The Columnist Manifesto

Familiarity breeds .... what was that again?

What’s that old expression about “familiarity”? Breeds something. Consumption? Control?

I teach at a law school. I don’t teach at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. But I know a lot about Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. More than I’d care to, in fact. For example, Washington University in St. Louis School of Law has one of the more phonetically juicy email addresses of any law school: "wulaw.wustl.edu." As in, "I'm Professor Russell, at wu-law dot wustle."

I also know that Washington University in St. Louis School of Law in the past few years has joined the recent trend of law schools engaging in aggressive marketing activities to promote their standing in the U.S. News rankings of law schools. (For the scoop on the U.S. News rankings, check out what Conglomerate has to say.) One of those marketing practices is the sending of send glossy brochures. Here Expensive, four-color print glossy brochures full of color photos, with text laid out like a corporate annual report, announcing what’s going on in the sender’s law school. Sometimes you get the glossy alumni magazine. Washington University in St. Louis School of Law seems to lead the pack in the sending of glossy brochures.

There are several thousand law professors around the country, so it must be very expensive to send out glossy brochures to random law professors. And yet there they are, in my mail box. Glossy brochures from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law, sent to me, a professor at a distant law school with no particular ties to Washington University in St. Louis School of Law.

While it’s true that Washington University in St. Louis School of Law has pushed itself up in the U.S. News rankings, the rankings don’t actually have a category for “number of glossy brochures mailed,” so that can’t have been a direct cause.

Do the glossy brochures affect the rankings of schools like Washington University in St. Louis School of Law, by moving up their numbers in the category “reputation among legal academics”?

It’s true that I now know a lot more than I did about Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. For example, I know that Professor John N. Drobak “presented the paper ‘Moral Capital: the role of the Courts,” at the Annual Meeting of the International Society for New Institutional Economics, held in Budapest in October 2003. Oh, and Associate Dean Dan Keating was pictured in a glossy brochure on a pitchers mound in Dockers and sneakers, “throwing out baseball [sic] at a St. Louis Cardinals game.” Clearly, faculty members at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law get invited to interesting places.

But I don’t know that I have a higher opinion of Washington University in St. Louis School of Law after having received a dozen of their glossy brochures than I had before. I suppose the marketing experts hired by Washington University in St. Louis School of Law believe are of the view that “there is no such things as bad press” or “the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”

I’m no marketing expert, but then there’s that other old saw, “familiarity breeds...” What is it again? Conviction? Context?