Law School Deans

Get A New Dean, Hire PR Firm, ???, PROFIT!

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The school is dropping in the U.S. News law school rankings. The school didn’t even make the Above the Law rankings. The school’s dean quit on them a few weeks before classes started. The new dean recently sued the people who built the school’s law library because it suffers from “water damage.” A student recently got arrested, accused of making racist, anti-Semitic, and threatening comments.

Does this sound like a law school with… issues? Does this law school need to rethink how it provides legal education?

Probably. But they are not going to do that. Instead, they’re going to get a new marketing campaign.

Come, let’s see how much lipstick they can find for this pig…

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The Worst LL.M. Programs… In The World

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You could make an entire Olbermann-like career just exposing the ridiculousness of legal education… I think.

A couple of days ago, we talked about how law schools are trying to increase revenue by offering “master of laws” degrees of questionable value. These programs are just the latest attempts by law schools to charge people for something without assessing their value in the marketplace for jobs.

The more traditional way for law schools to jack revenue out of students who want “extra” credentials is to offer LL.M. programs. We’ve talked about the low value of these programs before. In fairness, there are a couple of useful LL.M. programs. If you can match the degree with a specific employer who wants it, some programs can help. Note: you’ll want to ask the employer if it’s worth it for you to get the LL.M., not the law school administrator trying to get you to sign up and cut them a check.

But one of the scam bloggers has put together a list of LL.M. programs that you should almost certainly avoid at all costs. That seems more useful than arguing whether NYU or Georgetown has a better tax LL.M. program….

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Wake Forest Lawsuit Follow-Up

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So what got that Wake Forest law student mad enough that he started calling for Wake’s accreditation?

To briefly recap, a Wake law student, Daniel Skinner, filed a defamation suit against Wake and several Wake officials over a letter he received suggesting that he’s quick to accuse folks of fraud and deceit.

Underlying this dispute is Skinner’s claim that Wake failed to meet basic accreditation standards and therefore defrauded the ABA and the federal government.

The details of this claim weren’t clear from the complaint and Skinner’s personal blog. But thankfully some folks have stepped up and provided us with more material Skinner has sent around explaining his beef with Wake Forest. So in the interest of full disclosure, let’s take a look at Skinner’s side of this story…

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Law Student Sues Law School For Implying He’s Litigious

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Law schools have been sued before. Often, we here at ATL, applaud those efforts. It’s a David and Goliath undertaking to bring a school literally filled with lawyers to court.

But this lawsuit has a little less “heroic struggle” to it. Suing because a dean accused you of being too quick to accuse others of acting in bad faith? Maybe he hasn’t taken torts yet, because truth is a defense…

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A Stunning Admissions Admission About LSATs

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LSATs are lower than in previous years. There’s been an arms race with LSATs and GPAs [among top law schools], but I think the shrunken pool has forced admissions officers to think about what we really need in our class, and it’s not just the LSAT. I think we are choosing substance over LSATs.

– Sarah Zearfoss, dean of admissions at the University of Michigan Law School, explaining to The Careerist that with fewer applications, Michigan is starting to consider substance (implying that she doesn’t think the LSAT is substantive).

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How Much Does Your Law Professor Make? University of Texas Edition

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A commenter on our story from last month about salaries for Boalt Hall law professors requested data about faculty compensation at UC Hastings. Ask and you shall receive. As noted over at TaxProf Blog (via the ABA Journal), the median salary for an assistant professor at Hastings is $112,942 and the median salary for a tenured professor at Hastings is $187,221 (not counting summer stipends).

Let’s continue our law professor salary survey. Last week, we looked at the University of Michigan (#9 in the latest U.S. News rankings, and #12 in the inaugural Above the Law rankings). Now we turn to the University of Texas (#15 in U.S. News, and T14 to ATL).

They say that everything is bigger in Texas. Is that true of law school faculty salaries?

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How Much Does Your Law Professor Make? Michigan Law Edition

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We resume our examination of professorial pay at the nation’s top public law schools (which generally have to make salary data public due to their status as state institutions). We’ve previously visited the East Coast, represented by UVA Law, and the West Coast, represented by Boalt Hall (Berkeley).

Now it’s time to head into the heartland. Let’s collect and analyze some compensation information for law professors at another elite institution, the University of Michigan Law School (#9 in the latest U.S. News rankings, and #12 in the recently released Above the Law rankings).

These salary numbers are strong. And remember that dollars go farther in Ann Arbor than they do on the coasts….

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Morning Docket: 05.03.13

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* “It’s a fine line society walks in trying to be fair.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor spoke earlier this week on the perils of racial profiling with respect to the Chechen suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings. Were we fair here? [Associated Press]

* What keeps in-house counsel awake at night — aside from the tremendous piles of money they’re rolling around in? Apparently they’re expecting an “onslaught” of food labeling and data breach class actions. [WSJ Law Blog (sub. req.)]

* Susan Westerberg Prager, known for being the longest-serving dean ever at UCLA School of Law, will take up the deanship at another illustrious institution, Southwestern Law School. [National Law Journal]

* The February results for the New York bar exam are out, and with the highest number of test-takers ever, the pass rate was brutal. We may have more on this later. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]

* Rhode Island just got a little more fabulous. The Ocean State legalized gay marriage yesterday, making it the tenth state to do so, and uniting New England in marriage equality for all. [Bloomberg]

* Back in December, we told you about an alleged “well-dressed” groper — an unemployed lawyer, as it were. Well, now there’s nothing alleged about it, because that guy just pleaded guilty. [New York Post]

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Could Law Schools PLEASE Stop Whining About The Nine Months After Graduation Statistic? You Sound Like Babies.

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New Rule: The next law school person who wants to bitch about the unfairness of the “employed nine months after graduation” metric must offer to make loan payments for all students who don’t have a job at nine months until they find one. If law schools are going to knock up their recent graduates they should at least have to throw in some child support.

Oh, wait, NO law school dean wants to actually be on the hook for student loans from when they come due six months after graduation until… whenever this unnamed point in the future comes when students can expect to have jobs. Given that, I don’t really want to hear about how your school is so freaking “unfairly” treated because CONSUMERS of legal education need to know if they will be employed within shouting distance of when they will start having to pay back their loans.

Fine, you want a compromise? It looks like we’re moving to ten months anyway…

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Law Student Arrested for Anti-Semitic, Racist, Threatening Comments

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Exam time can be stressful. Doesn’t it make you just want to go online and post a series of pictures of mutilated Barbie dolls with captions threatening to butcher your professors?

What?

That’s just one of the allegations against a law school student charged with second-degree harassment and breach of peace. The allegations also include racist emails and harassing professors with bogus complaints…

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