Timeless Classics About Conferences

Not that many law review articles are intentionally funny.   I commend to those who have not seen it a major exception, Eric Muller's What's In a Name(tag)? .   It seemed relevant after I attended Law and Society and the AALS Midyear, but it is 11 years old and not available for free on line, so it probably does not get the circulation it deserves.  The paper proposes radically  improved nametags to deal with the dilemma of whether to speak or remain silent when making eye contact with a person at the AALS (or, by implication, at other big conferences).  Professor Muller writes: 

I cannot overstate the importance of this choice. Each might strike gold: the other person could be, say, the chair of appointments at Texas. On the other (and far likelier) hand, each might strike out: the other person could be, say, a legal-research-and-writing teacher from Wyoming. [Muller's former position]  And make no mistake: that second possibility is disaster. Who wants to waste valuable networking time with someone off the network? Just yesterday I myself spent (read "wasted") several minutes on idle pleasantries with somebody who could not advance my career in any way!  Time at the AALS is too short for that sort of thing. That is what LAWPROF is for.

And, while thinking about conferences, no academic is fully prepared for career-advancing denigration of other people's work without reading economics Nobelist George J. Stigler's The Conference Handbook, 85 J. Pol. Econ. 441 (1977), also, unfortunately, requiring a JSTOR subscription or free registration.  Although economics-focused, many witticisms will readily translate.  My favorite suggested comment: "I can be very sympathetic with the author; until 2 years ago I was thinking along similar lines."