Law professors shy away from getting serious about academic value of their own work. It will cost too much for them to be honest.

I wrote on this blog recently about how law professors turned submission process of law reviews as a race to the top in search of a better employment, at the expense of law students, and how law reviews have no academic value because they are reviewed and accepted for publications not by "peers" of professors, but by law students who do not even have a completed law degree.

Law professors continued discussion of that sticky subject on their own blog.  It is interesting that the most critical comments came from anonymous participants, and that law professors branded those valid comments as "snarky".

Yet, the commentator under the picturesque nick "YesterdayIKilledAMammoth" only said this:

"Anything short of peer-review will not make law reviews more legitimate to outside disciplines."

Which was absolutely true.  Who cares about the value of law reviews if they are sorted out and accepted by students, often from their own law professors or their friends, in exchange for grades and careers?

And, the "Mammoth" also said this:

"While, I applaud at least one proposal to get us going, the proposal begins with funding and participation problems--which are death knells for any meaningful reform.

Law professors need to decide two questions. First, do they want to be part of the larger academic world? And second, do they want to influence the practical world? If the answer to either of these is 'yes', then systemic change is needed.

If the answer is no, then we'll continue to watch the growing obsolescence of legal research."

Legal research is not get "obsolete", it gets computerized, so the law professor may soon go the way of the mammoth - possibly, that's why they don't want to change anything about how they operate, no matter how wrong.

Trying to get the piece of the pie before it disappeared...