The Volokh Conspiracy

This blog was one of my main motivations for going to law school. I think Sallie Mae owes you a cut in the killing they're making off me.

I'm not sure if this is the kind of change you're looking for, but I read about DreamDinners on a blog a couple of years ago, and it has totally changed the way my family eats.

EV, your post about state unclaimed property websites led me to recover almost $300. I consider that a very material improvement in my life!

Yes. It is good to hear voices with various expertise discuss issues of the day. You find that on this and other blogs.

Well, I was a software engineer for thirteen years and pretty successful at it. Perhaps I got burned out, or didn't find the work challenging anymore, but it didn't really interest me, and I found myself spending a lot of time first on message boards and then blogs (including this one), reading about and discussing politics and economics.

I'd always considered writing my first love, so I started my own blog as well, and then began meeting other bloggers through Meetup.com. At this point, being an engineering nerd my whole life, my social life had consisted of staying at home and watching TV with the missus. So going out and meeting people was a pretty big deal.

My blog wasn't anything special. It was probably one of the more widely read ones of the other bloggers I had met, but not nearly enough to make any money off of it. So I might have not led to anything more until the tech bubble burst. Fortunately, I kept my job, but my original master plan of saving up to retire early (so I could then do whatever it is I really wanted to do -- write or whatnot) didn't look as realistic.

So I took a long hard look at my job and realized that it wasn't something I wanted to do for another 10-15 years. So I looked at some of my favorite bloggers to see what they were doing. Academia didn't appeal to me, but a few bloggers had worked at Cato (namely Julian Sanchez, Gene Healy, and Will Wilkinson), and after perusing some of Cato's policy analyses, I decided I wanted to work at a think tank.

I was still reluctant to leave behind a career that had treated me so well, but after some prodding from my wife (who'd recently finished her degree after I'd encouraged her to go back to school), I took a few night classes in Economics and Poli Sci, and then took the plunge and am now at San Jose State full-time to get a Master's in Economics, hoping to end up in a policy job after I finish in May.

The journey has had its fair share of bumps. We had to cut back our lifestyle (although not as much as you might think). I struggled with time management for a while, and stopped updating the blog. Worst of all, problems in the marriage that we'd been ignoring bubbled to the surface, and we got divorced earlier this year. In hindsight (and my writing about it on LiveJournal -- friendslocked of course -- helped us sort things out), it became clear that it wouldn't have worked out. I had clung to her and convinced both of us that we were soul-mates because I was at a low point when we had met, and she was my first long-term relationship.

Thankfully, it's been an amicable divorce (aided, no doubt, by the prenup). And my early retirement planning meant I saved more than the max allowed for retirement accounts, so I had plenty of savings to tap. I also was kept on part-time at my job as a software engineer.

And I have no regrets. I'm enjoying my classes and my school life far more than work. I find myself pretty comfortable in social situations now, so I have a pretty active social life and am dating a journalism major now. I've also met a lot of people in the libertarian movement through an Austrian Economics seminar at FEE, an internship at Cato this past summer, and at the Mackinac leadership conference earlier this month. So I'm definitely looking forward to the future nowadays.

I don't owe this entirely to blogs, but they were probably the biggest factor.

In a sense yes. It isn't as if it was the only factor in all of it, but in a very real sense it was the triggering event. I learned of a conference through econlog that brought me to D.C. where I fell in love with George Mason and D.C. and so forth and - although I had been planning to move here already - the whole event was revelatory enough to be a tipping point on my decision to move (which involved breaking off a dying relationship and so on).

Reading blogs has definitely changed my life, though not necessarily in any specific way alluded to in the original post.

Mostly it has opened me up to intelligent points of view that are outside academia, and has consequently expanded my view of the world beyond measure. More importantly, it has taught me to call the world as I see it, rather than use my intelligence to support a view that I (or someone else) wish were reality. In this regard, I think blogs have made me much more mature and aware of the world outside the "chattering classes."

I started reading the Freakonomics blog after buying the book, which itself has sparked a revolution in data driven, ideology-free descriptions of the world.

Through various links and google searches, I became a regular reader of Marginal Revolution, Becker-Posner Blog, La Griffe Du Lion (which is truly one of the best social science publications in existence), and Isteve, along with some other, less famous, ones.

I do, actually, credit reading blogs in part for my good first year performance in law school. Reading daily clips of thoughts that other people have been developing for weeks/months/years is great exercise for the brain, and also teaches me to think critically about all sides of a problem. I noticed that the people who bring the most intellectual curiosity to class often do the best. Now those grades have paid dividends at a job at a top national law firm, which may, down the road, lead to a job in an important public service position, so who knows how much I really owe to reading blogs beyond how they just enrich my intellect.

BTW, thanks to everyone at Volokh for putting on an A+ blog. It's truly some of the very best content on the web.

Before I read blogs, I used to have lots of free time to advise insurgents and help the British seize power in the Hejaz.

Now I barely have time to leave Cairo, let alone ride across the desert or blow up Turkish trains.

Sigh.

Reading econ blogs has convinced to seriously consider economics grad school, which is a big change from Chemical Engineering.

Reading this blog has solidified even further my conviction that a chemical engineering research career will be more satisfying for me than a career in law, politics, or economics academia. Chemerinsky's brouhaha, the Group of 88, and the Summers debacle, to name a few, have me convinced that scholars in humanities, law, or social sciences face onerous costs that engineering scholars simply do not abide.

Also, here's a hypothetical: between Fritz Haber and John Keynes, who do you think changed the world more?

Various legal blogs including insights on law schools were the reason I chose attending U of Chicago Law over other law schools similarly situated in the rankings.

Reading blogs such as this one has been a natural extension of my intellectal curiosity. However, they certainly haven't helped me do well in law school. On the other hand, the wasted time (and therefore barely average law school grades) due to blog-reading would probably be filled with something else non-school-productive if I were to give up blogs, so they are really a symptom rather than a cause.

TE Lawrence--Perhaps you could resume some of your former activities if you cut down on time spent being thrashed by brawny gentlemen?

I'll likely switch career paths and start doing criminal law -- an interest that I cultivated only after law school reading criminal-related blogs.

Has it led you to change professions, go to a particular school, or study some field rather than another? Has it led you, directly or indirectly, to meet your new spouse? Has it led you to lose your old spouse?

Luddite that I am, had chosen a school and a profession long before I found blogging. No spouse to gain or lose. Nevertheless, blogs like Volokh have reminded me why I'm in law school, without which I surely would have left law long ago in favour of playing around in the California surf.

Like other law students who read this blog, I have a clue about what professors are talking about when they bring up current legal goings-on. It's kind of neat to be the only student - or one of a handful of students - who can discuss issues that are not in the casebook.

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned deteriorating vision(or perhaps my eyes are so bad I missed it?) as one consequence of reading blogs.

Reading Balkinization and The Volokh Conspiracy has changed me, yes: I have discovered American constitutional law and scholarship, which I like very much.

In law school, I always loved constitutional law, and now I regret deeply not having remained at the law school in order to specialize on it, produce scholarship and eventually enter academia. In my country (Spain), returning to law school seven years after obtaining the J.D. with an expectation of making a living of it is impossible. This has led me to some frustration—just two months ago I was still considering to leave my current job at a big law firm and explore my options at law school—, but I have come to the conclusion that constitutional law will remain just a hobby for me.

Anyway, reading blogs, among other things, helps me cultivate this hobby. :-)

When I was a sophomore philosophy major in college, I was pretty sure I wanted to be a philosophy professor. How else would I get to paid to think about ethics and justice? Then I stumbled accross SCOTUSBlog (and later How Appealing) and realized that the thorny moral problems of the day--e.g., execution of the mentally retarded--were actually being fought over in the courts. Focusing on concrete moral problems was far more interesting to me than the abstract meta-ethics that was in vogue in academic philosophy, so I started reading Supreme Court and appellate opinions in my free time. First, cases like Atkins v. Virginia and Roper v. Simmons, where the moral problem loomed large. But then I found myself getting sucked into cases where the focus was more on procedure or positive law, like Teague v. Lane. In my junior year it occured to me that I might as well get paid to do what I was already doing in my free time--reading court decisions--and so I decided to apply to law school.

It's been a great decision, and I have Tom Goldstein and Howard Bashman to thank for sparking my interest in the law.

I agree with "uclaw student" above. When I was in law school I enjoyed reading blogs immensely, including this one. But I think it was not a good decision in retrospect. Perhaps I could have found some way to limit my blog-reading to an hour or so, but I've found that once I start reading blogs, and following the links, and then reading the comments, etc., hours have fled without my noticing. I definitely would have done better in law school if I had spent more time reading the assignments, learning the material, and preparing (long-term) for the exams. My blog habit seemed justifiable because so many legal issues were discussed, cases analyzed, etc.
If I had not read blogs in law school: better grades, less intellecutal and political stimulation. I'm not sure I cared (or care) enough about grades and rankings for my hours spent blog-reading to be categorized as a bad decision. But I do wish I had gotten more out of the traditional law school experience, rather than spent so much time on the computer.
One more thing: I made some friends in law school, but I wish I had spent more time with them (and built up more friendships). Three years of law school go by very quickly, even though at the time every day seems like a forever of drudgery. (And I used blog-reading to alleviate the drudgery.) It can be a lonely place, and reading blogs makes you feel like part of a coummnity, but it's somewhat artificial. Being in front of the computer all day just isn't healthy, and it's better to spend some of the time with real people, even with strange folk who do not read blogs.
Yet here I am, reading Volokh and commenting. So it's a hard habit to break, and maybe I don't really want to.

As a non-law professional, reading this and other blogs on politics and law have given me a better understanding of the heuristic models that legal professionals and political pundits use. Whether or not the models are rational or logical is not is not near as interesting as people providing their own Rorschach tests via comments.

I read my wife's blog and now I know what is going on at home.

Blogs have certainly reduced the time I used to devote to Internet-related masturbation.

Thanks to the Volokh Conspiracy, I am now taller, thinner, self-confident, and more attractive to the opposite sex.

--|PW|--

How reading blogs has changed my life:

1. Blogs are in electronic format over the Internet, and as such are readable by one with autism-vision impairment precisely due to computer capability to enlarge print, change color contrasts, etc -- as compared to hard paper copy print, which is not readable.

2. Blogs provide many insights into how others perceive one's viewpoint, however representative the sample. This can be useful for doing jury research, preparation of arguments in cases, etc., or just for personal enjoyment.

3. Blogs circumvent the mainstream media's stranglehold on censoring out unpopular viewpoints designed to present the American public propaganda about the happy people shows or having a particular partison bent. This allows real discussion of real, significant, and important issues.

4. Blogs enable persons with autism to actually have a social life, which is not possible in real face-to-face human interactions. This is why, if anyone were to research such phenomenon, there are so many autistics blogging on the Internet these days -- it IS their social interaction medium.

5. Blogs enable thinkers to learn new and useful information that might not be learned anywhere else, e.g., the delight of RA's posts on the Knights Templar thread.

6. Blogs enable highly intelligent people with extremely stigmatic disabilities (autism) to access education and training to which they would not otherwise have access in a pencil and paper, standardized testing, law school rankings, top 10% based on exclusion of electronic format access world -- e.g., Eugene's most excellent First Amendment posts.

7. Blogs can be highly entertaining, e.g. Jonathan Adler's Sunday Lyriks. (I WISH he were my law prof).

Have I left anything out?

Well, considering reading blogs, one specific blog in particular, and then blogging myself, lead to a serious relationship with the blog's proprietor, I'd have to say yes, blogging has changed my life.