I'm heading to sleep early tonight, because after a week of performing in the Parody show, I'm pretty exhausted, and my 8:30 Corporations class beckons too soon. But starting at midnight, if all goes as planned, I'd like to invite you to head over to De Novo, a new group blog effort I'm part of that's basically the successor to En Banc. (Incidentally, Unlearned Hand, who started En Banc, has a thoughtful and engaging post up today a bit about why he ended En Banc, and a bit about the plight of finding a life of purpose while at law school. I identify with a good bit of what he says.) In any case, when En Banc ended, I wasn't sure if I wanted to be part of whatever incarnation it next took -- I wasn't sure that I'd really figured out what the group blog format provided that I wasn't getting out of posting here, besides some new readers (of course, new readers are great, and so it was surely worth it just for that), but as we started talking about a possible new blog, we realized that what's cool about the group blog format is that it can bring diverse voices together under one roof, and, especially by including a comments function for readers to react, create a little bit of a conversation. We've decided to experiment with the idea of a "symposium" -- we invited some of our favorite legal bloggers -- professors and practitioners -- to contribute pieces regarding their perspectives on legal education, a topic we thought would be of interest to most of our potential readers. What's cool about the legal blogosphere is that there are students, there are professors, and there are practitioners -- who in "real life" probably wouldn't have the opportunity to engage in too many conversations on relatively equal footing, yet we link to each other, we respond to each other's posts, there's a dialogue already across lots of legal weblogs. We're hoping that our symposium can organize and foster even more dialogue, and bring a bunch of people's thoughts together and begin what could end up being an interesting conversation. This might be a failed experiment. It just may not spark that much interest. That's fair. I don't know if people really care to read a bunch of essays about the value of legal education, and whether what we've put together really will start a conversation or just pass in the night unnoticed, like some of my less successful attempts to be funny. But we thought it was worth a shot, and maybe we've stumbled onto something that has a waiting audience. Maybe not. It's cool either way. In any event, check it out. Of course, like I keep saying, nothing changes here. Unless you want it to, in which case you know where to reach me. I have a song parody burning a hole in my chest but I really want to get to sleep, so it'll have to wait until tomorrow. :)