Introduction and Thanks

Hi Everyone,

First of all, thanks to Craig for the nice introduction. As he mentioned, I'm a recent law school graduate currently living in New York, where I am an associate at a law firm. Over the past few years, I've published law review articles on a range of subjects, from gay marriage to civic engagement to the takings clause. My most recent article was on stare decisis and was discussed on this blog last year. I've got a couple of other pieces in the pipeline, which I'll blog about soon. I'll also share my thoughts on other issues as they come up. Sometimes I'll be discussing works that are still unpublished, so I'd appreciate any feedback or comments you might have.

Incidentally, the views in my articles and my blog posts are my own, not those of my firm, Blackbook, other editors on this blog, or any other individual or entity. And, although I'd like to blog about interesting legal issues in the news, I won't be blogging about anything work-related, even if news about those matters is already public, just to steer well clear of any confidentiality concerns.

I'm looking forward to blogging here and engaging in discussions with all of you. Feel free to contact me with any questions, comments, criticisms, or funny jokes. Thanks to Craig, Nima, and everyone else on the Blackbook team for inviting me to blog with them. This should be fun!

Pardon our Current (Dis)appearance

Happy Fourth of July!

And apologies for the lack of activity recently. As law students, time is on our side. Not so much as working folk, and actively maintaining The Blackbook has been harder than expected.

While things will likely continue to be slow over the remaining summer weeks, we look forward to returning to our usual volume when school kicks up again in a month or two. So don't worry about having to actually sit in class and listen to your professor--we'll still be here for your classroom browsing pleasure!

Subscribe to The Blackbook!

We've received several requests for information on how to subscribe to The Blackbook Legal Blog. You can subscribe by clicking this link, which is also at the bottom of the main page.

Additionally, you can always view our content via The Blackbook Legal Blog's ABA Journal Page which tracks our RSS Feed. Happy viewing!

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UPDATE (Apr.15, 11:50 PM): I'm bumping this old post up to let our readers know we're on Twitter. We joined a while ago, actually, but just recently figured out how to use it. Sort of. Anyway, you can now check out our Twitter feeds from time-to-time!

The Blackbook Welcomes its New Contributing Editor!

By popular demand (amongst ourselves), we've invited a new contributing editor aboard; we think he'll deliver a fresh new perspective--particularly because he, unlike us, is not an east-coaster.

We'll let him introduce himself:

My name is Freddy B.* and I attend a Jesuit law school in Chicago. (I have yet to figure out what that "Jesuit" label means in relation to the law school.) You may remember me as 'Master Shake'. I am BBL's new Chief Midwest Correspondent. I am interested in a ton of things and consider myself a "tinkerer," meaning I like to grab a new idea, gnaw on it for a while, and then move on. My interests include liberty, economics, law and the intersection of these things in the real world. Please feel free to write me at scrranger11@yahoo.com if you have any questions. I look forward to weighing in and posting in the future.

*- Real name has been withheld in order to maximize frankness and minimize future fall out.

Although pen names are not really our thing, we respect Freddy's decision. We'd be remiss, after all, to ignore the very real consequences of online blogging which have been observed by, amongst others, our friends at The Shark.

But while Freddy will be using a pseudonym, we assure you he'll adhere the theory underlying our decisions not to do so: namely, the desire to provide legitimate, substantive and--above all--thought-provoking content.

With that said, please join me in welcoming Freddy to the team!

Our Interactive Mission

So, it's been roughly two weeks since we've gotten up and running, and we want to thank our avid readers and cursory visitors. We started this blog to encourage student legal blogging which, according to Professor Orin Kerr at the Volokh Conspiracy, has been progressively disappearing. Our first two weeks saw thousands of visits, and we are very grateful for all of the support.

We also want to take this time to clearly outline our aim in writing this blog. Our principle goal is to provide an open forum for law students and practitioners to voice their thoughts, opinions, and ideas on issues of concern to the profession (and hopefully how to change it for the better). In a sense, this goal is about thoughtful interactivity. To that end, here are a few features we continue to employ so as to make our efforts fruitful:

1. A completely anonymous article tip line: This tip line is designed to enable our readers to alert us to topics that interest them. You can--in fact, you should--send us ideas to write about. We will oblige. Craig wrote an article this week in response to a request from an up-and-coming 1L regarding law school supplements and I wrote one considering the implications of potential bank nationalization on the legal profession.

Many more articles prompted by requests will be forthcoming to facilitate further discussion along these lines.

2. Easy anonymous posting: While a lot of blogs allow anonymous commentary, not all blogs offer it for the same reasons. We want you to feel comfortable in giving your opinions in a truly open forum (within the bounds of our site policy, of course). And, more importantly, we will actively discuss your thoughts with you because our goal is to continuously challenge our own views throughout the process.

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Again, we are very thankful to the supporters of this site. Please continue to send us any recommendations or thoughts.

Our Site Policy - Blogging at the Blackbook (Redux)

On February 13, we clarified The Blackbook's blogging policy to preemptively ensure that comments received accorded with our mission. As we explained:

While we intend to continue discussing general issues affecting the legal industry, we do not want to include any discussion of specific law firms. It goes without saying, then, that we will not discuss anything about our own legal employment or experiences—this summer and onwards. Additionally, we ask our commenters to speak in generalities when sharing their work experience with the blog (e.g. 500-750 person firm in NY).

In monitoring the site, we have found some deviations from this policy which we have removed. We appreciate the wide reception to our efforts thus far, but intend to keep the discourse intellectual, and on-point at all times.

So, to clarify (again), we will not--to the extent that we talk about the legal market at all--post any information relating to specific firms or the like, nor will we allow such material to remain posted in the comments to our posts.

Additionally, we ask readers to refrain from sending us any information pertaining to specific law firm actions or the like. We will not read, and we will certainly not publish, any such "tips." We do, of course, appreciate the tips we have received recommending article topics. For example, I will be publishing a post later this afternoon regarding law school supplements that was suggested by a reader.

Sorry to be draconian on this point, but we continue to believe it integral to our mission.

Finally, we want to clarify that what we write is based solely on our own opinions, observations and experiences. The opinions expressed on this blog do not--and will not in the future--represent those of anyone else.

Send us your tips

We want to thank those of you who have sent us tips on various issues of interest to the legal community.  For clarification, please send all tips to tips@blackbooklegal.com.  While we cannot guarantee publication, we will review all tips in detail.  Should we decide to incorporate your tip into a post or a story, your anonymity is assured and your identity will be protected.

Blogging at The Blackbook

Welcome (back) to The Blackbook:

With the recent increase in traffic we’ve experienced over the past few days, we wanted to briefly clarify our policy with regards to the blog’s discussion of legal employment.

While we intend to continue discussing general issues affecting the legal industry, we do not want to include any discussion of specific law firms. It goes without saying, then, that we will not discuss anything about our own legal employment or experiences—this summer and onwards. Additionally, we ask our commenters to speak in generalities when sharing their work experience with the blog (e.g. 500-750 person firm in NY).

The goal of this blog is to offer the law student’s perspective on the legal profession and legal education, while also discussing a variety of intriguing legal issues. We want this blog to add its own unique and permanent contribution to the legal blogging community and expect that these ground rules will ensure we are able to achieve our goals.

Welcome, again, to the Blackbook!

Now that we're up and running, it's worth laying out some brief ground rules--both for our readers, and ourselves. We'll all benefit from the structure, I'm sure.

Our objective with this blog is simple: we want to facilitate discussion about the (legal) issues that interest us. We expect to address anything and everything--from actual legal issues, to musings about law school, legal employment and everything in between. We'll (likely) each be posting two-to-three times a week.

We want readers to be able to freely express their thoughts in responding to the points we discuss and, accordingly, will not censor critical comments--anonymous or otherwise. We will, however, delete inflammatory comments that do not add anything constructive to the discourse.

This is not to say, of course, that comment discussion must always be "on point." Indeed, we encourage our readers to express themselves; but in a polite, non-derogatory manner. Remember, this is not AutoAdmit!