There is an entertaining item on faculty workshops by Gary Lawson (Law, BU) in the June 2004 Journal of Legal Education, which has just arrived (at least here in Austin). It’s not on-line, so you’ll have to find a hard copy, but here’s an excerpt:

“The participants [in faculty workshops], as we all know, are not always good judges of their own limitations. Ignorance of the law is no excuse–or at least no excuse for silence at workshops appears to be a very powerful norm in the legal academy. Participants who really are not in a position to offer serious help to the presenter’s enterprise–and in an era of specialization there is no loss of honor in being unable to contribute to everyone else’s enterprise–often consume the major portion of what little time remains in the workshop with discussions of matters that are at best tangentially related to the workshop topic or the present’s research agenda.”

Indeed! Professor Lawson has some ideas about how to make workshops more intellectually fruitful as well. He also has a memorable acknowledgement in the first footnote (more articles should include this, but I won’t name names!): “I am also grateful to the many people from whom I have stolen most of the ideas in this article over the years, most notably Cynthia Bowman, Charlotte Crane, and Anthony D’Amato.”