'E-expertise and scholarship: One of the challenges [for American law schools] relates to faculty scholarship rather than teaching or student selection. Law professor bloggers, or "blawgers" as some call themselves, number in the hundreds. They transmit their expert opinions online in short, timely postings and receive immediate feedback from those in the courts and practice. This limits, they say, their time to write the traditional lengthy law review articles and treatises. One of the treasured aims of legal scholarship has been to inform the courts and policymakers. Now the courts have begun to cite blogs in their opinions, and blawgers report hearing from policymakers that the blogs have arrived at just the right time to help them understand the area of law and issues before acting.

Blawgers argue that their online pieces should "count" as a professor's required scholarly activity and not just as social exchange. The blawgers may not prevail in their argument that blogs are scholarship, as other faculty despair of maintaining high-quality scholarship without the intermediary checks of law review staffs or peer reviews. To promote discussion of these issues, the AALS and The National Law Journal will sponsor an online debate on these issues on Sept. 17 at Santa Clara University, and the AALS annual meeting includes a plenary session on this topic.'