Law School

So You Want to Go to Law School: The Series

Posted on November 01, 2010
So You Want to Go to Law School, a viral video classic on the foibles of legal education and its relationship vel non to the practice of law, has become a full-blown series. David W. Kazzie, the author of the original video, will trace the adventures of Carrie-Ann Fox, an idealistic would-be lawyer, as she makes her way through law school...

Three Kinds of Diversity

Posted on October 28, 2010
Diversity comes in many flavors. I here compare three types?diversity of skin color and sex, cultural diversity, and ideological diversity?and offer some observations about the distinctive costs and benefits of each. I conclude that, holding all else equal, a group of people having diverse colors and sexes will enjoy modest institutional gains at low cost, while a group touting ideological diversity runs the risk of high transaction costs but wins a shot at great intellectual gains...

Outsourcing Legal Education?

Posted on October 27, 2010
The other day a pile of new course proposals by adjunct and non tenure track employees was delivered to the members of the curriculum committee. It made me wonder: How much of our curriculum is taught by people who did not go through a search process, have no role in faculty governance, or were not hired to be teachers...

Encouragement For The Less Than Highly Motivated

Posted on October 21, 2010
I'm not as big a fan as Jim of animations, but feel that it's time that some concern be shown for those who might struggle to stare down the cynics. Remember, not everybody raises their hand in class.

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So you want to go to law school?

Posted on October 20, 2010
So you want to go to law school? Watch:Congratulations to Wahoo Corner, the apparent origin of a video that is sure to become a viral classic for prelaw advisors, law students, lawyers, and even full-time legal academics. Hat tip to Donald Anton, Eric Fink, and Shubha Ghosh via Facebook.

Where Partners Come From: Finding the Brass Ring

Posted on October 15, 2010
The ABA has become increasingly interested in outcome measures. US News uses relative bar pass rates and questionable at-grad and 9-month employment rates. Bill Henderson has looked at per capita NLJ first-year-associate hiring rates.This post reports preliminary results of a study examining what many law students view as the ultimate outcome measure: partnership in a big firm...

Point Counter-Point

Posted on October 02, 2010
Since I received this in my email I suppose most other law professors did as well. It's about scholarly impact. I think an excellent and thoughtful reponse is this by Brian Tamanaha. Brian pretty much covers all the bases as far as the problems of counting as a way to assess scholarship.

More on UF Rent Boy Kerfluffle

Posted on September 29, 2010
Over yonder.

Tenure, Academic Freedom, Broadcasting, and Bill Inserts

Posted on September 25, 2010
You do not hear much about academic freedom from law professors because they rarely say anything controversial that anyone hears about. In fact, wouldn't it be far more interesting if someone were listening to us? It may seem odd that there is so little controversy given the iron clad protection we have...

Shameless self-promotion.

Posted on September 10, 2010
See here.

Elite Relief

Posted on September 10, 2010
If there is way to open doors for elites while closing them to others, law schools will find a way. And in the process they make some really questionable decisions from a economic perspective.Take a recent policy adopted by UF. We now have a program of hiring people with "outstanding academic credentials" and with little or no scholarly record or teaching experience...

New school

Posted on August 27, 2010
The double entendre is very much intended, because the New School's new president is anything but old school.The New York Times article announcing the appointment of Northwestern Law School dean David Van Zandt as president of the New School offers this delicious observation from soon-to-be President Van Zandt:People want to know what the facts are, and through a lot of discussion, people can understand why change may be good...

The Soccer Plan for Law Professors

Posted on August 23, 2010
The best soccer book I have read is Joe McGinniss' The Miracle of Castel di Sangro. Tim Parks' A Season with Verona is also good as is Hornsby's Fever Pitch. As soccer fans know, in the leagues within countries there are multiple levels. When a team finishes low in their level they are "relegated" to a lower level and teams who did well at the lower level are raised to play in a higher level...

Public Law School Faculty Salaries

Posted on July 12, 2010
See here for a list of law faculty salaries at Arizona State, Florida, George Mason, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri (Columbia), North Carolina, Ohio State, Rutgers (Camden & Newark), SUNY (Buffalo), Texas, UC-Berkeley, UC-Davis, UC-Irvine, UCLA, Virginia, William & Mary, and Wisconsin.

Making the Grades

Posted on June 22, 2010
The New York Times reports that at least ten law schools have raised their grade curves in the last two years. The new rationale for this timeworn response is that students need a competitive edge in a tight job market and higher gpa, however contrived, is just the thing...

Do Law Schools Golf?

Posted on June 10, 2010
I used to ask my students whether they would be golfers or football players when they graduated. The distinction I was trying to make was between golf, a sport in which players observe the rules and actually report themselves with they violate them, and football, where there are also rules but the idea is to bend them and disregard them and hope not to be caught...

Collateral Damage

Posted on June 01, 2010
Law schools have now engaged in the USN&WR battle for several years and the collateral damages is mounting. I used to rail against my law school's participation in the war but now wish the Dean would go nuclear, whatever that means.Most of the collateral damage is known to most of us...

Shameless self-promotion, part n.

Posted on May 27, 2010
See here.  Our book came out in print today.

U.S. News: Less Transparency = More Fairness

Posted on May 21, 2010
Robert Morse today announced that, in response to evidence that law schools had been gaming its rankings, U.S. News would change the way it estimates the "Employment at 9 Months" measure for schools that decline to report that figure. Paul Caron offers some background here...

Over 100 Law School Commencement Speakers

Posted on May 20, 2010
Here.

Did 16 Law Schools Commit Rankings Malpractice?

Posted on May 11, 2010
Here.

U.S. News Law School Rankings: Judicial Clerkships

Posted on May 07, 2010
Here.

The Hand Rule

Posted on April 27, 2010
Judge Learned Hand famously opined that if the burdens of preventing an accident outweigh its cost multiplied by its probability, it does not constitute carelessness to avoid those burdens. Doesn't that little gem make you want to break out in song? I've got just the thing: The Hand Rule, a little ditty I recently composed and played for some students at Chapman Law School...

2011 U.S News Peer Reputation Rankings & Overall Rankings

Posted on April 16, 2010
Full list here.

Chapman Dean Search--No Kidding!

Posted on April 02, 2010
We here in the sober and serious groves of academe have no time for foolishness, April 1st or not. So while you may think I jest in claiming that some very lucky person will soon get to become the new Dean of Chapman University School of Law, I assure you that I jest not...

Size doesn't matter. Really.

Posted on March 16, 2010
Once again it's tournament time. The NCAA men's basketball tournament always seems to bring MoneyLaw themes to the fore. This year is no exception.Consider this statistical study (.pdf download) by Scout.com of the factors that let talented players elude the major college teams of the six power conferences and slip down, so to speak, to the midmajors:Perhaps the most telling analysis in the study comes from how to judge a player?s frame...

Just Go to This Cite

Posted on March 15, 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLC7Q3DTzi4

Well orchestrated

Posted on February 28, 2010
From a former student's touching tribute to her violin teacher:Mr. K. pushed us harder than our parents, harder than our other teachers, and through sheer force of will made us better than we had any right to be. He scared the daylight out of us.I doubt any of us realized how much we loved him for it.

Power and Entitlement

Posted on January 29, 2010
Nearly 5 years ago I wrote an article, "Law Faculty Ethics: Shirking, Capture and ?The Matrix,?" 82 DETROIT MERCY LAW REVIEW 397 (2005), in which I identified the many ways I felt law professors were shirkers. I analogized it to regulatory capture in the sense that faculty who were supposed to govern law schools for the benefit of shareholders -- students, taxpayers, donors -- actually governed to benefit themselves...

My Favorite Motions

Posted on January 06, 2010
Faculty meetings may have their charms, but efficiency does not rank among them. Many a time I have looked around a room full of my colleagues, long minutes into a winding discussion of what was supposed to take only a few moments to resolve, considered the full agenda still stretching before us, and bemoaned the deadweight social costs of law school governance...

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