Let’s Make 'Law Porn' Correctly, Shall We?

With a little help, your "law porn" can actually send the signals that you want it to send.

Dear law school media people, deans, and distinguished professors,

It’s that time of year when I get “law porn.” “Law porn” is a term for law school promotional materials and brochures designed to sway voters who might influence U.S. News and World Report rankings.

In the heyday of law schools, I used to get a LOT of law porn. It was the first thing to go, I think, after professor raises and party money. Still, I get a sufficient amount to realize what I do and don’t like in your law school’s brochures. If your law porn isn’t good, I’m not voting for your school in a favorable way. I apologize in advance for my hostile tone, but there are trees at stake!

  1. Too much blank space. Blank space might be good for Taylor Swift, but if you have huge pictures of your faculty members, with tiny print citing their articles next to them, keep in mind two things: 1. I won’t read it. 2. Many senior faculty members won’t be able to read it.
  2. Don’t let the eccentric faculty member into your brochure. If all your faculty members are wearing suits of various sorts, but there’s that one professor who is wearing tie-dye, it’s probably best to not let professor tie-dye into the brochure.
  3. Do not give free advertising to your competitors. Let’s say you have a faculty member published in Georgetown Law Journal. Let’s say you compete with Georgetown. You are implicitly saying that Georgetown’s journal is better than yours. And if you fill the blank space with, say, a picture of the Georgetown Law Journal, you’re giving them free advertising. Stop that.
  4. Don’t give me a table of contents. You know I’m going to be flipping through it, not looking for a particular faculty member. And your brochure is not going into the library as reference material.
  5. Make sure you have a diverse faculty. I will be looking for gender and racial diversity. If your school doesn’t have that, I’ll likely downgrade your school in the rankings for not having an optimal faculty network for decision-making (non-diverse groups make poorer decisions than diverse groups).
  6. Spare me your pictures of faculty in classrooms. Okay, yes, we all teach. I really like that you put the letter “D” on the grease board. Defendant, right? Good use of the board! And look at you, all casually leaning on the podium! Or leaning in to engage the students! Wow! Meanwhile, your student’s Gchat or Facebook conversation is (barely) blurred out. Your students aren’t even listening to you anyway because there is a photographer snapping a thousand pictures a minute, distracting them.

As a deconstructionist exercise, let’s talk about how the publications are the focal point, and the pictures are the fluff. The publications are more valued, and everyone knows it. If a law school decided to put out law porn that didn’t list pubs but actually just showed pictures of happy engaged students, it wouldn’t go very far.

  1. If you show your students, please pose them properly. The dude in the right corner is covering a smile because he’s on Gchat maybe. Or he’s unhappy. Or maybe he’s picking his nose. It is hard to tell, but I picked up right away something was off. Also, do you need the plaque on the front of the podium identifying your school? Are your students sometimes lost and end up at other law schools?
  2. Spare me the casual conversations between professors and students hanging around various hallways of the law school. We know you staged that.
  3. Don’t show a chalkboard. I mean, those are SO 20th By the same token, don’t any of your professors use multimedia in the classroom?
  4. Dean, unless your name is Batman, I’m not reading anything you wrote.
  5. If you’re using publications from 2007, you’re using artificial fillers. We are a very productive faculty over a long-term horizon, you are telling me.
  6. If you’re using half of the publication space for your faculty members’ 12,000 titles, you’re using artificial fillers. I’m sorry, but I don’t care if your faculty member is also president of 20 institutes and head of the local PTA.
  7. I can’t help but notice all the faculty members who got to pose for the bigger pictures are white. All the ones on the covers, too. Are you trying to tell me something here? I notice on the inside of the brochure that you do have some diversity. Are you not sufficiently appreciating that? Are they unavailable for pictures because you have them rushing around showing how diverse you are?
  8. Don’t write me an essay, or quote at length from faculty publications. Sorry, no one is going to read that. Well, I know I won’t. And it is a bit presumptuous to think I will, don’t you think?

With a little help, your law porn/brochure can actually send the signals that you want it to send, and not the horrible signals I’m currently picking up while I browse through it.

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LawProfBlawg is an anonymous professor at a top 100 law school. You can see more of his musings here and on Twitter (@lawprofblawg). Email him at lawprofblawg@gmail.com.

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