ARCHIVE FOR NOVEMBER 2009

November 30, 2009

Tennessee Sees Opening of New Law Schools

Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, plans to open the state’s sixth law school in 2011.  Although some critics have questioned the necessity and value of the new $25 million law school, given today’s tight legal market, the school’s leaders recently cited that it will serve a specific local niche as an alternative to the internationally known Vanderbilt University Law School and the Nashville School of Law, which offers a night and weekend program for professionals remaining at work while attending school.

Bob Fisher, the President of Belmont University, also explained that the law school aims to provide an innovative and specialized curriculum for its students.  Students at Belmont can choose to focus their legal education in the fields of music and health care, for example.  In its first year, Fisher expects approximately 350 to enroll at the school.

Nashville is not the only city in Tennessee to open a new law school to serve unmet regional needs.  Earlier this fall was the debut of the Duncan School of Law at Lincoln Memorial University in Knoxville.  Duncan, the state’s fifth law school, is geared towards working professionals, offering night and weekend classes for the 81 students who enrolled this fall.  With 250 applicants this year, primarily from the southeastern United States, Duncan hopes to enroll 125 students next year.

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# posted by admin @ 12:00 pm in Law School News

A Look Inside: New York University School of Law Guide

In the fourth installment of this series examining our new Clear Admit Law School Guides, we are pleased to offer a glimpse of our New York University School of Law Guide!

The NYU guide contains in-depth information about NYU’s J.D. and graduate programs, and also compares the school to other leading programs.  It’s a great tool that makes background research easy for busy prospective applicants and, further along in the process, allows applicants the opportunity to tailor a personal statement or optional essay to highlight particular aspects of NYU School of Law’s program that fit with the applicant’s story.

One such point of comparison distinguishing NYU from peer programs is the comprehensive instruction in  practical legal skills provided to NYU School of Law students through its 1L Lawyering course, which we describe in part as such:

“NYU’s professional skills course, simply called Lawyering, is one of the most rigorous and innovative of any offered by a comparable school, standing out from peer schools’ courses in a number of ways. The most obvious difference is that Lawyering demands a great deal of time; it is held during both semesters and meets three times per week for a total of 4.5 hours each week.

Lawyering professors present a hypothetical situation that focuses on a common intellectual question that practicing lawyers deal with on a daily basis, and assign texts, such as court cases, that present varying interpretations. Then, students discuss the case in small groups and complete a series of mini-exercises that require them to create legal arguments, conduct informal trials and devise appeals to test their arguments. Following these mini-exercises, each student writes a memo or brief articulating their argument in detail, incorporating the nuanced legal reasoning gleaned from the small group discussions. The exercise is concluded with a critique, in which the small group that has collaborated for the mini-exercises meets with the Lawyering professor to review each student’s work.”

Apart from a discussion of NYU’s J.D. and various LL.M. curriculums, our NYU guide touches on life on the Greenwich Village campus, financial aid data and information on the School of Law’s international law offerings, among other topics.  For example, we explore NYU’s international legal scholarship reputation, based on the Hauser Global Law School Program (HGLSP).  Here is a segment of our HGLSP discussion:

“Like many other law schools, NYU seeks to be at the cutting edge of international legal scholarship. However, NYU has taken a more aggressive tactic than many of its peers, which have thus far simply added international scholars to their permanent and temporary faculties and broadened their selection of courses on international legal systems. The HGLSP’s scope and ambition has led its leaders to pursue the goal of fully integrating the study of foreign legal systems into all aspects of the law school curriculum, so that every NYU student develops an understanding of the interplay between legal systems in a fully globalized environment.”

For other preview posts, please see the previous series entries covering the University of Chicago Law School Guide, the Columbia Law School Guide and the Harvard Law School Guide.

The New York University School of Law Guide is on sale now at the Clear Admit Shop, along with law school guides from Chicago, Columbia, Harvard and Yale.  Please visit us again next Monday for our final “look inside” of this first quintet of guides!

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# posted by admin @ 8:00 am in Law School Guides, School: New York University

November 27, 2009

Fridays From The Frontline

Hi there and welcome to Fridays From The Frontline! This week most current law students were in the midst of frantic exam studying with the goal of being able to celebrate Thanksgiving without stressing over outlines, torts or other school-related commitments, to varying degrees of success.

oL MRS’s undergrad law class hosted a guest panel, which inspired her to ask her readers if they had suggestions for law-school related summer reading. 1L Ricky Nelson considered whether Madoff victims could sue the SEC and noted that there are no replays in life. NYU ‘12 Invisible Man did not cross the 10 hour study line, and found that reading a non-law book was a great way to put all his studying into perspective. Austin ‘12 Mariel found that she didn’t mind spending seven hours in the library if it meant that she wouldn’t be stressed during Thanksgiving. NYU ‘12 Anonymous shared seven reasons she was thankful, which included her boyfriend and almost being done with her first year. Boalt ‘12 Moonshine Project planned on taking a bluebook citation test, eating sushi and watching the latest Twilight movie. NYU ‘12 IDWSK explained why he was slightly hesitant to give study advice to his peers, but had a few thoughts for those OLs thinking that they should spend the time before law school prepping for their eventual coursework. North Carolina ‘12 TDot enjoyed playing a hostile witness for a 2L trial practice.

Yale ‘11 SB didn’t go home for Thanksgiving, but an epic, Google spreadsheet-managed, potluck would give her plenty of festivity fun. 2L Kel looked for the motivation she had back when she was applying to law school. 2L NewLawMom lucked out in her current semester, and only has to prepare for three exams. 2L The Exit didn’t take too kindly to her school’s new referral campaign.  2L Casebook Sherpa read a post that was supposed to provide insight into how to pick a law school but found it lacking, so wrote his own similar post but with more criteria.  Minnesota ‘11 Jansen provided his professor’s reasoning for teaching like-kind exchanges and explained why he hated law school curves. 3L (In)Sanity Gal missed her days of drama and wondered what the difference between being realistic and giving up really is. 3L Nobody rebounded from a number of stressful law school-related issues (paper of doom, fitful journal contributors) with wine and sleep.

And that concludes this week’s summary of the hip happenings in the law school blogosphere. We hope all readers and bloggers had a great Thanksgiving, full of their favorite foods, family. And, as always, if you are a current law student or law school applicant with a blog, we’d love to include you in Fridays From The Frontline, just send your blog addresss to bob@clearadmit.com!

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# posted by admin @ 12:00 pm in Fridays From the Frontline

November 25, 2009

Fordham Law’s Latest Clinic to Debut in Spring

Capitalizing on an alumni connection in another of New York City’s boroughs, Fordham Law School announced Tuesday that it is expanding its clinical program offerings.

The Prosecution Clinic, which is slated to begin practicing next semester, partners the law school with Queens District Attorney Richard Brown.  Fordham Law alum and Queens Assistant District Attorney Kevin Duddy will head the clinic.

Said Ian Weinstein, the school’s Director of Clinical Education: “The Prosecution Clinic will be a fascinating and demanding opportunity for our students to engage in all facets of prosecutorial work.”

Indeed while clinical responsibilities also depend largely on the flexibility of location-specific court regulations, initial word indicates that Fordham Law students should play important roles within the clinic.  According to a press release, students will handle “all aspects of criminal prosecutions” for misdemeanor and violation cases in Queens Criminal Court.

The Prosecution Clinic, once underway, will be the 15^th clinical program offered by Fordham Law School.  For information on the other 14 clinics, please visit the Fordham Law website.

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# posted by admin @ 1:34 pm in Law School News, School: Fordham

Admissions Tip: General Writing Guidelines

Working on a law school application can be an overwhelming endeavor, so today we’d like to share some simple guidelines to make the process of writing your personal statement and supplemental essays as easy as possible.  We offer the following advice to help law school candidates craft essays that succinctly yet effectively demonstrate the strengths of their candidacies.  Demonstrating one’s strong writing skills is an important step in creating an overall impressive application for law school admissions committees.

1.  Emphasize Action. A common pitfall for many applicants is lapsing into the passive voice, constructing sentences about how some unseen force or agent acted upon something or someone else (e.g. “we were required to” or “the project was completed”) rather than putting their own thoughts and actions at the fore. By making a conscious effort to write “I/he/she did x” rather than “x was done to y” you can make your comments more informative, dynamic and, often, more concise.

2.  Be specific. Specifics are of the utmost importance in law school essays, as the adcom wants to see details of what you’ve accomplished in the past, what you would like to achieve in the future, and how you are a good fit for the particular law school.  Explaining the reasons for your interest in studying the law and the school itself will also help to differentiate you from the many other applicants arguing their case for a place in the class.  Though applicants sometimes worry about the page limits, it is important to keep in mind that you can replace often vague and generic points with specific ones without adding any length.  For instance, rather than stating that you would make a great and lasting impact in the X field, you can state that you would do A and B.

3.  Show, don’t tell. Keep in mind that a given adcom reader cannot spend an indefinite amount of time reviewing your application. As a result, it is imperative that you make an impression and give the reader a clear sense of who you are and what you’ve done. Specific anecdotes and vivid details make a much greater impact than general claims and broad summaries. Be sure to fully explain your actions, and provide illustrative examples to produce a set of engaging essays.

4.  Follow the guidelines. Many times applicants attempt to tweak the font size, spacing, or margins in their application essays in an attempt to stay within the various schools’ page limits.  The admissions committee, however, will not be fooled.  Rather than playing with the formatting, focus on making your discussion clear and concise.

We hope these tips prove helpful in writing your law school application essays!

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# posted by admin @ 8:00 am in Admissions Tip

November 24, 2009

Trivia Tuesday: Legal Writing at Penn Law

Welcome back to Trivia Tuesday, our continuing segment spotlighting a specific J.D. program feature.  Today, we’re taking a look at the legal research and writing curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.  Penn provides professional skills instruction to its 1Ls through Legal Writing, a year-long course that meets once per week throughout the academic year.

Legal Writing classes are made up of just one cohort – roughly 15 students – making them the smallest non-seminars that Penn law students take during their law school career.  This small class size creates an intimate learning environment that permits the course’s instructors to give each student as much individual attention as needed to create the memos, briefs and motions assigned throughout the year.  The first semester is devoted to legal research instruction, understanding the analytical strategies involved in lawyering, and an introduction to legal writing forms and techniques.  The culmination of the fall semester is a project that requires students to research and write a memo for a hypothetical senior lawyer that identifies the legal issue assigned and the laws associated with it, describes each side of the issue, and provides a well-supported argument for how to use existing laws to achieve the best possible outcome.  In the spring, Legal Writing focuses on equipping students with the research and communication skills to write persuasively in a legal context, culminating in a project in which students write a brief for a mock appellate court and deliver an oral argument at Philadelphia’s federal courthouse.

Legal Writing is primarily taught by Legal Writing Fellows, 3Ls chosen by Penn’s faculty for their talent in research and writing to teach and mentor 1Ls.  Faculty instructors also teach occasional sessions of the class throughout the year, and Penn’s law librarians teach additional legal research tutorials during the fall semester.  Penn is one of the few law schools that rely on current students to administer the legal research and writing curriculum, but student opinion of the quality of instruction provided by the Legal Writing Fellows is overwhelmingly positive.

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# posted by admin @ 10:00 am in School: University of Pennsylvania, Trivia Tuesday

November 23, 2009

Online Federal Clerkship Applications See 66% Increase

Similar to the increased number of LSAT test-takers, the online applications for federal clerkships grew substantially this year.  Approximately two-thirds of federal judges use a website through which aspiring clerks apply for the 1,244 available clerkship positions.  Between October 1, 2008 and September 30, 2009, this website tracked 401,576 applications for clerkships, a 66 percent increase from last year’s 241,529 applications.

Similar to the increase in applications, there was also a substantial increase in applicants.  The record-high number of applications this past year came from 10,722 applicants, whereas the year prior there were 7,556 applicants.  With the 42 percent increase in applicants, each applicant this year applied for approximately 38 clerkships.  Applicants last year each applied for approximately 31 positions.

The 10,722 applicants were almost evenly split between law school graduates and 3Ls, with 52 percent of the applicants already out of school and 48 percent anticipating graduation.  Although more law school graduates applied to these clerkships, law school students on average applied for more clerkships, as 68 percent of the applications came from students.

Kirsten Solberg, a clerkship advisor at Harvard Law School, attributed this increase in applications to the traditionally stable nature of a clerkship position when contrasted to offerings in law firms and public interest, which may seem more unpredictable given the current economy.

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# posted by admin @ 12:00 pm in General, Law School News

A Look Inside: Harvard Law School Guide

This week, our “look inside” series for the first-released set of Clear Admit Law School Guides turns its attention to our Harvard Law School Guide!

(For previous entries, in which we looked at the Chicago and Columbia Law School Guides, respectively, please click here and here.)

Our HLS guide serves as a key resource for any applicant interested in learning about the program in detail, and for those who want to see the educational and employment opportunities that HLS provides.  As we indicated in our post announcing the guides’ release, these publications can assist prospective students at all stages of the application process, from those who are just starting background research to applicants who seek to strengthen personal statements with school-specific details.

One detail appearing in our HLS guide touches on the significant curricular changes that have been approved for the Cambridge, Mass. school:

“The new curriculum was developed over 18 months by a committee of HLS faculty. Authorized in December of 2008, it will go into effect for the Class of 2012, and represents the largest overhaul in Harvard’s law curriculum since the nineteenth century…. [To develop] successful twenty-first practitioners of the law, the faculty committee agreed that Harvard needed to update the system of law education in three areas: international law, problem-solving as part of the daily practice of law, and adding more flexibility to the upper-level curriculum.”

Additionally, HLS hosts one of the largest clinical programs among leading law programs, as 29 alone are run by the school, in addition to other community, national and international clinical opportunities.  Further, as we explain in our guide and epitomized by this example, HLS’s clinical programs are uniquely tied to coursework:

“Most clinics at HLS are offered in conjunction with classroom courses or workshops. This sets Harvard’s clinical program apart from those of many of its peer schools, which instead rely on the clinical professors and supervising attorneys to impart the applicable law to students at clinic sites. The HLS classroom courses attached to clinics are organized so that students are able to apply the concepts learned in class directly to actual clients. For example, students in the Predatory Lending and Consumer Protection Clinical Workshop spend much of the semester learning about bankruptcies in class while they represent clients filing for Chapter VII bankruptcy through the Predatory Lending/Consumer Protection clinic.”

And, as with all of our Law School Guides, the HLS edition includes details on the school’s international exchange offerings, clubs, student journals and graduates’ career statistics, in addition to many other topics.

The Harvard Law School Guide is on sale now at the Clear Admit Shop, along with law school guides from Chicago, Columbia, NYU and Yale.  Please visit us again next Monday for another “look inside!”

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# posted by admin @ 8:00 am in Law School Guides, School: Harvard

November 20, 2009

Law School Center, Clinics Partner for Legal Network Aiding New Media Entities

A new legal network, buoyed by a law school research center and a host of law school clinics, was recently launched to offer burgeoning media ventures legal counsel.

The Online Media Legal Network (OMLN), an initiative of the Citizen Media Law Project, is designed to match new media creators with lawyers and law firms, school clinical programs and in-house counsel so that the journalistic ventures can receive pro bono legal assistance while pursuing new media avenues.

OMLN is supported by Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society and Arizona State University’s Center for Citizen Media.  The initiative is based out of the Berkman Center on the HLS campus.

“OMLN provides a structure to address the legal needs of journalists working in a rapidly-changing industry,” said Diane Heins of Faegre & Benson LLP, a participating law firm, on the OMLN website.  ”The availability of high-quality pro bono assistance will ensure that the standards, protections and values associated with traditional journalism remain constant in the face of technological innovation.”

The legal services offered by OMLN include business formation and governance, copyright licensing and fair use, access to government information, pre-publication review of content, and litigation representation.

In addition to participating law firms, a number of law school clinics have signed up to offer services, including programs from the University of Washington School of Law, the University of Pennsylvania Law School and the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, among others.

For more information on OMLN, please visit the network’s website.

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# posted by admin @ 12:00 pm in General, Law School News, School: Harvard

Fridays From The Frontline

Welcome back to another edition of Fridays From The Frontline, Clear Admit’s fascinating foray into the the law blogosphere. This week’s bloggers had a number of things on their minds,  from birthdays to the myriad ways current students are preparing for their upcoming exams.

Legal eagle hopeful MRS turned 25 and felt old. Fellow aspirant, Ricky Nelson, heard about Berkeley’s recent tuition increase and shared his thoughts on how that does or does not change his plans to apply to the school. NYU ‘12 Reckless dreamed about civil procedure  jurisdiction and found that her dream self had a good grasp on the material. Columbia ‘12 Soleil was glad that her locker problems of last week were not entirely in her imagination. NYU ‘12 Invisible Man found that riding the Staten Island ferry was a cheap way to find a little quiet time to think. Miami ‘12 Goateed 1L ventured to another school’s campus and courtrooms to study for his exams. NYU ‘12 IDWSJ compared himself to an outdated Terminator, explained when law school would really become worthwhile and had a lot to do before exams. North Carolina ‘12 TDot found himself using Lexis Nexis just for fun. 1L Ricky Nelson witnessed a classmate’s ingenious method of watching television during class.

3L (In)Sanity Gal found that becoming a law student had taken away the time for her to work out or be creative, but saw the bright side in this situation. 3L Nobody got a kick out of a photographer’s experience with leopard seals, and had a few things to say about the journal editing process. Austin ‘11 Mariel entered a courthouse for the first time to fulfill a class assignment. 2L Laura loved Google for a number of reasons, one of which was the free legal research resources it now provides. 2L Huma wondered whether readers would be interested in reading her ‘Law Skool Musical.’ 2L New Law Mom attended an ABA negotiation competition and found that her definition of  negotiation and that of her competitors were very different. 2L The Exit counted her law school blessings, among them Hulu and her laptop. 2L Circumlocutions had an idea on how Twitter could better serve its corporate clients. 2L Casebook Sherpa thought that some readers might like to know about the latest development in fantasy leagues and gambling: taking bets on the Supreme Court. 2L Josh looked at the proposed changes to the Federal Rules of Evidence, and found a few possible problems. 2L Kel expressed her worries over having the same job interview as her friends, and felt that her resume was chock full of competitions. Minnesota ‘11 Jansen took his dog, Harley, on a walk and worked through some the reasons he was, and was not, going to law school.

As the days leading up to exams dwindle, we hope that all current students find their own perfect study space and method, and that those in the application process are getting the most out of each day. If you are a current student, or law school aspirant, and you want to be included in our weekly round-up, just email b0b@clearadmit.com. Until next week, good luck and have a great weekend!

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# posted by admin @ 8:00 am in Fridays From the Frontline

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