Law Schools

U Mass Welcomes 1st Law School Class

Last year, there were only only 73 students in the first-year class at Southern New England School of Law. But now that it has been donated to the University of Massachusetts, applications are snowballing. The U Mass School of Law-Dartmouth has 182 students registered to start in its inaugural class…

Aug 19, 2010 9:10 PM CDT

Arizona, Stanford Law Schools Most Popular for Justice Visits

The law schools at the University of Arizona and Stanford are most popular with U.S. Supreme Court justices. Each school was visited by three justices last year, TaxProf Blog reports, relying on financial disclosure forms. Justices visiting Arizona were Stephen G. Breyer, Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice John G. Roberts…

Aug 19, 2010 12:05 PM CDT

Magazine Names Best Value Law Schools

Looking to attend law school for less than $35,000 a year? You’ve got 60 “best value” schools to choose from, according to a magazine analysis. National Jurist announced the schools selected by its sister publication, preLaw magazine, which divided the schools into top 20 and top 60. Readers will have…

Aug 18, 2010 3:36 PM CDT

Associates Are Worthless? Law Dean Pans Lawyers Who Agree with the Assertion

Clients hoping to lower their bills might be expected to argue that associates are worthless. But the dean of Duke Law School, David Levi, can’t understand why some lawyers agree with the assertion. “It is wrong and surprising for experienced lawyers inside and outside of firms to acquiesce in, even…

Aug 18, 2010 10:30 AM CDT

Angry Law Grads Beef, Blog and Move On; Tuition Makes $15K Total in 80s Seem Paltry

Unemployed law grads are venting their anger on blogs and in newspaper interviews, but some are moving on to permanent jobs or opening their own law firms. One of the angry bloggers, known as Law is 4 Losers, complained online that law school is a “scam,” administrators are greedy “charlatans”…

Aug 16, 2010 1:42 PM CDT

Florida Law School Group Joins Multidisciplinary Oil Spill Task Force

Students are already at work doing research this summer for a new University of Florida Levin College of Law working group looking a the legal and policy issues surrounding the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf. Eight professors and six law students are involved in the working group so…

Aug 12, 2010 10:50 PM CDT

New Fashion Law Institute Sews Up Legal Niche

Fashion is serious business. Just ask Susan Scafidi, who next month will help Fordham University open its Fashion Law Institute, a first in legal academia. Scafidi, who blogs at Counterfeit Chic, has developed a niche focusing on fashion-related legal issues and pushing for intellectual property protections for designers who are…

Aug 12, 2010 6:40 PM CDT

Illinois Pol Says State Could Ax Two Law Schools, Including His Alma Mater

A candidate for Illinois state treasurer has a plan to save money: Eliminate two of the state’s three law schools, including his alma mater. Scott Summers, an estate planning lawyer, says the state’s law schools at Northern Illinois and Southern Illinois universities could be trimmed down or even “mothballed,” the…

Aug 11, 2010 11:56 AM CDT

Duquesne Law School Asserts Bias Plaintiff Was ‘Uncooperative and Combative’

Duquesne University’s law school says in court documents that a former instructor who sued the school did a poor job of overseeing grant funds and “resisted being accountable to anyone in authority.” The answer (PDF) to the complaint filed by Alice Stewart, filed in federal court in Pennsylvania, denies there…

Aug 10, 2010 4:44 PM CDT

Law Prof Sees More Plagiarism, Allows Do-Overs

An adjunct law professor who has taught at three law schools says he has caught a half a dozen students who plagiarized parts of their papers, and the problem seems to be increasing. Donald C. Dowling Jr. tells the ABA Journal that he first caught plagiarism in 2002 and gave…

Aug 10, 2010 3:00 PM CDT

On-Campus Recruiting Picking Up Slightly as Firms Seek to Avoid Generation Gap

Several law schools are reporting small increases in on-campus recruiting after a dismal year for summer associate hiring. Law firms are hiring because they want to avoid a generation gap after widespread associate layoffs, according to Jeffrey Grossman, national managing director with Wells Fargo Wealth Management. He told the National…

Aug 10, 2010 11:37 AM CDT

Lerach Battles to Get Community Service Hours for Teaching Law Class at UC Irvine

William Lerach, the federal felon and infamous securities lawyer who in 2007 pled guilty to conspiracy about an alleged kickback scheme, who completed the confinement portion of his sentence, and now wants to teach a class at the University of California, Irvine School of Law about free-market capitalism to fulfill…

Aug 9, 2010 8:12 PM CDT

‘UnemployedJD’ Says He’s on Hunger Strike to Spur Law School Reform

For just $19.99 you can buy a T-shirt to help support “UnemployedJD” and his cause—greater law school transparency and better career counseling. Blogging at UnemployedJD.com, a law grad identifying himself as Ethan Haines says he has been on a hunger strike since Aug. 5 in an effort to prod law…

Aug 9, 2010 1:58 PM CDT

US News Blames High Law School Tuition Partly on Oversupply of Eager Students

Angry law grads fighting for jobs in a tight job market often fill blog comment sections with demands to clamp down on the number of law schools churning out lawyers. These critics complain of sky-high education debt and no prospect of paying it off. But the limited number of schools…

Aug 6, 2010 11:40 AM CDT

Law School Grades More Important to Career than Elite School, Researchers Say

Law school grades are the important predictor of a lawyer’s career success—in fact they are “decisively more important” than the eliteness of the school attended, according to two law professors who have studied the issue. University of California, Los Angeles law professor Richard Sander and Brooklyn Law School visiting professor…

Aug 3, 2010 11:00 AM CDT