The list was compiled by Clare Kaufman, for WorldwideLearn.com. She explains: “The following top law professors dominate the Twitter-verse, either through the wit, volume or audience. Criteria for selection for this list include the quality of the tweets, the number of followers and the most active users.” For whatever reason, I’m not on the list, although based on number of followers, I rank #40. Since SSRN downloads are already a very important item in law faculty rankings, perhaps the day will come when Twitter too will play a role in the ever-escalating status competition among law professors.
Regardless, the Top-50 list might a useful guide for folks who are looking for additional people to follow on Twitter. Not surprisingly, it is dominated by professors who specialize in technology issues. Impressively, Lawrence Lessig, @lessig, bestrides the law prof twitterverse like a colossus, with nearly 200,000 followers–which appears to be (I didn’t count) about as many as the other 49 combined. @davekopel has only 0.7% as many followers.