Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

Applications to law school

So my earlier speculation has come true:  there has been an uptick in applications this year, as Dan reported.  A propos these developments, Jeff Gordon (Columbia) writes:

I would encourage you to write a blogpost aimed at some misinformation that media stories about the law school value proposition are purveying to the most qualified potential law school applicants.  The perverse thing is that the largest percentage application decline has been among the strongest applicants (by GPA/LSAT).  For students of at least the top X law schools (and I've done no science to identify the "X", but I suspect it's at least "10") employment opportunities remain strong, and given recent law firm hiring patterns, advancement opportunities for this generation of law firm associates should be very positive.  The question for those students should be, as always, do you want to be a lawyer, and, second, do you value the education that LS can offer for other things you might want to do.

I appreciate that a general message of caution for law school applicants is wise, but I think people should also get advice relevant to their situation. 

These are sensible points, and they do extend beyond "the top X."  Many state law schools are still reasonably priced, and have had, over the long haul, good professional outcomes for their graduates.  Many regional law schools, private and public, have strong market niches and, due to the competition for students, are discounting sticker price substantially.   Prospective students should, indeed, "get advice relevant to their situation," and that advice will mostly not be found on blogs or chat rooms, alas.

New Law School Application Numbers

In the newest volume summary from LSAC, we are seeing that law schools are experiencing a slight uptick in applications as compared to a few weeks ago.  The total number of applicants is now down 18.9% this year.  More details here.

Update on the lawsuits against law schools

They've mostly been failing, except in California, where they're still going forward.

Paul Campos admits he doesn't "even [know] what it means" to think like a lawyer

This probably explains a lot.  Fortunately, Fred Schauer has recently written a book that could help him with his questions, like, "What does it mean to teach people to think like lawyers?  How is thinking like a lawyer different from ordinary thinking?" 

(Thanks to Nick Smith for the pointer.)

UPDATE:  A senior legal academic, who has been involved extensively with legal education reform, writes:  "Keep up the Campos bashing.  I think that some of the law school critics have done a good service.  Even when I don't agree with everything, it was necessary for legal educators to give up a bit of complacency.  I've never met Campos, but he is disgraceful."  It's hard to disagree with any of that, but I don't really plan to keep up the "bashing," since, as we saw a few weeks back, by Campos's own admission, there really isn't much content to his routine. 

 

Racial, ethnic and other "identity" diversity in article selection?

A reader alerted me a couple of weeks ago to the fact that Scholastica collects demographic data on authors, which apparently some journals are using in the selection process.  Before I got around to it, the issue has exploded on various blogs; Blog Emperor Caron has links to the various discussions.  Given that the law reviews had been moving to more peer (i.e., faculty) review of scholarship, this does seem a step backwards, but much will turn on what law reviews are really doing with this information.

"U.S. News and the Price of Legal Education"

More sensible observations from Dean Yellen of Loyola/Chicago.

"Drastic changes" in how we educate new lawyers?

That's the theme emphasized in this Times report on the ABA task force on legal education meeting in Dallas.  On the table are sensible ideas--making it possible to get a two-year law degree, and creating a legal analogue of "nurse practitioner"--but one hopes that the would-be regulators bear in mind that the most important thing they can do is de-regulate or relax regulations on many fronts, so as to permit more experimentation with models of legal education at differential prices.   Many of the current problems result from a "one size fits all" model of regulation of law schools, as well as a "one size fits all" assessment of law schools by U.S. News.  The ABA isn't well-equipped, and never has been, to police the particulars of legal pedagogy.  Employers "vote" with their employment decisions and on that basis, it is quite clear that the most selective employers still vote for the "Yale" or "Chicago" or "Stanford" model of legal education (whatever exactly those are, but they clearly combine commitment to research along with teaching, extensive clinical opportunities, and a total commitment to interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching).  Certainly those schools have been modifying their own curricula and faculty in response to changes in the legal profession and to feedback from lawyers and judges over the past decade, and that will continue with or without the ABA.  But rather than top-down edicts that apply across the board--which is what the ABA has always done--it would do well to move in the opposite direction, to see what different approaches might also work.

Of course, no changes in legal education can help the tens of thousands of graduates saddled with debt and a dismal job market over the last half-dozen years in particular, and it would be good not to lose sight of the fact that any "drastic" changes in ABA regulation of law schools still leaves unaddressed the debt crisis that afflicts students in all parts of higher education.   But the ABA is not without its own political muscle, and one thing it might also do is use some of that muscle to put debt relief, including bankruptcy reform, on the table at the national level.

ADDENDUM:  The article does include one dangerous innuendo, namely, that somehow the current difficulties in the job market and the current need for more differentiation in models of legal education can somehow be laid at the doorstep of "tenured" faculty.  In fact, the lack of differentiation in models of legal education can be laid at only one doorstep, that of the ABA, and the dismal economy might be blamed on a variety of parties, from the deregulation of banking that began in the Clinton era, to miscreants on Wall Street.   Tenure remains an important feature of all serious academic institutions, and it would be a travesty were the current "crisis" mentality to undermine it.  That being said, and as we have written before, tenure has never meant lifetime employment, and the ABA, in consultation with AAUP lawyers, might think about drafting post-tenure review standards for law schools, to deal with the sometimes egregious abuse of tenure at many law schools.

Edwin Mellen Press sues librarian for millions after he criticizes the quality of the Press's catalogue

IHE has a write-up on this remarkable story.  The lawsuit was brought in Canada.

UPDATE:  The Gawker site has some fun with this.

The case for law school...

...courtesy of the University of Denver.  This echoes some of the points noted in an earlier debate.

Thomson Reuters Dumps Law School Publishing

As first reported by Paul Caron, Thomson Reuters has sold its law academic publishing division to Eureka Growth Capital.  West Academic, Foundation and Gilbert will now be  part of West Academic Publishing.  Given the increasing transition to digital materials with hyperlinks - first with TWEN (which presumably stays part of the Thomson Reuters stable) and soon with digital texts - I'm curious about how Thomson and West Academic Publishing will (or will not) continue to integrate their products. Is Thomson Reuters planning on creating its own digital law school textbook line?