Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

The "Executive Unbound": University President edition

Lawprof David Pozen (Columbia) uses recent events at Columbia to look at university governance, drawing some striking analogies with problems familiar from public law.

Congratulations to the Chicago alumni who made (or announced) lateral moves this year

They are:

 

*Vincent Buccola '08 (bankruptcy, corporate) from the University of Pennsylvania (Wharton School) to the University of Chicago (Law School).

 

*Sarah Burstein '07 (intellectual property, design law) from Suffolk University to Illinois Institute of Technology/Chicago-Kent College of Law.

 

Pedro Gerson '14 (immigration law, criminal law) from the Pozen Center for Human Rights, University of Chicago to Illinois Institute of Technology/Chicago-Kent College of Law.

 

*Mary-Rose Papandrea '95 (First Amendment, media law) from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill to George Washington University (effective July 2025).

 

*Zoe Robinson '08 (constitutional law, law & religion, comparative constitutional law, judicial behavior) from the Australian National University (Politics) to Marquette University (Law).

 

*Angela Zhang '08 (Chinese law, law & economics) from the University of Hong Kong to the University of Southern California.

Elite law firms are now recruiting 1Ls in spring, bypassing the traditional on-campus recuirtment process

On FB, Mark Lemley and Kate Litvak brought to my attention this Bloomberg story; an excerpt:

Top law firms are rushing to target new recruits, often before students have finished their first year.

On-campus interviews, long the chief recruiting method for major firms and controlled by law schools and the National Association for Law Placement, now take a back seat to direct hiring by firms who want first crack at talent. The coveted summer associate roles are the most common path to Big Law careers, serving as a tryout for full-time positions after graduation.

 

“This direct hire process will likely be filling about 50% of our class, at least,” said Nicole Wanzer, director of attorney recruiting at Morrison Foerster. “Were we to wait for traditional OCI and lean only on traditional OCI, we feel like we would be missing out on some of the talent that’s getting picked up earlier in the process.”

 

The shift has had a snowball effect. Weil Gotshal & Manges has already opened applications for its 2025 summer program, allowing first-year law students to apply directly—a process dubbed “pre-OCI”. Other prominent players such as Jones Day, Milbank LLP, Paul Hastings, and Davis Polk & Wardwell open up their direct applications as early as mid-April for jobs that start the summer after the second year of school is completed. MoFo is launching its own advanced consideration application system for first-year students this year, which opens May 1.

Law review publication contracts with unreasonable terms

Another reason not to publish in student-edited law reviews, I guess.

Seven law professors elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences

They are:  Anne Alstott (Yale), Ann Carlson (UCLA), G. Mitu Gulati (Virginia), Daniel Ho (Stanford), Pauline Kim (Wash U/St. Louis), Eric Talley (Columbia), and (in the Religious Studies category) John Witte, Jr. (Emory).

Letter from many Columbia Law faculty to the University President about the handling of protests on campus

Here.  Signatories include Vince Blasi, Kimberle Crenshaw, Jane Ginsburg, Michael Graetz, Ronald Mann, David Pozen, Carol Sanger, Robert and Elizabeth Scott, and others.

Some student-edited law reviews are calling to be compensated for their work

This is surprising; if it gets traction, it will probably lead to law schools closing down most of their student-edited reviews.  Maybe U.S. law schools would do what other common-law law faculties do, and have the faculty take charge of editing the school journal.  I doubt it will get to that, however, given the importance of Law Review membership as a sorting mechanism for clerkships and elite law jobs.

UPDATE:  Law professor Hillel Nadler (Wayne State) writes:

You may be interested to know that at least some law reviews used to pay students for their work.

 

In the Tax Court case Wassenaar vs Commissioner, which is often included in basic income tax casebooks for its discussion of the deductibility of education-related expenses, the court mentions that:

 

"[Wassenaar] served on law review while at Wayne State in both 1971 and 1972, and although he was a member of the board of editors, his services were no different from those of any other law review member. His duties included editing legal material, checking sources of legal articles, and writing legal articles. He received compensation for such services from Wayne State in the amounts of $845 in 1971 and $1,314 in 1972."

https://casetext.com/case/wassenaar-v-commr-of-internal-revenue

Law faculty contributions to political candidates

Notre Dame lawprof Derek Muller compiled data for the period 2017 to early 2023 (so during the Trump era), and I was surprised by how many contributed to Republicans, given the condition of that party, although this fits with the general perception of the American legal academy as conservative by global standards.  Most Republican supporters in the academy I know are motivated by the hope that something of the libertarian policy agenda still survives, but perhaps that's only true of faculty at the law schools I know best.  I note that according to additional data from Professor Muller, the highest percentage of Republican donors are at religious law schools--and even there, there are relatively few donors overall.   Of course, it bears remembering that donating to Mitch Romney is not like donating to Ted Cruz, and donating to Sherrod Brown is not like donating to Joe Manchin, so just looking at "Democratic" and "Republican" donations is not really that informative.

 

 

Congratulations to the Chicago alumni and Fellows on the law teaching market...

...who accepted tenure-track jobs.  They are:

 

Charles F. Capps ’20, who will join the faculty at Arizona State University.  He graduated with Honors from the Law School, where he was Articles Editor of the Law Review.  He also earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago.    He clerked in his native Saint Louis for Judge Gruender on the 8^th Circuit from 2020-22, and served as Deputy Solicitor General of the State of Missouri.  His primary areas of teaching and research interest include criminal law, criminal procedure, jurisprudence, torts, and evidence.

 

Jonathan Green, who will join the faculty at Arizona State University.  He is currently a Bigelow Fellow at the Law School.  He earned his J.D. from Yale in 2020, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal, and a Ph.D. in History from Cambridge University in 2018.  He was an associate at DLA Piper in Philadelphia in 2021, until taking up a clerkship with Judge Neomi Rao on the D.C. Circuit.  His primary areas of teaching and research interest include legislation/statutory interpretation, civil procedure, federal courts, legal history, and administrative law. 

 

Filippo Lancieri JSD ‘21, who will join the faculty at Georgetown University.  He is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the ETH Zurich Center for Law & Economics.   He received his JSD at Chicago with a thesis on “Essays in the Regulation of Digital Markets”; he received his LL.M. from Chicago in 2016.  He also holds an MA in economics and an undergraduate law degree, both from São Paulo.  He practiced antitrust and corporate law in his native Brazil for four years, and has also practiced antitrust as an International Lawyer with Latham &Watkins in Brussels.   His primary areas of teaching and research interest are antitrust, privacy, law and technology, contracts, and copyright.

 

Tyler B. Lindley '21, who will join the faculty at Brigham Young University.  He graduated with Highest Honors and  Order of the Coif from the Law School, where he was Business & Communication Editor of the Law Review.   He clerked for Chief Judge Pryor on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, and for Judge Katsas on the D.C. Circuit, and served as Of Counsel at Lee Nielsen.  His primary areas of teaching and research interest are constitutional law, civil procedure, federal courts, and legislation and regulation.

 

Meighan C. Parker, who will join the faculty at the University of Georgia.  She is currently a Bigelow Fellow at the Law School.  She received her J.D. cum laude from the University of Alabama in 2018, where she also received the John England Award for the Black law student with the highest academic standing; she also holds an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School awarded in 2015.   She spent two-and-a-half years as an associate in the Life Sciences & Regulatory Compliance Group at Ropes & Gray in Washington D.C., before joining Sidley Austin in Washington, D.C. as a Managing Associate in their Food, Drug, and Medical Device Compliance and Enforcement Group.  Her primary areas of teaching and research interest are health law, food & drug law, torts, business organizations, and law & technology. 

 

Mark Pickering '05 who will join the faculty at the University of St. Thomas (Miami).  He earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from Boston University in 2013, and taught philosophy at various schools, most recently at the University of Alabama.  His primary areas of teaching and research interest are criminal law & procedure, torts, and jurisprudence.

 

Eve Rips '12 who will join the faculty at the University of Illinois, Chicago John Marshall Law School.  She worked as an attorney at the Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and for Young Invincibles in Washington, D.C., where she was Acting National Deputy Director.  She has taught at Loyola University, Chicago, the University of Maryland (Baltimore), and Chicago-Kent College of Law, where she is presently a VAP.   Her primary areas of teaching and research interest are education law, criminal law, family law, and legal research and writing.

 

Zalman Rothschild, who will join the faculty at Cardozo Law School/Yeshiva University.  He is presently a Bigelow Fellow at the Law School.  He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School in 2018, and also received a Ph.D. in Religion & Jewish Studies from New York University in 2016.   He was a litigation associate at Paul, Weiss in New York City for three years, and also clerked for Judge Jane Roth on the Third Circuit.  His primary areas of teaching and research interest are constitutional law (especially the First Amendment, both the religion and speech clauses), civil procedure, family law, employment discrimination, and professional responsibility. 

 

Bill Watson ’14, who will join the faculty at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.  He is currently a Climenko Fellow at Harvard Law School.  He graduated with High Honors and Order of the Coif from the Law School, where he was a Kirkland & Ellis Scholar and the Book Review & Essays Editor of the Law Review.  He clerked for Judge Jay Bybee on the 9^th Circuit, and was a litigation associate at Kirkland & Ellis in Chicago for three years before starting the graduate program in philosophy at Cornell University, where he received the Ph.D. in 2023.  His primary areas of teaching and research interest include legislation/statutory interpretation, jurisprudence, administrative law, civil procedure, evidence, and constitutional law.

You can see a complete list of Chicago law alumni in teaching here.

"Law is a Moral Practice"

I review a recent book of legal philosophy.  

My review itself has been favorably reviewed by UCLA lawprof Steve Bainbridge on Twitter: "The opening line of @BrianLeiter's review is worth the price of admission. If more law professors wrote with his flair, legal scholarship would be a lot more entertaining. His range from rapier to saber to battleaxe is remarkable."