December 7, 2004

Anonymous lawprof?

I say this is a law student, very awkwardly imagining what goes on in a lawprof's mind. Clue to law students: we don't sit around obsessing about how much we don't like you and how we can hurt you. I have never in twenty years of teaching law school encountered a law professor who had an attitude like this about students.

UPDATE: I should note that I don't like to link to this this blog. I'm only linking to it because it has been double linked by JD2B and linked by Volokh Conspiracy, How Appealing, and various law student blogs, which means that many law students and prospective law students are likely to read it and have their anxieties about law school stoked. On the positive side, the blog offers an opportunity to hone one's critical reading skills. I think you can find evidence in nearly every sentence that the author is a law student. Now, there is nothing wrong with writing a fictionalized blog from the perspective of someone other than yourself--and this blog does identify itself as fiction--but readers seem to be assuming the writer is a lawprof adopting the veil of anonymity in order to reveal the dirty secrets that he's in a position to know and not a law student projecting his own emotions.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Eric Muller has renamed this guy "Anonymous Law Student" and is having fun pointing out his obvious gaffes.

A emailer suggests that the writer is a former law student, based on today's post, which has the fictional lawprof serving on what the writer clumsily calls the "re-admission committee," but which an actual lawprof would probably call the Retentions Committee. Perhaps, our writer has failed at law school. (Maybe it's that possibly nonfictional drinking problem.) Which law school is it? I wonder. I Google "re-admissions committee" and discover that a couple schools do have a "re-admissions committee." If I were looking for the blog writer, I'd start at Fordham Law School.

By the way, do lawprofs use the U.S. News terminology to refer to their schools? I think the expression "first tier law school" is mostly law student talk. A lawprof is unlikely to introduce himself as a "tenured law professor at a first tier law school."

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: An emailer with some experience talking to lawprofs says he's heard the term "first tier law school" used to identify their schools when those schools are in the lower part of what U.S. News calls the "first tier" (that is, its top 100). Those at higher level schools would tend use the smallest available rounded off number and say they teach at a top 20, top 30, or top 40 school.

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