Case Western Reserve University School of Law

It’s That Time Of Year When Law Professors Show Themselves To Be Lazy, Incompetent, Or Both

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‘If they hadn’t done what I told them not to do, they’d be alive.’

It’s final exams time, which means it’s time to start our semi-annual series on law professors who are too busy to write novel exams for the students who pay their exorbitant salaries.

I really don’t understand how this happens every semester. You know how in children’s stories there’s often a key plot point that revolves around the child/hero being specifically told not to touch something or else horrible things will happen to them, but they touch it anyway because they’re just kids, but the “horrible thing” doesn’t kill them? That’s what this feels like.

Every semester we write stories about how one professor’s laziness in question usage screws up entire transcripts, and yet every next semester it happens again. Either writing exams is one of the hardest thing to do on the planet or there are way too many law professors who don’t care one iota about the careers of their charges.

I don’t know about you, but I’m leaning towards the latter….

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Open Thread: 2014 U.S. News Law School Rankings (53 – 68)

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Welcome back to our series of open threads on the latest batch of U.S. News law school rankings. Last time, readers weighed in on the law schools that made up the bottom third of the traditional first tier. Alas, thanks to the way employment statistics are now weighed in the U.S. News methodology, some law schools were knocked off of their prestigious pedestals, and law students are calling for their deans’ heads now that they’ve descended downwards into previously uncharted territory: the traditional second tier.

Today, we’ll take a look at those law schools, as well as their new rankings rivals — the schools that have traditionally been known to dwell in this part of the U.S. News list. You are about to enter another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. Your next stop, the Second Tier Zone….

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Caption Contest Winner: The Man, The Myth, The Legend, The Law Dean

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Last week, we asked readers to submit possible captions for this photo:

On Monday, you voted on the finalists, and now it’s time to announce the winner of our caption contest….

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Caption Contest Finalists: The Man, The Myth, The Legend, The Law Dean

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Last week, we asked readers to submit possible captions for this photo:

Let’s have a look at what our readers came up with, and then vote on the finalists….

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Caption Contest: The Man, The Myth, The Legend, The Law Dean

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Contrary to popular belief on the blogs, law school is a good investment. That’s right: the media’s “hysteria” over the value proposition of law school has caused many of the best and brightest students in our country to “irrationally” skip out on a degree that could allow them to reap vast monetary rewards. In fact, it’s really quite obvious that the critics’ focus on first jobs out of law school is “misplaced.” Yes, you’ll have a little bit of debt, and that’s a problem, but it’s “extremely shortsighted” to forgo law school entirely just because of it.

Oops, sorry guys, please disregard all of what was just said. I was just repeating some of Dean Lawrence Mitchell’s New York Times op-ed talking points to see how ridiculous they’d sound. Students at Case Western Law, I applaud you for listening to this kind of tripe on a daily basis.

Oh, but speaking of Dean Mitchell, here’s the photo for our latest caption contest….

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Law School Throws ‘Job Idol’ Competition, Grand Prize: Not a Job

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Voted ‘Mr. Congeniality’ by a panel of Biglaw partners.

The best competitions reward the winner with something related to their skill. If you win American Idol, you get a recording contract. On Project Runway, you get a clothing line. In the Hunger Games, you get to be alive.

Tying the tested skills to the ultimate reward is a concept so strikingly obvious that even we at Above the Law grasped the concept. In 2008, we held a competition among writers, which we called ATL Idol, and we hired the guy who won.

At Case Western Reserve University School of Law, the Career Development Office has announced a “Job Idol” competition, to determine which lucky Case Western Spartan has the chops to earn a law firm job.

We had a similar competition when I went to school. It was called “Early Interview Week,” and the top 98 percent of competitors won a job.

So what do the winners get at Case Western? We have the official advertisement for the competition.

Spoiler alert: They don’t get jobs….

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Non-Sequiturs: 01.04.13

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Don’t be a sucker!

* According to the Second Circuit, the long arm of the law doesn’t extend to the middle finger. You can’t just go around arresting dudes for flipping you the bird. [U.S. Second Circuit / FindLaw]

* President Obama jetted off to Hawaii before he could sign the fiscal cliff bill, so he ordered it be signed by autopen. Of course, people are losing their minds over it. [Volokh Conspiracy]

* Should we scrap the Constitution? Georgetown Law professor Louis Seidman continues to advocate for constitutional disobedience in this epic ConLaw throwdown. [HuffPost Live]

* Don’t celebrate your increase in California bar passage points yet. The state bar changed its tune, and a 40% pass rate is the new standard. That shouldn’t be hard, eh TJSL? [California Bar Journal]

* One of our former columnists, Jay Shepherd, has a great way to calculate what your actual hourly rate should be, if you don’t mind working for just pennies a day. Most lawyers would mind. [jayshep]

* For the love of God, even Gawker knows that going to law school these days is a fool’s errand, or in their own words: “IT’S A SUCKER’S BET. A CLEAR SUCKER’S BET.” Come on, stop being suckers. :( [Gawker]

* If you’d like to hear Dean Lawrence Mitchell of NYT op-ed fame sound off on why there isn’t a lawyer oversupply problem, and why it isn’t his job to get law students jobs, we’ve got a video for you to watch….

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Above the Law’s 2012 Lawyer of the Year Competition: The Finalists!

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The year is quickly drawing to a close, but we have unfinished business to conduct here at Above the Law. Come on, people, we still have to crown our Lawyer of the Year for 2012.

Thank you to everyone who responded to our call for nominations, in the comments or via email. We’ve narrowed down the nominees to a field of nine (although you’ll see only eight options in the poll because one is a joint nomination). As in past years, the contenders run the gamut from distinguished to despicable.

And the nominees are….

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Morning Docket: 12.04.12

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* “Maybe in the future you could let us know when something as definite as that comes [at the last minute.]” It would appear Chief Justice John Roberts has yet again been angered terribly by a lawyer from the Department of Justice over policy changes. [CNN]

* G’day, mate! Perhaps Peter Kalis was telling the truth about his firm, because everything really is great at K&L Gates after last night’s announcement. Partners at the Biglaw firm just approved a merger with Australian firm Middletons. [WSJ Law Blog]

* The commission overseeing the revisions to Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code will focus their energies on labor and benefits. Aww, how nice of them to think of the little people. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]

* The suit over job stats against Thomas Jefferson School of Law lives to fight another day. The school was “disappointed,” but probably not as disappointed as the students it allegedly duped. [National Law Journal]

* And speaking of disappointment, people are still pissed off about Case Western Law Dean Lawrence Mitchell’s defense of going to law school, aka “a full-throated defense of the indefensible.” [New York Times]

* If you’ve made a mistake on your law school application, fret not, because there’s a way to correct it. (Note: some would say the real mistake was applying in the first place.) [Law Admissions Lowdown / U.S. News]

* Another day, another lawsuit filed against the much-sued and oft-creepy Dov Charney. This time, an ex-store manager alleges the American Apparel CEO choked him out and tried to rub dirt in his face. [Huffington Post]

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Students and Recent Graduates Speak Out About Dean Mitchell’s Defense of Law School

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Law students react to op-ed in the New York Times.

Yesterday, we discussed a New York Times op-ed, “Law School Is Worth the Money,” by Dean Lawrence E. Mitchell of Case Western Reserve University School of Law.

Mitchell has been slammed — by me, by Professor Paul Campos, by Alison Monahan, and by many others. If you’ve been looking seriously at the state of legal education, it wasn’t hard to eviscerate Mitchell’s arguments.

But Mitchell seems to believe that looking critically at the value proposition of legal education is a media-driven phenomenon. As he wrote in his op-ed, “For at least two years, the popular press, bloggers and a few sensationalist law professors have turned American law schools into the new investment banks.”

It seems that Mitchell has forgotten about the students. Bloggers and law professors don’t really have any skin in this game. But actual students feel like law school deans have taken advantage of them, and telling them “everything is okay here” isn’t a winning argument.

These kids are tired of law deans, like Mitchell, who continue to act like law schools can keep doing what they’re doing while recent graduates don’t have jobs and are crushed under a mountain of debt. They’re really sick of the subtle implication that they only reason the “great deal” of law school didn’t work out for them was that they were “lazy” or somehow undeserving.

In short, they are sick and tired of the very kind of arguments Mitchell made in the New York Times — and yesterday they spoke out about it, loudly….

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