Former NYU law school dean John Sexton famously invented what's now known as "law school porn." It started out as an overwrought glossy alumni magazine that Sexton had sent to every law professor in the land. He expended it to include flyers, postcards, and so on, all lauding NYU at lengths that would have made PT Barnum blush.
Sextonism, as Brian Leiter aptly called it, spread wildly. Today, I'd guess that 67% of the mail I get at the office is law porn that goes straight into the recycling bin without ever being read.
Lately, however, I've noticed a new trend. Snail mail law porn is turning into email law spam.
In my in box today, for example, I find an email from the University of Washington celebrating the "Clinical Law Program 2010-2011 Annual Report Highlights." I have no relationship with the University of Washington, its law school, or especially its clinical program. Heck, I barely have a relationship with my school's clinical program. So why the frak am I getting this spam? The answer is that they got an email list of all law professors (probably bought it from the AALS) and made the same economic calculus that all spammers make. Sending out masses of spam is so cheap, that even if only one or two law professors take note of the email positively, UW has won. If those law faculty members happen to be among the chosen few whom US News surveys as part of its annual law school ranking process, UW really wins big.
While the economic calculation behind law spam differs but little from that behind, say, Nigerian scam spam, one wonders whether law school spammers like UW will take a reputational hit that the Nigerian con artists avoid. Unlike the vast majority of spam I receive, I know who sent this spam note to my inbox. And I now hold them -- and their school -- in disdain. If a modest percentage of law faculty feel the same way I do, the cumulative hit to Washington's reputation may impose real costs on the school.
Unfortunately, the UW spam is but one example of several I received just today. Presumably, UW and its ilk (sadly, probably including my school), figure that the reputational hit will be modest because "everybody does it."
But I invite readers on law faculties to send me examples of law spam. I'll post them periodically in hopes that naming and shaming the spammers will do some good.
