Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

The Upheaval in the Market for New Lawyers at the Big Law Firms: Temporary or Permanent?

Moving to the front from April 15; many readers will be interested in Professor Henderson's observations in the comment section, which were just posted today.

One need only look at this extraordinary list of leading law firms pushing back the start dates of their new associates to realize that the market model of the elite law firms is now in crisis.  The question is what the future holds.  A permanent contraction in the most lucrative sector of the private legal market is going to have effects on law schools, especially those just outside the most elite ranks, but also those within those ranks, which can expect declines in alumni support and a higher number of their graduates taking less lucrative jobs.   I'm hoping Bill Henderson (Indiana) will weigh in on these developments, but I'm also interested in hearing from others.  What does the future hold?  Is there a silver lining to these developments (will, e.g., public sector jobs become more attractive to the best new law graduates as private sector jobs and salaries decline?).  Comments are open; signed comments only.  Post only once, comments may take awhile to appear.

Kleinbard from Government Service to Southern California

Edward D. Kleinbard (tax), currently chief of staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation in Washington, D.C., has accepted a senior offer to john the law faculty at the University of Southern California, effective this summer.

Fordham's Matthew Diller Named Dean at Cardozo

Information on Professor Diller here.

Yet Another Ranking Based on Another Permutation on the US News Data

Here.

George Washington Dean Lawrence Responds to the US News Nonsense

Here.  It's a very sensible response.  The big unanswered question is how the US News decision to include the numerical credentials of part-time students will affect part-time programs.  Everyone knows, of course, that the US News tail often wags the legal education dog.  The part-time programs undoubtedly provide a useful service for more mature, non-traditional students who want to get a legal education.  They are also important sources of revenue for many schools.  At the same time, law schools have pretty consistently taken steps to alter their programs to improve their US News standing.  One can understand why, when the nonsense number (the overall rank) is treated as newsworthy by other lazy journalists who don't bother to do any actual reporting or investigation, but just regurgitate the nonsense.  So what will happen to part-time programs over the next year?  I would not be surprised to see a major contraction in these programs.

Solum Updates the Entry-Level Hiring Report

Here.  He has the gross numbers (they do not discriminate based on either quality of placement or additional degrees--some ambitious soul might crunch those numbers), here's a size-adjusted ranking (total placements this year [so far] divided by average recent class size):

1.  Yale University (.130)

2.  Stanford University (.057)

3.  Harvard University (.047)

4.  University of California, Berkeley (.040)

5.  University of Chicago (.030)

6.  University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (.029)

7.  Columbia University (.027)

8.  New York University (.022)

Someone with access to the AALS faculty database could also calculate something like the success rate of grads on the market.  The one problem with this is that all schools tend to have more alumni who register with the AALS than are credible candidates.  I am not sure, for example, how many Chicago alumni registered this year, but of the seven rookie candidates we were working with, six did get tenure-track jobs, and some had multiple offers.

Law professors in the Obama Administration

A  list.

A Ranking Using US News Data, but without...

....a lot of the irrelevant or unreliable noise.  These are the work of Nathan Gimpel.  If nothing else, it hammers home how the inexplicable weightings of 12 different factors drive the "nonsense number" that is the overall rank in US News.

"Top 10" Articles in Corporate & Securities Law for 2008...

...based on a poll by Corporate Practice Commentator.  Authors of the winning articles are:  Iman Anabtawi & Lynn Stout (both UCLA); Chris Brummer (Vanderbilt, moving to Georgetown); Stephen Choi & Marcel Kahan (both NYU); Stephen Choi (NYU) & Jill Fisch (Penn); James Cox (Duke), Randall Thomas (Vanderbilt), and Lynn Bai (Cincinnati); Todd Henderson (Chicago); Henry Hu & Bernard Black (both Texas); Marcel Kahan (NYU) & Edward Rock (Penn); Judge Leo Strine (Delaware Court of Chancery); and Guhan Subramanian (Harvard).

Budget Woes Affecting Faculty Retention at Nevada?

This article suggests it is a factor.