Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

Is anyone familiar with an institution where the university took 45% or more of the law school's tuition revenue?

Signed comments only.  As best I can tell, Baltimore is sui generis.

UPDATE:  Just to avoid confusion, all universities take some portion of a law school's tuition revenue, as they should, since university budgets provide all kinds of services from which law schools and their students benefit.  The question is only one about proportions, and the 45% figure, if accurate, would be unusually high.

Popular Baltimore Law Dean Closius Forced Out by University Admin...

...which apparently didn't appreciate his objecting to the university capturing 45% (!!!) of law school tuition for non-law school purposes.   C.J. Peters, one of a number of faculty recruited laterally to Baltimore by Dean Closius, writes:

If you look at the two key measures of a law school’s quality – faculty and student body – you’ll see that in both areas UB is a very different, and much better, school than it was just four years ago when Phil took over.  Under Phil’s guidance, our faculty hiring has produced perhaps the most dynamic group of junior and mid-career faculty I’ve seen at a non-top-20 law school (and I’ve taught at more than a few).  Across the board, Phil has motivated the faculty to work harder at, and think more carefully about, our teaching and scholarship than most of us had ever done before.  The student body is as motivated and energized as any I’ve ever taught.  The alumni love Phil because he’s a straight shooter who cares about the legal community and the realities of legal practice....

I can add that I personally would not have moved half way across the country to join UB’s faculty were it not for Phil’s leadership.  And as chair of our appointments committee for the past two years (and a member for the past three), I can report a noticeable and steady increase in the number and quality of candidates (entry-level and lateral) who display genuine enthusiasm about the prospect of joining our faculty.  Some mention Phil by name; most comment on UB’s growing reputation as a dynamic place to be.

I think we’ll manage to continue most of this momentum, because we now – thanks largely to Phil – have a critical mass of hard workers who care about the school among the faculty, staff, alumni, and student body.  But losing Phil Closius is a significant blow.

ABA Adopts Changes in Employment Data It Will Collect

The official announcement is here.  U.S. News is certain to change its formula in light of this, though how remains to be seen.  The results should be revealing, assuming the traditional reluctance of law schools to lie to the ABA continues to hold. 

Updated Information on Submitting to Law Reviews

Courtesy of Professors Rostron and Levit.

UT's Rodriguez to be the New Dean at Northwestern

My esteemed former colleague at the University of Texas School of Law, Daniel Rodriguez (administrative, public law, positive political theory) has accepted appointment as the new Dean at Northwestern University School of Law, effective January 1, 2012.  As noted last week, Rodriguez was very successful in his last Deanship, at San Diego.  This seems to me an excellent appointment for Northwestern.  I'll add a link to the official university announcement as soon as it is on line.

UPDATE:  The Northwestern press release.

Three Cheers for On-Line Publication!

Richard Danner (Duke) and colleagues have undertaken to gauge the attitudes of law professors towards exclusively on-line or electronic publication; Professor Danner kindly offered the following useful summary of their findings (I responded to the survey--my publication decisions would have been unaffected by print publication):

Increasingly, U.S. law journals post current articles in freely accessible PDF format on their web sites. Yet,  they also continue to publish print issues despite evidence that new legal scholarship is read not in print, but online in SSRN or the journals’ own postings.  Subscriptions to print are declining, and law libraries  are no longer preserving journals in print.  Yet, law review editors, who themselves rarely use print in their research, fear the impacts of ending print publishing on their journal’s reputation and ability to attract the best authors.  Does it matter to law journal authors whether their work is published in print?  We surveyed 464 authors of articles published in the last two completed volumes of the lead journal at the law schools ranked in the top fifteen by US News in March 2010.  Over 51 percent replied. 

Sixty eight percent of the respondents indicated that continuing publication of print issues would not have affected their decision to publish the particular article in the journal where it appeared.  Yet, when asked more generally what they would do if they had had offers from more than one of the journals on the list, other than those they considered  to be the most prestigious, 51 percent of the authors  said that a journal’s continuing publication of print issues would be the deciding factor in choosing which offer to accept.    When broken down by years teaching, however, only 38  percent of authors who had been teaching for six or fewer years said that print would be the deciding factor in their decision.  Although the survey results suggest that print remains important to law journal authors, it will become less important over time.

The paper also provides demographic information about authors who publish in the lead journals of top ranked law school.

The Repeal of DOMA and "Full Faith and Credit"

Tobias Barrington Wolff (Penn) has an instructive discussion.

Columbia's Jane Ginsburg Elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy

The Academy's announcement is here.  As we have noted before, it is quite rare for U.S. legal scholars to be so honored.

Which law schools graduate the most lawyers at the nation's biggest law firms?

Some business school professors examine the data.

Dean Matasar's Reply to the NY Times "Hatchet Job"

Here.