“Legal commentator Walter Olson sounded the battle cry in his recent post: ‘Abolish the Law Reviews!,’ arguing that most exist so students can edit them, rather than to be read by lawyers and judges.” (more)
More reactions: Scott Pryor, Faculty Lounge; Kevin O’Keefe, Real Lawyers Have Blogs (“Blogs and social media to replace law reviews? Seems likely”); more, Deborah Hackerson, Legal Skills Prof Blog; “Something tells me this would not make Walter Olson reconsider his belief in irrelevance of law reviews.” [Jacob Laksin] Earlier here, here, here, etc. Related: Dave Hoffman on what would happen if we freed up 2 million law student hours a year [ConcurOp]; Ross Davies/Journal of Law, PDF, via Bainbridge on when legal scholarship helps judges. (& Mitchell Rubinstein, Adjunct Law Prof)
One Comment
If law school want to put out law review articles, that’s just fine right. If they don’t, they don’t. I think if you don’t like them, you shouldn’t read them. But, really, if they are just to puff up law students’ resumes, that is not exactly a crime against the people.
For legal research, you can often get a good summary of an area of law from a law review article. I still use them in my research.
There are just not many blogs putting out that much quality material. Look at 95% of attorney written blogs. The are, charitably, trash.