It’s been about three and a half years since Dave Hoffman at  Concurring Opinions asked whether the blawgosphere has become stagnant.  I was a babe in the blawgosphere at the time, but felt compelled to respond nonetheless, questioning why the “old guard” of blawging demonstrated no interest in anything new. 

Mark Bennett, the Texas Tornado, then coined the term “practical blawgosphere” in making a distinction I missed.

Scott Greenfield commented on the new wave of blawgs bringing vitality back to the blawgosphere. I think he’s right — but Scott and David are talking about entirely different places on the web. Just as law professors and criminal-defense lawyers inhabit different places in the real world, Scott’s Blawgosphere is not David’s.

Bennett was right.  This wasn’t as much a new guard/old guard schism, but a practical/academic one.  We might all be writing stuff in the blawgosphere, but there was almost no overlap on the part of the lawprofs.  We didn’t interest them.

Over time, I tried to engage with the lawprofs, as I often found their posts provocative and their insights interesting.  Not all practicing lawyers did, but that was my take.  Sometimes I would write posts that praised an idea; other times not so much.   At first, they would comment when I disagreed with them, defending their honor in the blawgosphere.  After a while, most stopped, realizing that there was nothing good in it for them, as I was not on their tenure committee, not inclined to show them the deference they expected from a student and, as practicing lawyers sometimes are, blunt in my responses.

The lawprofs didn’t really like interacting with practicing lawyers.  They have a language and tone that is mandatory in the Academy, where no feelings are ever hurt and no harsh words ever uttered.  Practicing lawyers tend to be a bit rougher around the edges, using words that no scholar would ever utter.  They found us offensive and coarse.  We made their eyes burn when they read our words. 

They wouldn’t tolerate our rude ways, and withdrew again.  Some called it circling the wagons. Others, a circle jerk.  Either way, they pulled up the drawbridge and headed for the castle keep, where no harm from the outside could touch them.

All of this came rushing back to me when I read Mark Bennett’s post on other voices in the blawgosphere, those who chose to be heard on the issue of Texas making it unethical for criminal defense lawyers to charge clients a flat fee.

Thanks to the following bloggers, and especially to our out-of-state colleagues, for weighing in on the State Bar of Texas’s attempts to amend the Disciplinary Rules and efforts to do away with flat fees:

Max Kennerly, Sound And Fury Over Flat Fees, Signifying Nothing
Gideon, Blawg Review #294: MLK, Jr. Day edition
Brian Tannebaum, Shame On The Texas Bar, And Us
Scott Greenfield, Flat Fees and the Last Texas Criminal Defense Lawyer
Colin Samuels, A Round Tuit (53)
Jeff Gamso, If I Only Had a Vote

Paul Smith, It’s Big Vs. Little,, Money Vs. Underdog,, Corporate Vs. Individual
Paul Kennedy, Just follow the money
Paul Kennedy, Let our voices be heard
Paul Kennedy, The State Bar strikes back
Paul Kennedy, State Bar says those opposed to rules changes are liars
Murray Newman, Please Vote No on the Texas State Bar Referendum
(If I’ve left you out, it was inadvertent. Please email me. Paul is kicking butt. Where are the rest of the Texas criminal-defense blawgers? Guest? Matlock? Floyd? Martinez? Breston? Flood? Spencer? Skinner? Barnett? Maselli? That’s right, boys (and girl), I’m callin’ you out. It’s just about time to rework the blogroll, and I’m looking for an excuse.)

Meanwhile, there have been blog posts in favor of the amendments:
State Bar of Texas: Referendum 2011: Q&A with Tom Watkins : State Bar of Texas Blog
State Bar of Texas: Referendum 2011: Clarifying the Issues : State Bar of Texas Blog
(I detect a pattern here.)

Mark properly questions why other Texas criminal defense blawgers haven’t bothered to raise their voices on this critical issue.  Now it’s my turn to return the favor Bennett did for me three and a half years ago:

Why is there not a single law professor who has bothered to write on this issue?  Not one has acknowledged it exists, it’s happening.  Too busy doing heavy scholarly lifting on the subject of Harry Potter and Due Process at the Ministry of Magic?  Of course, the issue of  princess succession for the former colonies is both critical and timely, and so much more important than the practice of law.  You cry that you want to be relevant, respected?  So get your head out of your ivy-covered butts and be heard on things that matter in the real world.

Are such mundane issues below your intellectual merit?  Don’t forget that the problems faced by real lawyers in Texas are the outgrowth of such notable scholars as  Lester Brickman, whose theoretical approach coupled with his disdain for practicing lawyers gave rise to this absurdly misguided approach.  So is it scholarly enough for Brickman but beneath your dignity?

It would be remarkably nice, not to mention occasionally fun and even potentially interesting, if the lawprofs ever gave a damn about the issues that practicing lawyers faced in the trenches.  It’s not like we expect you to ever go into the trenches, where you might get some muck on your tweed jackets, or even that you would be allowed in the trenches since so many of you aren’t even licensed to practice law in the jurisdictions where you pontificate.  But that doesn’t prevent you from giving a few minutes of your brilliance and blawgospheric effort to overarching issues of importance to real lawyers.

I continue to keep the lawprof blawgs on my RSS feed.  I continue to read your posts.  Can you say the same about practicing lawyers? 

Three and a half years ago, Dave Hoffman asked whether the blawgosphere is stagnant.  It wasn’t then.  It’s not now.  But Dave asked the wrong question.  The question is whether the academic blawgosphere is relevant. 

Not a single lawprof opined about the changes in Texas.  Not one of you.  That’s a disgrace.