Law School

The Stakeholder Impact Statement

Posted on September 18, 2008
Since before joining the Moneylaw group my individual beef (most specifically with public schools) has been the disconnect between faculty governance and the interests of law school stakeholders -- the people who pay the bills and for whom a Law School exists...

For Law and Fun

Posted on September 16, 2008
All sorts of "law and" movments have popped up over the years?law and economics, law and literature, law and sociology, and so forth. Each has its merits, and each has its acolytes. Were I to choose a "law and" movement, though, I think I'd opt for law and fun...

Creating Disabilities

Posted on September 15, 2008
Within the last month the following have occurred to me or to others including some at other schools who have shared their concerns with me:1. A student asked to have a 2 year old grade changed in order to improve his class rank.2. A mother called to complain about her son's grade in a class...

Raw intelligence is overrated

Posted on September 15, 2008
Awesome insights from Jonah Lehrer on the New York Times' "football for smarties" feature:Three and a half seconds: That?s approximately how long a quarterback has to decide where to throw the ball. How does he survey the options while a swarm of humongous, angry men seek to pancake him? It seems obvious: a quarterback needs to think, to look at each of his receivers and make a calculation...

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Georgia 14, South Carolina 7

Posted on September 13, 2008
Georgia 14, South Carolina 7It's always satisfying when the Bulldogs win, but the victory tastes sweetest in Columbia, South Carolina. I celebrated this evening with a meal of curried Gamecock.

Scholars, Scholarship, and Teaching

Posted on September 10, 2008
It is common to hear the claim that good scholars are good teachers. That may be true, but that is not the same as saying those who produce scholarship are good teachers. Some of the most interesting, well informed, and analytical law professors I know are infrequent writers or do not write at all...

Social networking for legal academics

Posted on September 10, 2008
Jim Chen's Facebook profileJim Chen's social networksLegal academics are among the slowest to adopt new forms of information technology. Then there are those among us who have not only dipped into Law 2.0, but affirmatively dived into blogging and social networking...

Closing time

Posted on September 05, 2008
Sometimes, perhaps at the end of a short week that feels paradoxically long, or perhaps when you're feeling strangely fine, the office whispers to you in semisonic tones: "You don't have to go home but you can't stay here." That's when you know it's closing time:Semisonic, Closing Time , Feeling Strangely Fine (1998)Closing time — time for you to go out, go out into the world...

Good sports

Posted on September 03, 2008
This morning's New York Times profiles Ben Dogra, "maybe the best football agent attracting the least attention."Dogra, working alongside Tom Condon (at right in the picture), Jim Steiner, and Ken Kremer, has led Creative Artists Agency's football division to dominance in the fast and powerful game of representing players in the National Football League...

Post Tenure Review

Posted on September 01, 2008
A friend on my faculty alerted me to this article, "Post Tenure Review as If It Mattered," by Jane W. Barnard. I do not agree with some portions of it but the importance of its subject matter and the common sense appeal of many of its proposals should not be overlooked...

Juniority: The political version

Posted on August 30, 2008
The 2008 presidential election so far, like the institution of serial marriage, represents the triumph of hope over experience. With the designation of Sarah Palin as the Republican candidate for Vice President, each of the major tickets will include one member under the age of 50...

Billable Hours and Law Professors

Posted on August 29, 2008
This letter was sent to me and I thought it deserved publication. For some, that will mean that the author, Concerned, has written a peer reviewed "essay."Dear Jeff,From a money law perspective is the Fall article submission season more like the annual flooding of the Nile or a recurrent infestation of love bugs?At my law school it seems likely that implementation of one money law principle (encouraging and rewarding productivity in publication) is backfiring...

nominees for best foundational administrative law articles?

Posted on August 28, 2008
Because I am very excited about learning administrative law, and because learning is best when it's a collaborative enterprise, I would very much appreciate tips and recommendations for great survey articles on administrative law, the non-delegation doctrine, and deference/review...

Z-Scores in Model of 2009 USN&WR Law School Rankings

Posted on August 26, 2008
U.S. News & World Report publishes scores for each of the hundred or so schools that it ranks highest, and offers some of the data that goes into calculating those scores. To really understand how each of those schools fared relative to its peers, however, you need to know its z-score in each category of data that USN&WR measures...

Pride and Shame

Posted on August 20, 2008
One of Jim Chen's recurring themes is good vs. evil. It is expressed, at least in my opinion, most eloquently in his instant classic Three Deans. Although written obviously about deans, I think the three prototypes can be adapted to fit law faculty as well...

Ithaka: Legal education as an odyssey

Posted on August 18, 2008
Thalia-Flora Karavia, Portrait of C.P. Cavafy (1926)Like all other journeys, legal education has a fairly well defined end. Like the best of journeys, legal education at its best does not set its destination in advance, but rather refocuses along the way...

Michael Sauder on U.S. News as the Interloper In Legal Education

Posted on August 18, 2008
Great paper! Brayden King reviews Michael Sauder's paper at OrgTheory.Net:Michael has an article in the latest issue of Administrative Science Quarterly, ?Interlopers and field change: The entry of U.S. News into the field of legal education.? The paper uses in-depth interviews to examine the effect that the entry of the U...

AALS Annual Meeting: Correction and Apology

Posted on August 18, 2008
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.I had assumed, based on the AALS's decision and press release, that the problem towards which the proposed boycott was addressed was solved.Dan Rodriguez, former dean at San Diego, points out that the two hotels are both owned by the same guy...

Proposed Boycott of AALS Annual Meeting Succeeds

Posted on August 18, 2008
By earlier post, I explained why I would support a proposed boycott of the AALS annual meeting. Many of the most important events were to be held at the Manchester Grand Hyatt, whose owner is one of the principal sponsors of a California initiative to ban gay marriage...

Model of 2009 USN&WR Law School Rankings

Posted on August 16, 2008
As I have every year since 2006, I this year again tried to duplicate the law school rankings published by the U.S. News & World Report ("USN&WR"). Although it took me longer than usual to model the most recent rankings?the "2009" rankings, as USN&WR styles them?I ended up getting the best fit, yet...

a post on norms and bullying in the blogosophere

Posted on August 14, 2008
A (very long) post concerning a big blawg kerfuffle over at Scatterplot. Please read and comment there.

Freak, minus economics

Posted on August 13, 2008
Steven Levitt is freakishly smart. But his reaction to the Coase theorem in action at NYU Law is simply freakish:Class assignments are made by lottery. There are no waiting lists for classes. This gives students an incentive to sign up for the most popular classes, even if they don?t want to take them...

Goodbye to all that

Posted on August 13, 2008
The objects of this autobiography . . . are simple enough: an opportunity for a formal good-bye to you and to you and to you and to me and to all that; forgetfulness, because once all this has been settled in my mind and written down and published it need never be thought about again; money...

Henderson on Faculty Free Agency (and Lipshaw's Comments)

Posted on August 13, 2008
Bill Henderson (Indiana-Bloomington) has posted his assessment of the problems and solutions to the "faculty free agency" issue provoked by the recent article by Clayton Gillette (NYU).  You can find not only Bill's post over at Legal Profession Blog, but my comments on it as well.

Name that Law School

Posted on August 12, 2008
Law schools don't seem to care very much about staking out original names. Consider two Orange County law schools: Irvine University College of Law (founded in 1993), and the University of California, Irvine School of Law (which should start accepting student applications this fall)...

OrgTheory.net Book Forum: The Rise of the Conservative Movement by Steven Teles

Posted on August 11, 2008
Excellent stuff. Introductory post by Prof. Fabio Rojas (Indiana) here (along with great questions):Over the next week or so, we?ll have a back and forth with Steve Teles, whose 2008 book chronicles the emergence of the conservative legal establishment...

the coase theorem in action is a terrible idea

Posted on August 11, 2008
Oh come on now, surely you see the problems with this idea:The Coase Theorem says that ? absent large transaction costs ? resources will end up being efficiently allocated, regardless of who holds the initial property rights. NYU Law School is providing its students valuable real world experience with the Coase Theorem, according to this ABA Journal article...

Why I Will Honor the AALS Boycott

Posted on August 09, 2008
The owner of the Manchester Grand Hyatt, at which the AALS Annual Meeting is now scheduled to be held, has funded an initiative to ban gay marriage in California. Four groups ? the Society of American Law Teachers, the Legal Writing Institute, the AALS Section on Legal Writing Research and Reasoning, and the AALS Section on Teaching Methods ? have called for a boycott of sessions held at his hotels...

Why Bother?

Posted on August 09, 2008
A great deal of attention is focused on the USN&WR rankings of JD programs. Whatever errors exist in those ranking pale in comparison to the LLM rankings. The last time I checked, LLM rankings were 100% reputation -- no accounting for LSAT of students, law school GPAs, rank of JD program of applicants, number of applicants, acceptance rate, etc...

Practicing Practicing the Law

Posted on August 05, 2008
After teaching Contracts for ten years, I'm giving it up to teach Torts. I recall the best law profs of my 1L year cycling through the "Big Three" common law courses (Contracts, Torts, and Property), and I've long wanted to emulate that example. Unlike those, my academic heros, however, I plan to put my students to work practicing practicing the law...

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