Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Beetles, Frogs, and Lawyers

Posted by Jeff Lipshaw

Several weeks ago, I was provoked (in a good way) by Usha Rodrigues' reference to Ronald Gilson's 1984 article on how transactional lawyers create value as the "reigning academic account."   I wrote a quick little essay and let it sit until this weekend when Gordon Smith reported on a clever quip from Professor Gilson about lawyers who become professors, and in the classic line:  "I resemble that remark."  I decided to update the little essay a bit and it is now on SSRN as Beetles, Frogs, and Lawyers:  The Scientific Demarcation Problem in the Gilson Theory of Value Creation.  Here's the abstract:

Recently, Ronald Gilson described a transactional lawyer turned law professor as someone who was a beetle, but became an entomologist. This is not the first non-mammalian metaphor used by an economically inclined legal academic to demarcate those who study and those who are studied. As Richard Posner so colorfully explained rational actors as they appear to economists studying them objectively: "it would not be a solecism to speak of a rational frog." In this short essay, I suggest that both say something about the prevailing view of theorizing that is entitled to privileged epistemic status in the legal academy. I assess Professor Gilson's classic 1984 article on value creation by lawyers in terms of its implicit claims to (social) scientific truth.

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_profession/2008/11/beetles-frogs-a.html

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