let's check the facts (Score 1)

I notice that few slashdotties bothered to read the article and none seem to have checked the askme.com site.

Looking at askme's law page I notice that lawguy1975 is not one of the top ten rated law experts. The top rated "lawyer" is LAGM with between 1K and 2K points. The NYT's claim that layguy1975 is a highly rated law expert at askme.com appears to be refuted.

The plot thickens, however. LawGuy1975's page does exist,and it states that his points total is in the 5K-10K range and his rank 798. Oddly his rating for crime and civil law is 5, and for the death penalty and criminal law it is 4 (max=5). His rankings in these specialities range from 9 to 41. I don't know how AskMe generates its rankings, but I suspect that something weird is going on.