{"id":13881,"date":"2011-07-03T15:44:46","date_gmt":"2011-07-03T20:44:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=13881"},"modified":"2011-07-06T12:07:51","modified_gmt":"2011-07-06T17:07:51","slug":"how-scam-blogging-threatens-the-law%e2%80%99s-professional-image","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2011\/07\/how-scam-blogging-threatens-the-law%e2%80%99s-professional-image\/","title":{"rendered":"How Scam Blogging Threatens the Law\u2019s Professional Image"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I first want to express my sincerest gratitude for the opportunity to appear on the Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 I have been a long time reader of the Faculty Blog<\/em>, and what was true when I first started reading this blog continues to be true now: I have thoroughly enjoyed the quality of content posted here on a regular basis.\u00a0 We have Alan Borsuk\u2019s timely pieces on public education.\u00a0 We can watch the fireworks as Professors Esenberg and Fallone debate.\u00a0 And Dean O\u2019Hear\u2019s posts flag for us new and forthcoming scholarship by members of the Marquette community (to say nothing of his posts tracking cutting edge developments in federal criminal law).\u00a0 In short, this blog has gotten it right.<\/p>\n

Some law blogs, however, are not quite so lucky.\u00a0 In fact, one trend in law blogs that has garnered nationwide attention this year is an example of blogging gone wrong.\u00a0 That trend is called “scam blogging.”<\/p>\n

Here is an account of how the scam blogging movement came to be.\u00a0\u00a0Since\u00a0the financial crisis in\u00a0the late-2000s, the job market for student summer associates and licensed attorneys has taken a nosedive.\u00a0 This is particularly true in the larger markets like New York and in their larger law firms:\u00a0 Once major businesses in the United States folded, took major financial hits, or simply became more cost-conscious, the law firms representing them felt the recession’s sting as well.\u00a0 Stories abound of large law firms laying off associates and partners alike.\u00a0 Though not to the same extent as the larger markets, law firms in smaller markets like Milwaukee have had to make cuts as well.\u00a0 In Milwaukee, some mainstays of law school on-campus interviewing reduced their summer associate hires or just did not\u00a0show up in the Fall 2009. \u00a0With many sources of employment drying up, students have shifted their job searches to the few jobs\u2014any jobs\u2014that make themselves available.<\/p>\n

Many law students, myself included, thus have struggled to find attorney positions with decent, even livable\u00a0pay.\u00a0\u00a0 Not everyone is without a job: some\u00a0classmates of mine have managed get state and federal judicial clerkships and others jobs at large law firms.\u00a0 Others were able to secure employment at the law firms with which they worked throughout their legal education.\u00a0\u00a0But these are the lucky ones.\u00a0 Many have not obtained permanent, full-time legal employment after graduation.\u00a0 Adding to the anxiety of the job search\u00a0are the\u00a0crushing amounts of student loan debt\u00a0shouldered by my classmates; some debt figures may reach over $100,000.<\/p>\n

My classmates trying and failing at the seemingly Sisyphean task of seeking employment in a down economy have reacted in ways that are many and varied.\u00a0 Most of my friends have expressed resignation, shaking their heads and uttering short, emasculated complaints like “It’s tough” and “The economy sucks” and the like.\u00a0 A handful laugh it off, noting with somewhat forced grins that they will just move back in with their parents after graduation.<\/p>\n

And then, there are the scam bloggers.\u00a0 These law students and graduates have taken to the Internet to voice their complaints about the cost and quality of\u00a0legal education.\u00a0 They claim that their schools defrauded them\u2014or scammed them, if you will\u2014into believing that most of the schools’ graduates landed employment in private practice or with the government or in business post-graduation, all implying to them that they would be working as attorneys.\u00a0 But lo and behold, the employment statistics reported by the schools may have been inflated, counting someone working at the law school on a part-time basis and someone working as a barista at Starbucks as employed under their statistics.<\/p>\n

These blogs are dripping with anger and vitriol. \u00a0Some are littered with curse words.\u00a0 One website even refers to law schools not as schools but with various names for toilets, restrooms, and garbage cans and will even post piles of fecal matter and vomit to begin a rage-fueled rant about a particular legal academic institution.\u00a0 And what of professionalism? Not for us, says one scam blogger, for that is a concept imposed by the elites in the legal profession upon the rest of the bar.<\/p>\n

Shock tactics aside,\u00a0this\u00a0suggestion raises\u00a0a\u00a0number of questions about how the legal profession should be treated as a profession. \u00a0Did our concept of law as a profession merely develop so judges, law professors, attorneys at white-shoe firms, and other members of the legal profession’s elite could force their will upon the rest of the legal community? \u00a0Do we treat it as such because lawyers have enjoyed a place of hierarchy in American society from the very beginning? \u00a0Is the concept of law as a profession merely a vestige of centuries past? \u00a0Or is it just an intellectually hollow “it is just because it is” proposition? \u00a0And if the legal profession’s special status is simply a product of elitist social construction and historical accident, why should we hold legal professionals to high moral and ethical standards? \u00a0Should lawyers and law students care when we see others like the scam bloggers acting reprehensibly?<\/p>\n

I say we should care.<\/p>\n

We should care because lawyers occupy a special place alongside an American institution that is both a structure and an ideal: democratic rule of law.\u00a0 Respect for the caretakers of our legal system is essential to our respect for the legal system itself.<\/p>\n

We should care even more when the legal system’s reputation is under attack.\u00a0 To be sure, public distaste for lawyers, whether their allegedly exorbitant or even extortionate fees or some of our justice system’s rights and privileges that seem less than immediately intuitive, has existed in the United States since its inception.\u00a0 The volume of these complaints ebbs and flows, with low points occurring with Watergate and the corporate scandals of the early 2000s and points not quite as low in between.\u00a0 Lawyers are easy targets in political campaigns: conservative candidates will often blame money-grubbing plaintiff attorneys for an overly litigious society that creates a hostile business climate and pushes the cost of health care into the stratosphere.\u00a0 And there is no need to catalogue the lawyer jokes that have appeared anywhere from the New Yorker<\/em> magazine to my high school freshman year religion class.<\/p>\n

Today, professionalism in the field of law is indeed under attack from the inside, and it is projected on the Internet for the world to see.\u00a0 Comb through the\u00a0comments on the ABA Journal’s website, and you will find snarky readers making ad hominem remarks about other commenters and throwing insults at other targets.\u00a0 The comments are admittedly tamer than what one would find on Youtube videos, but out of a website whose intended readership mostly comprises the legal community, I would expect more civility. \u00a0The scam blogger presence, however, is in an entirely different league, especially now that the New York Times<\/em> has made their presence known.\u00a0 See<\/em> David Segal, Is Law School a Losing Game?<\/em>,\u00a0N.Y. Times (Jan. 8, 2011).<\/p>\n

Most bothersome about the scam bloggers are not necessarily\u00a0the opinions they espouse.\u00a0 Their opinions do give someone pause to think about how some law schools market themselves to the outside world.\u00a0 Whatever the bloggers’ faults, the message for more truth in advertising among law schools has certainly been heard and raised a few eyebrows. \u00a0See, e.g.<\/em>, Lucille A. Jewel, You’re Doing It Wrong: How the Anti-Law School Scam Blogging Movement Can Shape the Legal Profession<\/em>, 12 Minn. J. L. Sci. & Tech. 239 (2011); Segal, supra<\/em>.\u00a0 <\/em>That they may have galvanized beneficial change is something to be commended.<\/p>\n

The main problem I have with scam blogging lies in their decorum.\u00a0 These scam bloggers are future lawyers.\u00a0 When the economy picks up, they will be drafting wills and contracts and complaints, arguing about truth and justice to judges and juries, and advising individuals and businesses on how to comply with a multi-faceted legal system.\u00a0\u00a0It reflects poorly on future lawyers\u2014members of a profession that prides itself\u00a0for critical thinking and searching below the surface for the truth\u2014that they would so quickly say that even they, the next generation or lawyers, would be so easily fooled by employment statistics.\u00a0 And when many of the legal profession’s future caretakers can be seen in public on the Internet throwing tantrums about their job prospects and debt, however valid those concerns are in their own right, what does that say about the future of the legal profession as a whole?\u00a0 What of the legal community’s sense of exceptionalism?\u00a0 Of being special?\u00a0 Of being held to a higher standard?<\/p>\n

Of being professionals?<\/p>\n

Editor’s Note (7\/6): This post has provoked several vituperative responses, which\u00a0have been submitted without the authors’ full names.\u00a0 This blog’s comments policy, in relevant part,\u00a0is as follows:<\/em><\/p>\n

We reserve the right not to publish comments based on such concerns as redundancy, incivility, untimeliness, poor writing, etc. All comments must include the first and last name of the author and a valid e-mail address.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I first want to express my sincerest gratitude for the opportunity to appear on the Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog.\u00a0\u00a0 I have been a long time reader of the Faculty Blog, and what was true when I first started reading this blog continues to be true now: I have thoroughly enjoyed the quality of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":81,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-education","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/81"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13881\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}