f/k/a archives . . . real opinions & real haiku

Lawyers and law professors are purportedly “wordsmiths.”  Their

word-smithing skills are particularly important when they are playing

neologist — coining new words or nomenclature.  Therefore, Prof. Yabut

and the f/k/a gang are particularly annoyed to see the phrase “law porn”

catching on in legal academia and the blawgisphere.

You see, the term refers to materials that are neither “law” nor “porn.”

Those who use the phrase “law porn” seem to attribute it to Stanford

Law Professor Pamela S. Karlan.   I don’t have Pam’s definition of the

phenomenon or concept, but Brian Leiter equates “law porn” with

“Sextonism” [named after former NYU Law School Dean John Sexton,

who is now President of NYU], which he describes as:

“a disease familiar to law faculty, in which a good school

suddenly lapses in to uncontrolled and utterly laughable

hyperbole in describing its faculty and accomplishments

to its professional peers. The NYU alumni magazine,

which was sent to all law faculty nationwide, was so plagued

by Sextonism that a Stanford professor memorably dubbed

it ‘law porn’.”

Dan Markel has described it further (PrawfsBlawg, Aug. 16, 2005), explaining:

“Judging by my mailbox at school, I guess it is now typical

in the law porn business for schools to distribute glossy

brochures to every law professor in the country that extol

the unparalleled virtues of the sender’s school and each

hiccup and burp it emits.”

We mere mortals outside the portals of legal academia can now

perhaps start to guess just what they are talking about: A practice

in which a law school bombards law faculty with materials (often very

glossy and expensively produced) touting its virtues in a manner that

may be somewhat exaggerated.  The practice has spread (perhaps

like a venereal disease) across the entire law school community.  [It’s

apparently done to help maintain or improve a school’s reputation, for

purposes such as the US News law school rankings.]

Full Professor

putting an extra syllable

between us

john stevenson, from Some of the Silence

As mentioned above, then, we’re not talking about law — unless one

is so parochial in perspective as to equate “law school” with “law.”

And, we’re not talking about “porn” or “pornography” — except, perhaps,

in its original meaning: describing or “writing about prostitutes.”

So, why are otherwise smart folk like Pam Karlan, Brian Leiter,  The

Conglomerate‘s Victor Fleischer, TaxProf‘s Paul Caron, and Dan Markel

at PrawfsBlawg, using such a nonsense term?  Do they really call every-

thing they don’t like (that’s slick or glossy?) “porn.”  (Surely, it doesn’t

become “porn” merely because there’s a lot of it in their mailboxes.  Or,

is that the connection?)   Are they so isolated that the little four-letter

word “porn” is titillating for them?  Especially catchy?  Do they really

think “law” and “law school” mean the same thing?

putting holes

in my argument

the woodpecker

george swede, from Almost Unseen

We’ve been preaching at this website rather consistently, that

neologisms should actually help explain the concept they’re naming — and,

at least, shouldn’t create more confusion than explanation.  It seems to us

that we have some pretty good terminology available already to describe large

amounts of unsolicited materials: “junk mail” and “spam.”   We also have

a pretty good term for highly exaggerated claims about a product or service:

puffery.

.

Law schools are sending out massive quantities of magazines and other

forms of prospectus-like promotional materials, which are filled with puffery.

Can you dear reader come up with a better name than “law porn” for such

items?  If it needs to be cute and “neo”, maybe “law school puffspam” will

do.  Or, “puffspectus.” Please offer your suggestions in a comment.

It’s not too late to improve on the term “law porn” and put it into the dustbin of internet history.

.

When you Google it today, there are only a few

results that relate to law school promotional materials, as opposed to porno-

graphy law and lawyers.   Let’s keep it that way — except for new links to

this post, of course.

.

We all have obligations toward our language legacy. When presented with

a neologism that simply fails to connote or denote the concept it has been

coined to represent, we should ask the coiners to come up with a better

choice — or create our own.   Otherwise, all we’re promoting is — um —

“word porn.”

update (Oct. 27, 2005): Paul Caron covers this topic today at TaxProf, including Pam Karlan’s defense of her term “law porn,” which she provided us last night in an email exchange.  Please go read the whole explanation, where Karlan focuses on the analogous term “food porn,” and reminds us that “At least within the community to which I was directing my remarks . . . the phrase communicates exactly what I intended: people instantly recognize the phenomenon and share my reaction to it.”

Meanwhile, one wag has emailed to ask whether this bookstore has a neology section.

update (Oct. 27, 2005): Here are substitutes for the term 

“law porn,” as suggested by our Commenters and emailers.

Thanks to each of them.  Please help us add to our list.

• “perplexus”
• “alumlies”
• “publawcity”
• “plawpaganda”
• “plawbicity”

Heimliched out of me

pink candy heart

wordless now

randy brooks, from school’s out