by Maisie Allison
Paul Campos has confirmed that he is author of the unsparing blog. His apology followed this seething invective from Brian Leiter:
ScamProf is the failed academic who has done almost no scholarly work in the last decade, teaches the same courses and seminars year in and year out, and spends his time trying to attract public attention, sometimes under his own name, this time anonymously… After we called him out Monday, ScamProf pulled back a bit, and switched gears and stopped projecting his own failures on to all his professional colleagues and started actually writing about the economics of legal education…When his identity comes out, there will be additional ironies that will warrant comment.
The drama has really struck a nerve in the legal academy (and blogosphere): Paul Caron has reax here, and David Lat has more updates here. William Jacobson raises questions about anonymity and intolerance. Paul Horwitz takes issue with Campos's approach. Bruce MacEwen mounts a defense of the blog, and laments the legal academy's missed opportunity:
Exposed as never before to sincerely felt discourse (factually misguided, inconveniently timed, or otherwise–let that debate begin!) in the open air of the online community, the Academy has chosen denial, distraction, and blaming the messenger. One could argue that the appearance of someone like LawProf "had to happen" given the conscience-shocking distortions of some law schools about employment prospects and other issues (auto-destructing merit scholarships, for example), but even if the Academy could not have been expected to see this coming, the amazingly blinkered response to date–from extremely bright and articulate people who can surely do better–is, so far, an enormous missed opportunity.
Noting that Campos is far more popular among law students and practicing lawyers, Scott Greenfield holds out hope that the controversy will lead to real debate:
[M]aybe this airing of harsh words will end up producing a wee bit of honesty about how the Academy has completely screwed the pooch on law school.
The Dish 