Corporate Governance

Thinking of all those who suffered damage during Hurricane Ike

Posted on September 21, 2008
See here for some pictures of the disaster and here for a news report of one of the local landmarks (near where Jeff & I used to live) burning to the ground. Although our family was lucky (only a few days of no power for my dad, back in Houston), so many others are still suffering.

Suggestion for the Green Bag's proposed rankings system

Posted on September 21, 2008
Al Brophy's latest article, on the correlation between the citation rankings of law reviews and the school's overall rankings, is a new must-read (see here).

Welcome to Race to the Top!

Posted on September 21, 2008
I want to welcome to the rankings conversation a new blog: Race to the Top (see here). I'm on the advisory board of this group, and I'm excited about the mission:[W]ith no information on educational quality, research shows that respondents simply replicate the previous year's U...

Enron's back in the news....

Posted on September 09, 2008
This morning's Wall Street Journal gives the update (here). For me, this news couldn't happen at a more apropos time: I just turned in the draft of our second edition of the Enron book for Foundation Press. It'll be called Enron and Other Corporate Fiascos: A Corporate Scandal Reader...

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Roger Lowenstein got it exactly right.

Posted on September 07, 2008
In today's New York Times, Roger Lowenstein discusses why we didn't learn from the Long-Term Capital bailout (here). Marvelous essay.

Ann Bartow's meme

Posted on September 07, 2008
Ann Bartow has tagged me (see here) to get my five favorite non-legal blogs (thanks, Ann!), so here they are. And I'm not embarrassed to admit them. Well, not very embarrassed, anyway....GraphJam.I Can Has Cheezburger.Fail Blog.Funny or Die.FrancisStokes...

Welcome to the blogosphere, Marquette!

Posted on September 02, 2008
Paul Secunda has just told me that Marquette is entering the blogosphere w/a faculty blog (here). Should be a lot of fun to read. Congrats, Marquette!

Lipshaw & Henderson's post related to this morning's WSJ article on the USNWR rankings

Posted on August 26, 2008
Bill Henderson & Jeff Lipshaw have done a masterful job over at Legal Profession Blog (here) taking the implications of Amir Efrati's story (see my post here) to their logical conclusions.

Amir Efrati's WSJ article about the USNWR rankings--and a couple of points

Posted on August 26, 2008
Amir Efrati's article on how USNWR might redo the rankings to prevent some of the gaming that's been going on (see here; for the WSJ blog take on the article, see here) does a great job of pointing out how the gaming has occurred and the ramifications of the change...

A short history lesson

Posted on August 25, 2008
Because I think that there will be yet another article this week on the rankings and my relationship to it, here's a brief recap of what happened at my last job during my final year as dean. In September of that academic year, one of the senior faculty members who was unhappy with me sent in a colleague of his to meet with me...

Newsflash from JetBlue: JFK Airport is filled with microclimates

Posted on August 10, 2008
Having stayed at this year's ABA annual meeting long enough to watch my friend Sarah Weddington win a special Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award today (BRAVA, SARAH!), I headed out to JFK to catch an early evening JetBlue flight home to Las Vegas...

Please help me give credit where credit is due!

Posted on August 01, 2008
Can anyone help me with the attribution for this wonderful PowerPoint (here)? Thanks!

The most important paragraph in a very important post

Posted on August 01, 2008
From this morning's post in The Race to the Bottom's discussion on the change in USNWR's methodology regarding PT students' LSATs and UGPAs (here):Whatever a law school does in the short term [about the change in methodology], it is clear that this change will result in continued homogenization of entering classes, with law schools having an incentive to ensure that the part time and full time divisions have comparable numbers...

A little bit of Enron justice

Posted on July 30, 2008
According to this morning's news (see here), Lou Pai will pay $31.5 million to settle alleged insider trading charges.  Considering the size of the profits that Pai made from his sale of Enron stock, $31.5 million is a drop in the bucket; nonetheless, the $25...

Another "must read" by Bill Henderson

Posted on July 29, 2008
Cross-posted over at Legal Profession Blog (here) and at Empirical Legal Studies Blog (here), on how most law firms misapply the "Cravath system."  It's a follow-up to Bill's first post (here) on how the "Cravath system" created the bimodal distribution in starting salaries...

In memoriam: Randy Pausch

Posted on July 29, 2008
Never met him, of course, but his last lecture (here) and his book, The Last Lecture (with Jeffrey Zaslow) (here) really touched me.  May his memory be as a blessing.

Fun visuals for the weekend

Posted on July 25, 2008
Some fun visuals for the weekend:1. As the time for fall semester marches inexorably closer: here. 2. Proving that I'm right about Spinal Tap and the rankings: here. 3. As I finish up a summer of traveling, talks, and PowerPoints: here.

Thank you, Dean Gary Simson of Case Western!

Posted on July 23, 2008
According to this morning's WSJ Law Blog (here), Dean Gary J. Simson of Case Western's law school has suggested that deans say "dayenu" to the USNWR rankings.  Recognizing the insanity of tailoring an educational program to the whims of a news magazine, Dean Simson believes that law schools instead should use their own good judgment about how to allocate resources...

But wait! There's more! Bill Henderson gives us some data on the PT loophole issue

Posted on July 14, 2008
See Bill's post (here) over at Empirical Legal Studies.  Well done, Bill!

Just in case anyone missed TaxProf Blog recently....

Posted on July 14, 2008
Paul Caron's TaxProf Blog compiled some of Jason Solomon's very thoughtful posts on PrawfsBlog (here's the compilation at TaxProf Blog) regarding the "academic program"/"academic reputation" voting portion of the USNWR rankings.  Very interesting, nuanced thoughts...

Tail wags dog so furiously that dog falls off, leaving only tail

Posted on July 07, 2008
I was reading today's TaxProf Blog, as I do every morning, when I came across this post (here), in which Paul Caron pointed to a NLJ article (Deans dislike rankings proposals, here) about the proposed changes in the USNWR rankings.  Paul highlighted the following very, very scary quote:The proposal is strongly opposed by deans at schools with part-time programs designed for students who are years past college graduation and often well into careers outside the law...

Also in this month's ABA Journal, more on flat fees for legal work

Posted on July 06, 2008
I'm telling you (again):  billable hours aren't going to be the future of the legal world forever.  See here.  

Arnold Peter is featured in this month's ABA Journal

Posted on July 06, 2008
Arnold Peter, one of my all-time favorite lawyers, is featured in this month's ABA Journal (here).  Arnold's a founding partner of Raskin Peter Rubin & Simon (here) and one of the founding members of AMEC, the Association of Media and Entertainment Counsel (here)...

More on how to study for the bar exam

Posted on July 05, 2008
Ilya Somin's updated his post (here), and I agree with some of his points: (1) figure out your own, best way of studying and key your bar prep to that, (2) try not to overstress, (3) be disciplined in your studying, and (4) remember that failing the bar exam is not the end of the world...

Volokh Conspiracy's Post on Reducing the Pain of Taking the Bar Exam

Posted on June 30, 2008
One of our own law students directed me to Ilya Somin's post (here) on the Volokh Conspiracy blog, never a boring blog.  Prof. Somin's advice is to study less for the bar exam:  read the review books, take some practice tests, memorize the rules, and relax...

Thomas Sowell on college rankings

Posted on June 22, 2008
Loved Thomas Sowell's take on the rankings, including his reasons for disparaging USNWR's rankings (here).  In his column, Dr. Sowell quotes Professor Thomas Vedder, who observes that USNWR's use of inputs to measure quality "'is roughly equivalent to evaluating a chef based on the ingredients that he or she uses...

Dave Van Zandt does it again--Northwestern Law to offer the option of an accelerated two-year law degree

Posted on June 20, 2008
Dave Van Zandt, one of the true visionary law deans, has announced that Northwestern Law will  offer an option for a two-year law degree (see here).  The degree will be available for students with at least two years of prior work experience (which most Northwestern Law students already have--another Van Zandt trademark)...

More about the local lawyer who did the right thing

Posted on June 20, 2008
When I blogged about Louis Schneider (here), I didn't know he was a graduate of the William S. Boyd School of Law.  Now our law school has one more reason to brag.

I can't remember which comedian has a routine about this....

Posted on June 18, 2008
It may be Patton Oswalt.  But a real-life version of someone's bit happened to me over the last few days.  I've been getting text messages on my cell phone from an 808 number (Hawai'i, apparently), and they've been in Spanish.  I wish I could speak Spanish, but I am seriously other-language-deficient...

Update on capital case involving alleged judge/prosecutor affair

Posted on June 18, 2008
Yesterday's scheduled execution was stayed (see here, with some great commentary by my friend Larry Fox), but the fight to do the right thing is far from over.  Keep an eye on Legal Profession Blog for more updates--the folks there have been doing a great job watching this case...

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