Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

Amicus brief from law professors in support of Shmuel Leshem in his tenure dispute with Southern California

The list of signatories and the brief are available here.  (Prior coverage.)

(Thanks to Abe Wickelgren for the pointer.)

With 95% of the Fall 2020 admissions cycle complete, applicants are down 3.2% nationwide

Details here.   That's not good news in terms of next year's academic job market in law schools, given the other negative pressures on law school hiring related to the pandemic.

University of Minnesota law professor Parisi wins defamation lawsuit against woman who falsely and maliciously accused him of rape

Good for him, some vindication after the ordeal he was put through.  (Prior coverage.)

"The Legal Academy": Orin Kerr (Berkeley) interviews law professors

Episode 1 is up with Akhil Amar (Yale).

Entry-level hiring report for 2019-20...

...courtesy of Professor Lawsky (Northwestern).  Sorry for not posting this sooner, I had missed it.  Do submit your information.

Legal issues raised by COVID-19

This looks to be a useful resource, prepared by faculty (mostly) at Columbia Law School.

Wash U/St. Louis eliminates summer salaries for tenured faculty

A colleague there tells me the law school has eliminated summer 2020 salaries for tenured faculty, which represents 7-10% of annual compensation for those professors (junior faculty will continue to receive summer salary).  That's rather dramatic for a law school regularly in the top 25 in the U.S., and one that is part of a very wealthy parent university (although its wealth, I gather, is tied up heavily with the [top] medical and [the middling] business schools).  Have other law schools cut summer salaries?   You may post anonymously, but you must include a valid e-mail address (your e-mail address will not appear or be disclosed).

"If liquor stores are essential, why isn't church?"

So ask Michael McConnell (Stanford) and Max Raskin (Adjunct, NYU) in a recent NYT op-ed.  I confess I hadn't expected Professor McConnell to hold the Marxist view that religion is the opium (or liquor) of the people, but that aside, I would have thought the answer was obvious:  people can practice their religion without going to a church or other religious institution; but you can't drink or eat unless you can go to stores to buy things to drink and eat.

Why Berkeley's mandatory diversity statements are unlawful

At CHE.

Survey about changes to grading practices in wake of the pandemic

Professor Bliss (Denver) asked me to share the following, which I'm happy to do:

We write to ask for your help filling out a brief, anonymous research survey. Many law schools have recently changed their grading schemes in response to COVID-19, suspending their normal grading system in favor of pass/fail or honors/pass/fail systems. Our survey asks what considerations went into your choice of grading scheme and how you expect this change to impact your students.

 

The survey is anonymous and will be reported anonymously. You may complete the survey by clicking on this link: https://uwo.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9H4HYsRjqVq3LUN?Source=pers&ID=JB.

 

We thank you for considering this and look forward to sharing the results!

 

Many thanks,

Professor John Bliss (University of Denver Sturm College of Law)

Professor David Sandomierski (University of Western Ontario Faculty of Law)