ARCHIVE FOR FEBRUARY 2010

February 26, 2010

Friday Roundup: Interim Dean at Washington and Lee & Applications Jump at New U. Mass. Law School

Rounding up this week’s news updates to stories we’ve been following, Washington and Lee University School of Law announced that Mark Grunewald has been named interim dean, effective July 1.  He has been a faculty member since 1976 and even previously served a stint as interim dean during the 1999-2000 academic year.

Grunewald steps into a relatively high-profile role, as Rodney Smolla left the deanship in mid-December to become president of Furman University, raising far-reaching questions about what would come of Smolla’s proposed 3L curricular reforms.  As we reported then, the law school quickly confirmed that it was planning to go ahead with creating an entirely-experiential 3L, saying such reforms were “beyond one man.”

In Massachusetts, the Boston Herald reported late Tuesday that applications to the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth have thus far increased 132 percent from last year - now that the university has a public law program.  That program, which was the Southern New England School of Law before it offered itself to the state’s university system, received 53 applications at this time last year, compared to 123 applications now.

In the article, UMass-Dartmouth officials attributed the number of applications to “word-of-mouth communication and media coverage of the issue.”  We last reported on the subject, which proved to be a divisive issue in the state, when the public law school proposal received final approval Feb. 2.

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

Fridays From the Frontline

Hi there, and welcome to Fridays From the Frontline! Each week the Clear Admit team delves into the ‘blawgosphere’ to find the latest news, opinions, and experiences of law school applicants and students. This week bloggers were up to a great deal, from learning how to use a new camera to preparing for Moot Court.

0L Ricky Nelson enjoyed his professor’s witty Google Chat banter, but worried about what was being said in the teachers’ lounge. NYU ‘12 Invisible Man discussed the pros and cons of the school’s ‘Lawyering’ requirement. Miami ‘12 Goateed 1L received a camera as a wedding present and worked to earn enough points for Moot Court. NYU ‘12 IDWSJ provided one solution to seeming prepared in class, and found himself a summer job. NCCU ‘12 TDOT shared his thoughts on competition in law school. Columbia ‘12 Soleil attended an art opening and met a judge, but wondered whether the context of the meeting made contacting the aforementioned judge taboo. Northwestern ‘12  Jeremy found the latest National Law Journal ‘Go-To Law School List’ had at least a little good news for him and his classmates.

Harvard ‘11 Ivy Lea commented on the lack of snow Boston has seen this winter. 2L Huma was quoted in an article about law and Twitter. Harvard ‘11 Cat began her clerkship application process and was strangely comforted to know she wasn’t doing it alone. Yale ‘11 SB shared her own perspective on the values of a clerkship. 2L Kel’s externship experience with a judge wasn’t without its benefits, but she worried that without the laughs it wouldn’t help her get a job. 2L The Exit gave five reasons why going to law school during a recession was a positive. Minnesota ‘11 Jansen prepared extensively for his upcoming Moot Court and shared a few suggestions to those 0Ls trying to decide between schools.  2L Reasonable found a new law-oriented television show to be wildly unrealistic. 3L Thanks But No Thanks thought that the demands of her journal’s faculty advisor might just push her over the edge of sanity. Austin ‘10 Paragon2Pieces learned about a few new dual degree programs the school is offering. 3L Eliza also provided some thoughts and words of wisdom to 0Ls. 3L (In)Sanity Gal hoped that the end of books wasn’t headed this way.

And that wraps up this ‘issue’ of Fridays From the Frontline. We hope all 0Ls are weighing their options carefully, and that current students find those elusive summer/full-time jobs. Have a great weekend!

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# posted by admin @ 8:05 am in Fridays From the Frontline

February 25, 2010

Yale Law School Dean of Admissions Answers Applicant Questions

Late-February is a notoriously stressful time for law school applicants. Although some applicants have begun to hear back from programs regarding their candidacy, February marks the crunch-time for reading applications at law school admissions offices. The anxiety caused by the seemingly endless waiting period has prompted a number of conversations on popular online forums.

Recently, Asha Rangappa, Yale Law School’s Dean of Admissions, took the time to respond to a number of the questions raised by prospective students on the (203) Admissions Blog. For example, one candidate wondered if Yale has a cutoff for applicants in terms of GPAs or LSAT scores. As Asha explained, Yale does not have a cutoff, but a candidate with a notably low GPA or LSAT score “does usually need extremely strong everything else.”

Another applicant wondered just how detrimental typos in an application are to an applicant’s candidacy. Again, Asha explained, ”I probably do miss some typos.  However, I catch a fair number of them, and whether they are fatal to your application really depends on the overall strength of your application and the egregiousness of the typo (as in, are you just sloppy, or does it call your literacy into question?).” Additionally, Asha eased the concern of another applicant who was worried that the late date of his submission might indicate a lack of interested in the school to the admissions committee. According to Asha, “We don’t really interpret the date you choose to apply as having any correlation with your interest (in fact, it might suggest that you chose to spend more time applying to us than to anyone else!). “

For more answers to your “burning questions,” make sure to check out the full blog post. To read questions asked of Asha in the past – and the responses to them – click here.

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# posted by admin @ 10:16 am in Admissions Blogs, Admissions Tip, School: Yale

February 24, 2010

Fellowship for Study of Women’s Property Rights Offered to Columbia Law Grads

On its website Monday, Columbia Law School announced that a new fellowship is available to its graduates who want to work on issues of women’s land and property rights in developing countries.

The two-year postgraduate fellowship is offered through the Global Center for Women’s Land Rights, part of the Seattle, Wash.-based Rural Development Institute, an organization with affiliates in more than 45 nations worldwide.

According to the institute, women are often responsible for primary agricultural production in developing countries, but are precluded from land ownership.  The organization, in part, works to resolve this issue, thereby enabling women to better feed and educate their children and improve their overall standards of living.

The fellowship will be administered by the law school’s Office of Social Justice Initiatives and is available immediately to graduating students and also retroactively to the last two graduating classes.

For more information on Columbia Law’s offerings, please revisit our post in which we introduced the Clear Admit Columbia Law School Guide or preview the guide at the Clear Admit Shop.

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

Admissions Tip: The Advantage of Experience

Law school applicants range from current college seniors to those who have been out of college and working for several years.  Today we’d like to offer some guidance to those applicants who have been in the working world for a substantial amount of time and are now interested in going back to school to become lawyers, as there are several ways these J.D. candidates can stand out from relatively younger applicants in a helpful manner.

1. Use your experience to your advantage. For applicants who have spent some time in the working world, it’s important to demonstrate that their professional experience has been valuable to them.  This value includes personal growth and a better understanding of one’s strengths and weaknesses, which can be easily explained through professional accomplishments and challenges.  In your personal statement (and possibly interview), it’s therefore important to show that the time you have spent out of school after gaining your undergraduate degree has helped you improve and therefore better prepared you for law school and a career as a lawyer.

2. Know what to write about. As we’ve stated before, the broad prompts for the personal statement can often be a challenge for law school applicants, regardless of their current status in the academic or working world.  However, for applicants who have been out of school for quite some time, this is the perfect opportunity to explain how you’ve spent this time, and more importantly, how your work has led you to the decision that you need to gain a law degree to progress in your career.  Law schools are sometimes hesitant to accept relatively older applicants, expecting that that these people are more interested in a change than the rigors of law school and a legal career.  Therefore in your personal statement, it’s important to demonstrate that your work experience has led you to make an informed decision regarding your interest and commitment to law school and being a lawyer.

3. Know what they will value. Because relatively older applicants have been out of school for a few or more years, the adcom looks to other sections of their applications to gauge their current abilities and potential.  These applicants should not that their LSAT scores, work experience, personal statements, and recommendations carry greater value than their undergraduate academic records.  This may be good news for applicants who did not perform as well as undergraduates; however, these applicants will need a particularly strong LSAT score to demonstrate their academic abilities to the adcom.

For all of our readers who have been out of school for a few years, how have your working experiences been helpful to you thus far in the application process?  Feel free to share your comments below!

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# posted by admin @ 9:00 am in Admissions Tip, Personal Statements

February 23, 2010

Article Details Buzz Surrounding Proposed Inclusion of Outcome-Based Accreditation Standards

A detailed article in The National Law Journal Monday outlined the discussion among law school leaders that has arisen since a shift toward “outcome-based” ABA accreditation standards has been proposed.  The article labeled the proposal “the most significant change to law school accreditation in years.”

Reflecting an overarching shift in legal education, the suggested accreditation changes would seek to ensure that graduating law students possess the necessary practical skills to succeed in the profession.  Rather than merely evaluating inputs, such as student-faculty ratio and school facilities, the proposed changes would additionally focus on “the skills and competencies they want students to have when they graduate.”

Currently, accreditation relies on the “output” of bar passage rates; the new system would measure core “lawyering” skills, such as appellate advocacy and negotiation. The necessary skills to measure and the methods of measurement are being debated.

Though the revamped standards are still in an incipient stage, it is clear that the idea has drawn significant, and varied, reaction.

Northwestern University School of Law Dean David Van Zandt, for instance, worries about the cost and the “open-ended” nature of the requirements, even though he said to the Journal that he supports such changes in theory.

Loyola University Chicago School of Law Dean David Yellen, additionally, wants to protect law school autonomy.  “We don’t want to make standards where the ABA comes in with a heavy hand and dictates what schools must do,” he said.

To see the proposed changes to accreditation standards, please click here (PDF).

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

Trivia Tuesday: Small Evening Seminars at Harvard Law School and Michigan Law School

In this week’s Trivia Tuesday, we are considering the very popular discussion-based seminars offered at Harvard Law School and Michigan Law School.

Known as Reading Groups at HLS and Mini-Seminars at Michigan Law, the weekly seminars are held outside of the usual school day, usually during dinnertime, at the home of the professor who is leading the course. The scheduling and location of the seminars, combined with the intimate class size, give students the opportunity to explore a legal topic in a casual setting under the guidance of a leading legal scholar. In this way, the evening courses function as channels for community building and provide opportunities for faculty members to get to know their students outside of class while discussing a subject of personal interest. Class sizes are limited at each school to a maximum of 10 students, which likely makes the evening seminars the smallest classes that students at HLS and Michigan Law – two of the largest leading U.S. law schools – will take during their law school career.

At Harvard, the Reading Groups are open to 1Ls only, and are held during Fall term. Topics for Reading Groups are at the discretion of the professor teaching the course, and frequently vary from year to year based on the professor’s interests. For the Fall 2009 term, over 45 faculty members offered reading groups covering subjects from cyberlaw to immigration, with titles such as “Climate Change: Science, Economics, Law, and Policy,” “Socrates for Lawyers” and “Shakespeare’s Constitution: The Henriad.” Though students receive no academic credit for taking a Reading Group, many students report that Reading Groups are among their favorite offerings at HLS, citing as reasons for their interest the opportunity to get to know a renowned legal scholar – who might be a great source for a clerkship recommendation in the future – and the unconventional perspective on legal issues that an examination of the law in conjunction with literature or popular culture provides. Some of the most popular Reading Groups are taught by Harvard Law’s most famous scholars, such as Alan M. Dershowitz, Howell Jackson and Jeannie Suk.

Where Harvard’s Reading Groups are meant to aid in making new 1Ls feel comfortable within the HLS community, the Mini-seminars at Michigan Law are open to 2Ls and 3Ls and are designed to give upper level students a venue to explore legal issues from an interdisciplinary approach using the skills developed in their more conventional courses. The Mini-seminars’ informal setting is merely an extension of the close-knit and collegial environment at Michigan Law that students there praise. Under Michigan’s policies, students are permitted to take one seminar per year and receive one credit, graded on a pass/fail basis, for their participation. Roughly one dozen Mini-seminars are offered each year during Fall and Winter quarters (with some held across both quarters), and competition for spots in each section is stiff. Topics for Winter 2010 Mini-seminars include “Separation of Church and State,” “Law and Popular Literature” and “Legal Issues, Rhetoric, and Practice During the American Civil War.”

For more information about similar programs offered by other leading law schools, read the Clear Admit Law School Guides!

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# posted by admin @ 8:00 am in School: Harvard, School: Michigan, Trivia Tuesday

February 22, 2010

Northwestern Law Tops 2009 BigLaw Rankings

Supplanting Columbia Law School in the annual “go-to” law school list, Northwestern University School of Law garnered top honors in a relatively down recruitment year.

The rankings, released Monday afternoon by The National Law Journal, detail the number of law school graduates placed as first-year associates at the nation’s largest 250 law firms in 2009.

Northwestern took the top slot by placing 55.9 percent of its 2009 graduates at BigLaw firms.  Columbia, which ranked No. 1 in 2008 and 2007, was second in 2009.  Stanford Law School, the University of Chicago Law School and the University of Virginia School of Law rounded out the top five, respectively.  The top nine programs placed 50 percent or more of their graduates at BigLaw firms.

Overall, the placement figures represent the recession’s impact on the legal market.  In 2008, for instance, Columbia Law topped the list by placing just over 70 percent of its graduates at BigLaw firms.  The only top-50 program to send a greater percentage of its 2009 graduating class to BigLaw positions, compared to 2008, was Vanderbilt University Law School, the 12^th-ranked program at 47.1 percent this past year.

For the full top-50 list, please click here (PDF).

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# posted by admin @ 6:00 pm in General, Law School News, Rankings, School: Northwestern

Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice Has New Leader

David Onek, who founded the Barkeley Center for Criminal Justice (BCCJ) in 2006, is stepping down as executive director and will be replaced by current associate director Andrea Russi.  Prior to joining the BCCJ in 2006, Russi worked as an assistant attorney in the Los Angeles U.S. Attorney’s Office’s Criminal Division, taught at the USC Gould School of Law, and clerked for the Central District of California and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The BCCJ promotes collaboration among legal scholars, policymakers, and practitioners, with the mission to develop new criminal and juvenile justice law and policy approaches.  Berkeley students have the chance to attend BCCJ conferences and roundtable events, as well as work with the program, such as the summer intern position.  For the past two years Onek and Russi have worked on expanding the BCCJ’s partnerships with local communities and lawmakers as well as hosting a greater number of organized events.

Onek plans to continue at Berkeley to host a new joint venture of the BCCJ and the Berkeley School of Journalism, the Criminal Justice Conversations Podcast.  These podcasts will feature interviews with criminal justice leaders, including members of law enforcement, policymakers, advocates, service providers, and legal academics.  Onek will also remain as the San Francisco police commissioner, while simultaneously lecturing at the law school and serving as a senior fellow at the BCCJ.

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

Law Review Paid Circulation Drops Significantly Over Last 30 Years, Study Finds

With readers finding content via publication websites or other online resources, paid circulation for law reviews has dropped significantly over the past three decades, according to a new study.

The research was conducted by Professor Ross Davies of George Mason University School of Law, who tracked 21 of the most prominent law reviews from 1979 to 2009 using data from the U.S. Postal Service.

Detailed in a recent article in The National Law Journal, the Harvard Law Review has experienced a circulation decline of nearly 77 percent, while the Yale Law Journal has seen a drop of more than 57 percent over that time period.

In the article, Prof. Davies offers a number of reasons for the sharp declines, beginning with the fact that Internet users no longer need a subscription to read a law review’s content.  Additionally, he points to legal information aggregators, reading rooms, and a changing focus among law reviews away from practicing attorneys as other reasons for the declines.

Unlike newspapers, Prof. Davies theorizes that law reviews have not been seriously afflicted by the circulation drop, as the publications are relatively cheap to produce and publish.  He did say, however, that “the worry is on the influence end.  The question is now, ‘How useful are we?’”

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# posted by admin @ 8:00 am in General, Law School News

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