Posted by Orin Kerr:
Lessons of 'Anonymous Lawyer':
Over at [1]Stay of Execution, Scheherazade has a good post on the
lessons to be drawn from Jeremy Blachman's ability to [2]draw a great
deal of attention with his fictional blog about life as a law firm
partner:
[T]he three big lessons for me are: 1) the blog as a medium has an
inherent credibility. 2) Humans in general, and lawyers in
particular, are amazingly susceptible to status and heirarchy --
Anonymous Lawyer's appeal was the perception of access to honesty
from the upper stratus of the standard professional heirarchy, and
the delicious way the author could make explicit all the power
struggles and displays of status and power within a law firm. . . .
3) The profession really is draining talent, energy, and enthusiasm
from a huge hunk of lawyers, which is a travesty. Anonymous Lawyer
was fiction, but too many people recognized themselves in the
mirror Jeremy held up.
Points (1) and (2) are also true for the academic twin of Anonymous
Lawyer, the recently-launched [3]Anonymous Law Professor. Fortunately
-- at least for us law professors -- (3) doesn't seem to apply to the
latter blog. While Jeremy's fictious partner seemed real to many, the
same character dressed up as a law professor was spotted early on as
the creation of a law student (see [4]here, [5]here, and [6]here).
References
1. http://civpro.blogs.com/civil_procedure/2004/12/secrets.html
2.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/26/fashion/26BLOG.html?ei=5090&en=92a97e05adda128f&ex=1261717200&partner=rssuserland&pagewanted=all&position=
3. http://anonlawprof.blogspot.com/
4.
http://www.isthatlegal.org/archives/2004_12_01_isthatlegal_archive.html#110243717973553488
5.
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2004_12_01_althouse_archive.html#110246164646566309
6.
http://drustevenson.blogspot.com/2004/12/my-doubts-about-anonymous-law.html
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