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Archive for the ‘Law School’ Category

Curricular Reform Revisited

posted by Jon Siegel

Another Concurring Opinions visitor, Spencer Waller, yesterday offered this post in response to my recent post on curricular reform.  Spencer agrees with my basic idea while challenging the usefulness of spending quite so much time on personal jurisdiction in civil procedure.

I am happy to have this opportunity to reconsider my earlier post, which generated a lot of comments.  So let’s go over Spencer’s ideas as well as some of the comments on my previous post.

Read the rest of this post »

  October 13, 2009 at 11:57 am   Posted in: Law School  Print This Post Print This Post   5 Comments

Law School Reality (sort of, or at least to some)

posted by Deven Desai

As some may know from previous posts, I rather like the Socratic method. I think it can be used well and that the cliche of the Paper Chase meanness is not really the way the method should be used. That being said, I thought the following clip “Argument Clinic,” by Monty Python may capture what law students perceive to be the way law classes and law school in general operates, at least on more absurd days.

  September 8, 2009 at 1:24 pm  Tags: Argument Clinic, Monty Python  Posted in: Humor, Law School  Print This Post Print This Post   No Comments

The Art of Renaming

posted by Daniel Solove
Chilean sea bass

Chilean sea bass

If people don’t like something, the solution is often as simple as a name change.  Consider fish.  Some of the most popular fish today are renamed versions of less desirable fish.  Orange Roughy used to be called slimehead.  Chilean sea bass used to be called toothfish.  Monkfish used to be goosefish. The result of these name changes has been a dramatic increase in popularity, so much so that many renamed fish are now overfished and endangered.

The renaming trend is now spreading to academic courses. From the Boston Globe:

Boston College German studies professor Michael Resler went searching for a way to boost flagging interest in his “German Literature of the High Middle Ages’’ class a few years ago, and settled on the idea of simply giving the course a sexier name. The resulting “Knights, Castles, and Dragons’’ nearly tripled enrollment.

Resler then replaced his class on “The Songs of Walter von der Vogelweide,’’ a great German lyric poet, with “Passion, Politics, and Poetry in the Middle Ages.’’ Again, enrollment swelled.

“I suppose the moral of the story is that we live in an age where everything has to be marketed in order to find a willing audience,’’ Resler mused.

Maybe it’s time to rename law school classes:

Torts –> Crashes and Accidents

Criminal Law –> Murder Most Foul and Other Dastardly Crimes

Trusts & Estates –> Dead Hands: Power After Death

Corporate Law –> Gold and Parachutes

Property –> The Story of a Whale and a Fox

Hat tip: Inside Higher Ed

  September 8, 2009 at 7:32 am   Posted in: Culture, Education, Humor, Law School, Law School (Teaching)  Print This Post Print This Post   10 Comments

Sabbatical Blogging

posted by Dave Hoffman

This semester, I get to take my first sabbatical. As Larry observed, law firm sabbaticals are a thing of the past, and so lawyers might see this opportunity as yet more evidence that academics are insulated, head-in-the-clouds, wastrels. Perhaps, though it might help to see the sabbatical, like tenure, as simply a form of alternative compensation for professors, rather than a serious spur to productivity. And, like tenure, the sabbatical is a relic: while many years ago, a regular sabbatical policy was commonplace, now it’s my sense that it’s somewhat more rare.

I’ve got to say, I find the prospect of a fall with no duties other than those I set for myself more than a little terrifying. Putting aside the absence of structure, and colleagues to talk to, there’s the problem of figuring out which kinds of projects are the right size. If I pick something too big, I’m not going to finish (and thus feel pretty bad about having nothing to show for the immense privilege that the Law School and its stakeholders have extended me). If I pick something too small, well, you get the idea. So I’m looking for the sabbatical goldilocks. As I’ve learned, painfully, promising goldilocks projects in the empirical world are often (forgive me) wolves in sheep’s clothing. You start collecting data, and before you know it it’s two years later and you realize you never fully specified your research question. Yikes!

Some folks use their sabbaticals to do something entirely different, e.g., hiking the Appalachian trail (no, seriously); writing fiction; constructing toasters from scratch. I fear I’m more conformist than that. Apart from some personal business, I’ll probably be spending the fall writing more articles, coding more data, thinking about how to be a better corporations teacher, and blogging a little bit more often than I did over the summer.

I do have two larger intellectual projects that I’m going go try to fold in. The first is to read (again) the works of the Situationalist project. I’ve read several of the project’s papers – in one case, multiple times – but I still don’t think I really understand many of the claims, and, more importantly, the project’s motivation. Since there are tons of brilliant folks affiliated with the group, this obviously is a situation that I’ve got to remedy.  Second, I want to read at least a large sample of the articles that Herb Kritzer identifies here as fruits of pre-1940 empirical legal studies work. One of the few abiding disadvantages to not having a PhD is is a missing sense of the intellectual history of your field. That problem is particularly acute in ELS, where (to read the dates on citations in most recent papers) nothing useful was written before 1995.

I suppose that’s it. I’m not training to climb Everest. I’m not going to reorient my scholarly path. I’m not taking on a court case (though the amici in Jones appear to be having tons of fun). I can’t imagine that I’ll pick up a new hobby. Nevertheless, I’m pretty sure I’ll be spending more hours working than I do when I’ve got classes to teach!

  September 2, 2009 at 6:16 pm   Posted in: Law School, Law School (Scholarship), Law School (Teaching), Teaching  Print This Post Print This Post   7 Comments

Fellowships for Aspiring Law Professors 2009-2010

posted by Daniel Solove

Over at TaxProf, Paul Caron has posted an updated list of fellowships and visiting associate professorships for aspiring law professors.

  August 31, 2009 at 11:24 am   Posted in: Law School, Law School (Hiring & Laterals)  Print This Post Print This Post   No Comments

Classes Begin: Tips for Newbies

posted by Deven Desai

So there you sit in the first year class. You have tracked down the assignment and read it in a vacuum. You thought you understood it. The professor seems to drone and then surprises the class with a question. Hands fly up. Bodies sink into seats. Anxiety sits next you. That was the question? That is what I should be thinking about? Someone answers. Sounds like gibberish. They are right?!? What the heck was that? How did that person know any of that? Anxiety smiles at you and sits in your lap. The class continues. You follow along and find that little makes sense. This mad, mad world scenario recurs in class after class.

You panic. In the words of the great Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Don’t Panic.

Honestly, some folks may have family members who are lawyers; some may have worked around the law; some may have read extra material (often a professor’s articles but be careful about that tactic); some may have jumped in to see what happens; and some may just be that on it…for now. No matter where you are in law, you will be learning. At least I hope so. Law is not that static. In law school, you are tackling new language and a subculture. Hang in there. If you are feeling lost, work harder to find out what seems to be lacking. If folks throw words and concepts at you as if you should know them, realize that you may not yet, but you will. Although law school is not a war zone, it can resemble the book Dispatches which drops the reader into Vietnam and a world of jargon and confusion. One reads words and phrases and watches as others react while all of it is opaque. As the book progresses, undefined words and strings of acronyms are unlocked and the world is a bit more clear. Law school can be scary. Don’t let that get you down.

And if the panic takes hold (or not) try the song below, “Panic Switch” (lyrics here) by Silversun Pickups (I recommend going to 11). If you like it, play it a few times, revel in the way it captures how panic can take over and (to me at least) the suggestion that you have a choice in overcoming it or letting it swallow you up. After you have wallowed and flung about in the sensation, let it pass. Then get back to work. After all there’s always more reading to be done.

Panic Switch – Silversun Pickups

  August 28, 2009 at 1:54 pm  Tags: first year law, panic, Silversun Pickups, studying  Posted in: Law School  Print This Post Print This Post   No Comments

Weekend Song and Get Ready for Classes to Begin

posted by Deven Desai

So the weekend is upon us. For many of our readers law school and a fresh fall semester looms. What is one to do? Scurry to find the initial assignments for your class? Well, yes. But as a last, lingering gasp of summer I offer Blitzen Trapper and their song Furr. Dig it as you enjoy your endeavors whatever they may be.

Furr – Blitzen Trapper

Hat Tip: Chuck as the show played the song in one of the episodes, Chuck vs. the Delorean. Ah synyergy! This link has the list of songs in each episode too.

  August 21, 2009 at 10:06 am  Tags: Blitzen Trapper, Chuck, Furr  Posted in: Law School  Print This Post Print This Post   2 Comments

The End of Summer (Programs)

posted by Michael Kang

On-campus interviewing is already underway at many law schools, and law students are obviously worried about their job prospects this fall. According to NALP, law firms had already cut back their hiring dramatically last year compared to the year before. Based on early feedback from law students and firms so far, as well as the number of firms that are forgoing summer programs altogether for 2010, it doesn’t look good for 2Ls interviewing on campus right now.

Assuming the economy bounces back, law firms will need to ramp up hiring to cope with the increased workload, particularly after laying off many associates, but it seems likely that law firm hiring at law schools will be very different. The economic downturn is a shock to the hiring system that has been in place for decades now—heavy recruiting of 2L students into lavish summer programs, with a high percentage of those students receiving permanent offers during the following fall of their 3L year. Right now, some firms are simply doing away with summer programs for the time being and freezing entry-level hiring out of law schools. Almost all big law firms are limiting the size and duration of their summer programs, and many are deferring the start date by six months to a year for new permanent associates who receive offers out of their summer programs.

I wonder how many of the new changes to law firm recruiting and summer programs will be permanent and remain after the economy bounces back.

Read the rest of this post »

  August 13, 2009 at 5:14 am   Posted in: Law Practice, Law School  Print This Post Print This Post   3 Comments

Challenge to Wisconsin’s Diploma Privilege Continues

posted by Sarah Waldeck

Yesterday the Seventh Circuit reversed the dismissal of the class action challenging Wisconsin’s diploma privilege as a violation of the commerce clause.  (I previously posted about the case here. ) A few thoughts about this latest development:

1.  I remain baffled about what benefit the plaintiffs (graduates of out-of-state law schools)  expect to receive from this suit.  They have asked for an injunctive order striking a few words from the Wisconsin Supreme Court rule on bar admission.  The result of this proposed edit is that Wisconsin would offer the diploma privilege to all graduates of ABA-accredited law schools.  But as Judge Posner pointed out in his opinion, the state could also remedy a commerce clause violation by requiring graduates of Wisconsin law schools to take the bar exam.  Does anyone really believe that Wisconsin would do anything other than what Judge Posner has suggested?  Talk about the potential for a quick race to the bottom!  Even if they are victorious, the plaintiffs will be in the same position as when they started:  they will have to take a bar exam to practice in Wisconsin (or practice in another state for five years).

2. Judge Posner referred to the diploma privilege as favoring the economic interests of Wisconsin law schools, because prospective students who want to practice in Wisconsin have an incentive to attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison or Marquette.  This is undoubtedly true in theory, but I wonder how many applicants this incentive actually yields.   First, how many people dream of practicing law in Wisconsin who don’t already have a connection to the state?  I suspect that most people who plan to practice in Wisconsin are already living there or grew up there and would like to return.  This would make an application to Madison or Marquette likely in any event (particularly an application to Madison, which offers an in-state tuition discount).   Second, prospective law students tend to be extraordinarily optimistic about their potential for academic success and, by extension, their ability to pass a bar exam.  The exam is also more than three years removed from the decision about where to attend law school.  While the diploma privilege may occasionally tip the scale, I suspect most applicants make their decision based on more immediate factors:  prestige, physical plant, cost,  location, etc.  I doubt that the diploma privilege attracts many additional applicants to Wisconsin law schools or discourages many applicants who would like to eventually practice in Wisconsin from attending an out-of-state school.

3.  As the case returns to the district court, the most important question is whether the state can prove that Madison and Marquette offer courses that teach Wisconsin law and are therefore different than courses offered at other ABA-approved law schools.  At oral argument, Judges Posner and Wood were quite skeptical that the state would be able to offer this proof.  (Gordon Smith, a former Madison professor, blogged about this here.)  While I cannot speak about Marquette or about the current state of affairs at Madison, I am confident that 12 years ago (when I was a law student) Madison would have been able to satisfy the court.  Were my antitrust or federal courts courses different than what was offered at other schools?  No.  But in the courses that were necessary to qualify for the diploma privilege, I learned a lot of Wisconsin law, even when my professors chose to use national textbooks instead of their own materials.  Gordon Smith wrote that the faculty at Madison have “an unusually strong attachment to the home state’s law.”  When I was a student, I would have described it a bit differently:  I thought the faculty perceived itself as having an obligation to teach Wisconsin law because it knew that students who remained in the state would not take the bar exam.

  July 10, 2009 at 5:40 am   Posted in: Constitutional Law, Law School  Print This Post Print This Post   9 Comments

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

posted by Gerard Magliocca

As many of you know all too well, times are tough in the legal market.  Abovethelaw.com continues to track a steady stream of layoffs, salary reductions, and deferrals at major firms.  While this may be a temporary phenomenon caused by the severity of the Great Recession, some people are starting to ask deeper questions about what this might mean for the current model of legal education.

One possibility, of course, is that students who are thinking about law school will start wondering whether it’s a good investment. Incurring huge debts when there is doubt about the availability of jobs at the end of the rainbow is risky.  If there is a decline in law school applicants (or a shift to less expensive schools) that might put some institutions out of business.  Others suggest that the ABA should consider a two-year degree program to reduce costs, or should emphasize externships or apprenticeship relationships to help students get jobs after they graduate.

At a minimum, we should try to set a positive example of cost containment.  In this respect, I was disappointed to learn that the Maurer Law School of IU- Bloomington (which is the sister of my school) has received preliminary approval for a 24.5% tuition increase for in-state students.  This increase is curious because the Maurer School has received over $100 million in gifts during the past two years. You would think that some of this largesse could be used to help students out in these difficult times.

  July 7, 2009 at 4:46 pm   Posted in: Law School, Uncategorized  Print This Post Print This Post   No Comments

Columbia Law Review, Volume 109 Issue 4 (May 2009)

posted by Columbia Law Review

CLR-logo2jpg

Columbia Law Review, Volume 109 Issue 4 (May 2009)

Articles

An Aggregate Approach to Antitrust:  Using New Data and Rulemaking to Preserve Drug Competition

C. Scott Hemphill

Revealing Choices:  Using Taxpayer Choice to Target Tax Enforcement

Alex Raskolnikov

Notes

Between Healthy and Hartman:  Probable Cause in Retaliatory Arrest Cases

The Lorax State:  Parens Patriae and the Provision of Public Goods

Essay

Federalization Snowballs:  The Need for National Action in Medical Malpractice Reform

Abigail R. Moncrieff

  June 30, 2009 at 10:25 am   Posted in: Law Rev (Columbia), Law Rev Contents, Law School, Uncategorized  Print This Post Print This Post   No Comments

Routing Around Government Pay Scales

posted by Frank Pasquale

I know, you’re expecting a post on the new compensation czar. But before commenting on that, I want to think a bit about the way in which Sallie Mae–once a GSE, now “fully privatized”–may amount to a de facto end-run around the usual pay scales for government work.

Back in May, Gail Collins editorialized on “the epicenter of the college loan strangeness,” guaranteed student loans. For such loans, she says, the following holds:

We the taxpayers pay the banks to make loans to students.

We the taxpayers then guarantee the loans so the banks won’t lose money if the students don’t pay.

We the taxpayers then buy back the loans from the banks so they can make more loans to students, for which we will then pay them more rewards.

As she noted in another column, “The White House believes that if it cuts out the middlemen, and just gives the loans to the students directly, it can save $94 billion over 10 years.”

Predictably, the middlemen have furiously lobbied to preserve their prerogatives. Sallie Mae has “hired two prominent lobbyists, Tony Podesta, whose brother, John, led the Obama transition, and Jamie S. Gorelick, a former deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration.” The lobbyists are to press the case that private lenders create value via “marketing, customer relations, billing, default prevention and collection of delinquent loans.” Collins counters that “The real competition among the lenders is not to win over students so much as the school financial aid officers . . . [leading to] thinly disguised bribes and kickbacks.” The Wall Streeting of higher education encourages such shenanigans.

I only have a couple of comments on the situation.
Read the rest of this post »

  June 10, 2009 at 6:41 pm   Posted in: Administrative Law, Economic Analysis of Law, Law School  Print This Post Print This Post   One Comment

Barnes v. Yahoo!, CDA Immunity, and Promissory Estoppel

posted by Daniel Solove

yahooThe Ninth Circuit recently decided Barnes v. Yahoo!, a case with some very interesting holdings relating to the Communications Decency Act § 230 as well as promissory estoppel.  I wrote about this case briefly in my book, The Future of Reputation, long before it made it up to the Ninth Circuit.

Celia Barnes’ ex-boyfriend created fake profiles in her name on Yahoo.  Moreover, as the court relates:

The profiles contained nude photographs of Barnes and her boyfriend, taken without her knowledge, and some kind of open solicitation, whether express or implied is unclear, to engage in sexual intercourse. The ex-boyfriend then conducted discussions in Yahoo’s online “chat rooms,” posing as Barnes and directing male correspondents to the fraudulent profiles he had created. The profiles also included the addresses, real and electronic, and telephone number at Barnes’ place of employment. Before long, men whom Barnes did not know were peppering her office with emails, phone calls, and personal visits, all in the expectation of sex.

Barnes contacted Yahoo to get the profiles taken down:

Read the rest of this post »

  May 19, 2009 at 6:14 pm   Posted in: Constitutional Law, Cyberlaw, First Amendment, Law School, Media Law, Privacy, Privacy (Gossip & Shaming), Social Network Websites, Tort Law, Web 2.0  Print This Post Print This Post   4 Comments

Does Law and Economics Destroy Law Students’ Sense of Justice?

posted by Dave Hoffman
Judge Posner, Whose Pen Launched a Thousand Econo-Careers

Richard Posner. Founder. Latter-Day Apostate?

A draft paper by Raymond Fisman (Columbia Business),  Shachar Kariv (Berkeley Economics) and Daniel Markovits (Yale Law) has gotten surprisingly little attention given its potentially radical implications.  Maybe it’s the title: Exposure to Ideology and Distributional Preferences. I would have gone with something different.  Perhaps “Law and Economics Eats Law Students’ Hearts.”

The authors looked at first-year students at Yale Law School taking contracts and torts.  They labeled the students’ professors by their purported tendency to emphasize economic and “humanist” rhetoric in class.*  They then used the natural experiment of law school sorting to determine the effect that exposure to economic ideology had on law students’ distributional preferences in the dictator game. That is, did students taught by economically-minded professors behave differently than those taught by professors disposed toward humanism or critical-legal studies?

The bottom line: students taught by economically-minded professors were both more selfish and more likely to see fairness as a form of kaldor-hicks efficiency.  By contrast, students taught by humanists were more generous and also  likely to see fairness as a matter of equity.

These are important results for those interested in legal education.

  • First, and most obviously, it suggests that our preferences for altruism and the content of fairness are highly manipulable — one semester of teaching by a professor – at Yale, no less – can affect them.  I admit to being a bit surprised by the size of the effect, given the mixed results from earlier work on the relationship between economics and altruism.  It’s also surprising that Yalies are so impressionable!  I wonder whether the effect persists past a semester, and whether better coding of actual classroom discussion would have changed the results.
  • Second, it suggests yet more reasons for researchers to think hard about the effect that law school teaching has on the content of legal doctrine.  As I’ve argued, it’s quite likely that some law school professors who never published a lick have had more effect on substantive legal doctrine than those who’ve written reams, simply by influencing how their students (who went on to be lawyers and judges) thought about the content of rules and the byways of arguments.  We should do more work like this!
  • Third, and most personally, this makes me nervous.  I’m a highly socratic teacher who places lots (and lots) of emphasis in the first-year on efficiency-arguments and on the need to look beyond questions about distributional equality in the present case.  I thought that by doing so I was helping students to think critically about the dynamic nature of contract law – the relationship between contract rules and market price; the usefulness of an intelligent system of defaults; the importance of getting beyond gut intuitions.  But maybe I’m also indoctrinating the students to grab more of the pie for themselves.  Nuts.

*The method they used to code economic preferences was, to be frank, a little mystifying.  They gave points for PhD’s in economics, but had to make exceptions for Alan Schwartz, PhDless but L&E to the bone, Guido, for obvious reasons, and both Robert Gordon and Carol Rose, who are similarly off-set.  Why not simply ask the professors themselves how much they emphasized economic rhetoric in class?  Or the students?

  May 18, 2009 at 6:17 pm   Posted in: Behavioral Law and Economics, Contract Law & Beyond, Economic Analysis of Law, Empirical Analysis of Law, Law School, Law School (Scholarship), Law School (Teaching), Law Student Discussions  Print This Post Print This Post   4 Comments

The Heart of a Center

posted by Jacqueline Lipton

So here’s a question for people thinking about the nature of law schools and the nature of scholarship (and with thanks to Mike Madison for picking up on my invitation to blog more about his research deanship).

I’ve talked to a lot of folks at a lot of schools with different philosophies on law school centers.  Even folks within the same school often have widely divergent views about what law school centers can and should be doing for the overall law school enterprise.  And of course, it must be acknolwedged that centers can serve a variety of different functions within a law school – and different individual centers can have different individual roles.

So my question is whether there is any way to get to the heart of the center question.  Are there one or more key ideals that all centers in law schools should be able to live up to, or to contribute to the school?  And, if so, is it something other than:  “It’s a marketing device to attract faculty/students.”  (Not that there’s anything wrong with that – I’m asking the question out of legitimate interest.)

We’ve been talking about this recently at my school and the question is of particular interest here because we have a number of different centers that were set up under vastly different conditions for vastly different purposes.  Some are research focused and obtain grant funding.  At least one has a private endowment.  Some take advantage of collections of faculty who specialize in particular subject areas.  Presumably none of them are cost-neutral for the school, although none of them drain big bucks out of the budget either.

There are always political questions within faculty about centers and the role of faculty who happen to operate as center directors (I plead guilty to the charge of being a center director).  “Why does s/he get [a lighter teaching load/a director's stipend/a dedicated administrative support person/_______]?”  Pick one or fill in the blank.

But politics aside, what do centers ideally contribute/potentially detract from a school? Read the rest of this post »

  May 12, 2009 at 2:17 pm  Tags: law centers  Posted in: Education, Law School, Law School (Scholarship), Law School (Teaching)  Print This Post Print This Post   One Comment

The Law School Faculty as a Commons

posted by Michael Madison

What’s the connection between law professors and stand-up comics?

My last post pointed to a recent short piece on comics and the relationship between “anti-plagiarism” social norms that encourage comic creativity and the emergence of those norms in the context of commodified comedy.  Comics sold and consumers bought LPs by the boat-load. The success of record albums had a clear if unmeasurable impact on comics’ incentives to produce and innovate.

A generalizable point is this: Record album sales are an objective and observable characteristic of this particular environment. The data is mostly external to the comics themselves. What scholars describe as social norms among comics are, by contrast, mostly subjective. Norms are personal to each comic. We “observe” the existence of social norms them by inferring their existence from regular behavior and from anecdotal reports. That interplay between observable, objective, and “external” dimensions of an innovation environment and subjective, “internal” dimensions of that environment is central to understanding its mechanics.

In fact, that interplay is probably central to understanding the mechanics of any cultural context. It’s a central theme in the work that I’ve begun on “cultural commons” with Brett Frischmann and Kathy Strandburg. And it connects stand-up comedy and law faculties. More below the fold.
Read the rest of this post »

  May 11, 2009 at 8:33 am   Posted in: Behavioral Law and Economics, Law School, Law School (Scholarship)  Print This Post Print This Post   One Comment

The Beauty of Casuistry

posted by Nate Oman

When I get asked by non-lawyers about teaching law school (and this happens about once or twice a year) I tend to tell them a certain kind of myth about the case method.  I try to throw my students into the particulars of the common law and force them to engage in a casuistic process of pushing the limits of their intuitions by testing them against new, but slightly different fact patterns.  Likewise, when a student asks me something like “Yes, but what does reasonable reliance really mean?” my answer is generally that they have to look to the cases.  I can’t give you a set of abstract principles that answer that question, I say, what you have to do is find a case with a fact pattern similar to yours and then either distinguish it (if it is bad for you) or argue that it covers your case (if it is good for you).  In my more nominalistic moments, I will insist with what I hope is a suitably wild-eyed look that there really is nothing else there when it comes to many legal concepts.  It is just the cases.  Just the particulars.

Read the rest of this post »

  May 8, 2009 at 8:43 am   Posted in: Law School, Law School (Scholarship), Law School (Teaching)  Print This Post Print This Post   3 Comments

The physical plant of a law school

posted by Jennifer Collins

For a number of reasons, my law school is currently considering whether any revisions should be made to our building, which leads me to the following question.  Does your law school building have a communal gathering space where professors and students can easily mingle?  A lounge, a cafeteria, or a coffee shop, for example?  If your building does have such a space, do students and professors take advantage of it, and do you find that it advances your educational mission?  When I think about my dream building revisions, the addition of a space that could foster more informal interactions than what often take place in a professor’s office is near the top of my list.  I am wondering if that instinct is correct, and if so, what kind of space might be the most beneficial.

  May 7, 2009 at 10:57 am   Posted in: Law School  Print This Post Print This Post   8 Comments

A Grading Thought

posted by Dave Hoffman

“A” exams validate professors’ vanity by suggesting that the exam made sense & fairly tested the course. The rest of the pile makes us feel either like terrible teachers, or gob-smacked fools who asked incomprehensible questions. Therefore, the goal of a test taker should be to write an answer that makes the exam seem like it was internally coherent. This is not the same as trying to guess the professor’s politics and bringing vomit back to the dog.

(Yes: it’s exam-grading time in Ithaca. Expect a flurry of posts from me as I try to avoid it. If you haven’t taken your exams yet this semester, re-read Solove’s tips.)

  May 1, 2009 at 5:09 pm   Posted in: Law School  Print This Post Print This Post   No Comments

Columbia Law Review, Volume 109 Issue 3 (March 2009)

posted by Columbia Law Review

CLR-logo2jpg

Columbia Law Review, Volume 109 Issue 3 (March 2009)

Article

Contracting for Innovation: Vertical Disintegration and Interfirm Collaboration

Ronald J. Gilson, Charles F. Sabel & Robert E. Scott

Notes

Paradox of Presumptions: Seller Warranties and Reliance Waivers in Commercial Contracts

Kabir Masson

Equal Justice Under Law: Post-Booker, Should Federal Judges Be Able to Depart from the Federal Sentencing Guidelines to Remedy Disparity Between Codefendants’ Sentences?

Ryan Scott Reynolds

Essay

Corporate Philanthropy and the Market for Altruism

M. Todd Henderson & Anup Malani

  April 30, 2009 at 1:42 pm   Posted in: Law Rev (Columbia), Law Rev Contents, Law School  Print This Post Print This Post   No Comments


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