Blog Holds ‘American Idol’-Type Contest for New Editor

The law firm gossip blog Above the Law is asking its readers to help choose a new lead editor in a reality blogging competition.

The blog chose six finalists who will be eliminated in pairs by weekly reader votes until “the two finalists will go head to head, in a legal blogging deathmatch,” the blog says.

To help undecided readers, the blog says it has tapped three celebrity judges: University of Wisconsin law professor and blogger Ann Althouse, Supreme Court litigator and SCOTUSblog founder Tom Goldstein, and Slate senior editor Dahlia Lithwick.

“Professor Althouse emphatically rejects that she'll be the Paula Abdul of this contest,” the blog reports. “This is just as well; when we invited Dahlia Lithwick to serve as a judge, she called ‘dibs’ on Paula.”