Co-blogger Orin Kerr links to Richard Fallon’s interesting article on the ethics of law professor amicus briefs. Fallon argues that lawprofs are far too quick to sign amicus briefs that fit their ideological proclivities even if they aren’t really expert in the underlying legal issues and sometimes even if they don’t agree with the particular […]
Archive | Law Schools
Clifford Winston’s Case for Abolishing the Requirement that Lawyers Must get Law School Degrees and Pass the Bar Exam
Brookings Institution scholar Clifford Winston recently published a good column advocating the abolition of legal requirements mandating that all lawyers must graduate from law schools and pass bar exams: For decades the legal industry has operated as a monopoly, which has been made possible by its self-imposed rules and state licensing restrictions — namely, the […]
Challenging the Conventional Wisdom About the Job Market for Lawyers
St. Louis University law professor Aaron Taylor recently published a good column challenging the conventional wisdom that holds that the job market for lawyers is rapidly collapsing: It’s open season on legal education — falling applications, lawsuits by former students and dooms day warnings about the legal job market. The rampant bad publicity has taken […]
How Lawprofs Outside the Top 15 Schools Can Still Have a Big Impact on their Fields
I agree with most of co-blogger David Bernstein’s advice to aspiring law professors. In particular, David is absolutely right to reject the view that you can’t have a major impact on the scholarly and public debate in your field unless you’re at a top 15 school. I had the same fear when I was on […]
Advice to Faculty Candidates: Be Wary of Advice from Your References
A wildly disproportionate percentage of law school faculty graduate from a very few top law schools, especially Harvard and Yale. Not surprisingly, graduates of these schools turn to their mentors and references for advice on how to navigate the teaching market. Some of these professors give sound advice. But the very fact that these folks […]
One Out of Three Law Professors at the “Top 13” Law Schools Has A Ph.D.
Joni Hersch and Kip Viscusi have posted an interesting paper counting the number of law professors at the “top” schools that have Ph.D. degrees. Of course, “top” is in the eye of the beholder: Hersch and Viscusi divide schools into the “Top 13” and then the “Top 26.” A few of the findings: At the […]
A Few Thoughts on “LawProf” and Law School Scam Blogs
With law school scam blogs being in the blogospheric news these days, I wanted to offer a few thoughts. 1. In my view, Paul Campos’s blog has been useful. If Campos had written his blog using his real name, few would have paid attention. By hiding his identity, and by claiming that he hid it […]
Are Federalist Society Speaking Engagements a Major Advantage for non-Liberal Academics?
Brian Leiter argues that the opportunity to speak at Federalist Society student chapters is an important career advantage for conservative and libertarian academics. Co-blogger David Bernstein believes otherwise. On balance, I think David is right. As he points out, the speaking engagements that really help an academic career are those attended by other academics. And […]
An End to Minimum GPAs for Merit Scholarships?
The recent NYT story on law schools’ use of grade-contingent, merit-based scholarships to recruit 1Ls has prompted substantial discussion in the blawgosphere (including here and here). At some schools, a substantial proportion (if not a majority) of the incoming 1L class may receive merit scholarships that are contingent upon the maintenance of an above-average […]
More on Law School Scholarships
Paul Caron of TaxProf links here to various reactions to the purported scandal that not all 1Ls who receive scholarships can expect to maintain a high enough GPA to retain them. Let me throw my two cents in. I think part of the problem is that incoming law students are unaware of how law schools […]
The National Jurist Ranks Law Schools on “Diversity”
In the National Jurist, Rebecca Larsen has an article ranking law schools on the basis of “diversity.” At Balkinization, lawprof Jason Mazzone makes some cogent criticisms of her approach. Larsen ranks schools on the basis of the percentage of students and faculty who are African-American, Hispanic, or Asian, with a bonus if that percentage is […]
New US News Law School Rankings Are Now Out
This year’s US News law school rankings are now available. For what it’s worth, George Mason has moved up slightly to number 40, while UCLA – home of senior conspirator Eugene Volokh – ranks 16th. For some of my past criticisms of the US News rankings see here and here.
U.S. News Leak!
The rankings aren’t officially out until tomorrow, but there has been a serious leak. Thanks to a prematurely released press release dated tomorrow, I can report that the University of Arkansas Law School is ranked number 84 for 2012. Now that that’s cleared up, you can sleep soundly.
Law School Rankings and Application Advice
I agree with much of the advice that co-blogger David Bernstein offers on law school rankings and admissions. I don’t think that the US News rankings are completely useless, but their utility is indeed limited by various methodological weaknesses, such as those that I pointed out here and here. The most fundamental problem is that […]
Law School Admissions and the Wisdom of Crowds
With U.S. News rankings due out tomorrow, I thought I’d repeat part of a post from two years ago. First, U.S. News has several methodological problems. E.g.: Consider how U.S. News ranked part-time programs [for the first time in 2009]–it sent out a survey asking professors and deans to list fifteen schools with outstanding part-time […]