Things Lawyer Like – Publishing Articles

Ever wondered “How ERISA Can Make You Scream Like a Baby,” need “Ways to Separate the Forrest From the Trees When Dealing with Structured Debt Asset Classes,” or wanted to understand “The State of the State of the Art of Defense in the Ninth Circuit”? You can bet your last share of Citibank that a lawyer has written an article on one of these topics.

Across the board, lawyers feel pressure to make names for themselves. This need is rooted in the concept that honest to goodness “lawyering” has traditionally meant hanging out your own shingle and blazing your own trail. Since most lawyers today practice under someone else’s shingle, they have limited opportunities to distinguish themselves. Faced with this dilemma, lawyers turn to one source of self-promotion – publishing an article.

The aspiring lawyer learns in his or her second year of law school that publishing is the path to prominence. Writing a journal article, especially a law review piece, will allow a law student to soar through interviews with the confidence that comes with the safety net of talking about a mind-numbingly complex and probably completely irrelevant piece of legal scholarship. When the practicing lawyer churns out a publication, a link can be added to that lawyer’s online biography to immediately add the perception of authority and standing in a particular field; perception because the article may never be read.

You see, one consequence of the sheer volume of articles published by the legal profession is the reality that nobody has time to read the finished products. Instead, the lawyer’s publication, regardless of its worth, immediately becomes a bio booster with limited consequences. Try to slip speaking Portuguese as a hobby on your resume and you can bet you will be called out, but put a citation to an article you wrote on your bio and you are almost certain to avoid scrutiny. So what are you waiting for? Get out there and write something...anything…and start building your shingle.