Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

Today's NY Times Article on Legal Education

I'll have more to say about this piece later today (or tomorrow), but this mistake is surely revealing about the intentions of the author:

But citable law review articles are vastly outnumbered, it appears, by head-scratchers. “There is evidence that law review articles have left terra firma to soar into outer space,” said the Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer in a 2008 speech.

Some articles are intra-academy tiffs that could interest only the combatants (like “What Is Wrong With Kamm’s and Scanlon’s Arguments Against Taurek” from The Journal of Ethics & Social Philosophy).

The Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy is not a law review, it's a peer-reviewed philosophy journal.  And the article in question is written by a philosophy professor at the University of Vermont.  And it concerns arguments by three philosophers:  Kamm, Scanlon, and Taurek.  So what in the world does this have to do with what's in law review articles?  Nothing.

UPDATE:  Some colleagues have already written about the article, including Matt Bodie (St. Louis) and Larry Ribstein (Illinois).

ANOTHER:  More thoughts on the article here.

Some college students ain't writing so good...

...and some of them may even make it to law school, who knows?

Robert Hockett (Cornell) on Occupy Wall Street

Here.

Palfrey From Harvard to Andover

Professor John G. Palfrey Jr., Harvard' Law School's vice-dean for library and information resource, is moving to Phillips Academy, Andover to become the school's 15th headmaster.  

From "Law Porn" to "Law Spam"

Stephen Bainbridge (UCLA) comments.

Alexander Named Dean Of New Indiana Tech Law School

Indiana Tech, which plans to admit its first 1L class in the fall of 2013, has successfully recruited an experienced dean to launch the new institution.  Peter Alexander, professor of law at Southern Illinois University, and dean of SIU from 2003-09, has been named founding dean and will take the helm at the Fort Wayne school this coming January.

U.S. Senators who issue press releases like...

...this are plainly gearing up for hearings.  The ABA and AALS are presumably taking note.  For roughly a decade now, I (and others) have been remarking on the fact that the job placement data that law schools report and U.S. News reprints without audit were essentially fiction:  like good fiction, they bear some relationship to reality, but they are primarily a "work of the imagination."  What's obviously changed the equation enough to garner Senatorial attention to the matter is (1) the general economic collapse, which has taken its toll on the legal profession as well, and so highlighted the unreality of many of the employment numbers schools have reported; and (2) the increasing debt burden of law students, which, given (1), are increasingly going to be debts that are not repaid.  One hopes that in addition to calling relevant ABA officials to testify about oversight (or lack thereof), they will also ask Bob Morse to testify, to explain why, despite years of complaints, U.S. News never audited the data it both published in its magazine and factored into its rankings.

The Penn State Pedophilia Scandal

This is obviously not law school related, but since it's been all over the news, some readers might find this pointed commentary interesting.  (Thanks to Ruchira Paul for the link.)

Law firms vs. In-house counsel

Larry Ribstein (Illinois) comments.

Should untenured faculty write in multiple areas, or concentrate on just one?

There's an interesting discusssion here, though I'm inclined to think (as some commenters suggest) that what matters is writing, not the area(s).  On the other hand, I've certainly been party to tenure decisions where the faculty discusses whether the candidate will be a "leader" in his or her field, and to the extent a school values that, that may favor more focussed scholarship.