Anonymous weblogging

Dennis Kennedy is skeptical about anonymous weblogging. In his guidelines to would be bloggers, he includes the following bit of advice:

6. Think Carefully About This Anonymous Thing. I really struggle with the idea of anonymous legal blogs, but I'm an old-school kind of guy. On the one hand, I am very disturbed by the current legal culture in which associates in law firms live in such a state of terror that they will not blog unless they are anonymous. On the other hand, I don't understand how blogging anonymously helps you. Of course, look what I named my blog.

On one hand, I can see his point, especially since he is coming from the perspective of a seasoned lawyer who uses his weblog primarily to comment on what he sees as the future of law practice. But not every weblog author shares that perspective, and I can understand their point of view as well.

I've gone from writing anonymously, to publicly, back to anonymously, and back to public again. I recently gave up on anonymity simply because publicity in early 2003 means that Googling my name leads people here anyway. The tph-lex.com domain is on my business cards, and I use it for my business-related e-mail. It's not hard to figure out who this is.

Many lawyers avoid thinking of their weblogs as marketing devices. They're looking for an outlet that they can use to communicate with other lawyers and non-lawyers about whatever is on their minds. (Some may want to take the potentially dangerous step of writing about work.)

If these authors write under their own names, they will feel the pressure of marketing standards. Firms generally want to present a unified image, a "brand," if you will. They want clients to see a particular professional image that may clash with the writer's desire to write about his or her personal life. (This facially good marketing idea can have poor side effects, but that will have to wait for another post.) They worry about losing their jobs or not getting jobs that they want.

The public weblogger who is looking for work experiences the same constraints. The job-seeker or client-seeker must hone, or at least be attentive to, a public image that may exclude some of the very topics the writer feels a need to express. This is probably especially true among many of the law school webloggers. They're acculturated and trained to be very concerned about the image that they present to potential employers, but they're also going through a trying experience that prompts many people to seek expressive outlets.

I often feel like my entries are too "stuffy," so I always laugh at myself a bit when Evan Schaeffer asks the question, "Why are lawyers so stuffy?" In my case, it's for the very kind of reason I discussed above — I feel a need to be very cautious because I don't want to say anything to dissuade employers or clients. I'm probably overcautious, and there are probably ways to be careful without being "stuffy."

What do you think?

See also: Robert Scoble, A little more on Mark Jen's story.