- 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]
Tagged as:
bar associations,
law schools,
Second Circuit
- New York Times sets off furor with article on role of ABA accreditation in driving up law school costs, a theme explored by several recent authors including me in Schools for Misrule [David Segal/NYT, Somin, Bader/Examiner, Above the Law, Gideon Kanner, Matt Leichter/AmLaw, Macchiarola/Minding the Campus, Brian Tamanaha (on ABA dispute with fledgling Duncan Law School)] ABA president claims high tuitions unrelated to accreditation rules [Reuters]
- Related: “Data Show Feds Will Lend $54.3 Billion to U.S. Law Schools by 2020″ [Matt Leichter, AmLaw]
- The politics of the AALS, which just held its annual meeting in Washington [Bainbridge repost]
- Former North Dakota attorney general files spate of age bias suits after many schools turn him down for law professor position [TaxProf]
- “Some Words of Advice for Law Students, from 1811” [Kyle Graham (Santa Clara), guestblogging at Concurring Opinions last month; among topics of Graham's other posts were the famous tort case of Summers v. Tice and suspect kinds of law review articles]
- Prof. Lawrence Connell’s fight with Widener U. and its offended dean in “wild hypotheticals” case [Hans Bader/Minding The Campus, earlier here, here, etc.]
Tagged as:
age discrimination,
bar associations,
colleges and universities,
law schools
- 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]
Tagged as:
bar associations,
bloggers and the law,
Connecticut,
Delaware,
Duke lacrosse,
recreation,
safety
- “A Dean’s Lament: I Wish I Had Never Gone to Law School” [Chen via Caron] Critiques of law schools go way (way, way) back [Dave Hoffman, ConcurOp]
- “ProfScam” blogger with provocative critique of legal academia reveals self as Paul Campos of Colorado [Kerr, Horwitz, Conglomerate, Ribstein, Lat] Lawprof cage match, Campos vs. Leiter — go Campos! [Caron, Campos, Greenfield]
- To deregulate legal services, start with law school accreditation [Winston/Crandall, WSJ] More views [Tim Lynch, Greenfield, Bader]
- Law school placement data scandal: here come the class action lawyers [TaxProf] ABA’s Villanova censure a venture in “atmospherics of disclosure” [Dave Hoffman, ConcurOp]
- “The no-frills law school” [Roger Dennis, Faculty Lounge] What drives law school tuition? [Orin Kerr]
- Per one critic, Liberty lawprof’s book on Miller-Jenkins case “justifies parental kidnapping and flouting the American judicial system” [BTB]
- NYSBA president on law schools: “Our research and our own experience show that graduates are less prepared to practice law” [WSJ] Evidence as a mere elective? What are law schools thinking? [Greenfield]
- Take a stroll with the law dean on his walk to work — but sign a release form first [ABA Journal]
- “Blame the lawyers and law schools” [Bob Ingle, Asbury Park (N.J.) Press, thanks for mention of Schools for Misrule]
Tagged as:
bar associations,
law schools,
Miller-Jenkins case
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).
Tagged as:
bar associations,
law schools,
on TV and radio
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]
Tagged as:
bar associations,
Georgia,
lawyers
I suppose I’ll need to make this a regular feature as Schools for Misrule gets closer to publication:
- “The Wit, Wisdom, & Worthlessness of Law Reviews” [Gerald Uelmen, California Lawyer via Law School Innovation] Maybe courts aren’t ignoring them after all? [Yung, ConcurOp]
- History as advocacy: why one scholar would never sign onto a “Historians’ Brief,” even if he agreed with its contents [Gerard Magliocca, ConcurOp]
- Will new ABA accreditation standards require law schools to affirm a particular ideological line on diversity preferences? [Bernstein, Volokh]
- New Brian Tamanaha book on formalism/realism reviewed [Stanley Fish, NYT "Opinionator"]
- University of North Texas plans: “How To Sell a Law School to Texans” [Mystal, AtL]
- Survey of (some) law professors’ salaries: Michigan seems a little high, no? [Collegiate Times via Josh Blackman]
- Fights break out over Louisiana, Maryland law school clinics: profs call tune, state taxpayers pay piper. Something wrong with that picture? [Bill Araiza, Prawfs, NLJ, NYT, Legal Profession Blog, Adler/Volokh, Steele/Legal Ethics Forum]
- Not very up to date, but still worth a look: long (and left-leaning) list of law profs who’ve joined the Obama administration [Hunter via Barnett, Volokh]
Tagged as:
bar associations,
Barack Obama,
law schools,
Michigan,
Texas
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]
Tagged as:
bar associations,
insurance,
lawyers,
Texas
Tagged as:
AAJ,
bar associations,
Chicago,
child protection,
feeing frenzy,
immigration law,
judges,
New York,
politics,
tort reform,
workers' compensation
“A Seattle civil-rights attorney who was disbarred earlier this month after the state Supreme Court unanimously found that he had gouged some clients and bullied others into unwanted settlements has sued the Washington State Bar Association, claiming its investigation was rife with errors and conflicts of interest.” [Seattle Times]
Tagged as:
bar associations,
discipline,
Seattle
There are too many lawyers entering practice already, argues former litigator Dan Slater in the NYT’s “DealBook”. “The American Bar Association, which continues to approve law schools with impunity and with no end in sight, bears complicity in creating this mess. …. many law schools appear to profit from what may charitably be called an inefficient distribution of market information.” Profs. Bainbridge and Ribstein react.
Tagged as:
bar associations,
law schools
Prominent Austin, Texas lawyer and judicial candidate Mina Brees, who died Aug. 7, is the target of a probe by the state’s attorney general after sending scores of letters to Houston and Dallas area restaurants advising them that their business name registrations had expired and that they could buy them back by dealing with her at a cost of $20,000 or $25,000 each. The letters informed them that a client, Chicksports Inc., had taken possession of the names, but did not mention that she herself was the president of Chicksports or that it operated from the address of her solo-practice law firm. The Texas Restaurant Association had advised its members not to pay and said under state law lapses in name registrations do not deprive restaurants of their legal rights to their distinctive names. Brees had been on strained terms with a famous son, NFL quarterback Drew Brees. [Mike Tolson, Houston Chronicle/KHOU, Austin American-Statesman, more Houston Chronicle, Tex Parte, DeadSpin] Per the Austin American-Statesman, “Brees received the Austin Bar Association’s 2005 professionalism award for legal ethics and professionalism.”
Tagged as:
bar associations,
legal extortion,
restaurants,
Texas
“The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana has launched a class action against that state’s board of law examiners, asserting that inquiries into the mental health of those seeking a law license violate federal disabilities law.” [NLJ]
Tagged as:
bar associations,
disabled rights,
Indiana
As I mentioned last week at Point of Law:
The one case of [Sotomayor's] of which I’ve been most sharply critical over the years is Bartlett v. Bar Examiners, the famously long-drawn-out disabled-rights case in which Judge Sotomayor ruled that a seriously learning-disabled bar applicant who’d already failed the bar exam several times with extensive accommodations was legally entitled to yet further chances and accommodations. I wrote up the case here and here, among other places; Jim Dwyer of the Times has an account that is much more sympathetic to Bartlett’s cause.
Now a post by Anthony Dick at NRO “Bench Memos” gives a quick summary of why the case is so controversial:
you might think that, since reading ability is an important part of practicing law, and the bar exam is designed to ensure minimal competence among lawyers, papering over a test-taker’s lack of reading ability would somewhat defeat the purpose. It would seem clear to most people that, in the language of the ADA, compromising the standards of the test regarding a basic legal skill would not qualify as a “reasonable accommodation.” But that would be a decidedly unempathetic point of view. Such an attitude is in fact “invidious,” according to Sotomayor’s opinion.
It is far from clear that any of this will constitute so much as a speed bump on the path to Senate confirmation for Sotomayor, since lawmakers on the Hill have shown little or no interest in reining in adventurous interpretations of the Americans with Disabilities Act — indeed, when the Supreme Court moved on its own to rein some of them in, Congress responded with legislation to overturn the decisions and re-liberalize rights to sue under the law (cross-posted at Point of Law). A different view: Larry Ribstein.
Tagged as:
bar associations,
disabled rights,
Sonia Sotomayor
