American Bar Association / ABA

The latest proposal to impose bar passage standards on law schools is surprisingly tough.

What types of new changes will the ABA be making to do this?

If you’re looking for inspiration, camaraderie and practical practice information, you could do a lot worse than attending next week’s ABA TechShow in Chicago.

When a school cannot figure out how to maintain accreditation under such reasonable rules, it should close.

* “I’ve taught immigration law literally to 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds.” Immigration Judge Jack H. Weil seems to think that children facing deportation don’t need court-appointed attorneys because they’re perfectly capable of representing themselves. We’ll have more on this later. [Washington Post]

* “[T]his will be the first time a law school will be on trial to defend its public employment figures.” It’s taken five years, but Anna Alaburda will finally get to face off in court against Thomas Jefferson School of Law. Soon we’ll find out if the word “allegedly” can stop being used as a prefix for the school’s allegedly deceptive job statistics. [DealBook / New York Times]

* If President Obama nominates Judge Jane Kelly of the Eighth Circuit for a seat on SCOTUS, then Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) of the Senate Judiciary Committee could be in a pickle. Would Kelly, a longtime Iowa public defender, be refused a hearing even though Grassley supported her when she was appointed in 2013? [Des Moines Register]

* The Alabama Supreme Court begrudgingly dismissed suits filed by conservative groups seeking a ruling declaring that the state’s anti-gay marriage laws were still in effect, despite the SCOTUS decision in Obergefell. In a concurrence at odds with reality, Chief Justice Roy Moore held fast to his belief that the state’s law was still intact. [AL.com]

* As we mentioned previously, the American Bar Association will vote on a change to its bar passage rate rules for law schools. Schools notorious for their bar passage problems better hold onto their hats if this proposal is passed, because their accreditation may quickly turn out to be like their graduates’ job prospects: nonexistent. [WSJ Law Blog]

Dozens of law schools around the country have made unethical admissions choices in the face of financial pressure, but will any pay the price?

* Riding high after his victory in New Hampshire, Donald Trump settled his $500 million lawsuit against Univision for the network dropping his beauty pageants. Ay dios mio, this must be some sort of a YUGE GRANDE ploy to win the Hispanic vote. [USA Today]

* Dickstein Shapiro lawyers must be feeling pretty good about themselves right now. Their mass lateral move to Blank Rome isn’t a merger, it’s an “asset acquisition.” You see that? You’re all “assets”! Remember that next time a partner makes you cry. [Big Law Business / Bloomberg]

* The ABA is considering toughening bar passage requirements for law school accreditation. Under the plan, schools would have to prove that 75 percent of graduates who took an exam within two years of graduation passed. Good luck! [ABA Journal]

* Uh-oh! Are partners at large law firms getting screwed? Biglaw firms are asking for bigger capital contributions (30-35 percent of earnings on average), and holding on to that money for longer periods of time when those partners leave. [Am Law Daily]

* Minnesota Law has been hit pretty hard by the law school crisis, with losses expected to hit $16.1 million by 2018. When the school’s soon-to-be ex-Dean first started in 2008, “everything was good,” but now, it’s a huge sh*tshow. [Twin Cities Pioneer Press]

D.C. is the 20th jurisdiction to adopt the UBE.

* That hashtag you’re using might just be a registered trademark, but that doesn’t mean it should be. [Buzzfeed]

* Yale Law students filed a class action representing people held in quarantine for 21 days amid fear of the Ebola virus. [Hartford Courant]

* The Sixth Circuit holds 10 weeks of constant video surveillance from a public road does not constitute a search under the Fourth Amendment. You know if you just assume you are always being watched, none of this really bothers you. [Volokh Conspiracy]

* Understanding the rapid fire world of SnapChat is essential if you don’t want to get left behind in the dustbin of history. [Associate’s Mind]

* Tackling the thorny issue of access to justice, in law school and after. [Reboot Your Law Practice]

* The ABA House of Delegates joins the call for cameras in the Supreme Court. What do they have against puppies? [Fix the Court]

* When we say, “life without parole,” what do we really mean? [The New Yorker]

* Remember Kent and Jill Easter, the married lawyers who planted bags of weed and pills in the car of Kelli Peters, a PTA volunteer at their son’s school? Kent’s law license was suspended, Jill was disbarred, they’re now divorced, and to top it all off, a jury recently awarded Peters $5.7M in her case against them. [Orange County Register]

* The horror! The horror! Not only did Marco Rubio get his ass handed to him during this weekend’s Republican debate, but it turns out he’s accused of having been a law firm lobbyist for Florida firms Becker & Poliakoff and Broad and Cassel. [BuzzFeed News]

* A proposed ABA resolution that local bar groups think has to do with non-lawyer ownership of law firms — they’re not entirely sure, of course — is making the hair stand up on the back of attorneys’ necks. What could possibly go wrong? [WSJ Law Blog]

* Career alternatives for attorneys law school deans: David Yellen, dean of Loyola Law – Chicago for more than a decade (and former ATL columnist), will be leaving the law school game to assume the presidency at Marist College. [Poughkeepsie Journal]

* Applications may be down at Yale Law School when compared to prior years, but administrators aren’t exactly concerned about it. Come on, get real: It’s Yale, and the law school “still [has] more qualified applicants than [it] can accept.” [Yale Daily News]

* According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the legal profession celebrated the New Year by shedding 1,400 jobs. Don’t worry, 2016 graduates, there’s still a chance the job market could improve, but we’ll have to wait it out. [Big Law Business / Bloomberg BNA]

* Miriam Cedarbaum, longtime federal judge of the S.D.N.Y., RIP. [New York Times]

The ABA House of Delegates should encourage state bar examiners to join the 21st century by adopting the Uniform Bar Exam.

* Republican presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz has pledged to “spend whatever political capital is necessary” to create the most conservative Supreme Court in our country’s history. Uh-oh! Voters better elect him, or else we’ll be “one justice away from … unlimited abortion on demand.” [ThinkProgress]

* A shakeup at the top? More than 20 Schiff Hardin partners — including the firm’s former managing partner, practice group leaders, and an executive committee member — are leaving to start their own firm thanks to an apparent leadership dispute. [Big Law Business / Bloomberg]

* On the seventh anniversary of his signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, President Obama took action to address the gender pay gap. Companies with 100 employees or more must now include salary info on their annual EEO reports. [New York Times]

* Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s legal team filed the first of what’s sure to be many appeals: They’ve asked the First Circuit to overturn his conviction and death sentence, as well as an order that he pay more than $101M to his victims. [Reuters]

* For some reason, people are highly opposed to the ABA’s proposal to lift its ban on law students receiving pay for their credit-bearing externship positions. Yes, let’s continue to make indebted students pay for their experiential learning opportunities. [ABA Journal]

Sooner or later -- probably sooner -- this is an issue that this law school will have to come to grips with.

* “Every school has had to make choices, even at the top. This has been upheaval for everyone.” With a significant drop in applicants, the crisis in legal education has reached the members of the T14, the very best law schools in the country. [Big Law Business / Bloomberg BNA] * Another lawyer has filed […]

TJSL might have acted egregiously, but the ABA enables them.

It’s that time of year again. No, not Christmas or your holiday of choice. December 15th is the day that law schools must produce their ABA 509 Required Disclosures!

Law schools soon won’t be able to hide from a clear and enforceable bar pass standard.

* My, but how quickly things change! Manhattan prosecutors might not be retrying the D&L criminal case after all. Instead, they’ve offered all of the remaining defendants plea deals. Dewey know if any of the former execs of this failed firm will take a deal? [WSJ Law Blog]

* In case you’re wondering what’s going to happen to Zachary Warren after all of this, it looks like Cyrus Vance found it in the goodness of his heart to offer the would-be Biglaw associate a plea deal: he’ll have to plead guilty to a misdemeanor to get 200 hours of community service. [DealBook / New York Times]

* Law students, get ready to lobby even harder for this, because a proposal to do away with the American Bar Association’s ban on law students receiving academic credit for paid externships is moving forward to a notice and comment period. [ABA Journal]

* If you’re preparing for a law school interview, you should stop freaking out about it and focus on the things that matter — like showing off your social skills to prove you’ll be employable in some way after graduation. [Law Admissions Lowdown / U.S. News]

* After having a culpable homicide conviction for which he already served time overturned and turned into a murder conviction instead, Paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius was granted $688 bail since he’s not considered a “flight risk.” [NBC News]

If the ABA waits too long to act, we will end up with yet another group of students in 2016 being set up to fail.

* Seton Hall Law Professor Michael Simkovic — he of the million-dollar law degree study — is back with a vengeance. Pay no attention to that law school scam op-ed in the New York Times; very few law school graduates are actually defaulting on their crushing loan debt. [ABA Journal]

* The U.S. Senate is finally looking into what’s going on with predatory pharmaceutical pricing at companies like Valeant Pharmaceuticals and Turing Pharmaceuticals, both of which have recently hiked up the price on lifesaving drugs to an absurdly exorbitant degree. [Reuters]

* Judge Arnold Ogden Jones II, a North Carolina state court jurist, has been accused of attempting to bribe an FBI agent with “a couple of cases of beer” in exchange for information. It better have been some damn good beer, Your Honor. [News & Observer]

* Complaints about tuition be damned, because law schools are still churning out pricey LL.M. programs like its their job. Fordham Law’s compliance program may be useful for some, but it comes with a $53,000 price tag. [Big Law Business / Bloomberg BNA]

* Law schools have been in a “death spiral” since applications started to drop along with admissions standards and student debt started to increase exponentially, but some will survive if the ABA steps in and polices accreditation and gainful employment. [Forbes]