The Shark

we are taking california's hands-free law very seriously. very.

[brian lauter]

As a very responsible driver, I feel it is my duty to remind you that, as of tomorrow, California’s hands-free cell phone law will take effect. Actually, hands-free cell phone law may be a bit of a misnomer, since you may still be able to text while driving.

Some say it will save over 300 lives a year. Some say hands-free is just as bad as hands-on. Some say the law will just give law enforcement another excuse to search you and your car. I have a feeling they are all at least partially right.

Being a very responsible driver, I got a Bluetooth hands-free kit last week (or, my mother bought one and sent it to me). I’ve yet to figure out how to use it, but I’m really looking forward to being one of those guys.

If you are a very impoverished responsible driver (like me...), and your mother did not send you a hands-free kit, Justin may have some ideas for where you can get one on the cheap.

rankings overhaul: can it be?

[justin gosling]

I wasn't surprised to read on ATL that someone is calling for changes to the current ranking methodology. The surprise is that its US News and not just a jaded law student calling for the change.

On the docket:

• Using data from both full-time and part-time programs to calculate a school's GPA and LSAT averages, rather than only the full-time data.
• Comparing a school's bar passage rate against only other ABA-accredited schools.  The proposal has received some criticism, but I applaud the US News for taking a closer look at the law methodology.

Tweaking the average GPA/LSAT data and Bar passage info is a good idea and US News shouldn't stop there.

I think the US News should completely revamp how they weigh faculty resources. Faculty resources currently account for 15% of the total ranking and include expenditures per student, student/faculty ratio, and library resources (number of volumes). Weighing the number of physical volumes seems silly because of a little thing called the Internet, and specifically Westlaw/Lexis. I bet you that you can go through law school without cracking a physical reporter volume. The ability to navigate physical volumes is a neat party trick skill, but it shouldn't impact school rankings.

The expenditures per student only take into account the amount spent, not where the dollars go. In theory, US News would reward School A for spending an absurd amount of money on a service that School B provides not only better, but cheaper. Kinda silly if you ask me.

I'm not sure how useful the ranking are to anyone other than college students unfamiliar with each law school and prestige whores obsessing about moving up or down one spot, but the US News rankings are still the biggest law school ranking authority. I'm glad to see that the US News is thinking about the methodology and asking for feedback, I just hope that they continue tweaking away to prevent schools gaming the system.

yoo testimony feels torturous

[cynthia foster]

For all those interested in the ongoing saga of John Yoo, Political Blotter has some very awkward and intense footage up of his hearing before the House Judiciary Committee.  We're talking high temp outdoor BBQ grilling.  Yoo looks nervous, guys.  Nervous.  And apparently does a better job of pissing off Rep. Conyer than he does of defining the word "implement."  I wonder if he gets this freaked out in front of hostile students? 

prof. gosling, on using the summer to organize your (financial) life.

[justin gosling]

Summer is the perfect time to take care of all the things you put off during the school year. Right now I'm taking proactive steps to streamline my finances and make life easier during the upcoming semester. Not only am I going to reduce the total number of bills I have to pay, but also make sure that I am paying down debt in an intelligent, productive way.

Resources such as Frugal Law Student are a great starting point and offer realistic ways to save money and use your credit wisely. I concentrated on condensing bills and making sure I'm paying off existing debt in a smart way. Eliminating nonessential services is another good idea. I mean, do you need membership in the Gourmet Cheese of the Month Club?   Probably not during law school.

Details on how I'm cleaning up my act, after the jump.

law's recession: older than you may think

[cynthia foster]

Over at the ABA's Young Lawyer Division, UCLA's Richard Sander has an interesting analysis of the "serious and prolonged recession" plaguing the legal industry and how it may affect law students and new lawyers.  He also details the reasons why no one seems to have noticed this downturn.

"The percentage of lawyers in the American workforce peaked around the year 2000. And since 2004, according to the latest census data, the absolute number of people listing 'lawyer' or 'attorney' as their primary occupation has been falling. Yet the production of new lawyers by law schools exceeds—by a factor of three or four—the number of lawyers reaching retirement age. Therefore, a declining lawyer population means tens of thousands of attorneys are exiting the profession in their prime."

Lack of awareness of this trend can be attributed to what Sander calls the "unusual" up-or-out structure of America's law firms.  Instead of firing junior employees during times of recession, law firms lean toward releasing more senior associates who, presumably, are being let go because of their inability to draw business and make partner.  This means that an influx of new talent is not being made aware of their potentially shaky job security while in law school. 

Law schools are experiencing record growth, possibly informing a false sense of security among future attorneys.  Students are being courted by firms while they're young and fresh, increasing dialog about the profitable legal industry among the young and hungry, but they're fired once experienced and released into a job market where there's nothing left for them to do but leave their chosen profession.

Sander insists that "prospective law students, on the threshold of spending six figures on a legal education, need much better information about their future prospects in the law" before making crucial new career decisions.  One would think that with all the recent Internet coverage of layoffs, that the 0L population would be better informed.  Just this month alone Above the Law has four posts on major firm layoffs.

There's a missing link, somewhere.  Or is the law school applicant pool about to burst?  Sander would seem to think it's only a matter of time.

youtube music videos, meet law school. law school, meet youtube music videos.

[brian lauter]

If you aren’t a fan of Mekka Don the “Legal” Hustler, and you haven’t been following R Kelly’s battle to prove his innocence, you probably haven’t thought much lately about the intersection of law and music.

Above the Law has, however, and last week they conducted a poll to find the top ten law-related songs. The Clash’s “I Fought the Law and the Law Won” claimed the top spot, beating out my personal favorite “Lawyers, Guns and Money” by the late great Warren Zevon.

Every once in a while a creative person sneaks into law school, so I took a quick look around for some law school-related music. A YouTube search yielded a couple of interesting results, including Law School Musical (complete with some pretty sweet animation) and All the Law Things, a Blink-182 parody.

I also ran across “The Law of Rock Vol. 1” by Boaltie Josh Keesan. Finally, if you don’t mind poor sound quality, check out “Torts I Wanna Court You,” submitted for my 1L section’s Torts Creative Competition, and featuring sub-par production work from yours truly.

northwestern commences law school at breakneck pace: 2 years.

[justin gosling]

As we reported earlier today, Northwestern is offering a 2 year J.D. in 2009. 

Rather than completely removing the third year completely or making it "experiential in nature" a la Washington and Lee University School of Law, it looks like Northwestern is condensing three years of study into two years. 

News reports indicate that Northwestern is following in the footsteps of the two year program at University of Dayton School of Law, which has been in existence for a few years now. It looks like both schools jam 18 units down your throat each semester.  I don't have to tell you that this is a ton of work. First year students at UC Hastings are never allowed to enroll in more than 17 units, while second and third year students must demonstrate extraordinary circumstances for enrolling in more than 17 units (§§ 301-02).

It takes a while to acclimate to the law school environment and lumping on extra units might be too much for some to handle for some. Even those that can handle the workload are not going to have enough time to have legal concepts marinate for as long as their three year J.D. counterparts.

Still, for those that breeze through the three year law school curriculum (and I'm sure they're out there), adding another class each semester sounds like a great opportunity to make swift work of academics so they can move on with their careers. I doubt the 2 year program will work for the majority of students, but it's refreshing to see law schools take a proactive step and tweak their curriculum for a specific group of students.

linx: chemerinsky doing his best to step out in front of the new law school crowd.

[cynthia foster]

A supersized edition of this weeks linx roundup.  I hope you're ready:

• Chemerinsky Taps Two From CA Law Schools (Cal Law, free reg. req.  Ed note: One of those two is Rachel Moran of Berkeley Law.)
• An Elite Law Degree - In Two Years (Inside Higher Ed)
• The Am Law School 20 - Too Many Law Schools? (Legal Blog Watch)
• How to Have a Personal Life in Grad School (Law and Letters)
• Time to Audit Law School Job Placement Statistics (Half Sigma)
• Law Schools Growing, But Jobs Aren't (Associated Press)
• How High Can Tuition Go? (Public Citizen)

law profs holding it down on the colbert report.

[brian lauter]

A couple of nights ago, two law professors appeared on The Colbert Report. The first was Professor Neal Katyal of Georgetown who recently argued and won Hamdan v. United States, which challenged the policy of military trials at Guantanamo Bay.  The second was Professor Jonathan Zittrain, who works in “several intersections of the internet with law and policy,” and recently published The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It.

Although Zittrain works in what is probably the nerdiest field in legal academia (and boy does he look it), his legal handle, JZ, is pretty badass. Maybe the best since Sexy Rexy burst on the scene 30 years ago.

Zittrain and Katyal both held their own pretty well against Colbert’s awkwardness-inducing interview style. Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard also did pretty well a couple of years ago when he appeared on The Report to push his book Preemption: A Knife That Cuts Both Ways.

Colbert hates the rule of law and elitist academics, so why is he having so many law professors on his show? Maybe he’s looking for some free advice.

they used to hang witches in andover.

[cynthia foster]

As President Bush recovers from the Supreme Court's improbable blow to the war on terror, a Massachusetts "progressive" law school dean lays plans to try him for war crimes.

Lawrence Velvel, co-founder and dean of Massachusetts School of Law at Andover, announced yesterday that he has scheduled a "planning" conference to strategize ways to "hold Bush administration leaders accountable in courts of justice."  According to Velvel's statement, representatives from the ACLU, Center for Constitutional Rights, and the National Lawyers Guild (which recently called for Berkeley Law to dismiss Professor John Yoo, also for war crimes) are expected be in attendance.  John Yoo continues to be an avid supporter of the Bush administration's hard line against suspected terrorists.

According to Velvel, "for Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and John Yoo to spend years in jail or go to the gallows for their crimes would be a powerful lesson to future American leaders."  Yes, that's right, Velvel recommends hanging as an appropriate punishment for the administration.

Velvel is an active blogger, and touts his school as one that "provide(s) high quality, practical and affordable legal education to deserving person(s) who have been unfairly excluded from law schools."

Many missions, one man.