Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

18% surge in registration for the LSAT

A good sign for law schools, but also for those seeking law teaching jobs going forward.

NY law firm drops client, Columbia lawprof Katherine Franke, when her views attract public criticism...

...and the partner who was representing Professor Franke quits the firm, while Profesor Frank has filed an ethics complaint with the NY Bar.  Pretty slimy way to treat a client!

JD/PhDs by PhD field

Andrew Granato, a JD/PhD student at Yale, has compiled data from PrawfsBlog about all PhDs hired in law schools over the last 15 years, more or less.   This includes folks hired into non-US law schools. Here's the breakdown by PhD discipline:

Political Science (71)

Economics (65)

History (59)

Philosophy (48)

Sociology (32)

STEM fields (19)

Literature (18)

Psychology (14)

Anthropology (12)

Among the 48 philosophy PhDs (one person on Granato's list did not take a job in a law school), I was happy to see six students I worked with.

(Mr. Granato also has a category for "Law/Jurisprudence" PhDs, which seems to include a fair number of Berkeley JSP folks, which would bolster the social science numbers, above.) 

 

More on the ABA's proposed revisions to its former "diversity" standard

Following up on last week's post, Dan Rodriguez, the former Dean at Northwestern, offers some thoughts of his own, and sheds interesting light on how the ABA "diversity" standard worked in practice.

"The Law and Philosophy of Academic Freedom"

Providence College has made available a video of a public lecture I gave last week, which may be of iterest to some readers.

Opposition to ABA's proposal to revamp its "diversity and inclusion" standards in the wake of SCOTUS decision in SFFA

As Karen Sloan reports for Reuters:

The proposed new standard—renamed the “access to legal education and the profession” standard—eliminates references to race, ethnicity and gender and instead requires law schools to provide access to “persons including those with identities that historically have been disadvantaged or excluded from the legal profession.”

A letter from 44 Deans can be seen here.  They argue that, "Nothing in the Court's ruling [in SFFA] precludes schools from continuing to pursue diversity as an objective. Rather, the Court limited the means that may be used. The Court did not prohibit schools -- or the American Bar Association -- from pursuing the goal of a diverse student body and a diverse faculty."  This is a plausible, but it seems to me optimistic, reading of the import of the SFFA decision.  Given the current composition of SCOTUS, I will be surprised if, when asked to clarify this import, this reading will be vindicated.  The ABA is obviously trying to "play it safe," lest momentum grow in a second Trump Administration (gasp) to disempower it as an accreditor.

Multi-million dollar budget deficit at George Mason Law

The Blog Emperor has the details.  Those are some big numbers!  Their Dean Ken Randall is experienced and savvy (he oversaw Alabama's rise to distinction in the early 2000s), but will have his work cut out for him.

The new timetable of the law school hiring market

Because I've been working with Chicago alums and fellows on the teaching market since 2008 (and doing the same at UT Austin before that), I've been witness to the changing timetable since the pandemic killed the "meat market" in Washington, DC (thank goodness!) and Zoom took over. 

Here's my perception, but I've opened comments for different perspectives and input (please use your full name and a valid email address):

1.  Schools start scheduling interview within a week of the FAR forms being released, especially for candidates with strong credentials that meet their hiring needs.  (Caveat: the selection bias in my sample is that I'm dealing with Chicago alums and Fellows.)  Bear in mind that 80-85% of schools every year are hiring to fill pressing curricular needs; only a minority are doing pure "best athlete" hiring.

2.  By this time (i.e., roughly a month after the FAR is released), there are relatively few screeners being scheduled, except by elite law schools, which take their time.

3.  Also by this time, the candidates who are successful at screener interviews are getting callbacks, though the rate varies:   25% yield (sometimes higher) for the strongest candidates, lower for others (many of whom will go on to get jobs!).

4.  Some schools begin making offers in October, which was almost unheard of under the old system. 

5.  Despite the preceding generalizations, candidates get screener invitations well into October (and not only from elite schools), and callbacks and offers of jobs still extend well into February and March.

Please submit your comment only once, it may take awhile to appear.  Remember:  full name and valid email address (the latter will not appear). Thank you.

Academic freedom abolished at Penn

The University of Pennsylvania has sanctioned Amy Wax for her offensive extramural speech, even though it is clearly protected under the applicable AAUP standards governing extramural speech (earlier coverage).  (The sanction does not involve revocation of tenure, but rather a substantial financial penalty.  I assume Professor Wax will sue for breach of contract.)   As the FIRE statement correctly puts it:

After years of promising it would find a way to punish professor Amy Wax for her controversial views on race and gender, Penn delivered today — despite zero evidence Wax ever discriminated against her students.

Faculty nationwide may now pay a heavy price for Penn's willingness to undercut academic freedom for all to get at this one professor. After today, any university under pressure to censor a controversial faculty member need only follow Penn’s playbook. 

But academic freedom is designed to protect controversial faculty from being punished for their speech or opinions. In an era when political forces right and left are all too eager to sanitize campuses of voices and views they dislike, faculty nationwide must be able to rely on the time-tested principles of academic freedom.

UPDATE:  The Academic Freedom Alliance statement on Penn's sanction of Wax.

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More controversy at Berkeley Law

Students are protesting a class on "anti-semitism and law" by leading corporate law expert Steven Davidoff Solomon, primarily because of an op-ed he wrote encouraging employers not to hire his "anti-semitic" students.  Let me comment on this purely from the standpoint of the academic freedom rights of faculty:  (1) Davidoff's op-ed was inappropriate:  as we noted in the Amy Wax case, faculty have no academic freedom right to destroy the professional prospects of their students based on gross generalizations; (2) students at a public university have a constitutional right to protest a class, but not in the class itself; disruption of the class itself should be grounds for discipline.