About five paragraphs down in this post, Glenn Reynolds (distinguished ConLaw Prof. at Tenn.) observes parenthetically that lawyers make for good bloggers because they are accustomed to the "low trust" environment of the Internet because that is "a lot like the world they live in." Reynolds is insightful, as always, about the Internet, but I don't think "low trust" is exactly accurate for the legal world. Rather, I would suggest the more cumbersome "high expectation" environment. Lawyers expect a high level of evidentiary support and sourcing accuracy from both their adversaries and colleagues. The legal profession is able to operate precisely because lawyers expect other lawyers to research, cite, support and carry on according to commonly understood procedural rules and some basic understanding of professional obligations. Thus the process of adjudicating a dispute is formalized and accelerated because the basic trust groundwork is already done. But on the Internet, there is no such common understanding. The 'trust' groundwork is laid by reputation - a high reputation blogger is immediately more trustworthy than someone you never heard of - and every new blogger must painstakingly establish their bona fides. In the legal profession much of that basic trust groundwork is created by virtue of each participant having his or her law license (and the risk of losing it) and acceding to the rules of procedure.