Legal academia

How boring does class have to be before you are within your rights to stomp out?

The future looks grim for law reviews. Mark Herrmann explains why.

What really triggered Dean Berman's departure from George Washington University Law School? Here's what we've heard.

Yale Law School will offer a Ph.D. in Law for aspiring law professors. Is this a good idea? We consulted with some current law professors.

Complete honesty is such a dangerous thing. I’m going to give it a shot. I’m posing three questions to myself today. First, why might a lawyer at a law firm choose to write articles? Second, what topics should lawyers write about, and where should they publish the articles? Finally, why might an in-house lawyer choose […]

While many of the law school deans and other administrators at the AALS conference acknowledged problems with the system, most of the actual critiquing came from people with no power to change it. Media members criticized law schools, judges criticized law schools, outgoing deans that shamelessly profiteered off of unwitting law students criticized law schools -- and the people who could actually change their systems dutifully listened. But despite all of the critiques, there weren't a lot of schools that seemed ready to institute sweeping change to the business of educating lawyers....

I’m really enjoying the newfound interest from the New York Times about the state of legal education. Times reporter David Segal seems genuinely interested in recording the growing tragedy of American law schools. Concern from mainstream media is great, but the proposed solutions are a little bit scary. Last month, Segal Slate explored the possibility […]

The topic of whether (and how) to reform legal education remains very hot. The latest New York Times story — by David Segal, who isn’t very popular among law school deans right now — has sparked much online commentary. And it’s not over yet. What do Professors Richard Epstein and John Yoo — two of […]

[T]he dislike [for legal academics] is a result of law professors being too much in the world. You see, law professors — and I should disclose here that I am one — very nearly run the world, or at least certain parts of the U.S. government. When you include Justice Anthony Kennedy, who taught nights, […]

Dear Suffolk University Law School Administrators: Your Michael Avery problem is not going away (and not just because he has tenure). Now, an adjunct law professor currently in Kabul has cut ties with Suffolk because of Avery, and Suffolk is now in the uncomfortable position of de facto supporting Avery's comments against a pissed-off military. What should the school do now?

Earlier this month, we wrote about an anonymous law professor -- a tenured professor, at a top-tier school -- essentially joining the ranks of the law school scambloggers. Well, as it turns out, LawProf is an actual tenured law professor, at a top 50 law school. Who is he, and where does he teach?

We've written before about law school scamblogs. It's not surprising that unemployed or underemployed law school graduates have taken to the internet with complaints about legal education; they are, after all, victims of the alleged scam. But now we have a tenured law professor admitting that law school is something of a scam....

Is the American Bar Association going to deal with the unmitigated proliferation of law schools? No. Will the ABA deal with overflow of lawyers entering the profession at a time when few well-paying legal jobs seem to be available? No. Will the organization seriously address the rising cost of legal education? Not really. Instead, the […]