I'll temporarily be away from the blog as I recover from back surgery

First off, my apologies to my co-blogger Scott and our loyal readers for my inconsistent blogging activity over the past few months. A large part of my time was consumed by my duties as EIC of Perspectives - Teaching Legal Research and Writing (and here for info on submitting articles) including appointing a new board, adopting our first bylaws in 27 years, establishing term limits for board members, and an open application process for anyone interested in serving on the board. These changes will help make Perspectives a stronger, better publication going forward in light of the changes that have taken place generally in the legal academy whereby more LRW professors and law librarians are now expected to publish in journals like Perspectives as part of their jobs. Having one guy working part-time on the weekends to publish Perspectives twice a year might have worked fine back in the early 90's when the journal was originally founded but it was clearly not a sustainable model going forward given the volume of articles we receive and the effort needed to produce a quality publication which is why I implemented these reforms over the past few months. 

The other circumstance that's going to keep me away from the blog for the next several weeks is that I'm having spinal fusion surgery today to correct a slipped vertebrae (a condition called spondylolisthesis) as well as a fractured vertebrae which I've been living with since February. So, yeah, I was literally teaching LRW the last two months of the semester with a broken back. Due to my surgeon's schedule and my health insurance plan, I've had to wait all this time before I could get the procedure scheduled. And even though the pain the first few weeks was excruciating - I lost 12 lbs because of it - to the insurance companies pain is not life-threatening so you have to learn to live it with for a while. Anyway, the recovery means it's going to be difficult to sit in front of a computer for several weeks so I'll blog when I'm able until the point when I can tolerate longer stretches at a desk. In the meantime, my stalwart co-blogger Scott (thank you, again!) will be holding down the fort. Please get in touch with Scott directly over the next few weeks if you have news or an announcement you'd like posted.

Thanks.

(jbl).