Legal Academic Blogging and Influence vs. Credit

Back in 2005, I predicted the following future for academic law blogging:

A continued increase in the overall amount of law blogging until we reach a natural equilibirum, and then a roughly constant amount of blogging with frequent turnover among active law bloggers. Here's my thinking. Right now law blogs are pretty new, and the number of law bloggers is increasing. But it's much easier to start a blog than to keep it up. A typical post might take an hour or so to research, write, and edit. And the better and more thoughtful the post, the more time it takes. Only so many people are willing to put in those hours on a regular basis, and members of that twisted elite group presumably will change over time, too.

 Among law professor blogs, the big variable would seem to be whether blogs eventually will be taken more seriously in the scholarly community than they are now. Right now most lawprof bloggers do it for fun, but don't consider blogging "real work." If this changes, I think it will transform the nature of law blogs considerably. Whether that would be a good thing or a bad thing is an open question.

I think the prediction in my first paragraph mostly came true, and pretty quickly, although there has been somewhat less turnover than I expected.  

As for the "big variable" of the second paragraph, I think the answer depends on what it means for blogs to be "taken more seriously."  Over time, we have learned that lawprof blogs are great for influence but not for credit.  By "influence," I mean influence on debates both within legal academia and in the broader legal and judicial community.  A lot of people read blogs. Legal blogs can help shape how those communities think about particular legal problems.  We saw that possibility in 2005, and I think that potential has been often realized in the decade since.  In that sense, blogs are now taken seriously. 

On the other hand, it turned out that lawprof blogging doesn't generate much internal credit within the legal academic world.  

For the most part, blogging is still an extracurricular activity instead of something that is part of the core mission of legal academics.  To put it in crass terms, I doubt a law school Dean ever gave a professor an endowed chair, or a raise, or a research leave -- or whatever else Deans can sometimes give professors for top job performance --  in recognition of the professor's outstanding contributions to the blogosphere.  Maybe it has happened.  But I doubt it.

The result is that lawprof blogging today is taken seriously in some ways but not in other ways.  And I suspect that combination has something to do with the dynamic several Prawfs bloggers have noted recently about the blogosphere now seeming less fresh and perhaps a little stale.  Internal credit isn't everything, of course.  People blog for lots of different reasons.  And in some cases, influence can lead to attention that can help bring opportunities for credit.  

Still, the relatively low internal rewards for blogging, combined with the sense that posts should be serious, have limited its dynamic possibilities.   Fewer profs have a career incentive to join in, at least beyond short-lived guest-blogging.   Those who have blogged a lot before face no pushback internally if they slow down or stop.  And given how time-consuming serious blogging is, the number of folks who will do it regularly is not large.