My colleague Leslie Garfield shared these reflections (reprinted with permission), and I thought that Lounge readers might want to offer some views:
As I read through several law review articles I am struck by the frequency with which certain authors — especially senior scholars — use the first person. Does the use of first person (in scholarship that is not explicitly employing personal narrative) make the author sound more authoritative? Is there is any general consensus about use of first person versus third person usage in traditional law review scholarship?
I was always told to use third person to separate the argument from the person (especially pre-tenure). I suppose that senior scholars don't have to worry about that so much. I personally think that first person reads more smoothly, especially for empirical work. "The author collected data on…" sounds strange.
I write some articles in the first person and some in the third person. It depends on the piece. One hinges crucially on things that happened to me, personally: writing that one in the third person would have been pointless. I find the third person more formal. Sometimes that's useful, as for a nuanced doctrinal argument that requires care and deliberation. But the engagement and directness of the first person can also be useful, as in a policy-driven essay that seeks to build a bond with the reader by appealing to what "we" (as scholars and policy-makers) want and what evidence "we" would find convincing.
Use of the first person, I think, tends to make one's prose style seem more casual. Junior scholars are more likely to be wary about appearing to write in too causal a style. Established scholars, often, figure they no longer need to care whether people think their style is too casual.
I think the third person distances you from your text and your reader. Who needs distance? We–the reader and the writer–both know I'm just a person, not "the author" in the machine, so we might as well get comfortable with one another. I, by the way, am as junior as junior can be.
This author's first articles were in the third person, but as I became more comfortable as a writer I moved to the first person. Most young writers feel more comfortable with templates, and the scholarly template is generally the third person.