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bar associations

Law schools roundup

by Walter Olson on February 8, 2013

  • Universities’ prestige game: will “zombie law schools” drag down the rest? [Gerard Magliocca]
  • Law as undergraduate degree works in advanced countries like Germany and Britain, could work here too [Bainbridge]
  • It’s a capitalist plot! Steve Diamond of Santa Clara assails Brian Tamanaha’s critique of law schools as too redolent of Hayek, Cato [SSRN, background, more]
  • “That’s pretty good reason to speak up: Thomas Breaks 5-year Silence During #SCOTUS Arguments to Mock Yale” [@DavidMastio]
  • Dean who took huge pay packet for dismal results is also immediate past president of ABA law school panel [Campos]
  • Does the California experience undercut arguments for relaxing accreditation? [Matt Bodie]
  • “What Do Law Professors Think About the Critiques of the Law Schools?” [Orin Kerr]

The idea of Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Accounts (IOLTA) programs in California and elsewhere is to skim off tiny sums from clients’ accounts, too small to be worth arguing about (isn’t that what class action theorists are always claiming defendants get away with?) to finance legal representation, sometimes for indigent clients, other times for “cause” litigation, the latter of which results in “a lot of unsuspecting clients funding things they may or may not have believed in.” With interest rates at prolonged lows, however, the sums raised by IOLTA have drooped, and California bar authorities have responded by burying new line items in dues renewals for voluntary levies — which have not, it seems, resulted in the hoped-for flood of lawyer contributions. [Charlotte Allen, L.A. Times](& Legal Ethics Forum)

Yes, lawyers are organized as a guild, but I’m not convinced that arrangement is disintegrating or on the way to doing so. I explain why in a new piece at Liberty and Law that’s a response to an essay-in-chief by Jim Chen of Louisville Law School arguing that competition and technological advance are fast eroding lawyers’ guild privileges. The other response-essay is by Brian Tamanaha of Washington U. in St. Louis, whose new book Failing Law Schools has been getting widespread acclaim [NLJ, Garnett]
and whose recent essays in the NYT and Daily Beast have stirred widespread discussion. (& Instapundit, Paul Caron/TaxProf, Scott Greenfield).

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Among the trip-ups are that lawyers are sworn by oath to uphold the laws of the land; that federal law bars the granting of state professional licenses to illegals; that federal law makes it unlawful to offer employment to them; and that clients might find themselves in a pickle were their attorneys whisked away on zero notice to face deporation. Nonetheless, the California Bar is pressing ahead with its recommendation of Sergio C. Garcia, 35, of Chico. [ABA Journal, Howard Bashman roundup, Bookworm Room]

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June 4 roundup

by Walter Olson on June 4, 2012

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April 9 roundup

by Walter Olson on April 9, 2012

March 15 roundup

by Walter Olson on March 15, 2012

  • Part III of Radley Balko series on painkiller access [HuffPo]
  • “Note: Add ‘Judge’s Nameplate’ to List of Things Not to Steal” [Lowering the Bar]
  • California’s business-hostile climate: if the ADA mills don’t get you, other suits might [CACALA]
  • Bottom story of the month: ABA president backs higher legal services budget [ABA Journal]
  • After string of courtroom defeats, Teva pays to settle Nevada propofol cases [Oliver, earlier]
  • Voting Rights Act has outstayed its constitutional welcome [Ilya Shapiro/Cato] More: Stuart Taylor, Jr./The Atlantic.
  • Huge bust of what NY authorities say was $279 million crash-fraud ring NY Post, NYLJ, Business Insider, Turkewitz (go after dishonest docs on both sides)]

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Law schools roundup

by Walter Olson on January 25, 2012

  • Second Circuit Judge Jose Cabranes, at AALS meeting, gives legal academics frank appraisal of where law school needs fixing, to the delight of many of us who’ve advanced a broadly similar critique [Caron, Above the Law, Sloan/NLJ]
  • “Let’s Regulate Harder. That’ll Provide More Jobs For Young Law Grads!” [my new Cato post, citing an official from the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT)]
  • ABA accreditation rules discourage reliance on less expensive (and often more practice-oriented) adjunct faculty [latest in David Segal series on law schools in New York Times; Catherine Dunn, Corporate Counsel] Plus: video of law school accreditation panel at Federalist Society national convention;
  • Law school without undergrad degree first? Many other advanced countries do it that way [McGinnis and Mangas, Northwestern dean Dan Rodriguez response, M&M rejoinder; ABA Journal on views of NYLS's Rick Matasar] Yet more on law school reform [Jim Chen via Caron, Caron, Mark Yzaguirre, Frum Forum]
  • Complete point-counterpoint at ELF last summer on Tulane law clinic fracas (I’m counterpoint) [ELF]
  • Why not rob the rich? Ask Prof. Leiter [Sullivan]
  • Does law and economics amount to “studies in social engineering”? [Kenneth Anderson]

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Law schools roundup

by Walter Olson on January 12, 2012

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January 3 roundup

by Walter Olson on January 3, 2012

  • Popehat’s Ken to the rescue after Maine lawyer/lawmaker assists naturopath in bullying critical blogger [Popehat]
  • Newt’s “patriotism made me stray” among highlights of the year in blame-shifting [Jacob Sullum]
  • Nifong sidekick, now in a spot of legal bother himself, hits back with lawsuit [K C Johnson, Durham in Wonderland]
  • Shareholder action: “Delaware approves $285 Million in Plaintiffs’ Lawyers’ Fees” [Bainbridge, WSJ Deal Journal, WSJ Law Blog]
  • “Even one death is too many — WE MUST BAN NETI POTS!” [NYDN via Christopher Tozzo]
  • Debatable premise of Joe Nocera analysis on Stephen Glass case: bar admission turn-down = “rest of his life … destroyed” [NYT, Howard Wasserman/Prawfs, earlier]
  • Who says Connecticut never reforms liability? Towns won protection last year from some recreation-land tort exposure [CFPA, earlier here, here]

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December 12 roundup

by Walter Olson on December 12, 2011

  • Liability suits bankrupt manufacturer of gasoline cans [Tulsa World]
  • Faces life imprisonment: “Greece’s statistics chief faces criminal probe” for “not cooking the books” [FT via @OlafStorbeck]
  • Man injured by runaway car can sue county on grounds bus shelter was built too close to street [Seattle Times]
  • Title IX trips up track teams [Saving Sports: Delaware, West Virginia, Maryland]
  • “‘Not gay enough’ softball players settle suit” [SF Chron]
  • Now it’s the Obama administration that’s upset with ABA over ratings of judicial nominees [Whelan]
  • Lawyer kiosks in UK newsstands [Knake, LEF] Lawyers open kiosk at Florida mall [ABA Journal]

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Law schools roundup

by Walter Olson on September 15, 2011

I’ll be appearing this morning on KARN in Little Rock, Ark., WRVA in Richmond, Va., and WTIC in New Haven/Hartford, Ct., to discuss my New York Daily News op-ed on McDonald’s and Campbell’s changes in their food line-ups following pressure from nutritional crusaders in public office. And I was quoted by reporter Jerry Crimmins July 22 in the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin on accreditation of law schools and lawyer oversupply (“ABA responds to senator’s criticisms,” subscriber paywall).

Law schools roundup

by Walter Olson on March 6, 2011

  • Looks as if ROTC will return to Yale and Harvard despite some misgivings at the latter institution over the military’s treatment of transgendered persons [Atlantic Wire, Weekly Standard; also see my Daily Caller interview]
  • California state bar urges U.S. News to factor racial diversity into law school rankings [Althouse]
  • Right-of-center commentators clash on Ninth Circuit nomination of Berkeley lawprof Goodwin Liu [Damon Root, Reason]
  • Odds of this resulting purely from chance distribution would seem pretty low: of 32 members of Congress who have Harvard degrees, 29 are Democrats [Stoll, Future of Capitalism]
  • Rather disrespectful review of new Ronald Dworkin book [Simon Blackburn, Times Higher Ed]
  • There’ll always be a legal academia dept.: “Multidimensional Masculinities and Law: A Colloquium” [UNLV/Suffolk via LaborProf]

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And that’s just so unfair, according to Lester Tate, president of the State Bar of Georgia. After all, it’s not as if lawyers have a lot of power or behave aggressively or hurtfully toward anyone else, right? “Particularly abhorrent are the attacks that come from candidates who are lawyers themselves.” Where’s their professional solidarity? [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

“Inappropriate but did not amount to misconduct?” Really? [Crime and Federalism, Journal Sentinel; Calumet County, Wisconsin]

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Legal academia roundup

by Walter Olson on August 3, 2010

I suppose I’ll need to make this a regular feature as Schools for Misrule gets closer to publication:

Physician-blogger Musings of a Dinosaur has some thoughts on the issue. More states are requiring lawyers to inform clients whether they carry liability insurance, according to the ABA Journal. Texas is one state where many lawyers are tenaciously trying to head off such a rule: “according to a February 2008 survey of attorneys conducted by the State Bar, 48 percent of the 6,160 attorneys who completed the survey do not have professional liability coverage.” [Texas Lawyer, White Coat]

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