Law Schools, Politics

How Not To Make An Energy Lawyer: Law Students Object To The Politicization Of Their Studies

School wants more Big Oil lawyers, but students protest.

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On Friday, we reported that a law dean resigned from his post because the university was not providing the law school enough resources. We mentioned that there were come rumblings that the university president was more concerned with making the law school a bastion for fringe political theories instead of simply providing a quality legal education.

Our tipsters are worried that their law school curriculum will be brought to them by “Big Oil.” And now students have signed a petition asking for input on the search for a new dean…

Tipsters from the University of Wyoming College of Law believe that the new president of the university is in the pocket of oil companies. Or at the very least, they think that the president wants the law school to be a finishing school for future oil lawyers of America:

Our New Prez, President [Robert] Sternberg from OSU, and his “task force,” which included NO FACULTY from the Law School but instead Big Oil UW Trustees and legislators, reviewed the Law School’s curriculum to see how many courses were “Big Oil-Friendly.” He was displeased with the results and made it known to the Dean that things needed to change. Easton resigned as did the Career Services Coordinator. More bloodletting is expected.

It’s very bad. Sternberg took the School of Environmental and Natural Resources out of the university organizational structure and placed it directly beneath his office. This is the main pipeline where oil money flows into the university. Several administrators resigned in protest. Sternberg made it clear that he couldn’t care less if his move violated UniRegs.

At this point, five out of the seven deans of UW Colleges are gone.

Tread lightly there, Wyoming Law. I’m pretty sure Harvard Law has cornered the market on soulless law drones happy to help oil companies rape the Earth.

Seriously though, I don’t even know what a “Big Oil-Friendly” law courses would look like.

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In any event, there’s now a petition from Wyoming Law students:

Following Dean Easton’s resignation, a news story posted on the University of Wyoming website claimed, “Sternberg this week began soliciting nominations for an advisory task force he plans to create to provide input on the College of Law.” President Sternberg, you extol the virtues of ethics and proffer an educational mission of educating “ethical leaders who will make the world a better place to live.” Contrary to your position on ethical leadership, no public mention of the clandestine “task force” was ever made to the students at the College of Law prior to Dean Easton’s resignation. The best implementation of an ethical leadership mission is by example. In that, you have failed.

In Dean Easton’s resignation letter, he wrote, “It is crucial for the College of Law to continue to offer a comprehensive legal education, not an education that is overly focused on one particular area of law.” While the undersigned students have received no notification of the purposes of the “task force,” we can read between the lines. The same news story referenced above quotes you as saying, “I will ask the task force to look at how we serve the state with regard to energy, natural resources, water and environmental law, but its work will not be limited to those areas.” The message is clear: The President of the University of Wyoming has decided the College of Law will focus more on energy and natural resources law.

Had you consulted with the students at the College of Law, you would have learned that this plan is misguided. Many energy and natural resources courses are already offered. In fact, energy and natural resources make up one fourth of the courses at the College of Law. Additionally, energy and natural resources law is not an exclusive field within the law, but rather a conglomeration of contract, property, business, and administrative law. All of these areas are covered extensively in the course offerings at the College of Law. While energy and natural resources focused courses are important for students wishing to pursue careers in those fields, they are not the sole focus or interest of all, or even most, students at the College of Law. For example, there are over forty students enrolled in both Employment Law and Criminal Procedure this semester. In Oil & Gas, there are only nine.

You can read the full petition on the next page.

What’s funny here isn’t just that the university wants the law school to focus on one, narrow area of law, it’s that they clearly don’t even really know how to achieve their pro-corporate goals. Looking at the “number of courses” in one area versus another is such a stupid — and clearly non-lawyerly — way of going about it. Not that I want to help this guy carry the water for Big Oil (pun intended), but Jesus, you don’t have to take “Oil & Gas” in order to be turned into an energy lawyer.

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I know it doesn’t sound “sexy” to a non-lawyer, but teaching Civil Procedure from the standpoint of helping big organizations crush smaller parties with a flurry of motion practice will really get you half of the way there. Get a torts professor who doesn’t believe in mass torts. Get an administrative law professor who is an expert at beating back rule-making. Teach patent lawyers how to distinguish between complicated “extraction” processes.

Oh, and here’s a thought, maybe you could provide jobs in Oil & Gas for your graduates. I bet your course offerings in that field would get really popular, really quickly, if your students saw that there was money in taking those courses.

It’s not hard to subversively infect the minds of impressionable law students. Liberals have been doing it for years. Just don’t be stupid about it. Nobody wants to work for “Big Oil.” You have to turn them… like a Skywalker.

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