The Decline of the Student Law Blog?

I recently read a blog post by T. Greg Doucette, a law student blogger who maintains a fairly robust blog roll of other student bloggers on his site www.lawdevnull.com (thanks to Mr. Doucette for adding me to the roll recently). In the post, he discussed his perception that law student blogs were on the decline, ie many on his roll had been inactive for some time and he hadn’t noted many others coming on line. Assuming he is correct and that he isn’t just behind the times (I have no reason to believe he isn’t; I have noted a lack of new student blogs on Justia’s blog roll as well), it begs the question of why this decline is occurring.

Before attempting to answer that question, it is worth considering just why students blog. As a former student (and still current) blogger I might suggest a few: a means of getting one’s name noticed, vanity, a fun release, a ready made (though more or less readily accepted depending on the company) excuse for skipping journal competition and the joys of collaboration are certainly all reasons I began, and continued to, blog. I believe they drive a lot of other bloggers, both student and otherwise, as well. Have any of those stimuli disappeared over the past three or four years? I don’t believe so.

In his article, Mr. Doucette didn't really present any theories. I might suggest a flight to microblogs like Twitter. Maybe students take themselves more seriously these days, or don’t feel a need to differentiate themselves. Maybe the job market and post-graduation prospects have just beaten people down so much that they don’t take joy in activities like blogging. I am just not sure I can say. Whatever it is, however, I hope it changes back at some point for the sake of erstwhile and would-be bloggers; running BlawgConomics has been a great source of joy for me, and serving both as a writer and an editor have been activities I would highly recommend for anyone with a serious interest.