CATEGORY - GENERAL

March 17, 2010

Clear Admit’s Graham Richmond Offers Advice in Waitlist Podcast

Joined by a fellow admissions consultant and two law school deans, Clear Admit’s Graham Richmond was one of four featured guests on Law School Podcaster’s recent release, “Getting Off the Waitlist: How to Improve Your Chances of Getting Accepted.”

Along with Richmond, the podcast offered Ann Levine, founder of lawschoolexpert.com, Richard Geiger, associate dean at Cornell Law School, and William Hoye, associate dean at Duke University School of Law.

Within the discussion, the quartet explained why law schools maintain waitlists and what various programs expect from their waitlisted applicants.  The group then offered strategies applicants in such limbo should employ.

Both law deans stressed the unpredictability of their waitlist counts as Dean Hoye said Duke Law is likely to increase its waitlist as prospective students, sensing a competitive landscape, are applying to more schools than in prior years.  Richmond too noted that leading law schools seem to be using the tough economic climate to hedge their positions and expand their waitlists.

In response, Richmond said applicants should explicitly follow individual schools’ waitlist guidelines and both he and Levine said applicants should be proactive in showing a program interest and continued personal and professional development.

“People do get in off the waitlist,” Richmond said.  “I’d say that’s the one thing to take away from this.  That it does feel like purgatory when you first are placed on a waitlist, but the earlier on that you get the news and the earlier you can sort of begin your campaign, the better off you’ll be.  They wouldn’t have the list if they didn’t take folks off of them.”

To hear the full 24-minute podcast and to read a transcription, please visit Law School Podcaster.

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March 15, 2010

NYU Law Launches First Official Student Blog

Last week NYU announced the launch of its first official student blog, Life at NYU Law.  The blog is sponsored by the NYU Law Admissions Office and is aimed at prospective students.  Written by seven 1L and 2L students, the blog is designed to showcase the NYU Law experience.

The blog, started earlier this month on March 4, has so far covered topics such as classes, faculty, public interest offerings, internships and jobs, campus events, off-campus social activities, living in New York City, public interest, general tips and advice, and bloggers’ thoughts on various topics of law.  In two of the first posts,  one student outlined the best way to learn the campus, while another blogger described her experience at the Public Interest Law Center’s career fair.  To visit the blog, go here.

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

Study Places Yale Law Atop ‘Scholarly Impact’ Ranking

Offering a preview Friday of the soon-to-be-released full rankings, Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports has placed Yale Law School atop its 2010 study of “scholarly impact.”

Yale was followed in the rankings, which tabulate scholarly citations over a five year period, by Harvard Law School and the University of Chicago Law School in the top three. Rounding out the top ten are: Stanford, New York University, Columbia, U. California-Berkeley, Northwestern, U. California-Irvine and Vanderbilt.

The study’s methodology is based off of the number of citations from January 2005 to mid-January 2010, and is primarily restricted to tenured faculty, excluding, for example, judges who still teach periodically at these leading law schools.

The full rankings list extends to the top 25 scholarly programs. Of these remaining law schools, Leiter writes that Florida State University College of Law had a “particularly notable” placement, coming in at No. 23.

Leiter also said he hopes to have the entire study online by mid-April. The full study will also feature specialty rankings in such areas as Tax, Law & Economics, Legal History and International Law.

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

March 11, 2010

Study: Faculties Up 40% Across Law Schools, 1998-2008

Previewing a study that will be released in full later this month, the average law school increased its faculty size by 40 percent from 1998 to 2008, says the National Jurist.

The number of faculty at 195 accredited law schools grew from 12,200 to 17,080, according to the study.  These figures, which include deans, librarians, administrators who teach and part-time faculty, conversely lowered the average student-to-faculty ratio from 18.5-to-1 in 1998 to 14.9-to-1 in 2008.  In 1978, the average student-to-faculty ratio was 29-to-1.

One quoted professor, William Henderson of Indiana University Mauer School of Law, told National Jurist that he believes such an increase in faculty is due to schools’ efforts to strengthen their respective reputations.

“Law schools tend to believe that their faculty reputation is driven by scholarship and they are very interested in U.S. News (& World Report),” Henderson said.  “Lowering your faculty-to-student ratio improves your ranking and increases time for scholarship.”

Henderson said that individual professors are spending less time in the classroom and more time researching, with the average professor now teaching three courses.

Using faculty salary and student tuition data, the publication also determined that the 40 percent increase in staff has accounted for 48 percent of the decade’s tuition increase.

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

March 9, 2010

U.S. News Says Rankings Don’t Alter Law School Diversity

Responding to a somewhat accusatory study, the U.S. News & World Report’s Robert Morse downplayed the effect his publication’s law school rankings have on institutional diversity, addressing the criticism in a blog entry last week.

The study in question, put forth by two professors at the University of Iowa College of Law and Northwestern University School of Law, is entitled, “Rankings and Diversity” (PDF).  It contends that rankings systems - with U.S. News at the forefront - place pressure on law schools to boost the measured statistics.  “…Efforts to improve these (selectivity) statistics can threaten various forms of diversity,” the study says.

Morse responds to the study by first saying that the publication does not know how to compare diversity across different populations.  “How should law schools be compared in ethnically diverse states like California and Florida,” the entry asks, “with those in far less diverse states like Maine and Kansas?”  Morse does say U.S. News would be willing to work with educators to develop “such fair diversity yardsticks.”

Secondly, Morse says the rankings system’s use of median LSAT scores, rather than averages, allows schools to admit students with more varied scores and should reduce the statistic-targeting.

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

March 8, 2010

Employment Statistics in Legal Field Improving

Although the past few months have revealed less-than-ideal job hunting conditions for law school grads, a recent article from The AmLaw Daily says that things may be looking up.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a flat overall unemployment rate of 9.7% this February, which is significantly better than the loss of approximately 650,000 jobs in the first few months of 2009.  The unemployment pattern for the legal field is shaping up even more positively, as Ross Todd from The American Lawyer reports:

“The news for the legal services sector is one of the more hopeful signs of late. Only 100 jobs were lost in the legal sector in February, the second month in a row that has seen a substantial drop-off in job losses. According to seasonally adjusted BLS data, the legal sector lost 1,100 jobs in January compared to 2,100 in December, 2,900 in November, and 5,800 in October. Since February of last year, the sector has shed 37,100 positions.”

Although these statistics are more favorable, consultants at Hildebrandt Baker Robbins and the Citigroup, Inc.’s Citi Private Bank division reported in the 2010 Client Advisory report that 2009 was possibly “the worst year for the legal market in at least the past half century,” making it a uniquely difficult year for law firms across the country.  Therefore, Todd writes, there are still challenges ahead, as many law firms will mostly likely continue to cut costs and subsequently affect employment.

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March 4, 2010

NALP: Offers for Summer Associate Positions Take Significant Hit

Data released Tuesday by the National Association for Law Placement (NALP) has crystallized the difficult legal market facing current and recent law student classes.

The figures, discussed in a Wednesday article in The National Law Journal, indicate that the median number of offers for summer associate positions dropped to seven per firm, down from ten in 2008.  Additionally, 36 percent of interviews last year resulted in summer associate offers, compared to 47 percent in 2008.  In total, the 2009 offer rate, burdened by the economic recession, was the worst in the 17 years NALP has been collecting data.

Apart from the data on summer associate offers, the article also discusses the impact of deferrals on the Class of 2009, as more than 60 percent had their law firm start-dates pushed back.  According to NALP, about half of deferred associates have worked for some pay or stipend, and 44 percent have worked in the public interest legal realm.

In the article, NALP Executive Director Jim Leipold expressed concern about the improving market for the rest of 2010, but said he is cautiously hopeful for a turnaround beyond.

“This represents an enormous interruption in the usual recruiting and employment patterns that we have come to expect,” he said to the Journal.  “I don’t think anyone expects recruiting volumes to pick up significantly during 2010, though the worst does seem, we hope, to be behind us.”

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

March 3, 2010

Epitomizing Its Experiential Curricular Shift, Washington and Lee Headlines Lawyering Competition

With the program’s shift toward a practice-based 3L year set to become mandatory in 2011, Washington and Lee School of Law assumes a headlining role in a new law school skills competition this week.

On Thursday and Friday, the first-of-its-kind transactional lawyering competition will take place at the Earle Mack School of Law at Philadelphia’s Drexel University.  The event will measure students’ abilities in “structuring and negotiating everything from mega-mergers to financing a multi-unit rental property,” according to a press release from Washington and Lee.

Joining Washington and Lee will be two-person law student teams from Brigham Young, Cornell, Drexel, Emory, U. Georgia, U. Indiana-Bloomington, New York Law School, U. Pennsylvania, and Temple.  A related conference will also be hosted in which participants will discuss methods of transactional law instruction and perhaps whether to create a national organization on the subject.

The evaluative skills competition - and Washington and Lee’s inclusion - is significant because it offers another signal of the transition toward experiential learning among law schools.  Washington and Lee, spurred by now-departing Dean Rodney Smolla, grabbed headlines when it approved 3L curricular reform that eliminates traditional courses in favor of practice-based learning.  Such reforms are currently optional, but will become mandatory at the law school in Fall 2011.

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

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

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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