BLS Library Blog

The BLS alumna sat down on one of the brightly-colored, soft and comfortable couches in the newly-christened Nash Reading Room. “We didn’t have anything like this in the library, back when I was in law school!”

Over the years, many alumni have had experiences similar to those described by Bernie Nash (BLS ‘66) in his remarks at the dedication of the Nash Reading Room on June 26, 2018. When he started out at BLS, the library was a “medieval” place with long tables and hard chairs, where students kept their heads down in their devotion to quiet study. Yet he soon learned that these austere physical trappings belied the value of the library and librarians. During Nash’s tenure as a student, BLS Librarian Lucie Jurow (BLS ‘30) became his mentor. She not only taught him how to do legal research, a skill that served him well in law school and in practice, but also helped him out when he ran into some issues with the law school administration. Nash’s appreciation of Jurow’s mentorship, and of the value of the law school library, stuck with him throughout his long and successful career.  Hence it was fitting that the newly-renovated third floor collaboration room, which has quickly become the most popular space in the library, be dedicated as the Phyllis & Bernard Nash ‘66 Reading Room in honor of the Nashs’ generosity in giving back to BLS.

After the official ribbon-cutting ceremony had been conducted by Phyllis Nash, Bernie Nash, Dean Nick Allard, and Library Director Janet Sinder, the guests spilled into the reading room. Some guests chatted with those who were using the space: students taking summer classes as well as recent graduates studying for the July bar exam. Others settled on the inviting couches and fractal lounge chairs. They sipped champagne and didn’t seem like they wanted to leave.

Dean Nick Allard, Phyllis Nash, and Bernard Nash ’66 

Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony: Dean Nick Allard, Phyllis Nash, Bernard Nash ’66, and Library Director Janet Sinder 

Guests mingling in the newly-dedicated Nash Reading Room 

Librarian Lucie Jurow (BLS ’30) 

On the English side of the pond, LexisNexis’ 200 year anniversary seems to have coincided with AI hitting the very top of the hype curve, blockchain finding its way into the everyday Lexicon and increasing numbers of leading law firms opening their own tech accelerator hubs. These opportunities for lawyers, law firms, in-house teams, learning establishments and law students give us reason to think that we are experiencing the most significant innovations ever seen by lawyers.

One technology easily forgotten because of its pervasiveness was an innovation that dominated LexisNexis (previously Butterworths) during the first 160 years of our history but had already been available for 350 years before Henry Butterworth opened his bookstore in 1818. Johannes Guttenberg’s printing press was a major first step on a journey of democratizing information and transmitting it with ease and speed.

While the printing press had been developed in the mid-1400s, it was not until 1481 or 1482 when the first English law book was printed: Sir Thomas de Littleton’s Treatise on Tenures, which was written in French.  Perhaps even more importantly, the first legislation was printed in 1483. Before then, the dissemination of legal information and ideas – including publishing law reports and instructional guides for solicitors and justices of the peace – was limited to a scribe’s accuracy and speed and therefore tended to be limited to those few in the Inns of Court who had access to manuscript copies.

The pre-printing press, “manuscript culture”, methods of recording and sharing information in notebooks or commonplace books and the direct conversations between lawyers made it challenging for those practising or upholding law to be sure that they were up-to-date with current legislation and practice. However the same methods also proved to be an ideal protectionist tool allowing (or perhaps even engineering) a major knowledge gap between those who had access to the law and those who didn’t. A lawyer’s value would regularly lie with just knowing what the law was, rather than how to apply the law. Of course this is no longer how a lawyer creates value and such a scenario seriously offends our current concepts of the Rule of Law since people cannot be truly equal if it is impossible for the majority to even know what the law is.

In any event, LexixNexis has created a short video as a tribute to the legal profession and how it has helped transform society over the past 200 years.

Brooklyn Law School Library’s New Books List for June 1, 2018 is now out with 38 print titles and 41 E-book titles. One book attracted the attention of this writer. Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue tells the story of an astonishing modern media conspiracy. In an age when people compete to be contrarian, it is rare to encounter an astounding proposition. That is what makes Ryan Holiday’s “Conspiracy” such a delight. It takes real nerve, during an investigation into possible collusion to swing the 2016 presidential election, to argue that we might be better off “if more people took up plotting.” Unfortunately for Holiday, and for readers who enjoy a good provocation, his book focuses on a case that demonstrates why transparency beats conspiracy in the long run.

“Conspiracy” chronicles the legal battle between Terry Bollea, or Hulk Hogan, and Gawker Media, the swashbuckling Manhattan publishing group founded by Nick Denton. In 2012, A.J. Daulerio, then editor of the company’s flagship site, published excerpts of a sex tape, recorded in 2006 without Bollea’s consent or knowledge, that showed Bollea in bed with Heather Clem, who was then married to Bollea’s best friend: the radio personality Bubba the Love Sponge. The story was wacky, but it got truly weird. In 2007, Gawker Media acquired a powerful enemy when one of its writers outed PayPal founder and venture capitalist Peter Thiel as gay. Gawker’s Denton, who like Thiel is gay, believed that Thiel’s refusal to be open about being gay was proof that Thiel was “paranoid.” To Thiel, the story was a violation, one that made him into an object of curiosity, in a way he found incomprehensible.

Thiel, as Holiday writes, “venerated privacy, in creating space for weirdos and the politically incorrect to do what they do. Because he believed that’s where progress came from.” What Gawker saw as transparency, Thiel saw as a threat to Silicon Valley. He was so angry at Gawker that he began to refer to it as “the Manhattan Based Terrorist Organization.”

But it took him four years to strike back. In 2011, a Mr. A, whose role is first described in “Conspiracy” but who remains a shadowy figure throughout the book, persuaded Thiel to devote $10 million and five years to a shell company aimed at finding and backing potential lawsuits against Gawker. Among their beneficiaries: Terry Bollea. In 2016, a Florida jury awarded Bollea damages so punishing that Denton had to sell the company. On the surface, it seemed that Thiel’s conspiracy had checkmated Gawker Media.

Holiday, an author and corporate adviser, had unusual access to Thiel and Denton. It is one of the many ironies of this story, and of “Conspiracy,” that talking makes Thiel more sympathetic and comprehensible than plotting ever did. But by the end of the book, it’s clear that, despite Holiday’s argument, Thiel’s conspiracy failed: Thiel killed Gawker, but in doing so undermined his dream of making the Internet a more decent place and securing a more private life for himself. By contrast, Gawker was destroyed not because its leaders failed to conspire, but because they did not pursue the transparency they claimed to believe in.

By the time Thiel did identify himself as Gawker Media’s nemesis after the verdict in Bollea v. Gawker, the narrative of the trial was well on its way to being set. Thiel discovered that it is difficult to come forward and insist that you are the hero of the story when you have already won the sort of surprising and dismaying victory that makes the public inclined to believe that you are the villain. “Cunning and resources might win the war,” Holiday writes toward the end of “Conspiracy,” “but it’s the stories and myths afterwards that will determine who deserved to win it.” The flaw in Thiel’s thinking, and in “Conspiracy,” is in failing to recognize that the stories and the myths that emerge after an event often are the substance of the victory.