Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

1 Out of Every 12 Living Alumni of Yale Law School is a Law Professor!

I gleaned that stat from footnote 36 of this article.  Does anyone know of the comparable figures for other major producers of law teachers like Harvard, Chicago, and Stanford?

UPDATE:  Avery Katz at Columbia Law School writes:

It sounds astounding when you say it that way [i.e., 1 out of every 12 living alumni...].  But as my colleague Scott Hemphill and I quickly worked out using back-of-the-envelope calculations, it's actually pretty plausible.  Estimate the total number of AALS faculty as 168 member schools x 50 profs/school = 8400. Estimate the total number of Yale alums as 200/yr x 60 years - 12,000. [Balkin and Levinson report there are about 12,000 living alums, so we are close enough. Maybe there are 240/year when you count LLM's.]  With about 1000 Yale grads in teaching, this suggests that about 1 out of 8 law teachers is a Yale grad.  Sounds plausible when you look at it that way, no?  And probably the average is higher in recent years, as the fraction of new law teachers with Yale degrees rises.  (Larry Solum reports that 26/148 entry-level hires last year had a Yale degree, or about 1/5.7 -- though the previous year it was only 21/153 = 1/7.3.

Using the same method of estimation, suppose the total number of living Harvard alums are 700x60=42,000, and suppose that 1/6 law teachers is a Harvard grad [here the trend is probably downwards].  This yields a fraction of 8400/(6*42,000) = 3.33% of Harvard alums a law teacher. 

There are foreign law teachers, too, so these counts are probably a bit low. 

Kritzer from Wisconsin to William Mitchell

Herbert Kritzer, a leading law-and-society scholar in the Law School and Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, has accepted a senior offer from the William Mitchell College of Law in Minnesota; he will retire from Wisconsin at the end of this year, and then take up the William Mitchell post.  That is certainly a major hiring coup for William Mitchell.

"Beleaguered MSU Law Dean Takes Paid Leave"

Story here; an excerpt:

Terence Blackburn, the Michigan State University College of Law dean who came under fire from faculty members in the spring, has gone on paid administrative leave through the end of the academic year.

In April, a group of law professors demanded Blackburn's dismissal, saying his performance has been "unsatisfactory and that the specific deficiencies are serious and irremediable."

MSU officials disagreed, saying they were committed to resolving the group's complaints.

Blackburn kept his post, which he has held since 2000.

On Friday, Blackburn said the conflict with the faculty didn't have a "direct impact" on his decision to go on leave, but he granted that it had "added to all the rest of the intense periods" of the past year.

"It's time for me to take a small break," he said, adding that he will use the time for international projects and writing.

Blackburn said he does not intend to look for another  position.

"This is not a resignation," he said. "This is a leave."

The law college is up for accreditation this year.

(Thanks to Jack Rooney for the pointer.)