[Note: I have been on three appointments committees, so many professors have far more experience with this topic than I have.]

* Be authentic. Don’t try to be whoever you think the committee wants to hire. Be yourself.

* If you are doing the interview via Zoom, remember that the camera subtracts some of your energy. Don’t act, but be as energetic as you can be. Also, present a positive Zoom image (good sound, good lighting, cleaned-up backgrounds). Free yourself of any external distractions, but I personally never mind when there’s a pet sighting.

* Most interviews will ask about scholarship, teaching, and service. You will want to have some concrete examples about each topic that showcase the attributes you want to highlight.

* My view is that you should answer any question “I don’t know” if you don’t actually know the answer, and then explain your thought process about how you would think through or research possible answers. Committees know you are an entry-level candidate and won’t know everything about being a successful law professor, but they will credit logical and thoughtful approaches to problems.

A specific example: you might get asked what casebook you would use to teach a specific class. If you haven’t gone through the casebook selection process for that course, you can answer this question by explaining how you would research the casebook options and what attributes you would emphasize or avoid. In other words, you turn this into a question about your pedagogical priorities and how a casebook might help or hinder that, rather than a mechanical question about which specific casebook you prefer.

* Be prepared with questions for the committee. The questions you ask signal your priorities, so use them to that effect. For example, despite the AALS guidance on the page I linked to above, I would recommend not asking a question about the interview process before the whole committee. That’s a missed opportunity to signal some other priority of yours. Ideally, you will have done enough homework about the interviewing school that you can ask questions specific to the school, not just a stock or standard question.

* Sometimes you will encounter jerk interviewers who punch down on interviewees. I’m sorry if you run into those. It’s their insecurities speaking, so try not to let them rattle you. You will find that most interviewers are nice and genuinely want you to be your best self.

* The screening interviews are two-way sales pitches. Every school wants you to come out of their interviews being enthusiastic about them. Don’t be surprised if the committee spends some scarce interview time touting how great their school is.

* Do some mock interviews, if you haven’t done them already. Practice but don’t rehearse.

Faculty hiring is a super-complicated and incredibly idiosyncratic process. There are many complex interpersonal dynamics on appointments committees (as the old joke goes, ask 5 law professors their opinions and you will get 6 answers), and committee members often bargain with each other over their preferred or verboten candidates while trying to optimize against weird and constantly changing institutional constraints. So much of the hiring process does not turn only on your strengths and weaknesses as a candidate. Go along for the ride, but don’t take anything personally if it doesn’t work out, because that may have nothing to do with you personally.

Also, you are in an incredibly talented pool of candidates. There are hundreds of other candidates who also have elite credentials and who will (or could have) become successful academics. You should feel good that you already have stood out to the committee sufficient to get a screening interview. You probably already have at least one champion on the committee. But the amazing talent in the pool means committees make impossibly fine distinctions between candidates, some of which will appear nonsensical or inexplicable to non-committee members. Sometimes those distinctions work to your benefit, sometimes not. You might be the committee’s top candidate on paper; or you might already have some skeptics who will downrank you no matter how your interview goes so that they can advance their preferred candidates. Believe in yourself and your strengths, and don’t let anyone take that away from you.

Finally, you have been preparing for these interviews all of your life. Screening interviews have their own rituals, but in the end the screening interview is just another process for getting to know each other and exploring matches. It’s nothing you can’t handle. You’ve got this!

* * *

UPDATE: I got the following comment:

As someone who just spent some time on the lateral market, I would suggest adding:

– Candidates should research the institution and its institutional mission. Is there a research focus? A teaching focus? Access schools have different operational needs (and budgets) than larger schools with a bigger research footprint. Some focus on first gen lawyers, others on big law. Your background and talk should be tailored to the school’s mission first and foremost.

– Ditto for the people on the search committee. If there is overlap in research agendas or teaching areas it can make relating to the search committee easier during the screener. If not, find something in their bio that you do relate to. A candidate in the IP space needs to find some way to relate to the criminal procedure experts.

– This also extends to the institutions culture/political leanings (they all have one, expecially given the current political environment). The same for parochial schools that may have a religious mission that candidates should be aware of. Some religious schools have a very passive religious mission, and others have full on embraced Christian Nationalism. Other culture things to think about include: does the institution still value and embrace DEI? Or is it in a state with legal restrictions on academic freedom like Florida? What sort of community outreach does the school do? Is there a robust alumni network or is it more of a commuter school? What is the regional/national reputation of the school? (not talking about U.S. News).

– Try to be human. I never thought reading directly from a CV was a useful exercise, search committees want to know what you are going to be like outside of the classroom too. Be open to sharing about hobbies, especially if you have a screener with something in the background of their Zoom call you can relate to.

The post Tips for Your First Law Professor Screening Interview appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

The event was structured like a poster session at an academic conference. Every participant displayed and stood next to a poster that summarized their summer activities, including trips, research, and administrative projects.

We had a total of 23 posters–21 from faculty and 2 from staff. As many of you know, it’s incredibly hard to get faculty to self-report about their activities, so self-disclosures from 21 faculty is a treasure trove of information for the marketing team.

We scheduled a noon event during the second week of classes. We had a good student turnout. I saw many positive community-building conversations, both amongst the faculty/staff and with the students. We left the posters on display in the atrium so more students and visitors could see them. I will be sharing the digital posters on social media as well.

If you want to try an event like this at your institution, let me know. I’m happy to share more details about the mechanics.

See a photo album from this event.

Here are the digital posters:

• Center for Global Law and Policy
• Law Enrollment and Operations
• Prof. Adam Abelkop
• Prof. Vangie Abriel
• Prof. Sean Bland
• Prof. Taylor Dalton
• Prof. Eric Goldman
• Prof. Sue Guan
• Prof. Brad Joondeph
• Dean Michael Kaufman
• Prof. Devin Kinyon
• Prof. Linsey Krolik
• Prof. Ed Lee
• Prof. Kerry Macintosh
• Prof. Laura Norris
• Prof. Michelle Oberman
• Prof. Tyler Ochoa
• Associate Dean Thiadora Pina
• Prof. Cathy Sandoval
• Prof. Nick Serafin
• Prof. David Sloss
• Prof. Tseming Yang
• Prof. David Yosifon

The post Recap of a New Community-Building Event: “What I Did This Summer” appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

Reconvening After a 6-Year Hiatus. The conference series started in 2011, rotating annually between Santa Clara Law and New York Law School until 2019. The 2020 NYLS edition was scheduled for mid-March 2020, but the pandemic shutdown kiboshed that plan. NYLS hastily moved that event online, but it wasn’t the same. Ironically, as much as this community relies upon and embraces the Internet, an Internet Law conference is better in person. As a result, there was a lot of excitment about reconnecting in physical space. Attendees traveled from all over the country and globe, with 16 states (including DC) and 4 continents represented.

ChatGPT-Scripted Introduction. I personally wrote my introductory remarks. However, in a nod to the community’s high interest in AI, I also asked ChatGPT to write a conference introduction. Initially, ChatGPT produced a bland and uninspired introduction, but its output dramatically improved when I asked for a rewrite referencing Star Trek. Here’s the final version:

Attention, Starfleet legal officers and esteemed scholars of cyberspace! Welcome to the 2025 Internet Law Works-in-Progress conference, where we boldly go where no Internet law conference has gone before!

The digital frontier is a chaotic Neutral Zone—AI is evolving faster than Data on an espresso binge, tech giants are amassing power like the Borg, and cybersecurity threats are multiplying like tribbles. The legal framework? Let’s just say we’re one bad ruling away from a full-scale temporal paradox.

This is a true Kobayashi Maru—no easy answers, just high-stakes dilemmas. Will we regulate or be assimilated? Will digital governance bring balance to the Federation, or are we hurtling toward a Ferengi marketplace of unchecked capitalism? Some of you are Kirks—breaking the rules to get results. Some are Spocks—insisting on logic. And some of you are definitely Q—here to stir up chaos just for fun.

But one thing is clear: resistance to this discussion is futile! So, set phasers to engage, prepare for warp-speed discourse, and let’s make this the most illogical conference to miss.

Helm, set course for the first panel. Engage!

Zentangle Art-Making. For game night, my wife Lisa Goldman taught a Zentangle class. With her guidance, participants made two art pieces (1, 2).

The US Copyright Office requires copyright registrants to disclose if they used generative AI in the process of creating the work, and the office denies copyright registrations for any portions created by generative AI. If participants want to register their copyrights in their Zentangle art, as a joke (?) we prepared a certificate a(i)ttesting that the Zentangle art was generative AI-free. The A(I)ttestation reads:

I, Eric Goldman, a human without any cyborg components or neural implants, hereby certify that the above-named individual prepared their Zentangle artwork at Santa Clara University School of Law on March 8, 2025, exclusively using their human creativity and without any assistance from artificial “intelligence,” generative or otherwise.

Associate Dean Eric Goldman
Chief Validator of AI Inputs
March 8, 2025

Next Year in NYC. The 2026 conference will be hosted by James Grimmelmann and Cornell Tech on Roosevelt Island, NYC. More details will be coming soon. Hope to see you there!

Photo album.

Roundup of past Internet Law WIP events.

The post Recap of the 2025 Internet Law Works-in-Progress Conference appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

I’m honored and a bit humbled to have served as Prof. Mark Lemley’s lead nominator to recognize his mentorship of other scholars. Nine other IP professors joined this nomination.

Prof. Lemley’s achievements as a scholar are legendary and likely well-known to many section members. Prof. Lemley operates at a scale that few other scholars can match. For example, his works have been cited 45,000 times, making him one of the ten most cited legal scholars of all time. I imagine many of you in the room have cited him yourself.

Prof. Lemley is also one of the most prolific legal scholars of all time. Many section members aspire to publish one article a year. Prof. Lemley produces more like 10X that. No one has been able to reverse engineer the secrets of his productivity. It’s prompted many “jokes” in our community (more precisely, a mix of admiration and envy) that Prof. Lemley must have clones or robots to achieve his astonishing level of productivity.

I mention the scale of Prof. Lemley’s scholarly output because that word—scale—also applies to his mentorship of other people’s scholarly work. His quantitative achievements as a scholarly mentor are at a scale that defies logic. I’ll mention three numerical measures of Prof. Lemley’s mentorship.

First measure: Prof. Lemley has helped over 50 former students and fellows become law professors plus many other non-students or fellows, including me. Prof. Lemley’s numbers reflect his impressive track record of spotting and nurturing future academics. Several of his nominators specifically mentioned how Prof. Lemley recognized their potential as students (sometimes before they even had considered an academic career), encouraged them to pursue academia, and successfully navigated them through the daunting process.

Second measure: Like many professors, Prof. Lemley generously comments on other people’s drafts. Unlike other professors, he provides feedback at a staggering scale. He has been mentioned twice as many times in law review articles’ star footnotes than the next closest person—an amazing 170 times.

Third measure: Prof. Lemley co-authors with other scholars a lot—over co-authored 150 papers. Prof. Lemley is such a frequent co-author that community members often joke about having a “Lemley Number” analogous to the Erdős Number. While some co-authors are established big names, Prof. Lemley routinely uses the co-authorship process as his way of mentoring and developing emerging scholars and boosting their credentials.

The scale of Prof. Lemley’s mentorship efforts is bigger than my brain can compute. It feels like no one can do that much mentoring; and surely someone so deeply invested in mentoring shouldn’t have enough time to be one of the community’s most prolific authors as well. Based solely on his individual efforts as a mentor, Prof. Lemley deserves section recognition.

However, Prof. Lemley’s true impact is better measured by the cumulative effects of his work. Prof. Lemley routinely motivates the people he benefits to “pay it forward” and help others like Prof. Lemley helped them. Prof. Lemley’s mentorship-at-scale acts like a force multiplier: his efforts inspire scholars to “pay it forward,” and their acts further inspire other community members to adopt that ethos. Collectively, it’s generated wonderful scholarly norms in Prof. Lemley’s communities, all modeled on Prof. Lemley’s mentorship.

Drafting these remarks, I kept thinking of the Archimedes principle, which says “Give me a place to stand, and a lever long enough, and I will move the world.” I offer a Lemley corollary to this principle: with a generous mentor who dispenses guidance and kindness at scale, we can lift up entire scholarly communities.

For helping hundreds of individual mentees and for building great mentoring norms among scholarly communities, Prof. Lemley richly deserves recognition from this section. I extend to him my personal congratulations and my ongoing gratitude for his mentorship.

* * *

A few photos from the awards ceremony:

The post Prof. Mark Lemley Receives AALS Section on Scholarship Award for Mentoring appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

You asked me: why do I write? As a student, I wrote only when professors required me to do so, and those writing obligations were about topics I didn’t care about and on deadlines I didn’t choose. Over the years, I’ve realized that writing when someone else sets the topic and schedule squeezes the joy out of writing for me. I enjoy writing much more when I pick my topic and schedule.

I operate a blog on legal topics (http://blog.ericgoldman.org). I’ve written around 4,000 posts over 20 years. That translates to about one blog post every workday for 20 years in a row. My posts range in length from 200 to 10,000 words, with an estimated average of about 700 words per post. That means I have blogged around 3 million words over the past 20 years, or the equivalent of publishing 60 non-fiction books.

My blog posts share my unique perspective on the world with my readers. As a professor, I spend hours each day consuming information. By blogging, I can let readers (metaphorically) look over my shoulders, and I can highlight for them the most interesting things I’m seeing and put those developments in context. My readers come away from my posts more knowledgeable about what’s happening and with a sense of how they can use that information.

Each blog post generates a few dollars of revenue for me–not even close to minimum wage. I obviously don’t blog for the money! And yet, blogging produces many payoffs for me. As a professor, my blog has boosted my reputation as an Internet Law expert. As a result, my blog produces additional opportunities to share my expertise, such as media interviews with reporters and invitations to speak at events. Furthermore, because my blog demonstrates my expertise, I have been hired to provide expert testimony in litigation. Some of those projects have paid me tens of thousands of dollars. Finally, through my blogging, I have made virtual friends and connections across the globe.

One last point: people often assume that blog posts are hastily drafted and unfiltered, but not in my case. I never post first-draft writing to my blog. I quickly write a raw first draft to get my ideas out, but I then edit my posts from top-to-bottom at least twice (and sometimes many more times than that) before publishing them. I often set aside my drafts overnight so that I can do additional editing passes with a fresh perspective. For important posts, I ask other experts to review my drafts so I can incorporate their feedback. My motto is that the real magic of writing occurs during the editing. I wish I had learned more about, and practiced, how to edit my works while I was in school.

The post Why I Blog appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

Former Dean Don Polden and his successor, former dean Lisa Kloppenberg

I’m saddened by the death of my colleague, friend, and former supervisor, Prof. Donald (Don) Polden. Don was the dean that hired me as a tenure-track faculty at Santa Clara Law in 2006. I had been an adjunct instructor at SCU from 1997-2002, and returning to the law school was a dream of mine. Getting the offer from him was a highlight of my professional career.

At SCU, I was hired into a dual role as both a tenure-line faculty and Academic Director of the High Tech Law Institute. Normally, pre-tenure faculty are advised not to take mixed positions like this because of the risks to getting tenure:

• The administrative duties were likely to slow down my scholarly production, a key component of my tenure candidacy.
• Administrative decisions can be politically risky and can alienate colleagues. I hoped to be a mild version of myself during the tenure evaluation period, but I have a knack for finding trouble.
• I was coming into a new community with no built-up goodwill to smooth out any tenure considerations, unlike my situation at Marquette Law, where I felt confident of getting tenure the next year in part due to the goodwill I had built over my four years there.

To navigate this potentially perilous situation, I needed a dean who could help me succeed on every front–as a tenure candidate, a faculty member, an administrator, and also as a husband and father. Don did all of that and more. Foundationally, Don put together a teaching package that gave me enough time to invest in my HTLI responsibilities, perform my duties as a teacher and scholar, and still be a husband and father. As a result, I successfully navigated the tenure and full professor approvals during his deanship.

As my nominal boss, Don unequivocally backed the administrative choices I made. I always tried to be reasonable in my asks (of course, that’s a self-assessment…), but Don’s answer was always yes. His support led to a string of administrative successes that the school still benefits from, including a series of memorable conferences, the restructuring of Intellectual Property curriculum and High Tech Law Certificate (2009), and the launch of the Entrepreneurs’ Law Clinic (2013) (see this blog post for more background about Don’s role in the ELC’s founding).

One year, the HTLI unexpectedly dropped out of the top 10 of the US News specialty ranking of IP programs. I figured this development would make some alumni and students unhappy, so I asked Don if he would like me to tender my resignation from the HTLI director role so that he could use me as a scapegoat. Don’s facial reaction was a mix of bemusement and disbelief that I can only describe as a non-verbal statement “why would I as dean want to do that?” It was immediately clear to me that my resignation was the last thing on his mind. He saw the development as a short-term thing, not worth reacting to. His confidence in my administrative work was rewarded when the rankings drop was indeed only a one-year blip (I believe the program has ranked in the top 10 every year since).

* * *

In addition to our successful professional relationship, Don was a personal friend. For example, Don had season tickets to SCU basketball and the Oakland A’s and occasionally shared extra tickets with me. I used those tickets to bring my kids to the games and create some great family memories. Don also connected us with his daughter Emma for childcare help, which was a godsend because my kids loved her. So, in addition to helping me structure my professional time so that I could be a husband and dad, Don played additional important background roles in my kids’ childhood, and I always will be grateful for that.

* * *

I owe a lot of my professional and personal success to Don. He was an inspiration, a catalyst, a champion, and a mensch. I offer my condolences to the Polden family on their loss.  ז״ל‎

More links:

• San Jose Mercury-News Obituary
• University announcement of his death
• 2006 interview with Don as the “new” Santa Clara Law dean

The post A Tribute to Prof. Don Polden (1948-2024) appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

With respect to whitelisting or blocklisting external tenure reviewers in the IP community, my view is that many IP candidates will choose not to enumerate anyone on either list. Overall, in my experience, IP professors write fair reviews, and tenure committees generally try not to stack the deck against candidates. I know it can be scary to trust the process given the unknowns, but if the candidate generally thinks the committee will try hard to present them fairly, I would let the committee assemble the list of external reviewers on its own.

Some edge cases where I might feel differently:

1) the candidate might blocklist reviewers they know are unfairly out to get them. This would be highly unusual in the IP community.

2) the candidate might whitelist reviewers who can best appreciate the candidate’s work but will be difficult or impossible for the committee to find independently. This could be true in highly niche communities where outsiders won’t know the key players.

3) the candidate doesn’t trust the committee to put together a fair reviewer list. In this situation, the candidate could try to correct the problem with whitelists and blocklists. However, they would also have bigger concerns about the tenure process.

A couple of reasons why I’m not a fan of whitelisting reviewers. There’s always a risk that the faculty will downplay a review from a whitelisted external review because they assume those suggested reviewers are their friends and therefore predisposed to say nice things, true or not. Also, if the review comes back negative, the whitelisting might reflect poorly on the candidate for misjudging their standing with the whitelisted reviewer. At minimum, I could see the faculty giving extra weight to any criticisms from nominated reviewers. As a result, it could be slightly disadvantageous to whitelist anyone the committee will likely find on its own.

I’m sure there are other views on this topic. Please add your comment or send me an email (let me know if I can post it).

Of possible interest: I wrote some guidance to external reviewers of tenure and promotion candidates.

The post Should Tenure Candidates Whitelist or Blocklist External Reviewers? appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

April 2-4: speaking about age authentication at the IAPP Global Privacy Summit in Washington DC. Santa Clara Law is hosting a get-together at the Privacy Bash on April 3.

April 5-6: speaking about the SAD Scheme at the SFIPLA Annual Summit in Sonoma

April 7-8: personal trip to Eugene

April 10-12: personal trip to greater NYC area

April 15-17: speaking about the future of Generative AI as part of the Nies Lecture series at Marquette Law in Milwaukee

April 24 (tentative): annual Internet Law Year-in-Review for the law school’s Internet Law Student Organization

May 7: speaking about the CCPA/CPRA at PLI’s Twenty-Fifth Annual Institute on Privacy and Cybersecurity Law in San Francisco

May 16: fireside chat with Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter at the Copyright Office Comes to California event, at the Oracle facilities in Redwood Shores

May 29: AIPLA online seminar on the SAD Scheme

May 29: speaking about copyright year-in-review at the PLI Copyright Fundamentals event in San Francisco

Looking Ahead…

July 15-19: visit Traverse City on my way to speaking about Emoji Law and Copyright Year-in-Review at the ICLE IP Institute on Mackinac Island

July 22-24: Trustcon, San Francisco

August 8-9: IPSC, Berkeley

October 10: Bar Association of San Francisco IP Section, topic TBA

The post Speaking/Travel Schedule Q2 2024 appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

Dan was a brilliant and impactful scholar and academic. Dan also had a huge personal influence on my life and career–a sentiment that is shared by dozens or (more likely) hundreds of professors. He served as one of my role models in several ways, but perhaps most significantly in his tireless support for and encouragement of new community members.

In this post, I’ll explain how I got to know Dan and then talk about Dan’s talents as a scholar, a mentor, and a maven.

* * *

MEETING DAN

I first met Dan (virtually) through an email list called “Cyberia-L,” probably in 1994. As Prof. Winn (University of Washington) wrote in 1998, “the Cyberia-L listserv for discussion of cyberspace legal issues was established in 1992 by Trotter Hardy, a professor at William and Mary College of Law, creating a public space in which the application of traditional legal principles to Internet activities was hotly debated.” Listmembers were an eclectic mix of professors, lawyers, technologists, and others, and many members had cyber-libertarian inclinations. Over 20 years ago, I described it as a “very noisy list often filled with personal attacks and irrelevant rants, but still a key resource for seeing what others are thinking about.” Prof. Volokh (now of the Hoover Institute) provides additional context about Cyberia-L in this 1996 paper.

(Cyberia-L is long gone and nearly forgotten, as is its cyber-libertarian ethos. Many of the academic participants eventually migrated the conversation to the Cyberprof email list, run by Prof. Mark Lemley (now of Stanford Law), which is still going strong).

Dan and I were both active members of Cyberia-L, and it’s how we initially got to know and respect each other. It was one of millions of examples of how the early Internet brought people together and fostered community. In our case, it connected a brand-new West Coast lawyer like me with a rising East Coast academic star like Dan, something that would have been hard or impossible to do without the Internet.

* * *

SCHOLAR

Dan is perhaps most celebrated for his patent scholarship, but it’s too narrow to characterize Dan as a “patent” scholar. I always viewed Dan as a “law and technology” scholar or, perhaps even more precisely, a “law and science” scholar. His work frequently considered the implications of new technological and scientific developments for the law. It was consistent with those scholarly interests that Dan was at the vanguard of Internet Law scholarship, where he made several impactful contributions.

I want to say a few extra words about Dan’s 1995 article, “Trademarks Along the Infobahn: A First Look at the Emerging Law of Cybermarks.”

[Nomenclature notes: To be honest, I’m not sad that the term “cybermark” didn’t catch on, despite Dan’s second attempt in 2010 to make cybermarks happen. Dan didn’t create the “infobahn” analogy, but fortunately it too has faded].

Dan wasn’t a regular contributor to the trademark scholarship, but he had much to teach other trademark experts when he directed his energies that way. In the Trademarks Along the Infobahn article, Dan ran through a series of analogies to consider the application of trademark law to domain names. The paper says that “cyberspace is not unique in harboring designators that function as both names and addresses,” and it then identified some ways the domain name system was like other addressing systems and other ways in which the domain name system was in fact unique.

In retrospect, this paper deploys the now-standard methodology of Internet Law scholarship. It describes the Internet in technological terms, makes analogies to other media, and tries to isolate what’s unique, special, or different about the new technology. However, when Dan wrote this paper in 1995, that template didn’t exist. He helped set it.

It’s also noteworthy that Dan published this paper in the inaugural edition of the Richmond Journal of Law and Technology, which claims to be the first exclusively online law review. Today, many law reviews have online-only companions or publish only online; but in 1995, the world was skeptical of online content. Many academics did not view an online-only publication as a “legitimate” or “credible” publication and thus would have refused to publish there. Dan saw the future of journal publishing more clearly than many of his contemporaries. His willingness to publish in the Richmond JOLT helped validate the journal’s–and the genre’s–legitimacy.

* * *

MENTOR

Unlike some other academic disciplines, the IP academic community generally welcomes new members. Dan embodied that attitude. Over the course of decades, he generously and personally welcomed dozens/hundreds of junior scholars and actively integrated them into the community. Dan wasn’t the only senior IP scholar to do this, but Dan’s leadership strongly reinforced the norm.

With respect to Dan’s mentorship of me, I could easily rattle off a dozen ways Dan boosted my career, but none are more important than how he helped me join the community. In an email to Dan last month, I told him:

As you may recall, you and Mark [Lemley] were my two primary advisors in Fall 2001 as I navigated the law professor hiring market. I was pretty clueless about the process and I didn’t do any of the traditional steps to prepare for the search. Nevertheless, you were patient with my newbie questions, you were generous with your time, and you were incredibly helpful–as I know you have been with dozens of other candidates over the years. I could not have succeeded with that search without your interventions, so I owe my academic career to you (and Mark). Thank you for giving me that gift. It made a material difference in my life and the lives of my family members.

I recently wrote about Pam Samuelson’s key role in my initial academic job search. I owe so much to all three.

* * *

MAVEN

Dan knew everyone, and everyone knew and respected him. That meant he was one of our community’s top connectors. As a maven, he played an outsized role in personnel movements. Schools looking to hire would contact Dan for referrals. Indeed, I reached out to Dan last summer soliciting his recommendations for SCU’s search this year.

In the old days, there were very few ways for a potential lateral candidate to jump-start a move. AALS did little to support lateral movements (that’s improved only slightly), and it was considered bad form to publicly express one’s interest in lateraling.

Instead, candidates interested in a lateral move could privately “register” with Dan, which is what I did when I was ready to relocate from Wisconsin back to California. Telling Dan about my ambitions gave me a tiny bit of agency in an opaque and seemingly random lateral search process. (Other mavens I contacted: Mark Lemley, Graeme Dinwoodie, and Bobbi Kwall). My story was not unique. Everyone told Dan about their goals, and he kept tabs on pretty much everyone. As a result, Dan facilitated dozens or even hundreds of job placements over his career. Without Dan playing that maven role, our community becomes a little less liquid and well-informed. We’re all poorer for that.

* * *

I’ll let Dan have the last words in this post. Last month, Dan told me:

I have no serious regrets.  I’ve had a fantastic marriage for 36 years.  My career has gone far better than anyone would have imagined.  I have had amazing opportunities and experiences I couldn’t have foreseen.  I have used up far more than my share of the planet’s resources.  I have engaged with amazing colleagues and collaborators.  It’s all good.

For more on Dan’s legacy, see this Kudoboard. זיכרונו לברכה

UPDATE: The University of Minnesota School of Law memoriam.‎

UPDATE: The videos from the UC Irvine memorial event. Also, UC Irvine put together a playlist of videos from Dan’s time there.

The post In Memoriam: Prof. Dan Burk appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

* * *

Note 1: The pre-/post-placement decision may look different for articles seeking publication in peer review journals. Those journals may have more restrictive views of what constitutes first publication, impose embargoes, charge for open access, and impose more restrictive copyright policies–all of which may be implicated by SSRN posting.

Note 2: I usually (but not always!) prefer publishing my scholarly works through a third-party publisher. However, self-publication on SSRN without further third-party involvement is always an option (at least to tenured professors; in practice, pre-tenure folks may not have this luxury). The mental exercise is a valuable one: what value does a third-party publisher add, and is it worth any of the costs to find and work with them?

(I mean…as a blogger, I self-publish the vast majority of my total output).

Note 3: I personally prefer SSRN over other scholarly repositories for reasons I explain here, but I understand why that view is not universally shared. Many of the considerations in this post apply to any other pre-placement open access/public posting of a draft.

* * *

I don’t post my paper drafts publicly until I feel the drafts are refined enough to handle public criticism. There’s always a risk that whatever I share publicly will trigger blowback–even if I label the piece as a draft that’s subject to change. Usually, the first version of a project that’s ready for broad public scrutiny is the version I circulate to the journals for placement.

It’s theoretically possible that a law journal will reject a piece because it’s been previously posted to SSRN. I’ve not seen that personally. The vast majority of law journals don’t seem to care about the timing of SSRN posting.

Occasionally, journals reach out to authors asking if they can publish an SSRN draft. That’s happened to me a couple of times, such as this piece. However, I don’t recommend using SSRN posting as a placement strategy.

I post to SSRN the draft I circulated for placement soon after I’ve placed it with a law journal because (1) the draft is sufficiently ready for public scrutiny, and (2) I can disclose the publisher in my posting, and potential readers will see that (such as in the email alerts sent to SSRN subscribers). I don’t have any data showing that disclosing the publisher’s identity boosts readership, so that disclosure may not matter much.

I typically update the SSRN posting with the final published version when it’s available (often a year after my initial posting), unless there’s a remaining embargo. I don’t wait for the final published version to post the paper to SSRN for the first time, due to the significant time delay between placement and publication. If I only posted the final published version to SSRN, my paper may be old news at that point; plus I would lose many months’ worth of potential citations (this is especially a problem with rapidly-moving topics, which is usually where I’m writing).

I’m sure there are other views on the timing question. I welcome your thoughts in the comments or by email.

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