The Distribution of Law Professor Twitter Users

Given the criticisms in the comments to Bridget Crawford's post on the law professor Twitter census, I think it might be worth it to look a little more deeply at the issue of law professor "tweeters."  As I indicated in the comments on Sunday afternoon, I'm coming late to the issue of Twitter.  I wondered why a law professor would tweet?  Michelle Meyer had some apt observations about its importance in the comments.  

I thought Bridget's census might be worth a little more inspection, in terms of the question: who's tweeting?  There are 139 tweeting professors identified as of June 8th by Bridget Crawford after removing 7 professors at schools outside the U.S. and one at UC-Irvine, which U.S. News has not yet ranked.  The professors are on the law faculties of 92 schools in the United States.  Many professors are the sole known tweeter on their faculty, but one school (Pace) has five, Pepperdine and SMU each have four, and Chicago, Drexel, Harvard, Southern Illinois, and St. Louis University each have three.  Focusing now on the ranks of schools of the 121 professors at U.S. News “top schools” (ranks published in March 2012):  The range of school ranks is represented from 1 through 145, with a median rank of 58.0 and a mean of 65.4 (SD = 44.3).  Schools of 25% of professors in this group had a rank between 1 and 26, and schools of another 25% had ranks between 101 and 145.  Eighteen other professors are at U.S. News “second tier” schools, whose ranks were not published. They are at 14 different schools.  One thing is clear: law professors at schools throughout the U.S. News spectrum are tweetting.

I'm guessing that tweeting is about getting information out, building a community, and -- ultimately -- a reputation.  We could debate whether faculty are entitled to build their personal reputation on the law school's budget.  But I think most people think they are not only entitled to but expected to help build the institution's reputation.  Student reliance on U.S. News suggests that strong reputation is something students want.  As we have seen repeatedly and in many contexts, school reputations are important.

At right is a bar graph that shows the distribution of law professor tweeters according to their schools' U.S. News ranking.  

Comments

[Bridget Crawford]

For those who wish to access the raw data, I've made my spreadsheet available here: http://www.bridgetcrawford.com/2012/07/census-of-law-professors-on-twitter/lawprofessortwittercensus/

[Bob]

Bob here.

Yes -

Bernie posted some data that's been available for months (I'm glad he did, otherwise it would have been ignored here). I've counted 30 plus comments to this post from professors: "ooh me, me, I tweet, and I have a book."

How many comments addressing the social justice implications of Bernie's post as it relates to the historical deceptive behavior of EACH OF YOUR SCHOOLS!?! NONE!

There are 11 comments to Bernie's post, most of which ask whether the data can be re-sorted to the commenter's preference. Conversely, there are legions of comments on the useless musings that characterize this blog.

That, professors, is why a nonesensical post like this is so infuriating: It's clear you all read this blog(as evidenced by your quick responses to this utterly useless tweet post; yet, you are nowhere to be found in the comments to Bernie's post.

Your students read. They watch. They are suffering, mightily. And you can't be bothered to discuss the most pressing issues facing legal education and its consumers? But oooh, a list? oooh, perhaps yet another useless ranking of schools, this time by professors that tweet?

What's worse, for you, is that prospective students read this blog in the context of Law School Transparency, Inside the Law School Scam, and others.

You guys are making absolute fools of yourselves, and enemies of your schools' alumni (even the successful ones, like me) with each post on this blog.

Pace Law: One of the lowest performers by nearly all measures (academic rep, practitioner rep, etc.), features these outcomes, and a $212,607 cost (easily financed by high interest, non-dischargeable, taxpayer secured debt to boot):

http://www.lawschooltransparency.com/clearinghouse/?school=pace

Thoughts professor Crawford?

[Alfred Brophy]

To make the discussion a little clearer, Bob is responding to a comment I put up on Monday on Bridget's post, which in turn was responding to his comment (and one other) asking why Bridget was conducting a census of law professors who tweet.

My comment on Monday was:

We talk about all manner of things here at the faculty lounge, including employment prospects for students. My colleague Bernie Burk put up an important post about this recently, which I think you both would find of much interest:

http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2012/07/abas-class-of-2011-employment-outcomes-data-show-how-rough-it-is-out-there.html
----------------

Now here's my new response:

Hi Bob,

Couple of quick points. Actually, the data Bernie Burk posted haven't been available for months. They've been available for about one month. I was one of the people who asked for a re-sorting of the data. You know why? So I could better understand how schools were doing in terms of their students finding full time employment, rather than have them ranked by US News performance. That is, what I wanted was data more easily understandable in terms of *precisely* the issue of employment outcomes. I said as much in my comments.

We have coverage of law school cost, debt, and employment, as well as of other issues (for instance, the two posts today address IRBs and restrictive covenants). Another issue we talk about happens to be social media. Bridget's helping to build a community among twitter users; for reasons I mentioned in my post here that can have some value.

As to social justice, I wish I wrote about more of that. I put up some posts earlier in the summer on racial diversity in law schools and what one might do in terms of changing rankings, perhaps to encourage schools to have a more diverse student body. I don't know how broad your interest in social justice is. In case you have broad interests, here's one of the posts:

http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2012/05/relationship-between-african-american-student-enrollment-and-law-school-ranking.html

[Bridget Crawford]

Thanks for your comments, "Bob." I think you are making two points. Your first seems to be that faculty members have responded to one blog post (on this blog, asking for users of Twitter to identify themselves) and not to another. Your second point is that compiling a list of law professor Twitter users is "nonsensical."

As to why law professors have not commented more frequently or substantively on the post you mention, I do not have any data and am not sure that my speculations would be any more accurate than others' speculations. As to your comment that a Twitter census is non-sensical, I simply disagree. I find Twitter to be a helpful -- but by no means perfect -- way of communicating with and learning about the work of colleagues, former students and current students, practitioners in the field, and legal publishers.

[Bob]

Let's make this short and sweet (lest we digress - I knew you'd bite on 'how long the data's been available.'..B.S., any one of you could have marched in to your career services offices and asked years ago, but you didn't give a damn, because you didn't have to.)

Now you do!

I'm making one point and one point only:

Prof. Crawford, yes you! -

Query:

Under what circumstances do you beleive it makes sense for a person desiring to obtain a job 9 months after graduation as a practicing lawyer at a firm that will pay enough to service the average NON-DISCHARGEABLE HIGH INTERST debt that will have to be incurred to attend Pace, to attend Pace (and thereby fund your summer tweet'scapades)?

Would you recommend they jump in at full price, no tuition reduction?

Would you advise a someone you care dearly about, hoping to get a job at a firm of 50 or more attorneys, to attend Pace at 75% cost? 50%? 25%?

Law School Numbers, Top Law Schools, Inside the 'Scam, Above the Law and the like eagerly await your response (although, since the data are FINALLY there for consumers to make an educated decision, hence the decline in applicants, no response is really necessary, but please do humor us)!

And please keep on Loungin' as long as the market will bear.

**Oh, Oops, wasn't short, and surely wasn't sweet, but please do adress the substance of the comment, rather than the length and the tone.