Law Schools

Creative Thinking

Hamline University School of Law in St. Paul, Minn., will soon offer the “pen-ultimate” legal education: a joint degree program that pairs a juris doctorate with a master of fine arts degree in creative writing.

Dec 1, 2007 8:16 PM CST

Regent 2L Sues Over Suspension for Robertson Web Post

A Regent University law student has sued the school for suspending him after he posted an online photo of school president Pat Robertson with his middle finger extended. Robertson was scratching his face with his middle finger in the photo, posted on student Adam Key’s Facebook page, but the gesture…

Nov 30, 2007 7:41 PM CST

Half of Law Schools Surveyed Report Drop in Applicants

Law school applications are dropping, but school admissions officers say their standards are not. Those are the results of a survey of 190 law schools conducted by Kaplan Test Preparation and Admissions. Half of the law schools surveyed reported a decline in applicants, yet 79 percent said their admissions process…

Nov 29, 2007 7:02 PM CST

CUNY Bar Scores Up

Bar exam snafus aside, there’s some good news for students at CUNY School of Law. The Flushing school has posted the program’s highest-ever first-try pass rate on the state bar: 83 percent, the New York Post reports. Even though the pass rate trails the state average, it’s far better than…

Nov 27, 2007 6:05 PM CST

Law Schools Won’t Covet Place on This Ranking

Some people just don’t achieve the successes of their parents. The same can be said of law schools. TaxProf Blog has created a new ranking of law schools that are ranked significantly lower than their parent universities. At the top of the list is Tulsa, whose ranking has the greatest…

Nov 27, 2007 5:12 PM CST

Students Accuse Law School of Mismanagement, Racketeering

Students at a private Kentucky law school have a chance to show their administrators what they’ve learned. They’ve filed a federal suit against the 2-year-old American Justice School of Law, alleging abuse of office, conspiracy and racketeering, the Associated Press reports. Among other things, members of the school’s administration are…

Nov 26, 2007 6:22 PM CST

Columbia Law Prof Knocks Hired-Gun Academics

Columbia Law School professor William Simon contends in an article that law professors are part of a “vast enterprise” that provides legal opinions shielding those who hire them. The article (PDF), already published on the Social Science Research Network website, has been accepted for publication in the Stanford Law Review,…

Nov 26, 2007 5:15 PM CST

New N.Y. Law School in Binghamton?

A possible plan to establish a new public law school in Binghamton, N.Y., is being discussed by two existing universities there. If established, it would be the third public law school in the state. Under preliminary plans being discussed, the law school apparently would be a joint venture of Binghamton…

Nov 21, 2007 1:19 AM CST

Law School Exam ‘MacGate’ Over, Non-PC Students OK

A truce has been declared in a computer war that pitted Macintosh lovers against administrators of American University’s Washington College of Law. Sparking the computer conflict was a mismatch between the law school’s preferred exam software and the beloved Mac computers that some students wanted to use to take their…

Nov 19, 2007 9:27 PM CST

July NY Bar Answers Lost for 47; Officials Estimate Scores

When answers to the New York bar exam written on laptop computers this past summer turned up missing, officials said they expected to be able to get the answers from backup data. But in fact a fraction of those answers apparently could not be retrieved from test-takers’ hard drives, so…

Nov 15, 2007 3:45 PM CST

What Law Students Want (and What U.S. News Misses)

Law students care about factors that aren’t considered or aren’t influential in the U.S. News & World Report law school rankings, according to a survey by The National Jurist. The top factors named by law students were quality of teaching, bar passage rate, placement rate at nine months, practical skills…

Nov 15, 2007 3:29 PM CST

Houston Law Center Tops in Unusual Ranking

Some law schools manage to acquire a better reputation than the universities with which they are associated. TaxProf Blog, written by Paul Caron of the University of Cincinnati College of Law, has pondered that thought. He has created a list of the law schools whose rankings show the greatest positive…

Nov 15, 2007 2:52 PM CST

Student Accused of Shooting Law Book Released

The Indiana law student accused of firing an assault rifle at one of his law books has been released from jail. Jesse Sneed of Indiana University Law School posted bail last week after it was lowered to a $10,000 surety bond and $1,000 cash, the Indiana Daily Student News reports.…

Nov 12, 2007 6:14 PM CST

Billionaire UC Irvine Donor Had Dean Consulting Rights

Billionaire Donald Bren was promised the right to consult on the selection of a dean for UC Irvine’s new law school in exchange for his $20 million donation. Bren also specified how big the “Donald Bren School of Law” signs should be displayed (they must be at least twice the…

Nov 12, 2007 1:26 PM CST

Threats—and Response—Irk Law Students at U of Washington

Graffiti and telephone threats have prompted the University of Washington to post a full-time guard at the William H. Gates law school building and require students and faculty to show Husky student identification to enter. But in the wake of the student shooting massacre at Virginia Tech earlier this year,…

Nov 7, 2007 12:16 AM CST