The Shark

two california law schools get huge grant for innocence project.

[petra]

The federal government has dropped some major moolah into the hands of two California law professors for clinical programs that investigate inmates’ claims of innocence.

California Western School of Law and Santa Clara University School of Law will split $2.4 million in grants from the Justice Department. Cal Western professor Jan Stiglitz, who directs the school’s California Innocence Project, says the amount is significant. “I think it’s the biggest grant we ever got – we’ve had half a million before,” Stiglitz said.

The money for the 18-month program, called the Post-Conviction DNA Testing Assistance Program, will cover the salaries of two new staff attorneys and some paralegals. They, in turn, will help expand the clinic’s reach by letting staff seek out cases where DNA evidence might exonerate wrongfully convicted inmates, rather than just reviewing claims that come in, Stiglitz said.

The 12 Cal Western students enrolled in the program will be in the thick of it. The biggest expense, says Stiglitz, is travel. The grant money will cover trips lawyers, staff and students will be making to prisons, evidence rooms and crime labs all over California.

Stiglitz said students will get to flex their fact-investigation skills, examining the evidence in rape, murder and certain types of manslaughter cases. They’ll help determine what evidence was used to make a conviction, and whether new evidence would help undermine a conviction.

He says this type of fact investigation rounds out students’ more scholastic classroom experience. “By the time they graduate, they’ve all read cases and written memos,” he said. But in real cases, he says, whether you win or lose is typically a product of the facts and not the law. “Why wasn’t OJ convicted [of killing his wife]?” Stiglitz said. “Because factually, the prosecution didn’t convince the jury that OJ was the one wielding the knife.”

For more on Santa Clara’s role, check out Legal Pad.

Petra is a Cal Law reporter.

berkeley law loses one of its own.

[petra]

Berkeley Law has lost a long-time faculty member.

Stephen Barnett, an emeritus professor, died Tuesday after suffering cardiac arrest on Oct. 2. He was 73.

Not one to hold back when he had an opinion, Barnett had kept a keen eye on how the California Supreme Court went about its business and frequently criticized its policies. Chief Justice Ronald George grudgingly acknowledged to me that all of Barnett’s effort wasn’t in vain, and the court wound up adopting some changes based on his critiques. Barnett also targeted the State Bar. Colleagues said he didn’t limit his reach to the public sphere, though. Barnett was known to dig into decisions and policies at the school, too.

“If there is such a thing as a constructive gadfly, that was Steve,” said Berkeley law professor Richard Buxbaum, who had known him since Barnett joined the faculty in 1967.

Though he had retired four or five years ago, Barnett still made regular appearances on campus. Berkeley professor Jesse Choper said Barnett taught a first-year course and showed up to faculty meetings. But he also traveled a good deal for his international work and worked from home. “He had a big study at home,” Choper said. “Unlike most law faculty he tended to spend a lot of time working at home.”

The law school is planning a memorial service at the university.

Petra is a Cal Law reporter

buffalo law students save professor's life.

[dennis]

The curve should be canceled for a group students at the University at Buffalo Law School that saved their professor’s life.

Buffalo news reports that the professor’s knee started to swell during his lecture, so he canceled class and dismissed the students. The students refused to leave, and called campus security, but security refused to send a vehicle to help the professor to his car.

The professor said he would drive himself to the hospital, but the students would not let him:

“So these students picked me up and carried me outside, commandeered a shuttle bus to drive me to my car on the opposite side of campus,” Kloch recalled during an interview from his bed at Kenmore Mercy Hospital.

But the bus driver said, ‘This man is in no shape to drive himself.’"

Then they summoned security and security called an ambulance and I was taken to DeGraff Memorial Hospital,” Kloch, 58, said.

Their professor is Richard C. Kloch, who is also a judge. So, even if the student's don't get automatic A's, they can certainly expect an amazing recommendation letter.

rivalry could be healthy for chapman and irvine law schools.

[julie anne]

When the UC Irvine School of Law first opened its doors in August, and perhaps even before, some were speculating that the presence of another Orange County, Calif., school — a public school no less — would put a stop to the private Chapman University School of Law's plans to make it to the Valhalla of law schools: the U.S. News and World Report's Tier 1. 

But after Thursday night's "Battle of the Law School Deans" — a debate between Dean Erwin Chemerinsky of Irvine and Dean John Eastman of Chapman — I don't believe that a neighborhood rival is such a bad thing for Chapman or Irvine, which also has its sights set on a top spot.

the nice side of law school: no one actually cares about what you don't know.

[cynthia]

I'm not sure if this is news to anyone or what, but I can be a sort of negative individual. Some might even say (and rudely, I might add) cynical. But every now and then I come across something that even I can't think of anything negative to say about. This happened to me today, with the Really? Law? post on the Socratic method (hat tip to Thanks, But No Thanks).

The 1L in charge over there had these things to say about any insecurity you may be feeling about that one time yesterday you got called on by the professor and had no idea what to say and felt trapped in the headlights and Oh My God!!!!!:

1. We don’t really care. We’re too busy focusing on what the professor says. 
2. We don't remember. Unless you keeping bringing it up after class. 
3. We’re not laughing at you. We all know that next week the professor might be drilling us and we may not have the answer. It’s not funny and we’re not laughing.
4. We don’t think you’re stupid. You just got caught on the one thing you didn’t know. Or you got flustered. Or you misunderstood the question. Or any number of things that don’t involve your intelligence. Law school is hard–for all of us. 

I think this is all really nice. And practical. For all the flak law students get for being ruthless and indiscriminate in their ruthlessness, it appears that there are those out there willing to stand up for the nice side of law school. Particularly in these uncertain times, it behooves us all to stand up for some normalcy, in the classroom and otherwise.

chemerinsky: voice of the OC

[julie anne]

According to the O.C. Register's Orange County (Calif.) Business News blog, a group of Orange County Democratic and liberal leaders, investigative journalists and legal heavyweights led by California State Senator Joe Dunn will soon launch a non-profit online news site dedicated to “real-time investigative coverage” of the county.

Included in the lineup for the "Voice of O.C." board are U.C. Irvine School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and Henry Weinstein, a founding faculty member at the new law school and a former Los Angeles Times reporter. 

Here's a bit from the press release:

"Acknowledging the challenges facing any publication in this new era, Dunn said he placed special emphasis on recruiting the right mix of people for the Voice of OC board of directors. The board is extremely diverse and committed to investigative journalism as well as fundraising and providing assistance with public access lawsuits."

The press release doesn't mention it, but I wonder if we'll see some of Irvine's inaugural class helping out with this little endeavor.

the professors' fallacy: making a case against the science of bar exam failure.

[patrick]

A UCLA School of Law researcher recently found that people who fail the bar-exam fare more poorly than even college graduates in the first five years after graduation but spring back in the later half of their careers.  By "spring back" the researcher refers to these numbers:

Broken down by age group, the median salary of law grads who never passed the bar was $32,000 before they reached the age of 30 (compared to $48,000 for lawyers and $35,600 for college grads), $48,000 from the ages of 30 to 39 (compared to $64,000 for lawyers and $42,000 for college grads), $54,000 between the ages of 40 and 49 (compared to $83,600 for lawyers and $46,250 for college grads), and $62,849 between the ages of 50 and 59 (compared to $86,400 for lawyers and $48,416 for college grads).

The article goes on to conclude that:

"Despite the resilience of the law grads who never passed the bar . . . their law school experience wasn’t worth the cost."

Wait, what?  But it gets better.  Law schools should take heed, because: 

“Legal education may be a disservice for the significant group of students that never pass a bar exam—a group whose composition can be predicted fairly accurately before they’ve even begun law school,” she says. “At the very least, law schools owe it to their prospective students to provide candid information about the risks of attending law school.”

The data is interesting, but the article frames it as what I've started calling the Professors' Fallacy; it makes a generalized observation about a whole, then it proceeds to the conclusion that concrete advice should be given in particular cases.  In this case, it suggests that "because people who share some similar traits to you fail the bar exam, you weren't cut out for law school."  

My objections to this are legion.  

obama and yoo: freedom within a school.

[patrick]

Today, the President of the United States will brainwash a group of vulnerable young school children and under the guise of a "stay in school speech." 

By this time tomorrow, we'll be well on our way over the slippery slope to socialism.

If you think that's absurd, it's likely because you realize that the content of the President's speech are distinguishable from politics, and that people should be able to get behind some messages (like "stay in school") regardless of party affiliation.  

The same principles apply to the teaching of John Yoo, the now-infamous author of the so-called torture memos, and a current professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley. If you feel the rabid response to the President's speech is unwarranted, and yet you feel Yoo shouldn't teach at Berkeley Law, consider whether you can reconcile your views.

life in law school: please don't call on me, please don't call on me.

[julie anne]

If you're reading this, then I survived the three-day Chapman Law orientation and the first day of classes.

As far as orientation goes, I didn't know that just sitting around and getting talked at could be so tiring. As far as classes, I'm sure that today everyone was just as scared as I was, but hid it a whole lot better. 

If you go to my school and are in my class, I'm the shifty-eyed girl who sat in the front row of property who giggled nervously at the professor's jokes: yeah, those jokes are kinda funny, but, dude, what if he calls on me next?

All throughout that first class today, I had visions of being the one person in all of 1L-dom who couldn't regurgitate portions of the assigned cases.

I also imagined that I would somehow be found to be unsuitable for the rigors of law school in the manner that that emperor guy who wasn't wearing any clothes was found out.

I would march into the classroom, armored with and secure in the fact that I had prepared for class as best I could, but somehow someone - either the professor or a fellow law student seeking to draw first blood - would call me out and point that armor out to be flawed and inadequate.

"But mother, she doesn't belong in law school!"

Thankfully, I wasn't called on today. But it's only the first week of classes.

yoo protesters arrested after entering classroom and refusing to leave.

[cynthia]

The four prostesters who were arrested on Berkeley's law campus yesterday were detained inside Professor Yoo's classroom, according to an email sent out to students regarding the situation this morning. The protesters had entered Yoo's Civil Procedure II class in a loud enough way to disturb all the surrounding classrooms, and had refused to leave after UC Police entered the fray.

Berkeley Law students received an email this morning, alerting them that the school will be working with UC Police in the coming days to develop a "strategy" to deal with the protesters, who vowed to return as long as Yoo is employed

The full email can be found after the jump.