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Anonymous postings are the last vestiges of cowards.

By Nancy Rapoport

After reading the latest barrage of comments over at Wild Wild West's post about late grades (here), which managed to get picked up by the Wall Street Journal's law blog (here), I have to confess that I'm stunned that so many people feel compelled to post vitriol anonymously. Based on the tenor of their comments, I'm going to assume that the bulk of the anonymous posts were written by law students.

Even on the theory that law students often don't make the connection that they're actually going to be lawyers after they graduate and pass the bar, surely they realize that they'll have to sign letters and pleadings with their names as lawyers and that they won't be able to hide behind "Anonymous" sobriquets then? So why do they--as well as so many others--hide behind anonymous postings on blogs?

I doubt that most of them have a true fear of retribution. There are people in the world who can fear retribution: those who suffer abuse in relationships; those who are here seeking asylum from other governments; those on the wrong end of power imbalances with very nasty bosses. Those reasons are good ones for seeking anonymity. Lobbing nastygrams, especially without investigating the reasons that may have caused the complained-about situation in the first place? Not a good reason.

To you budding lawyers out there who are writing anonymous comments on the Wild Wild Law post above: maybe you should be anonymous. Were I to write some of what you've written, I'd be ashamed, too. When you become lawyers, though, you'll have to stop behaving so childishly. I'd be a lot more impressed with you if you'd have the courage of your convictions and sign your name to your comments. I have.

Full post as published by Nancy Rapoport's Blogspot on July 19, 2009 (boomark / email).