Law Schools

This law school had a 30% bar pass rate; do lower standards presage troubled times for law grads?

Updated: The Arizona Summit Law School has posted a dismal bar passage rate despite its offer of $5,000 to poorly performing students who delay taking the bar exam. Only 30.6 percent of first-time test takers from the law school passed the July 2015 bar exam, report Above the Law and…

Oct 26, 2015 9:03 AM CDT

At top law schools, law profs with PhDs and little legal experience become more common

The nation’s top law schools are increasingly hiring professors with both JDs and PhDs, according to a new study. About 29 percent of the tenure-track faculties at the nation’s 26 top-ranked law schools hold JDs and PhDs, according to the research by University of California at Los Angeles law professor…

Oct 23, 2015 6:00 AM CDT

Northwestern University School of Law announces $100M gift and new name

What does $100 million get you these days? How about the naming rights to a major law school in the United States? Northwestern University School of Law announced Thursday that wealthy hotel scion and venture capitalist J.B. Pritzker and his wife, M.K. Pritzker, will donate $100 million to the school,…

Oct 22, 2015 2:47 PM CDT

Cooley law grad who wanted to be a lawyer since 14 is a prosecutor at 20

A Cooley law grad who wanted to be a lawyer since she was 14 years old managed to achieve her goal only six years later. Robyn Crawford is only 20 years old and an assistant state attorney in Florida’s Fifth Judicial Circuit, the Daily Business Review (sub. req.) reports. Crawford…

Oct 16, 2015 5:45 AM CDT

New project will hire and train lawyers to serve moderate-means New Yorkers

A start-up designed to train lawyers to provide needed legal services to people of modest means is taking applications from recent law grads who are licensed in New York. The new venture, called the Court Square Law Project, is the result of a partnership between 19 BigLaw firms, the CUNY…

Oct 15, 2015 8:59 AM CDT

Does law school’s ‘critical mass’ policy amount to segregation? Dean says it combats stereotypes

University of California at Berkeley’s law dean is explaining his school’s “critical mass” policy that left some of its first-year sections without any black students. Berkeley Law Dean Sujit Choudhry sent an email to the law school community explaining that the policy is intended to create a more positive experience…

Oct 13, 2015 9:32 AM CDT

Judge dismisses class action suit against Florida Coastal School of Law

A judge has dismissed a class action suit against a Florida law school whose alumni claimed they were misled about their job prospects after graduation. U.S. District Judge Brian J. Davis of Jacksonville held that the plaintiffs did not have a case against Florida Coastal School of Law under the…

Oct 7, 2015 5:20 PM CDT

Northwestern to end accelerated JD program

Northwestern University School of Law is pulling the plug on its accelerated JD program. The decision was announced in a news release and email on Friday to the law school community from Dean Daniel B. Rodriguez, Above the Law reports. In the email, Rodriguez acknowledged that the program has not…

Oct 7, 2015 12:25 PM CDT

University of Nebraska tops list of best value law schools

The University of Nebraska College of Law has claimed the No. 1 spot on a list of the nation’s best value law schools. The National Jurist explains why the college is at the top of its list. The average student debt of University of Nebraska law students is $62,985 and…

Oct 7, 2015 8:20 AM CDT

Judge tosses ADA suit against BigLaw firms, cites plaintiff’s ‘outright speculation’

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit (PDF) contending that BigLaw firms’ reliance on law school rankings in hiring discriminated against the disabled. U.S. District Judge Gerald Pappert of Philadelphia tossed the suit by William Joseph Hanrahan in an Oct. 2 decision, the Legal Intelligencer reports. The decision is a…

Oct 6, 2015 9:43 AM CDT

LegalForce is looking for a few good apprentices

Raj Abhyanker's Trademarkia search engine has become a popular spot for inventors and entrepreneurs to learn whether their ideas have already been trademarked. Abhyanker estimates that Trademarkia draws 2 million visitors a month, 60,000 visitors a day or "one person every couple of seconds."

Oct 1, 2015 7:40 AM CDT

Which states had the greatest growth in lawyer population?

Is Texas’ 28 percent growth in lawyer population over the last decade all that unusual? Stories in the Wall Street Journal Law Blog and the Dallas Morning News reported on the number, which represents the growth in the active lawyer population from 2004 to 2014. That compares to a 20…

Sep 29, 2015 7:47 AM CDT

Law prof sues university over concealed-carry ban

An associate law professor has filed suit against the University of Missouri, contending that its ban on having firearms on campus contradicts a new state constitutional provision. Royce de R. Barondes, who teaches a class on firearms law, seeks a court order declaring that the ban is unconstitutional under an…

Sep 28, 2015 1:20 PM CDT

Will dropping bar passage rates create too few lawyers for available jobs? Experts assess the stats

Should the ABA create its own bar exam? Or should the exam be dropped altogether for top law graduates? Those are some of the ideas suggested by experts weighing in on the continued drop in scores for law graduates taking the multistate portion of the bar exam. Writing at the…

Sep 24, 2015 11:20 AM CDT

Jonathan Zittrain: Fighting ‘link rot’ in court opinions and legal scholarship

Fighting ‘link rot’ in court opinions and legal scholarship

Sep 24, 2015 9:00 AM CDT