The American Association of Law Schools section on financial regulation is seeking paper proposals for the January meeting on all topics of financial regulation and regulatory reform. The deadline for proposal submissions is August 1, fast approaching; I have posted details below the fold, and you can also contact my colleague Anna Gelpern with any […]
Archive | Law Schools
New ABA Accreditation Standards
Via TaxProf, I learn that the ABA Section of Legal Education & Admission to the Bar seeks comments on proposed changes to the law school accreditation standards. I blogged about one of these proposed standards in December, the one that requires law school graduates to have a “knowledge and understanding of … the legal profession’s […]
The Bernardine Dohrn of the early 20th century: The terrorist professor at U of Texas law school
By David Kopel on May 24, 2010 3:56 pm in Academia, Congress, Constitutional History, Counter-Terrorism Policy, Criminal Law, Economic LIberties, Education, Guns, History, Law Schools, Legal Professor, Militia, Rehabilitating Lochner
My DU colleague Thomas Russell, who used to teach at the University of Texas Law school, has a written a paper, available on SSRN, which urges the University of Texas Law School to rename Simkins Hall, a law and graduate male student dormitory named for William Stewart Simkins. Simkins taught equity, contracts, procedure, and related topics at UT for […]
Kagan and Diversity Hiring
I admire the fact that Elena Kagan made it a point to hire prominent libertarians and conservatives while she was dean at Harvard. It’s difficult to get many American law schools, dominated by a broadly and comfortably liberal consensus across almost every field, to recognize the importance of ideological diversity among faculty. That’s true for hiring both […]
My own Kagan experience
By Sasha Volokh on May 11, 2010 4:43 pm in Executive Branch, Federalist Society, Guns, Judicial Nominations, Kagan Nomination, Law Schools, Supreme Court
Elie Mystal, who graduated from law school at the same time as I did, has bad memories of Elena Kagan from when he had her for Civ Pro as a 1L. [UPDATE: Read The Whole Thing, the commenters remind me to say.] For what it’s worth, here are my own impressions of Elena Kagan: I […]
2010 U.S. News and World Report Law School Rankings Released
The 2010 U.S. News and Word Report law school rankings have just been released, and can be found here. As has been discussed elsewhere, these rankings are flawed … but, at the same, are an influential fact of life.
A Common Law School Exam Mistake
With law school spring exams around the corner, I wanted to blog on a common law school mistake on “issue spotter” exams: Writing too soon, and then writing too much on the facts at the top of the fact pattern. This probably won’t make much sense to non-lawyers, and it will only trigger bad memories […]
Legal Clinics Under Siege
The New York Times reports that law school legal clinics continue to spark controversy and political backlash, particularly (though not exclusively) at state-supported schools. The story keys on efforts by some Maryland legislators to defund the clinic at the University of Maryland law school unless the clinic turns over information about its clients and its […]
Joseph Bottum Spots Eugene Volokh Changing the Culture
Instapundit points us in the direction of Joseph Bottum’s First Things blog post yesterday; also Althouse’s comment: [W]hile I was [at NYU Law School] I saw posters for a lecture this afternoon by Eugene Volokh on the structure of slippery-slope arguments. … the posters for Volokh’s talk read, as I remember: “Founder of The Volokh Conspiracy blog and […]
Information Asymmetries and the Agent Principal Problem, As Found in … The Coca Cola Kid
Is this the ‘Australian Sound’? My class is covering information asymmetries as transaction costs affecting pure Coase Theorem analysis, and we will soon come to classic information asymmetries found in agent – principal relationships. I am thinking of using this as a pedagogical tool. Consider Eric Roberts’ soliloquy on agent-principal relations, and the many ironies […]
The Break-Even Starting Lawyer Salary?
Above the Law has a very interesting post summarizing a talk given by the Dean of Northwestern Law School, David Van Zandt, at a PLI conference on law firm management – Dean Van Zandt talks about the model of law school education and tries to approximate the median starting salary for a lawyer to make […]
Returns on Investment in Law School Education
The New York Times ran a much emailed piece talking about the declining value of a top-tier law degree, and now law professor Sarah Waldeck has followed up at Concurring Opinions with a blog post urging potential law students to be very tough-minded in deciding whether to go to law school: Forty-five thousand dollars per […]
My School’s Great Logo Debate
I am not very good with graphic design, illustration, and anything that requires good visual instincts. So I don’t really regard myself as fit to have an opinion about this. However, a current debate at my school is between Old Logo: And New Logo: Opinions at the school seem to be divided; naturally, a Facebook […]
Thought on First-Year Law School Grades
[Adapted from previous years– Ed.] Grades are being released at law schools around the country, and I thought I would offer some some comments about grades for our many law student readers (especially 1Ls). I wanted to address two questions: First, how important are first-year grades, and second, are law school grades random? I’ll start […]
Overall Hispanic Matriculation to American Law Schools is Increasing
Somewhat surprisingly the Society of American Law Teachers study on minority matriculation to law school didn’t give data for all Hispanics. Instead, it focused on Mexican-Americans alone, concluding that their “representation” has “trended downward since 1993.” Most law schools target Hispanics as a group for affirmative action admissions, not Mexican-Americans alone. It could be that […]