The Shark

linx: love your professor day.

[cynthia foster]

The only reason I remembered that today is Halloween is because of the guy in the mullet wig with the McCain sign standing outside of Hastings this morning.

• Stanford Law School's Mad At Me (Greta Van Susteren on the Greta Wire Blog)
• Plight of Undocumented Youth Focus of UCLA Documentary (EGPNews)
• Law Prof Blog Rankings (TaxProf)
• Law Professors Decry Proposition 8 Claims (The Desert Sun)
• Is a Laptop-Free Zone the Answer to the Laptop Debate? (Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog)
• Nobody Likes a Tattletale (Nuts & Boalts)

race to the top: cracking the rankings mess wide open?

[cynthia foster]

For those of you interested (like us) in shedding some light on the US News rankings circus, there's a new(ish) site you should be checking out: Race to the Top.

One part blog, one part resource center, Race to the Top (or RTTTLaw, as its been calling itself, presumably with a rimshot) describes its mission as follows:

If schools can rise and fall based on the education they provide, they will have the incentive to improve, and less of an incentive to “game” the system. We might just get a race to the top in legal education. This project aims to provide some information to help make this possible.

On the site, readers can find a downloadable copy of the US News Voters Guide.  The guide is circulated by US News to "assist" professors in their crucial role in the rankings.  Professors, in what can only be described as previously a popularity contest, assign numerical scores to schools' JD programs based on their reputation in the legal community.  These scores account for 40% of a school's overall ranking, and have been the subject of some heated debates in recent months. 

Most notably, RTTTLaw seeks to inform those professors who vote each year of programs that have created new and innovative ways to add value to their students' educations.

RTTTLaw is heading this effort with its "Best Practices Survey."  The survey is designed and intended to identify law schools that are particularly adept at using the "best pratices" in legal education (as identified by this Carnegie report [.pdf]).  The results of this survey will be circulated to US News respondents, in an effort to shake up a portion of the US News rankings that has remained static for about as long as it has been around.

law school reform: where's the support from professors?

[brian lauter]

I’ve written before about law school reform, and I was about done with the subject since the discussion never seems to lead to any actual reforming, but yesterday I read a couple of new items that got my blood flowing again.

Southwestern University Professor Austen Parrish wrote an item for PrawfsBlawg discussing, a little late, the rise of the two year law school program.

Northwestern made headlines when it announced its two-year program this summer, but, as Professor Parrish points out, Southwestern has had a two-year program for over 30 years.

Professor Parrish notes that the Southwestern two-year curriculum differs from its three-year curriculum in that it emphasizes simulation training and conceptual learning.

Picking up on Professor Parrish’s item, Professor Gordon Smith of BYU articulated his opinions on two-year curricula in item for Conglomerate Blog.

Professor Smith notes, I think correctly, that the first year of law school teaches students to “think like a lawyer.”  He then asks the $40,000-a-year question: “But what about the last two years?”

This is a frustrating question.  Why two years?  If we can’t even be sure what should be taught in the last two years of law school, why is everybody so sure that two more years is necessary?  If we don’t know for sure what the point of law school is after the first year, why not make it only one more year?  Why not three more years?

The last time I wrote about this issue, I suggested that all of this discussion about law school reform is intended to distract from the fact that the third year of law school is really just a windfall for law schools.

That may be a conspiracy theory, but it starts to feel realistic when I read new analysis by two very intelligent and highly critical minds, like those of Professor Parrish and Smith, discussing implementation of massive reform in second and third year law school curricula, and neither of them questions whether two more years is actually necessary.

Maybe one of these days somebody will ask the question that should begin any discussion of curriculum reform:  What must law school teach students to prepare them to practice law and how much school is necessary to accomplish this goal?

thelen done. out. bye.

[cynthia foster]

Our sister blog, Legal Pad, has broken the news that Thelen partners voted to dissolve this morning. 

lawyers and law students have bad manners. usf is on the case.

[abony holmes]

Last week, I witnessed my good friend get reamed by a member of the Boalt staff.  While trying to file a form, my friend ended up on the receiving end of a curt and tense exchange with a beleaguered staff member not in the mood to do her any favors. Many Boalt students have bad relationships with the staff, so my friend is not alone.

Law students and lawyers are very busy, logical people. They see no point in pleasantries; those only wastes precious time. Most law students believe a nice tone of voice and a please and thank you is the most that can be expected by the support staff we encounter on a daily basis.

Maybe this is why University of San Francisco's School of Law is offering meditation and interpersonal skills courses to help their students with social skills.

Dean Jeffery S. Brand described USF law students, and lawyers in general, as not having particularly good communication skills.

"Their notion of a communication skill is arguing to the hilt. There may be other ways to handle things."

Brand chalked up much of the communication problems facing law students and lawyers to depression, substance abuse and stress brought on in recent years by a collapsing job market, student debt and other anxieties. The interpersonal course, modeled on a course taught at Stanford Business School, features small group sessions and role playing that teach students “how to relate to co-counsel and judges and how to improve their self-awareness, communication skills and empathy.”

firms applying pressure, hoping students will accept summer offers in mere minutes.

[justin gosling]

Imagine participating in OCI and landing a call back interview at a small Bay Area firm. After acing the call back and receiving a job offer, the firm rescinds the offer less than two weeks later.

That is the story of a fellow 2L (who would like to remain anonymous), and I can't help but feel sorry for them. In this case, the firm in question is not a member of NALP.  This student did not do anything that would force the firm to drop the offer. Instead, they fell victim to a firm that overestimated their future needs. This problem is pervasive at NALP-member firms, as well.  While the student would have a 45 day window to accept an offer from a NALP-member firm, that window is not as much protection as one would think.

In the face of NALP rules, firms have been informing people with standing offers that the firm screwed up and overestimated their summer associate capacity for the summer 2009. Abovethelaw has more details here, here, here, and here, where they are repeating the mantra that students should accept summer offers with haste.

While I have not heard of big firms flat out rescinding offers in defiance of NALP rules, if you receive a heads up phone call about an oversubscribed summer class, you can bet that you are right on the edge and the firm is trying to do you a "favor" by pushing you to chose another option. Of course, this assumes that you have other employment options, and considering the souring economy and the dissolution of some law firms, I doubt that most students are lucky enough to pick among multiple summer offers.

Even if you are able to accept an offer before a firm rescinds it, there is a storm on the horizon.  If you do accept an offer from a firm with a bulging summer class, you may find yourself competing with fellow summers for a job offer after graduation. Your experience over the summer may not be as rich because you have to prove that you can get the job done better than your fellow summer associates rather than just demonstrating that you can get the job done on your own - the bar is set high, the pressure is on, and there are no guarantees like we've seen in previous (richer) years.

All this sounds like a great recipe for a terrible summer experience, if you ask me.

north carolina law school moves cities to improve students' quality of life. meanwhile, california is perfect.

[brian lauter]

I’ve heard a lot of complaints since I came to law school.  There’s too much reading, too much debt, too much gunning, and, most importantly, too few jobs. 

Not much can be done about most of those, but recently, the Campbell School of Law made a drastic move to answer at least some law student complaints.  Literally.  It moved.

Starting next year, the Campbell School of Law will reside not in Buies Creek, North Carolina, but in Raleigh, North Carolina. 

In addition to being the home of internet personalities Rhett and Link, who I have never heard of, Buies Creek is the home of Campbell University... and not much else. 

Raleigh, North Carolina, for those of you who didn’t learn geography from the Animaniacs, is the capital of North Carolina and home of national treasure Clay Aiken.  I think it was probably not the latter fact that triggered the move.  Obviously, the legal market in Raliegh is bigger than in Buies Creek, and students can find more to distract them from the previously mentioned downsides of being in law school in a metropolitan area.

I tried to think of which California law schools should consider making similar moves, but there really aren’t any.

Sure, everybody’s got their complaints.  Davis is a cow town.  Hastings and USC are in the ghetto.  The weather is so nice in San Diego that USD students have trouble getting anything done.

But almost all of the California law schools are conveniently located in or near the major California legal markets of Sacramento, the Bay Area, LA, Orange County and San Diego.

Aside from the University of La Verne College of Law, which is probably just itching to get out of the desert, I think it’s a safe bet we won’t be seeing any California law schools making big moves anytime soon.

gavin newsom loves millenials, even if everyone else thinks we're lazy and entitled.

[brian lauter]

According to Wikipedia I am a millennial.  You probably are, too.  If you’re confused, the Millennial Generation is the same thing as Generation Y, they just thought of a cooler name a couple of years too late.

I’ve been getting mixed signals about millennials.  Yesterday, I read a write-up in the Wall Street Journal of a new book by Ron Alsop called The Trophy Kids Grow Up:  How the Millennial Generation Is Shaking Up the Workplace.  The book is about how horrible millennials are to work with.

According to Mr. Alsop, millennials “feel a strong sense of entitlement.”  We expect higher pay, flexible work schedules, a promotion within a year, and more vacation and personal time.  Mr. Alsop has empirical data to support all of this.

The article goes a little bit Dr. Phil, however, when Mr. Alsop attempts to explain the reasons for this millennial entitlement.  We are a generation, apparently, of “trophy” kids.  Doting parents, teachers, and coaches are to blame (even Mr. Alsop apparently can’t bring himself to place any blame on millennials). 

I’m not sure where the evidence of this causal relationship is, but as I read Mr. Alsop’s reasoning I couldn’t help but wonder whether he was going to offer up some “life strategies” or tell all of us millennials to “get real.”

Needless to say, I was a little bummed out after reading all of this.  Luckily, I was invited to hear San Francisco Mayor (and likely 2010 gubernatorial candidate) Gavin Newsom speak during the lunch hour.  Mayor Newsom seems to hold millennials in slightly higher regard.

In a short speech and long question and answer section, Mayor Newsom, who seems to really enjoy coming to UC Davis, discussed the importance of the millennial generation, calling us “tolerant,” “open-minded,” and “global thinkers.”

Mayor Newsom went on to discuss his pride in seeing the millennials come into their own in this election cycle, and his hope that our generation will be able to fix major political and social problems in dynamic ways unavailable to past generations.

He makes a good point, and one that Mr. Alsop might consider.  I don’t see a sense of entitlement in my peers, but if one exists, maybe it is deserved.  Maybe our parents lavished praise on us because, even in our failures, we were approaching new issues in different ways, and mastering new tools.  Maybe some of the new challenges we’ve faced, such as higher education costs, require us to expect more.

Maybe this millennial entitlement is really just a paradigm shift that includes positives as well as negatives, and maybe, instead of complaining about perceived entitlement and making unsubstantiated assertions about the causes of said entitlement, we should all chalk it up to progress and move forward.

uc irvine to offer full scholarships to first class of law students.

[cynthia foster]

The National Law Journal is reporting that University of California, Irvine, School of Law will be offering full scholarships (valued at around $100,000) to its inaugural class of 2009. 

According to Assistant Dean of Development Charles Cannon, "the school, which will focus on public interest law, had planned to offer full tuition scholarships to about half that class; but, in an effort to lure high-quality students and compete with other top 20 law schools" they've expanded the scholarship program.  Cannon expects the first year's enrollment to be around 60 students.

UC Irvine is "actively" searching for donors to fund the program, and they currently have an endowment of $20 million from land developer Donald Bren.

See our previous coverage of UCI's comings and goings (including hires) here and here.

linx: your daily dose of pepperdine drama, courtesy of prop 8. and other stuff.

[cynthia foster]

A hazy Monday:

• A Grim Verdict Awaits Law Grads (The National Law Journal)
• More for Prof. Peterson To Worry About (Legal Pad - Prof. Peterson of the Pepperdine and Yes on 8 commercials fame)
• Fierce Critic of Law School Rankings Steps Down As Dean - But Goes Out Swinging (The National Law Journal)
• Pepperdine Prez Lashes Out At Anti-Gay Prop 8 Propaganda (To Form a More Perfect Union)
• Stanford Law Grad Accused of Running High-Priced Call Girl Service Pleads Not Guilty (San Jose Mercury News)
• USC School of Law Plans Memorial for Professor Charles Whitebread (Metropolitan News-Enterprise)