Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

Top U.S. research universities, 2014

Here, based on aggregation of U.S. News reputational data, for those who are interested.

What is REALLY going on at Denver (contrary to ATL's fabrications)

In typically irresponsible fashion, ATL yesterday posted factually inaccurate rumors about Denver (which they are slowly correcting).  Here is what a tenured colleague at Denver wrote to me:

The truth is that we are reducing our tenure and tenure-track faculty by 10 over multiple years.  This is consistent with a long-term plan to shrink the size of the school that began in 2007, prior to the economic downturn.  At that point we had 380 students.  Our ultimate goal was and is approximately 250 students.  The school needs *at most* one person to retire or take a buyout this year to meet our budget for 2014-2015.  In subsequent years the faculty who will be offered the option of buyouts will be exclusively tenured faculty who have held their positions for a minimum number of years. The buyouts will NOT include tenure-track faculty who are not yet tenured.  That is, the ATL story is simply wrong when it says that untenured tenure-track faculty are being asked to leave.  None has been asked to do so.  In fact, Denver Law has recommended 4 tenure-track faculty for tenure this year.  While tenure is not official until the summer, it is common knowledge that the Dean has recently assured those four faculty members that the planned buyouts will not affect their tenure process.  Finally, ATL's unattributed claim that the Denver Law faculty is "quite displeased" with direction of the school is simply false.  Of course there are outliers in every institution, but the overall faculty climate is collegial and the vast majority of faculty are pleased with Dean Katz's leadership during a difficult time for all law schools.  Of course, it is never ideal for ATL to report facts that are patently false, particularly with respect to untenured faculty, and one would hope that they care enough about their credibility to print a correction.

I've heard the same about Dean Katz from other faculty at Denver as well.  (I hope Blog Emperor Caron will learn a lesson from this incident, namely, not to reprint nonsense from ATL without independent verification.)

Dean Rodriguez (Northwestern) on hysteria about law schools

He is obviously right.  What is worse, in this instance, is that the "story" about Denver is complete fiction, but since "Above the Law" has no regard for facts, it's hardly surprising they would report such fiction as though it were factual.

More signs of the times

Appalachian cutting faculty.  In addition, I recently spoke to a colleague at another law school--a strong, regional school but with a faculty with a national scholarly reputation--who reported the teaching load has been raised from 10 hours per year per faculty member to 12 hours.  Twenty years ago, 12 hours was the norm at most law schools, except for the very top ones.  Over the last twenty years, 10 hours/3 courses became increasingly common.  For a school of this caliber to make the move back to 12 suggests that other schools are following or will soon follow suit.

Falsehood of the day: "U.S. News, for all of its faults, is how employers think of you"

Elie Mystal, one of the bloggers at "Above the Law," wrote this last week (a reader forwarded it to me).  No evidence was offered, and that's not surprising:  the statement is false in almost all cases.  Employers, to be sure, have views about different law schools, but they are based on experience, in some cases, experience that stretches over decades.  Actual lawyers and judges do not, in my experience, pay any attention to U.S. News at all.  A couple of years ago, for example, I was speaking to a distinguished group of Northwestern University Law School alumni about the U.S. News rankings.  There were about 125 to 150 lawyers (and a few judges) there.  Many of the lawyers in attendance had been or were the current hiring partners at their firms.  I asked a simple question:  how many had looked at the recent U.S. news rankings of law schools?  Maybe five hands went up in the entire room.  To a person, all these lawyers and judges said they based their evaluations of law schools--where they recruit, how deep into the class they will go for new hires--on their past experience with the schools and their graduates.  Full stop.  No one was waiting for the U.S. News law school rankings to decide where to interview or whom to hire.

So if lawyers and judges don't care about them, who does care about the U.S. News rankings?  Prospective students and journalists.  Prospective students are very clearly influenced by them, in part because journalists hype them and report on them irresponsibily.  And because of those two constituencies, law schools have to care as well:  if, in fact, the students a school wants will go elsewhere because of a precipitous drop in the US News ranking, this will over a period of time affect how the employers that hire frm that school perceive it, not because they follow U.S. News, but because they will notice the change in the caliber of the student body.

Buffalo offers retirement incentives to faculty over 55...

...and eight accept, bringing the size of the full-time faculty from 48 down to 40.  The school is also shrinking its class size slightly.  Seems like sensible responses to the current economic climate for legal education.

ABA votes to retain tenure (good) and require 6 hours of experiential learning of ALL students (bad)

Blog Emperor Caron has the details.  Fortunately, the insane proposal for 15 hours of so-called "experiential" learning was defeated.

ADDENDUM:  As a couple of readers noted, I have in the past expressed the view that tenure need not be an accreditation requirement, which is still my view.  But given some of the administrative mischief afoot, and some of the reasons given for opposing tenure, I am happy to see the ABA leave it alone for now.

February LSAT takers up very slightly from last year

A bit more than 1%.  A first indication that applications and enrollments may be about to level off in the next year or so.

In Memoriam: Eddie Ohlbaum

Temple University Law Professor Edward Ohlbaum passed away last week.  He had been on the Temple faculty since 1985.  He was 64.

U of Florida Dean Search Fails

Sounds like an ordeal, and it certainly won't be easier next year to fill the position given the start and now the finish to this year's.