Law Professors

Which law schools pay tenured profs the most and least? Survey has 68 median salaries

If you are a tenured law professor, the University of California at Hastings may be a good place to teach. UC Hastings paid its tenured law profs the highest reported median salary among 68 schools responding to a survey by the Society of American Law Teachers. UC Hastings paid a…

May 9, 2013 10:39 AM CDT

‘Leftist law professors’ stayed silent on high tuition while enjoying ‘sweet ride’, says law prof

Where is the outrage? It now costs more than $50,000 a year in tuition at many highly regarded law schools. So why aren’t liberal law professors who are concerned about class barriers rising up to oppose the oppressive cost? That is the question being posed by a well-known critic of…

May 2, 2013 2:00 PM CDT

Law prof Chemerinsky offers a syllabus on how the high court can polish its publicity

The U.S. Supreme Court enters the final two months of its term with another menu of blockbuster decisions forthcoming: Same-sex marriage; the future of the Voting Rights Act of 1965; the routine DNA testing by the police of certain criminal suspects; and whether human genes are patentable. The court’s decision…

May 1, 2013 8:30 AM CDT

How to force change at law schools? Little agreement emerges at ABA conference

Should the ABA tighten law-school accreditation standards to force change? Or loosen them to allow for more experimentation? No consensus emerged on that question and several others debated on Wednesday during a conference sponsored by the ABA Task Force on the Future of Legal Education. The National Law Journal covered…

Apr 25, 2013 12:30 PM CDT

U of Texas put ‘golden handcuffs’ on law faculty with help of $213M private foundation

As the state attorney general continues to look into the operations of a private nonprofit foundation that helped raise money for the University of Texas Law School, details are emerging about the “golden handcuffs” that discouraged faculty from going to other institutions. Although there is nothing to indicate that any…

Apr 23, 2013 9:02 PM CDT

John Sutton, lawyer who drafted ABA’s Model Code, has died

John F. Sutton, a one-time dean at the University of Texas Austin School of Law, FBI special agent and drafter of the ABA’s Model Code of Professional Conduct, has died at age 95. Sutton died Friday of complications due to old age, his family told the Austin American-Statesman. Born in…

Apr 22, 2013 1:25 PM CDT

Law prof is under fire for creating fake identity

An Emory law professor who was named one of America’s top 50 rabbis by Newsweek magazine is under fire after a news report said he used a fake identity to join a rival rabbinic group. The Jewish Channel reported that Rabbi Michael Broyde had used the name Hershel Goldwasser to…

Apr 17, 2013 11:10 AM CDT

Law prof opposes ‘ag gag’ laws, suggests slaughterhouse webcams to inform debate

Duke University law professor Jedediah Purdy opposes so-called ag gag laws that make it a crime to record undercover videos of conditions on industrial farms and slaughterhouses. Such laws, proposed or enacted in about a dozen states, are supported by the agricultural industry, Purdy writes in an op-ed for the…

Apr 10, 2013 11:00 AM CDT

Nearly half of 2011 law grads can’t afford a house, law prof concludes

Bleak employment numbers are one way to measure the misery of law graduates. Another way: Determine the percentage of grads who make so little money in relation to their law school debt that home ownership is out of the question. University of St. Thomas law professor Jerry Organ has crunched…

Apr 8, 2013 11:25 AM CDT

It’s not an April Fool’s joke: Illinois bar exam gets harder; which states have hardest tests?

Illinois has decided to make its bar exam more difficult beginning this summer by raising the minimum passing grade by four points. The minimum score will go up by another four points in July 2015. Above the Law first heard of the development when it received a professor’s email to…

Apr 8, 2013 10:39 AM CDT

Trailblazing women made white-collar crime an important field of study

When Sara Sun Beale attended the University of Michigan law school, only about 10 percent of her class was made up of women. After graduation, she was the second woman to work in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Pittsburgh. Now a law professor at Duke University, she is among several…

Apr 4, 2013 11:00 AM CDT

Obit that spurred Twitter outrage sparks punctuation criticism by law prof

A New York Times obituary for rocket scientist Yvonne Brill has sparked outrage on Twitter and a defense by a Harvard law academic fellow who nonetheless takes issue with the newspaper’s punctuation. The Times changed its lede in response to the criticism, according to the New York Times Public Editor’s…

Apr 3, 2013 10:40 AM CDT

Job market for would-be lawyers is even bleaker than it looks, analysis says

The job market for prospective lawyers is even bleaker than the law school employment outcome data released Friday by the ABA’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar would appear to suggest, according to one group’s analysis of the data. Excluding jobs funded by law schools, only 55.1…

Apr 1, 2013 7:14 PM CDT

U of Texas regents OK external probe of law school funding

In a close vote after an unusually contentious meeting Wednesday, the board of regents for the University of Texas System voted 4-3 to approve an outside probe of a law school funding controversy. The controversy centers on some $5.5 million in loans provided by the University of Texas Law School…

Mar 20, 2013 9:16 PM CDT

Adjunct law prof faces theft and harassment charges over campus demonstration

An adjunct law professor at the University of Oregon not only had his teaching duties reassigned after a confrontation with protestors at a campus demonstration on Thursday but was criminally charged. James Olmsted, 58, was cited for second-degree theft and physical harassment, escorted by authorities from the campus and given…

Mar 18, 2013 3:23 PM CDT