CATEGORY - LAW SCHOOL NEWS

March 16, 2010

Northwestern Law Creates Accelerated LL.M. Program

Northwestern University School of Law announced on Monday that it is creating a streamlined LL.M. program that can be completed in 12 weeks.

Detailed in a press release, the accelerated LL.M., which is slated to begin in May 2011, will be offered to graduates of non-U.S. law schools working in their home countries.  Rather than spending a year on the Northwestern campus, these visiting students can complete the proposed LL.M. in one intensive summer of two six-week sessions or over two summers.

The focus of the 20-credit program will be business law, especially transnational legal issues.  Participating students will take a set course load — which differs from the yearlong LL.M. — on subjects including contracts, commercial sales, business associations, intellectual property, taxation and litigation.  According to Northwestern Law’s associate dean for executive degree programs, Mayer Freed, these classes will meet five days a week, for up to five hours a day.

The introduction of the accelerated LL.M. recalls the law school’s accelerated J.D. program, which we discussed in June of last year.  At the time, it was the first top-tier school to commence with a two-year J.D. and just the third American law school overall.

Also last year, in December, we relayed a report from the Financial Times that examined the increasing popularity of the LL.M. degree, including a 25 percent rise in applications to LL.M. degrees at Northwestern in 2009.

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# posted by admin @ 12:00 pm in LL.M., Law School News, School: Northwestern

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 10, 2010

Citing Leadership Vacancy, USC Law Postpones Tax LL.M. Launch

In early December, we offered a few updates from the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, as the institution introduced a new vision statement and an entertainment law program, a law and business program, and a graduate tax LL.M.

Now, however, it has been revealed that the law school has pushed back its launch of the tax LL.M. from Fall 2010 to Fall 2011.  Commenting to TaxProf Blog on Thursday, Gould Dean Robert Rasmussen cited an inability to secure proper leadership for the program.

“We view having the right leadership as essential to launching the program, and we are still in the process of finding our founding director,” Rasmussen said.  “We simply will not offer any program that does not meet USC’s standards for excellence.”

In December, we reported that the tax LL.M. would be led by existing faculty, but the delayed start and the dean’s comments seem to point to an external search.

The program had been accepting applications since October.  An email from a Gould 3L to TaxProf indicated that the law school is refunding the $75 application fee.

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# posted by admin @ 12:00 pm in LL.M., Law School News, School: USC / Gould

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

Columbia Law Partners with Oxford for Law and Finance Program

Columbia Law School last week announced that it has partnered with England’s University of Oxford for the latest iteration of its Global Alliance Program.  The partnership will allow Columbia 3Ls to study law and finance at the British school.

While noting Columbia Law’s existing Global Alliance partnerships with other European institutions, Brian Gibson, the assistant dean for comparative and international programs, said in a press release, “We’re building strength on strength” (with the Oxford enterprise).

The alliance is slated to begin in 2011 with five 3L openings available each year.  According to the release, participants will be selected based on their interest level, their grasp of quantitative business law concepts, and their completion of four prerequisite courses.  The selected law students will take courses through Oxford’s Masters in Law and Finance curriculum and then have the opportunity to work London-based externships.

The alliance also extends to faculty, as a professorship exchange commences this spring when Columbia’s Professor Jeffrey Gordon will co-teach two courses at Oxford.

For more information on Columbia Law and its global legal reach, please see the Clear Admit Columbia Law School Guide.

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

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

March 2, 2010

Cornell Law Begins Post-Grad Fellowships for Study of Disadvantaged

By virtue of a multimillion dollar gift, Cornell University announced last week that it is creating three postgraduate fellowships, of which one or two, on a rotating basis, will be awarded to a Cornell Law School graduate interested in public interest law.

Operating on a two-year timetable, the Frank H.T. Rhodes Public Interest Law Fellowships will be administered by the school’s dean and will be awarded to graduates working for nonprofit and human rights organizations.  The $5 million funding for the fellowships comes from The Atlantic Philanthropies, a group focused on aiding “disadvantaged and vulnerable people.”  Rhodes was an Atlantic board member after serving as the university’s president for nearly two decades.

“This gift comes at a crucial time,” said Karen Comstack, the law school’s assistant dean for public service, “as the current recession has forced organizations to cut funding for legal services to those who can least afford to lose them.”  Comstack said fellowship recipients will gain experience while delivering legal services to “the poor, the elderly, the homeless and those deprived of their civil rights.”

The announcement follows our blog post Monday, in which Cornell Law was among four programs singled out by National Jurist for its multifaceted support of public interest law.

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# posted by admin @ 12:00 pm in Law School News, Public Interest Career Resources, School: Cornell

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