Law School bloggers keep pace with business issues
For a cadre of Law School students, the business of business is, well, blogging.
About 18 students, under the guidance of Gordon Smith, a Law School professor and an accomplished blogger, have set up a weblog called Law & Entrepreneurship News to track developments in business law.
The Web-based journal, employing a mix of commentary and news stories, allows aspiring lawyers to closely follow new legal wrinkles in a range of areas that interest them and to occasionally throw in their own two cents.
“As I understand more legal issues, I’m able to post a story and tell people why it matters,” says Zachary Wyatt, a second-year law student and editor of copyright and trademark issues for the blog. “It’s a great addition to classroom learning.”
Smith agrees that the blog – which launched in September at – provides a valuable chance to share breaking legal news and form opinions about the new developments.
“Law school can be a rather passive experience for a lot of people – it’s really the professor at the center and students reacting,” says Smith, who specializes in corporate and securities law. “Blogging enhances their knowledge because they have more context in more recent cases.”
Wyatt, who also has a personal blog called The Rising Jurist that examines the law school experience at http://jurist.onebluesun.org, says that Law & Entrepreneurship News averages about 150 hits a day.
Student editors keep abreast of subjects areas such as international trade, Wisconsin issues, venture capital, taxation, franchising and small business. The site also includes links to other business blogs.
Smith says blogging imposes a special brand of discipline.
“We’re all dumpsters for information, but blogging makes you organize it and sometimes explain the meaning of it. You’re viewing the world through different eyes,” Smith says. “Blogging is risky, in a way, because most bloggers are not anonymous.”
Smith started his personal website, called Venturpreneur at http://www.venturpreneur.com/weblogs/ with an eye toward doing the work of Law & Entrepreneurship News. But he found the job too big for one blogger.
As his blog took a turn toward discussing everything from gourmet cheese to politics to the Bowl Championship Series, Smith recruited students to work on the instructional blog.
Recent posts to the blog included news of export barriers to small businesses, the outsourcing of legal services overseas, the effects of California’s vote to provide $3 billion for stem-cell research and federal registration of hedge-fund advisers.
“It’s the wave of the future,” says Wyatt. “It’s a great way to get information out, and you don’t have to rely solely on traditional media outlets.”