Archive for the ‘Law School’ Category

Greater Philadelphia Area Junior Law Faculty Meet-and-Greet

posted by Tuan Samahon

Villanova Law School invites junior law faculty at greater Philadelphia area law schools to join us for lunch. Junior faculty will share their research interests, network, socialize, and otherwise foster a community of junior faculty who can collaborate across institutions.

The event will take place on Friday, May 7, 2010 at 12:30 pm at the Faculty Center in the new Villanova Law School building (pictured).

The following faculty members have agreed to serve as informal event coordinators. If you plan to attend, please contact your school’s coordinator so we can receive an accurate head count for the lunch.

1. Drexel: Bret Asbury

2. Penn: Shyam Balganesh

3. Rutgers-Camden: Gerardo Vildostegui

4. Temple: Sandra Sperino

5. Villanova: Tuan Samahon

6. Widener: Thad Pope

We hope this lunch will become the first of ongoing meet-and-greets with rotating Philadelphia area venues (including, we hope, a few good restaurants). If you would be interested in having your school host the next event, please contact your school’s coordinator.

  March 19, 2010 at 6:37 am   Posted in: Administrative Announcements, Law School   Print This Post   One Comment

Welcome to the Blogosphere: 20th & H Blog by Dean Fred Lawrence

posted by Daniel Solove

My dean, Fred Lawrence of George Washington University Law School, has started a new blog called 20th & H.  He writes:

20th and H was conceived as a place for me, as dean, to share with the GW Law community occasional thoughts about the Law School, legal education, and the legal profession, and to talk with you about some of the perspectives and insights I’ve gained through my work on campus and on the road.

Great idea!  Welcome to the blogosphere.

Fred has a recent post about laptops in the classroom:

For many of our students, the laptop has become almost an extension of their selves.  It’s how they take notes, research, write, and communicate; like it or not, those of us who were students in a pre-computer age simply can’t roll back the clock to a time when faculty members enjoyed the sight of rows of rapt faces and suffered at worse some inattentive doodling, note passing and an occasional nodding head.

Read more over at 20th & H.

  March 15, 2010 at 5:59 am   Posted in: Blogging, Law School, Law School (Hiring & Laterals), Law School (Rankings), Law School (Scholarship), Law School (Teaching)   Print This Post   No Comments

The Job Market and Public Interest

posted by Lisa Fairfax

By now we are all well aware of the tough job market facing everyone, including law school students and recent law school grads.   While law school students have found it more difficult–and some cases impossible–to find jobs, some others who had been promised jobs have found their offers rescinded, or altered into deferments or other fellowship options.   Of course, these job alterations have collateral consequences, including–but certainly not limited to–the difficulties they create for students who need to repay their student loan debt.  Another collateral consequence is the impact such changes have on public interest and legal aid firms and that job market. 

To be sure, at least some of these changes have been painted as a positive development for such entities.   This is because when firms offer deferment packages, they often offer to pay a reduced salary in exchange for, or at least with the understanding that, deferred associates will seek out employment in the public interest.  According to one Time article, “One undisputed upside to the current trend is that public-interest and legal-aid firms will finally receive some much needed help.”  Like with charitable giving, public interest organizations are suffering dramatic cuts just as the need for their services are on the rise.  As one Legal Aid executive noted, this means that deferred associates will be welcomed with “open arms.”  Moreover, deferred associates get the opportunity to get some legal training while working in a field that not only desperate needs their help, but also in which they might not have otherwise had exposure.  And after such exposure, some of them may even remain in the public interest field.  It all seems like a silver lining to an admittedly difficult job market.  But alas, perhaps this is a case of everything that glitters. . .

In other words, what about those law school students and grads who came to law school with the specific intent of working in the public interest field?  They have no deferred arrangements.  Instead, these law firm arrangements turn out not to be such a silver lining for them.   The current crisis with its resulting budget cuts, has meant fewer public interest positions.  Apparently (and as everyone expected), deferred associates have been taking the jobs that may have otherwise gone to those who would have specifically sought out public interest employment.  These public interest agencies get workers without having to pay their salary, and apparently in some cases, without having to pay their benefits.  Thus, it is an easy call for such agencies.   And it could be that with budget cuts and the downturn, such agencies would not have had the resources to hire anyone–so perhaps it is not appropriate to think of this as a kind of zero sum game.  Then too, it is still the case that associates are filling an important need.  Moreover, it is still the case that whatever is happening, it is a difficult job market for everyone involved.   However, this reveals that the climate is having a variety of unintended consequences.

  March 11, 2010 at 4:46 am   Posted in: Law School, Uncategorized   Print This Post   4 Comments

Thoughts about choosing a law school, pt. 3

posted by Alfred Yen

Legal writing programs get staffed in 3 meaningfully different ways.  One model relies primarily on part-time instructors (generally adjunct teachers or graduate student fellows) supervised by a director of the program who is sometimes, but not always, a full-time specialist in legal writing.  A second model uses a director (sometimes, but not always, a full-time specialist) who works with faculty teaching doctrinal courses like torts or contracts to integrate writing exercises into those doctrinal courses.  A third model uses full-time faculty who specialize in teaching legal writing.  Each has its pros and cons.

Model 1 is inexpensive for a school to operate.  Adjunct faculty don’t get paid very much, so this saves faculty positions for people who will teach other subjects.  Devoting slots this way arguably benefits students in a couple of different ways.  It might mean lower student-faculty ratios in upper level classes or a wider variety of courses from which to choose.  And, it could mean more faculty publishing and advancing the school’s scholarly reputation.  (Note:  This second point may be hotly contested depending on one’s perspective.  Conventional wisdom holds that tenure-track faculty who teach outside of legal writing publish more than legal writing faculty.  This is partly because many legal writing faculty hold non-tenure track positions for which publication is not a requirement.  This may be changing as legal writing faculty have begun to hold tenure-track positions and publishing more.) All of this comes at a cost, however.  Full-time faculty who specialize in legal writing develop considerable teaching expertise.  Perhaps more than any other type of law school faculty, full-time legal writing teachers think and write about how to train lawyers.  With all due respect to those who teach legal writing as adjuncts or fellows, I think that full-time legal writing faculty will, on the whole, teach better classes than part-time faculty.  An adjunct has another job that is his primary income.  He understandably pays more attention to that than his students.  And, adjuncts frequently teach for only a few years.  Just when they’re starting to figure things out, they move on.

Model 2 has intriguing possibilities for excellence that may not always be realized.  When full-time faculty teach writing as part of a doctrinally focused course, the integration could lead to a deeper understanding of legal problems and how to write about them.  Class discussion can explicitly tie big substantive questions to challenges in writing memos or briefs.  If this works, it probably creates an excellent legal writing class.  Unfortunately, the faculty I know who have taught in these programs report that the promise is not always realized because faculty who teach doctrinal classes do not, as a whole, make legal writing a priority.  They prefer to concentrate on their substantive law specialties and their scholarship.  Only an unusually dedicated non-legal writing specialist professor will spend the time necessary to become a top-flight legal writing teacher.  Some undoubtedly do it, but others I’ve spoken to find the obligation to teach writing a burdensome distraction from teaching and writing about subjects they prefer.

Model 3 uses only full-time faculty who dedicate themselves to teaching legal writing.  The obvious benefit is the development of expertise I mentioned earlier.  Not every law professor will agree with this, but I think that top-flight legal writing teachers bring great value to their students.  Those who don’t agree may say that any of us (meaning non-legal writing law professors) could step right in and do just as good of a job, but I’m not sure it’s as simple as that.  A good legal writing course combines the reading and analysis of cases with instruction on how to write about the law.  It isn’t obvious that “just any” professor would immediately do a good job of it.  If experience matters in teaching torts, it probably matters in teaching legal writing too.  So why don’t all law schools employ a full-time staff of legal writing teachers?  Well, it’s expensive.  Full-time legal writing teachers occupy faculty slots that could be used for teachers in other areas.  A school may not think that legal writing is sufficiently important to warrant the expenditure.

From the standpoint of a prospective law student, it’s worth deciding how important legal writing will be to you.  You will have to candidly assess your writing ability, how easily you will adapt to legal conventions, and your willingness to experience stress if you’re behind fellow summer associates/new lawyers who have had more training.  To be clear, I’m not saying that legal writing should be your primary method for choosing a law school.  But, if schools are fairly close in other ways, the legal writing program is one important and frequently overlooked way to identify the right school for you.

  March 10, 2010 at 3:16 pm  Tags: academia, Law School  Posted in: Law School, Law School (Rankings), Law School (Teaching), Teaching   Print This Post   5 Comments

Thoughts about choosing a law school, part 1

posted by Alfred Yen

So let me start with just a few thoughts about U.S. News and how much weight it should be given.  In my opinion, U.S. News gives a rough indication about how prestigious a school is.  Every prospective law student wants to know what a school will do for his resume, and U.S. News helps answer that question.  The top of the list – perhaps 5 to 8 schools – are sufficiently prestigious that simply going there will do a lot for the student in question in terms of career opportunities.  Beyond that, however, things get more dicey.  The schools that follow surely carry prestige, but employers will no longer pay attention “just because” a particular applicant went to the school.  The individual’s ability matters more.  That’s not to say that a school’s reputation becomes irrelevant.  It remains relevant, but in my opinion a prospective lawyer needs to think about what school will make him a capable lawyer.

To make this clear, look at the numerical scores assigned by U.S. News to various schools.  In last year’s ranking, Yale was #1 with a score of 100.  Harvard was #2 with 95.  Duke, Northwestern, and Virginia shared #10 with 80.  Now let’s take a look further down the line.  Three more schools shared #20 with scores of 66.  Five schools shared #30 with a 62.  In short, the difference between numbers 20 and 30 was one point LESS than the difference between numbers 1 and 2,  and 16 points less than the difference between numbers 1 and 10.  That means, according to U.S. News, there’s not much difference between a school ranked 20 and one ranked 30.

Despite this, I suspect that many aspiring lawyers place unwarranted weight on the relative rankings of schools outside the top few.  U.S. News (and maybe others) need to have a “top 20” or “top 50” to make rankings interesting.  A law student, however, needs to find the school that will best educate her, and I am hoping that the posts I intend to write will help students identify schools that will help them flourish.

  March 4, 2010 at 8:34 am  Tags: academia, Law School  Posted in: Law School   Print This Post   5 Comments

Larry Solum’s Entry Level Hiring Report

posted by Daniel Solove

Over at Legal Theory Blog, Professor Larry Solum is seeking information to compile this year’s entry level hiring report for law school faculty hires.   Here’s his post.  To take the survey, click here.

  March 3, 2010 at 7:55 am   Posted in: Law School, Law School (Hiring & Laterals)   Print This Post   No Comments

Law School Rescue! (Information Needed)

posted by Dave Hoffman

In Temple’s coffee shop this morning I found an advertisement for “LawSchoolRescue.com”, which promises to help students who feel like they are “drowning” by providing a “secret way to breeze through law school.”  As the website and flier describe, the course promises to help you:

• “Turn the tables on your professors so they sound unprepared
• Do a fraction of the work your classmates are doing — and get better grades
• Find and use software that will give you the advantage
• Make Law School even easier with a proven method to prepare yourself mentally
• Study for the bar in a way your classmates can’t
• Learn the secrets that exam writers don’t want you to know”

There’s tons to like here.  I would love to know the secret to taking an exam (which if I knew I wouldn’t want my students to know.  Is it coherence?  Proper weighting?  Bribes?) And who wouldn’t want to do less work and get better grades?  Of course, to get access to these secrets, there’s a small price: $29.95 plus $6.95 shipping, though the price is only available to the first 100 customers, “after which the price will increase.”  This sort of deterred me.  What if I had already missed the rush, and was the 101th customer?  What if the course cost more than I could pay, leaving me without the secret?  I’d feel very sad.

So I figured I throw it out there and ask you folks. Has anyone signed up for the course?  Can you tell me what my students can do to turn the tables on me, rarely work, get good grades, and feel good about law school?  What’s the secret sauce?

  February 17, 2010 at 11:08 am   Posted in: Law School   Print This Post   6 Comments

Summer Programs in China and Croatia

posted by Gerard Magliocca

I’m the co-director of the China Summer Law Program at Indiana University School of Law — Indianapolis, and I wanted to put in another plug to those who might be interested in China or in our summer  program in Croatia.  The China course is held at Renmin University in Beijing and runs from the third week of May until the third week of June.  We offer an overview of Chinese law taught by the faculty that focuses mostly on commercial subjects but also covers criminal and public law.  Learning about a legal system that is still under construction is fascinating, as is living in China and interacting with Chinese law students.  The Croatia program is held in Dubrovnik (a sun-splashed city on the Adriatic) from late June until mid-July and concentrates on Central and Eastern European law.

The link to the information on the China program is here.  The Croatia link is here.  They are both exciting opportunities and I hope you’ll consider applying.  Applications are due in March.

  January 27, 2010 at 6:49 am   Posted in: Law School   Print This Post   No Comments

Who Should (And Shouldn’t) Go to Law School

posted by Sarah Waldeck

Yesterday’s New York Times article about the depreciating value of a law degree is presently number one on the Times’ “most emailed” list.  My fervent hope is that the article is being forwarded not just to lawyers, but also to individuals who are considering whether to join a 1L class in 2010.

Because I am visiting at another law school this semester, I don’t have to attend any admissions events this spring.  Yet I’ve been thinking hard about what advice I would give prospective students and this is where I’ve landed:  Only go to law school next year if (1) you have always dreamed of being a lawyer; or (2) you are accepted by a very prestigious institution; or (3) you are offered a full scholarship.

This is not advice I’ve arrived at easily.  Fifteen years ago, such advice likely would have discouraged me from even considering law school.   But the economics of my decision are likely very different from the economics of the decisions that will be made this spring.  I went to a state university and graduated without a penny of debt.  Partly this was because I worked for three years after college and managed to save money, but mostly it was because my in-state tuition averaged about $5,000 per year.   Today, in-state tuition at the same institution would cost more than $16,000 per year.  If I went to a private school in the metropolitan area where I usually teach, I’d be looking at a yearly tuition of about $45,000.  Read the rest of this post »

  January 18, 2010 at 10:02 pm   Posted in: Law School   Print This Post   42 Comments

Maybe It’s Not Broken: Law Schools, Critical Thinking, and Carnegie

posted by Deven Desai

Law school doesn’t work. The model is broken. We need to train students to be ready to practice as full lawyers right out of law school. These are, of course, slightly hyperbolic reductions of some of the current claims and possible crises in legal education. Nonetheless, there has been discussion of whether the downturn means that law schools need to rethink what they are doing. I have written before that I think law school offers a special skill better than other schools: critical thinking. None of which to say that legal education could not improve. But insofar as that drive to improve is a claim for more practical training, there is another reason to pause. Business schools and at least one business leader seem to say that what they want is someone with, wait for it, great critical thinking skills. What? Yes. Excellent critical thinking skills are requested. And it gets better. Business schools are under criticism for, wait for it, being too practical. “Ever since 1959, when two influential studies by the Ford and Carnegie Foundations chastised business schools as being too vocational, most M.B.A. programs have taken anything but a broad approach to their subject matter.”

That’s correct. According to Carnegie, business schools were too practical. Law schools are too abstract. Which bed will Goldilocks pick? Is there a perfect blend? Perhaps, but one must wonder whether there is a pattern of over-reaction to whatever system is dominant in a given field. I like the idea of law professors using more real world examples in class and that law school should prepare students to write well. But I firmly believe that writing well is a function of reading and engaging with theory as well as other material. In other words, law schools must continue to develop and hone critical thinking skills.

Take a look at this quote from Nancy McKinstry, the C.E.O. and chairwoman of the executive board of Wolters Kluwer about qualities she looks for when hiring: “I look for people who are good problem solvers. Again, I think that’s from my own experience — if you know how to solve problems, you have a shot of performing at a higher level. You obviously need some subject-matter expertise, but I’d rather have someone who’s really strong on problem-solving, and maybe a little less on the subject-matter expertise, because we can teach them that.”

It sounds like something a law school might say. We’ll train you how to think. The details can be sorted as they arise.

If the New York Times is correct that “even before the financial upheaval last year, business executives operating in a fast-changing, global market were beginning to realize the value of managers who could think more nimbly across multiple frameworks, cultures and disciplines. The financial crisis underscored those concerns — at business schools and in the business world itself,” maybe law schools should remember that they are damn good at developing those skills.

In fact, as the Times noted, “while few [business schools] talk explicitly about taking a liberal arts approach to business, many of the changes are moving business schools into territory more traditionally associated with the liberal arts: multidisciplinary approaches, an understanding of global and historical context and perspectives, a greater focus on leadership and social responsibility and, yes, learning how to think critically.” Isn’t that what we do at law school?

  January 14, 2010 at 2:33 pm   Posted in: Education, Law School   Print This Post   7 Comments

Overheard at AALS

posted by Dave Hoffman

Here are a few thoughts inspired by conversations I participated in or listened to at AALS (it’s not my fault that people persist in having very loud & irritating conversations over coffee, despite my dirty looks):

(1) A hiring committee chair talked about doing Google background checks on candidates for inconvenient facts. The rationale was that students would like come across pictures/stories themselves, and it was better to know than not. This struck me as an inevitable development, though sad.

(2) Many people complained about how the nametag culture at AALS encourages attendees to feel bad about themselves.  One solution offered was color-coded nametags that were keyed to the kind of social interaction you might expect.

Red: Individuals who, if spoken to, will inform you in great detail about a recent political fight on their faculty. Possible crazy. Avoid.  If you are engaged in a conversation with them, nod vigorously and say nothing.

Blue: Individuals who want a job at your school. Will laugh at your jokes and won’t look over your shoulder for at least two minutes. Engage as needed for a boost.  But don’t commit to anything.

Green: Individuals at schools you want to visit or move to. Will try to avoid you. Elevators are their weakness.

Black: Friends. Meet them later.

Orange: People who won’t deign to make eye contact with you.  There is no point in trying to hunt them down, except after they speak at a session, when they may treat you like a particularly dimwitted student.  Flattery will get you everywhere at that moment.

Purple: Members of your blog. Shouldn’t you know who they are?

Silver: Deans. Also known because they wear suits, and because they are looking at your pockets. Be careful. Their social skills are so much better than yours, that simply being near them makes you look more than ordinarily goofy.

Brown: AALS organizers, looking harried.  If you are outraged, consider engaging them at prepaid lunch over terrible food, when they are at a moral disadvantage.

(3)  I heard one professor telling another than she believed we were working “nine month” jobs since that is how the typical professor contract is worded (and since summer writing is rewarded through “grants” or “bonuses”).  I couldn’t disagree more.  Discuss.

  January 12, 2010 at 11:44 am   Posted in: Conferences, Law School, Law School (Hiring & Laterals), Law School (Rankings), Law School (Teaching)   Print This Post   6 Comments

Junior Faculty Workshops: GW in Business Law

posted by Lawrence Cunningham

For ages, academic institutions have promoted scholarly inquiry by younger faculty members, especially through the junior faculty workshop. Scores of US law schools host these regularly during terms; both the AALS and Law & Society run programs at their annual meetings; the Yale/Stanford junior faculty forum boasts wonderful annual draws; and now regional junior faculty workshops are rising, like that in the southwest next term, hosted by Arizona State.

Though these ventures focus on career stage, not field, more recent, school-sponsored forums add substantive focus.  Junior faculty workshops appeared recently in environmental law (arranged jointly by Harvard, Berkeley and UCLA); family law (at Washington & Lee); national security law (at Texas); and federal courts (hosted alternately by American University and Michigan State).

You can soon add to that list business/financial law (including corporate, securities and banking) at George Washington.  Next year, GW will inaugurate a series of Junior Faculty Workshops and Junior Faculty Prizes, seeking submission of papers in Fall 2010, for a celebratory academic event to be held in Spring 2011. This is one part of GW’s forthcoming Center for Law, Economics and Finance (C-LEAF), which also includes GWNY (posted about here).

While further details about these C-LEAF programs and descriptions of others must await a formal grand announcement, these Junior Scholar endeavors are ripe and time-sensitive enough to warrant advance notice.   

Read the rest of this post »

  December 18, 2009 at 11:12 am   Posted in: Corporate Finance, Corporate Law, Law School, Law School (Scholarship), Securities, Securities Regulation   Print This Post   One Comment

Destination Externships and GW in NYC

posted by Lawrence Cunningham

In the vanguard of legal pedagogy, my colleagues and I are constructing an enriching new feature of our curriculum, offering George Washington University Law School students the chance to spend a semester in New York City, engaging in a supervised externship and taking courses given by me and a rotating slate of my wonderful business law colleagues at GW Law.  

Such a destination externship is among the most visible trends in legal education. Schools, long boasting optional local semester externships coupled with an on-campus seminar, now reach to other cities, principally Washington DC, to create destination externship programs. Just in the past few years, DC externships programs have been created by Arizona State, Duke and a Berkeley-UCLA joint venture, following along older programs led by Wash U as well as Ohio State (in partnership with GW).  Students take positions in the destination city and take courses there, usually taught by the school’s own faculty, who rotate or locate in the destination town.

Many other schools took the less comprehensive step of offering to facilitate destination externships, coupled with an individually-supervised independent study paper. Again, most schools, like North Carolina, target Washington DC; some, like UCLA, target DC, and a few other big towns, like San Fran and NYC; and a handful, like Stanford, impose no geographic limits. A few schools target particular externship employers, presumably because of past experience or special screening, such as Seattle’s with the International Court of Trade in New York or Villanova’s Senate Banking Committee in Washington. Read the rest of this post »

  December 16, 2009 at 2:04 pm   Posted in: Law School, Law School (Teaching)   Print This Post   One Comment

And Justache For All at GW Law

posted by Lawrence Cunningham

The global movement to promote men’s health issues, Movember, led GW Law students to adapt it to raise money to support public interest law service. The idea behind the Movember movement is that men grow moustaches in November to raise money and awareness for men’s health issues, especially prostate and testicular cancer.

A group of wonderful GW Law students (some pictured) tweaked that in an awareness- and fund-raiser, called Justache, to make it about the Equal Justice Foundation, which funds stipends for law students working in the public interest. Begun last year, Justache invites participants to register in early November clean-shaven. For the rest of the month, men have to let the upper-lip grow and keep the rest of their face relatively clean. Women participate using fake mustaches, glued, drawn or otherwise.

Participants must raise pledges of at least $15 weekly during the month. The participant raising the most money wins first prize in the competition. Last year, most contributions came from friends passing along a dollar or two, but there were a couple big donations. With about ten competitors in 2008, Justache raised about $3,000. The fund-raiser winner was Katie Taylor, winning a $150 prize. The honor of best mustache went to Jeremy Abbott. 

This year, more funds are expected. There are 35 participants signed up, including 4 women and 3 professors, with pledges raised and photographs appearing here (and rules are here).  There is also a gala dinner this year, tomorrow night, where a couple dozen guests, mostly GW Law students, are paying $75 each to attend.

I was the lucky recipient of an invitation and look forward to a delightful evening with this group. (I wasn’t asked to pay the entrée fee but how can I resist contributing at least that for this wonderful cause?)  Rumor is other guests may include Members of American Mustache Institute and selected Members of Congress sympathetic to the cause.

The only other school GW Law’s Justache promoters are aware of that’s done anything similar is Georgetown, although it seems to have been abandoned.   An old post on mustaches from the WSJ Law Blog has a defunct link to their competition. Also, as GW Law student Dan Martin put it to me, “they apparently did it in the spring, rather than the sacred month of Movember.”

Kudos to all GW Law students behind this, with special thanks to Dan Martin (on the right in the photo here) and Greg Crespo (in the center) for the leadership and Dan for the information and dinner invite!

  November 19, 2009 at 6:26 pm   Posted in: Law School   Print This Post   3 Comments

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   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   No Comments

The Art of Renaming

posted by Daniel Solove

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   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   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   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   No Comments

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