ARCHIVE FOR JULY 2009

July 30, 2009

Congratulations, Bar Exam Takers!

Clear Admit wishes you a few happy days of relaxation – you’ve earned it!  Whether you finished yesterday and have already taken advantage of your first evening off since finals ended or are just finishing up this afternoon, we at Clear Admit want to congratulate you on your effort.

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# posted by admin @ 11:29 am in Bar Exam

July 24, 2009

Search Data for ABA-LSAC Official Guide 2010 Recently Released

The Law School Admissions Council (LSAC) has recently updated its ABA-LSAC Official Guide search data. Each year, LSAC, in conjunction the American Bar Association (ABA), compiles an Official Guide that reports data collected from all U.S. accredited law programs. According to the ABA’s Standards and Rules of Procedures for Approval of Law Schools, accredited institutions are obligated to report their basic consumer information for public viewing. The facts reported include profiles of the incoming classes, bar passages rates, employment statistics and even details about the program’s curriculum and faculty.

For the convenience of prospective law students, LSAC makes the data collected available on its website, and additionally provides a search engine that permits candidates to search for a school according to a variety of variables. For further convenience, LSAC offers a specific search options that allows prospective applicants to enter their own undergraduate GPA and LSAT score and then peruse the programs which reflect similar averages among admitted students.

The data reported is collected annually, with the recently released guide reflecting statistics compiled during the fall of 2008, making this guide a valuable resource for individuals hoping to matriculate in Fall 2010. Although each law school’s dean is asked to certify that the data is accurate, LSAC does note that some of the information is subject to change during the year, and recommends that candidates review the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar for the most up-to-date information.

The LSAC search engine offers an accessible and convenient means for prospective applicants to quickly get a sense of the various programs in their targeted geographic region or the schools offering a curriculum matching their personal interests. To learn more about the ABA-LSAC Official Guide and to use the recently updated search engine to review the data, visit the LSAC website.

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# posted by admin @ 11:35 am in LSAT, Law School News

July 21, 2009

Columbia’s Pre-Term Legal Methods Course

While 1Ls at most law schools across the U.S. take some sort of legal research and writing course during the academic year, Columbia’s 1Ls are required to arrive on campus in mid-August to acquire familiarity with these skills before the start of the Fall term.  The three-week pre-term Legal Methods course meets twice each day for 90 minutes, for a total of fifteen hours per week for the entirety of Columbia’s long orientation.  During class time, veteran professors walk students through the process of critically reading statutes, writing a brief and understanding cases within the context of the development of Anglo-American legal thought.  CLS believes that exposure to these basic skills before term begins allows 1Ls to engage in the standard first-year courses with greater confidence than they would if they attempted to learn those skills while balancing a full course load.

The course is taught by some of Columbia’s most legendary instructors, including former president of Columbia University Michael I. Sovern and Philip C. Bobbitt, the famed constitutional law scholar, all of whom use the development of various sources of law, such as case law, administrative law and civil law, to provide context for their instruction.  One professor who will be teaching one section during the upcoming year, Peter L. Strauss, is known to simultaneously examine case law and statutory analysis in the process of tracing the development of two topics, product liability and workplace injury.  In his section, at the end of the three-week course students are able to combine their knowledge of statutes, contemporary legislative materials and even civil law to examine the past year’s Supreme Court decisions and place them in the context of the American legal tradition.

Legal Methods classes are composed of roughly 100 students, though teaching assistants meet with smaller groups of students each week to review the material covered in class to ensure that students understand the skills they will need to be successful in their term-time 1L courses.  The course meets until early September, just before 1Ls begin their Fall term courses, and the material is tested in a Pass/Fail exam administered in early October.

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# posted by admin @ 9:57 am in School: Columbia

July 18, 2009

LL.M. Program Highlights and Application Deadlines

In addition to offering students the opportunity to pursue a J.D. degree, most law schools also provide various advanced degrees. One of the most popular is the LL.M., a degree geared toward candidates who already possess a J.D., or their home country’s equivalent. A full-time LL.M. program is generally a year long, and requires that students submit a substantial piece of writing, composed using outside research and containing a sustained argument related to the field of law, in order to graduate and receive a degree.

Various LL.M. programs offer their students different opportunities in terms of areas of specialization, location and class size. Stanford, for instance, asks students to pursue one of two specializations:  Corporate Governance & Practice or Law, Science and Technology. Stanford’s LL.M class is relatively small with an average of 30 total students, 15 in each of these two groups. Stanford’s program is designed exclusively for students who have earned a primary law degree outside of the U.S. Meanwhile, the Harvard LL.M. program, representing a large class of 150 students in a given year, is currently in the process of developing a series of concentrations for its students to pursue, but aims to allow for as much flexibility in its curriculum as possible. Students from foreign nations and with J.D. degrees from accredited U.S. law schools are eligible for admission. The Cambridge LL.M. program, unlike either Stanford or Harvard, is even willing to admit a candidate without a law degree on occasion.

For individuals in the law community seeking a career in academia, now is the time to begin preparing an LL.M. application. In the past, we’ve discussed the upcoming admissions review periods for prospective J.D. candidates. Students pursuing alternative law degrees, such as an LL.M., however, are generally asked to submit applications sooner than those candidates applying for J.D. programs.  Many law school admissions offices are set to begin receiving LL.M. applications by August or September, similar to the time when the J.D. review process begins, but set then set their deadlines for sometime in November or December.  This means the window for LL.M. applicants to gather application materials and apply for financial aid is smaller than that provided for J.D. candidates.

Here’s a glimpse at a few of the already announced LL.M. deadlines:

Yale: November 16, 2009

Harvard: December 1, 2009

Cambridge: December 1, 2009

Chicago: December 15, 2009

Altogether the LL.M. deadlines at other programs, such as NYU, Columbia and Stanford have not yet been updated for the 2009-2010 admissions process, given their previous deadline histories, candidates can be confident that the dates will be set for sometime in November or early December.

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# posted by admin @ 10:03 am in Deadlines, LL.M.

July 15, 2009

Potential JD Transfer Students Use Summertime to Weigh Options

Although the summertime offers prospective law students an ideal opportunity to begin preparing for the upcoming application season, the real action does not truly pick up until the fall months when the admissions committees begin accepting applications and official school visits begin. While prospective are studying for and taking the LSAT, narrowing down target programs and drafting personal statements behind the scenes, another group of people are currently in high-gear. As discussed in a recent post from Above the Law, transfer students use the summertime to make final decisions about the program to which they’ll transfer in the fall – if they decide to transfer at all.

In the past, it has not been uncommon for law students not initially admitted to their top-choice programs to use their first year as an opportunity to receive stellar grades in order to reapply, and ultimately transfer, to a more highly ranked institution. This can be a strategic move for aspiring lawyers, as having a degree from a highly respected and well-known program is likely to impress potential employers. Transfers have been traditionally supported by a large percentage of the law community, including law professors who enjoy seeing hardworking students reap the benefits after proving themselves during their first years, a concept explained in a recent discussion on the Empirical Legal Studies blog.

That being said, the Above the Law post raises a good point – the changes in the economy may prevent students enrolled at second or third tier programs, but  currently possessing scholarships, from deciding to transfer to a first-tier where they will not receive the same type of financial support. With job opportunities for law graduates becoming increasingly difficult to find, law students are finding it hard to justify taking out more loans and accumulating more debt. The Empirical Legal Studies post also highlights some of the negative effects transferring can have both on the transfer student and the institution he or she leaves. Transfer students, for instance, are less likely to have had positive relationships with their peers during their first years –or even during their second and third years following their transfer.

The decision on whether or not to transfer is ultimately up to each individual, but it’s important to weigh the pros and cons when considering such a choice. For students who have already applied for a transfer and are currently weighing the options, it’s likely that many of these opposing arguments have already been brought to their attention – but it will soon be time for a decision to be made. Students who may be looking to apply for a transfer in the future may find this rundown of schools likely to accept student students helpful – the list discusses the 10 programs that took the most transfer students, as compared to the size of their 1-L classes, during 2006-2007.

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# posted by admin @ 10:59 am in General

July 8, 2009

Stanford’s Revised 2L/3L Curriculum

With the full implementation the new academic calendar this fall, Stanford Law School students will finally experience the new overhauled “3D JD” curriculum proposed by dean Larry Kramer in 2006.  Pieces of the plan have appeared throughout the SLS curriculum since 2007, though students have not been exposed to the new curriculum as a whole until the fall of 2009.  The impetus behind dean Kramer’s decision to revamp the SLS upper-level curriculum – the changes apply only to the 2L and 3Ls years – is his observation that while students learn a lot during the first year, when they are first exposed to blackletter law and are taught to think like lawyers, they are not given any comparable challenges in the second and third years and thus cannot make efficient use of the final two-thirds of their time at law school.  With the exception of the option of participating in a few clinics or research opportunities as 2Ls and 3Ls, upper-level students spend the majority of their final two years in law school honing the same skills they learned in 1L blackletter law courses.  By proposing curricular reform, dean Kramer sought to broaden the experience gained in law school and prepare SLS graduates to confidently step in to a greater variety of jobs outside of clerking.

Upper-level students can now customize their J.D. to a greater degree than was permitted by the previous generalist approach, with its focus on scholarly analysis of appellate decisions, and thus become more well-rounded lawyers.  Under the new curriculum, 2Ls and 3Ls will be strongly encouraged to pursue interdisciplinary studies through “concentration sequences,” – recommended courses in disciplines outside the law school for students who want to study another subject in depth but do not want to take on the pressures of a joint degree – full joint degrees, as well as devote one term during the academic year to clinical work as part of a clinical rotation.  Dean Kramer envisions that future graduates of Stanford’s new upper-level curriculum will be capable of functioning as true advisors to their clients, not only able to explain the legal reasons behind cautioning them against taking certain steps but also knowledgeable enough about the specifics of the client’s business to advise them on the best legal way to proceed.

At the heart of the new curriculum, SLS has established 27 formal joint degree programs with other schools within Stanford University and at other universities, allowing students to concurrently complete a J.D. and a Master’s degree in areas such as business, public policy or healthcare in three to four years for less than the cost of separately pursuing two degrees.  Though joint degree programs existed before, most famously the J.D./M.B.A. with the Stanford Graduate School of Business, they were difficult to manage logistically and few students took advantage of them.  The improvements and additions to the joint degree offerings have been made possible by the decision to align the SLS academic calendar with that of the rest of Stanford University, so that students can more easily integrate courses outside of the law school into their schedule.  In addition, the reforms call for more clinical offerings, including the opportunity to reserve an entire academic quarter to actively participate in a clinic, which dean Kramer envisions being akin to the clinical rotation in medical school.

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# posted by admin @ 12:46 pm in School: Stanford

July 6, 2009

Recent Faculty Lateral Movement: Harvard and NYU

In the past few years, law schools have started devoting significant resources, such as endowed professorships, research center leadership positions and other perks, to wooing top faculty members away from their tenured posts at peer schools.  As a result, leading scholars who have been closely associated with one school for the bulk of their career are taking jobs at other schools more frequently than before.  Today we’ll take a look at some notable faculty shifts that will go into effect for the upcoming academic year.

The most widely discussed has been longtime Stanford scholar Lawrence Lessig’s decision to join Harvard Law School as the faculty director of the Edmund J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics.  Professor Lessig, who joined the Stanford faculty in 2000, is an expert in constitutional law and has become one of the world’s foremost cyberlaw scholars.  Jesse Fried, an expert in corporate law who taught at Boalt Hall since 2003 and served as co-director of the Berkeley Center for Law, Business and the Economy, is also slated to join the HLS permanent faculty in the fall.

At New York University School of Law, six established scholars will be joining the faculty.  Richard Epstein, who has taught at the University of Chicago Law School since 1972, joins the NYU faculty, though he intends to split his time between NYU and Chicago, teaching at the former during fall semesters and at the latter during the spring.  Another leading legal scholar who will soon join NYU’s faculty is Jose Alvarez, the Hamilton Fish Professor of International Law and Diplomacy and executive director of the Center on Global Legal Problems at Columbia Law School, who was a visiting professor at NYU most recently as Fall 2008.  Harvard’s Ryan Goodman, De Paul’s Katherine Strandburg, Georgetown’s John Stephens and Yeshiva Cardozo’s Barton Beebe have also joined NYU’s permanent faculty.

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# posted by admin @ 10:41 am in Law School News, School: Berkeley / Boalt, School: Chicago, School: Columbia, School: De Paul, School: Georgetown, School: Harvard, School: New York University, School: Stanford, School: Yeshiva Cardozo

July 2, 2009

College Cost Reduction & Access Act Now in Effect

In today’s economy, paying back students loans is on the forefront of many recent law school graduates’ minds. The graduating class of 2009 is certainly feeling the effects of the economic downturn. Many of the nation’s large law firms have either decided against hiring new attorneys or have asked their recent hires to defer their start date until fall 2010 or later. Gone are the days of several thousand-dollar signing bonuses. For many graduates, paying back students loans during these economics conditions may seem like an insurmountable task.

In an effort to not only aid recent graduates encumbered with debt, but also to promote public interest law careers, Congress has recently passed the College Cost Reduction & Access Act. The federal program, which went into effect yesterday, Wednesday, July 1, will help public interest lawyers structure their repayments and eventually receive debt forgiveness. The Act will benefit law students in two ways, as summarized in a recent article in The National Law Journal. The most notable aspect of the Act is the loan forgiveness granted to public interest lawyers. According to the program, graduates will make payments for 10 years on government-back student loans. After 10 years, the government will forgive the remaining balance for those qualified. This loan forgiveness program benefits not only public interest lawyers, but also teachers, law enforcement officers and certain health care professionals.

The second aspect of the Act is income-based repayment. Under this system, monthly loan payments are determined according to the borrower’s annual income. Although public interest lawyers are included under this repayment option, other attorneys and law professionals may also discover that they qualify. According to this element of the Act, borrows cannot be required to put more than 15% of their discretionary income towards annual loan payments. After 25 years, the remaining loan balance will be forgiven.

The enactment of the College Cost Reduction & Access Act will make it possible for more law students to pursue careers related to public interest following graduation. With law school debts often surpassing $100,000, many law graduates have been tempted in the past to immediately join firms willing to pay upwards of $120,000 for a first year’s salary. This act will not only encourage more people to pursue lower-paying public interest careers, but will also put at ease the minds of law graduates who have not been able to secure the high-paying firm jobs they presumed they would have immediately following their time at law school.

Although the enactment of this bill is certainly a momentous event, several law schools have already established similar loan repayment systems. Stanford, for instance, founded the Miles and Nancy Rubin Loan Repayment Assistance Program (LRAP) in 1987, making it the first law school to launch such a program. Like the College Cost Reduction & Access Act, the program aids graduates who pursue careers in either public interest or government service. Both Berkeley Boalt and Harvard Law Schools also offer similar loan repayment systems for their graduates. These programs, in conjunction with the new College Cost Reduction & Access Act, are helping to shape the decisions of today’s law school graduates. Under these systems, salaries will not necessary drive career decisions, and more individuals will find that they have the freedom to pursue public interest opportunities.

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# posted by admin @ 1:53 pm in Law School News, School: Berkeley / Boalt, School: Harvard, School: Stanford