Law School Deans

Non-Sequiturs: 04.29.13

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* The saddest thing about prisons getting rated on Yelp is owning the bar down the street with fewer stars. [Simple Justice]

* Sending “LOL totes glty” is a bad idea. [IT-Lex]

* The chief of the Brooklyn DA’s gang bureau probably should have spent more time with the civil rights bureau. [NY Post]

* People don’t really pay attention to the U.S. News Best Intellectual Property Program rankings — though it’d help if they did. [Science to Law]

* UNLV’s Nancy Rapoport thinks law schools are no better than Enron. That sounds about right. [TaxProf Blog]

* When it comes to the Boston bombings, Logan Beirne answers, “What would George Washington do?” [Reuters]

* Tenure has put a crimp in the ability of law schools to excel in the ranking system that considers publication. [Ramblings on Appeal]

* Kickstarter plug: A progressive Yale student took a year off to make a documentary about a conservative activist group, the Tennessee 9-12 Project, to show civility and respect. [Kickstarter]

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How Much Does Your Law Professor Make? Berkeley Law Edition

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Earlier this week, we took a look at faculty salaries at UVA Law School. They’re freely available online because UVA is a public law school. The UVA student newspaper obtained the records through FOIA and then posted them on the web. (If you have a problem with such information being made public, sorry. The best I can do is channel Justice Scalia and tell you: “Amend the statute.” )

We don’t want to pick on UVA, so we’re going to take a look at law professor compensation at a few state law schools. Going down the latest U.S. News rankings, we find ourselves at the ninth-best law school in the nation, Berkeley Law aka Boalt Hall.

The word “Berkeley” conjures up images of long-haired hippies smoking copious amounts of marijuana. But in light of their lush salaries, Berkeley law professors could roll joints using hundred-dollar bills….

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How Much Does Your Law Professor Make? UVA Law Edition

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UVA Law School

We write so many positive things about UVA Law School that we could be the school’s publicists. We gave UVA top honors in our ranking of southern law schools based on reader responses to the ATL Insider Survey. We praised UVA’s innovative public service fellowships for recent graduates. We pointed out that UVA is a top law school for government and public service jobs and for prestigious judicial clerkships, especially Supreme Court clerkships.

(UVA also excels when it comes to producing funny Law Revue videos. They won once in the past and have been in the finals several times. Don’t be shocked if they make an appearance again in this year’s contest, whose finalists we’ll be announcing on Wednesday.)

What are the secrets to UVA’s success as a law school? For one thing, they have an amazing faculty, full of leading scholars and inspiring teachers.

But such talent doesn’t come cheap. Let’s learn more about law professors’ salaries at UVA….

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Morning Docket: 04.23.13

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SLU Law’s recent deanship drama?

* The Department of Justice announced federal charges against suspected Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev yesterday, leaving the decision of whether the death penalty will be sought in Eric Holder’s hands. [National Law Journal]

* Andrew Ceresney, most recently of Debevoise, was appointed to run the SEC’s enforcement bureau alongside George Canellos, an agency veteran. Maybe they’ll both be able to boost morale. [DealBook / New York Times]

* “[T]he best way to find Albany on a map is to look for the intersection of greed and ambition.” Preet Bharara is mad as hell about corruption, and he’s not going to take it anymore. [New York Law Journal]

* If Anthony Weiner decides to join the New York City mayoral race, partners from Am Law 200 firms will be responsible for his second coming thanks to their pre-wiener scandal funding. [Am Law Daily]

* “It’s done. Turn the page. The distraction is over.” The new dean of St. Louis University’s law school would like to move forward from the “slow-motion train wreck” of years past. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch]

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Morning Docket: 04.12.13

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* Earlier this week, after some political wrangling, Senator Chuck Grassley proposed the Court Efficiency Act in the hope of paring down the D.C. Circuit. But really, come on, what are the odds of that happening… again? [National Law Journal]

* Biglaw partners, rejoice, for it seems that your legal secretaries will be unable to sue you for defamation over emails written to your wives. Spousal privilege, baby! (N.B. This doesn’t apply to your girlfriends.) [New York Law Journal]

* Which law schools placed the highest percentage of grads in federal clerkships? This info comes from the rankings guru himself. We may have more on this later. [Morse Code / U.S. News & World Report]

* The Rutgers basketball scandal claimed another scalp yesterday after the school’s former general counsel resigned. Rutgers Law dean John Farmer will be stepping in for a brief assist. [Star-Ledger]

* So, do you remember that environmental report Steven Donziger allegedly had made up in the Chevron case? Yeah, the consulting firm just disavowed all of the evidence in the report. Oops! [Businessweek]

* Say so long to your retirement money, sweetie: Junie Hoang, the actress who sued IMDb for revealing the fact that she was over the hill, received a less than favorable jury verdict. [Houston Chronicle]

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Prep the White Smoke! NYU School of Law Has a New Dean

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The thousands of NYU faithful crowding Washington Square park last night unleashed a torrent of cheers upon seeing plumes of white smoke arising from Furman Hall, signaling the selection of a new dean for the School of Law.

The hiring comes after former Dean Ricky Revesz announced that he was stepping down from the post he held for the last 11 years (though Revesz will remain on faculty at NYU, sort of a Dean Emeritus).

So let’s meet the new dean…

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Morning Docket: 04.05.13

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Kamala Harris

* If President Obama could send a love note to California Attorney General Kamala Harris, it’d probably say something like this: “Girl, you look good. Won’t you back that ass up?” [ABC News]

* The fun things you learn during a Supreme Court justice’s book tour: apparently Sandra Day O’Connor dated William Rehnquist when they were at school together at Stanford Law. [Legal Times]

* When it comes to law firms, size really does matter. Quite a few midsize firms had the urge to merge in the first quarter of 2013, according to the latest Altman Weil survey. [Am Law Daily]

* In case you haven’t heard the news by now, NYU Law School has a new dean, and he was poached fresh from Columbia. The bonus here is that he’s actually pretty cute. We’ll have more on this story later today. [NYU Law News]

* Law faculties may be a tad too liberal, say some at Harvard Law School, which is basically a bastion of leftie law professors. Cut to Ted Cruz muttering about Commies under his breath. [USA Today]

* Here’s an obvious protip that may not be obvious to 0Ls: if you’re going to ask for a recommendation letter, you should probably make sure that it’s going to be a positive one. [U.S. News & World Report]

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Morning Docket: 04.02.13

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Kaye Scholer welcomes you to Flori-duh!

* It looks like it’s time for yet another rousing game of Biglaw musical chairs. This time, 11 of Bingham McCutchen’s securities enforcement partners are hightailing it over to Sidley Austin en masse. [DealBook / New York Times]

* This week in on-shore outsourcing: there may be a job waiting for you at Kaye Scholer’s new operations center (so new we bet you didn’t know about it), so hurry up and apply, because the interviews are soon. [Tallahassee Democrat]

* “We’re trained in the law and persuasion, not firearms.” But maybe you should be? After the targeted killing of attorneys in Texas, prosecutors are now on high alert. [New York Times]

* When looking at the current law school model, Paul Caron of TaxProf Blog urges law deans to take advice from Jimmy McMillan because “law school tuition is simply too damn high.” [Businessweek]

* Change our admissions practices amid the worst legal economy we’ve seen in decades? “Ain’t nobody got time for that,” scoffed Sarah Zearfoss, director of admissions at Michigan Law. [AnnArbor.com]

* Drexel Law will accept applications for its two-year law degree program in May 2014. The higher-ups at the ABA are scheduled to laugh their asses off on or about the same date. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

* “[F]or James Eagan Holmes, justice is death.” In a move that shocked absolutely no one, the prosecution in the Aurora, Colorado movie theater massacre case is seeking the death penalty. [CNN]

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Non-Sequiturs: 03.22.13

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* So, after being shut down for more than two years, Caitlin Halligan asked President Obama to withdraw her nomination to the D.C. Circuit. This is how democracy works in our country, folks, and it’s pretty sad. [People For the American Way; Post Politics / Washington Post]

* In America, we’re trying to get official recognition for gay marriage. In Scotland, they’re trying to get official recognition for weddings performed by Jedi Knights. Please, by all means, proceed to stroke each other’s lightsabers over this exciting nerd news. [Volokh Conspiracy]

* Oh my god, this is something I’m definitely going to have to sit down and read, it looks so salacious and — oh. *eyeroll* This just in from the subtitle letdown department…. [Overlawyered]

* A political consultant in Nebraska apparently got himself fired because he called Sen. Danielle Conrad a C-U-Next-Tuesday on his Facebook page. That was way harsh, Tai. [Jezebel]

* Click here to listen to Professor Brian Tamanaha and Dean Lawrence Mitchell talk about rethinking the future of legal education. Tamanaha thinks the tuition is too damn high, whereas Dean Mitchell simply thinks that “life is expensive.” Not even kidding, he really said that. [Associate's Mind]

* At Target, you can definitely expect more and pay less, but that’s probably because your money’s allegedly being stolen out of the cash register. [Legal Juice]

* And just because I love just about everything that Lindsay Lohan does because she’s the hottest of all messes, here’s a timeline of her mug shots ranked in order of her sex appeal. I love that we live in a world where such a thing actually exists! [Gawker]

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Some Students Want Their Deans Fired After Poor Showing In The U.S. News Rankings (And One Head That’s Already Rolled)

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One reason law schools care about the U.S. News law school rankings so much is because prospective law students care about the U.S. News law school rankings. The other reason is that people get fired when their schools drop too long and too far in the rankings.

Every year, deans and assistant deans find themselves “pushed out” of a job thanks to the U.S. News rankings. Law schools and university presidents rarely say outright that changes are being made in response to the magazine, but let’s just say that Kenneth Randall, dean of the rising Alabama Law School, is probably very safe in his job for another year.

This year, the rankings seem to have already claimed their first assistant dean casualty. But what’s fun this time around is that students at two law schools have started petitions demanding that their deans get canned for poor performance in U.S. News.

It’s entirely possible that U.S. News is getting more powerful in a market of declining law school applications….

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