Top 30 Law Prof Blogs: Harmless if not Very Meaningful Competition

Paul Caron (Cincinnati) charts traffic statistics of the "leading blogs" edited by law professors who use SiteMeter to record blog traffic. The selection of blogs is drawn from Dan Solove's "comprehensive" Law Professor Blogger Census, which of course isn't comprehensive (nor claimed by Solove to be) and wouldn't stand up to the population identification rigors needed for a real infometric analysis. But Caron's ranking, harmless if not very meaningful, is good enough for a blog post and a round of back slapping in law school faculty lounges across the country.

Or to put it another way:

Who cares [about law prof blog traffic rankings], you say?  Blog Emperor Caron, of course!  Curious that four of the top five have almost nothing to do with law; four of the top five are right-wing blogs; and three of the top five have almost no intellectual content.  Welcome to the blogosphere! -- Posted by Brian Leiter (Texas)

Indeed, welcome to the academic legal blogosphere law prof style, complete with pathological myopia. Caron's ranking is, shall we say, a tad elitist. It intentionally excludes academic law library/law librarian blogs. He notes, for example, that Law Librarian Blog is not edited by law profs. Apparently my co-editor's credentials as an AAUP-represented tenured faculty member aren't good enough; neither are yours if similarly situated. The academic legal blogosphere must be a very exclusive club; membership, alas, does not require publishing intellectual content.

Of course the information for an inclusive traffic-based "ranking" is readily available thanks to Bonnie Shucha's excellent directory which was updated earlier this month and now lists 140 law library/law librarian blogs, many of which do reside in the academic legal blogosphere.

The giggle factor for info antics about the legal blogosphere is pretty high among law librarians and some, hopefully most, law profs. I wonder if LIS profs use these all too common posts as examples of what infometrics is not. Bottom line: take them for what they are worth -- law blog trivial pursuit.

Kudos to Dennis Kennedy for recognizing the contributions law library/law librarian bloggers make to the legal blogosphere by repeatedly awarding them his annual Blawggie Award for "Best Legal Blog Category".

"I have to be one of the biggest fans of law librarian blogs there is. I learn so much from these blogs and they get named for this award [Best Legal Blog Category] every year. As I said before, 'across the board, these blogs have developed into strong information resources, often with links to primary source information that I'm not sure how I would find otherwise.'" -- Dennis Kennedy

[quoted in our coverage of Kennedy's 2007 Blawggies]

Footnote: Law Librarian Blog would have come in 19th place by visitors and page views for the period covered in Caron's blog ranking. Other academic law library/law librarian blogs may have placed higher if they had been included but I'm sure Caron has other ways to show his appreciation for the contributions academic law librarians make. [JH]