Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

600 law students pledge to boycott Paul Weiss because of its representation of Exxon and its role in thwarting action on climate change

Their press statement is here:  Download Press Release--Six hundred law students pledge not to work for law firm defending Exxon's role in the climate crisis.

I asked Mr. Hirschel-Burns, a Yale law student and one of the organizers, for a list of the signatories, which he kindly provided but did not give permission to share.  A bit more than two-thirds of the 600 signatories come from the elite law schools from which Paul Weiss usually hires, including large contingents from Harvard (78), NYU (94), Stanford (80), Michigan (79), and Yale (76).

Big jump in law school applicants at the start of the 2020-21 admissions season

Blog Emperor Caron has the details.  If this holds, that will bode well for law faculty hiring in 2021-22, and may even lead to some late entries to the hiring market this year.

Toronto Law scuttles search after sitting judge (and major donor) criticizes the final candidate on political grounds

MOVING TO FRONT FROM SEPTEMBER 17--UPDATED

What an embarrassment.  If these allegations are borne out, the Dean of the Law School there will have to resign.

UPDATE:   The University of Toronto's Students' Law Society has written a public letter to the Dean.   And various faculty, at Toronto and elsewhere, have apprently called for an ethics investigtion of the judge who allegedly interjected himself into the search:  e.g, Download Ethics complaint CJC-20-09-17 (003).

AND STILL MORE:

Today’s press now reports [paywall] that ‘In a written statement to what he described as the ‘faculty of law community’… Edward Iacobucci [Dean of the Law School] did not deny that a Tax Court Judge contacted the administration to express concerns about the candidate, Valentina Azarova.’

...A law dean did not deny published reports that a sitting judge attempted to influence a University hiring decision.  Presumably, then, he also did not deny that a judge had found out, or was told, who was on that short list?  (Even the University of Toronto law school is not yet required to get pre-clearance from the judiciary.)  And, presumably, if ‘contact’ was made, it was made with someone.  So who was listening (reluctantly? anxiously? eagerly?) to the judge’s ‘concerns’? It was not the faculty members of the Advisory Board. They resigned in protest.

SEPTEMBER 19 UPDATE:   The media is now reporting internal e-mails that contradict the Dean's public assertions about this case.  What a mess.

Blast from the past: when Forbes opiner Mark A. Cohen didn't know what he was talking about

Which is pretty much always.  The guy is a parody of management-speak.

Vast majority of George Washington law faculty sign open letter condemning GW alum and current AG William Barr

CNN reports.  Signatories include most of the best-known legal scholars on the GW faculty, including Stephen Saltzburg, Richard Pierce, Jr., Daniel Solove, Naomi Cahn, and Michael Abramowicz, among others.  You can read the full letter here:   Download Gw-barr-statement.  Barr has become a disgrace to the office, so kudos to them for making a public statement.

Impact of COVID on summer programs and OCI

Useful summary of recent NALP data.

LSAC cancels April LSAT, but introduces remote testing ("LSAT-Flex")...

...that will involve remote proctoring.  Bar examiners may need to take note of this approach, but kudos to LSAC for coming up with a solution in a timely way.  My guess is this will be the new form of the LSAT for the coming year.   This is important too because it will allow law schools to gauge demand, which, in turn, will affect their hirng plans.   (Recall that after the 2008 Great Recession, law school enrollments went up for two more years, before the downturn began after the ABA mandated better reporting on job outcomes.)  I'll have more to say about what law school hiring next year may look like soon.

Pass/fail grading?

Some law schools (including some that didn't have real grades to start with) have switched officially to pass/fail as classes move online; others have not.   Law professor Jonathan Adler (Case Western) argues against switching to P/F, while Noah Zatz (UCLA) argues in favor.  My own view is that it probably depends on the school and the course, and that there is no "one size fits all" answer.  (An example:  I can imagine a school switching a course to P/F for all students if the instructor falls ill for several weeks; or a school might allow students afflicted with illness or caregiving responsibilities to switch to P/F as needed.)  I will note that the economic fallout from the pandemic will almost certainly affect law firm hiring significantly, meaning that actual grades will be more important for students than before (again, how important will depend on the school, but we know from the Great Recession of 2008 that all schools will be affected, even if to differing degrees).    Mandatory P/F may hurt some students if they are competing against students from schools that continued to grade.

UPDATE:  I'm told that many students at Harvard Law School objected when the Dean announced they were switching to P/F.

Teaching online

A short video guide from law professor Seth Oranburg (Duquesne).

UCLA chapter of NLG is an embarrassment to the NLG

The UCLA Federalist Society had the temerity to invite Professor Doriane Lambert Coleman from Duke Law School, a former competitive female athlete who has written carefully and thoughtfully about the complex issues raised by the participation of trans women in female sports (see, e.g., this article).  The UCLA Law School chapter of the NLG decided to disrupt the event, apparently wholly unaware of the NLG's traditional staunch support for academic freedom, most famously during the Mcarthy era, but continuing to the present.   As the former faculty advisor to the NLG chapter at the University of Texas, I decided to point out their betrayal of NLG principles on Twitter; I was then derided as a "neoliberal white man" by these law students (and then subjected to a bizarre defamatory outburst by one Stephano Medina, who also turns out to be a UCLA 3L and not, as I had thought, a creepy teenage boy in his mother's basement).  What an embarrassment.