Following up on Chris’s post below, Dan Solove at Concurring Opinions has also written a post on the pros and cons of blogging without tenure. In favour: name recognition, exposure to other disciplines, increased ability to network, higher google rankings, and ability to talk to non-academics. Against: risks to reputation if your blogging seems shrill or frivolous to colleagues, and risks of distraction from producing peer reviewed articles (or whatever it is that you’re supposed to produce in order to get tenure in your discipline). I’m probably the wrong person to opine on this, as (a) I started blogging precisely in order to talk about things that I couldn’t talk about in my research, and (b) despite these initial intentions, have ended up turning blogs into part of my research, and thus something (I hope!) that contributes to tenure chances etc. But I would be interested to hear from CT reading academics – whether untenured (what are the tradeoffs that you perceive in blogging or not blogging as an untenured assistant or visiting professor or whatever?) or tenured (what do you think of junior colleagues blogging? A good or bad idea?).

Over at Legal Theory Blog, Larry Solum has an interesting post on the difference that blogging, and the internet more generally, has made to legal scholarship . Key points include the speed of dissemination, the bypassing of the gatekeepers that have traditionally mediated between legal scholars and the wider world, and the globalization of legal debate. Larry also has a few words about blogging and how it might affect your career as an academic lawyer (including some cautionary words for the untenured). Go take a look.