Southwestern Law School

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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Five Defenses Used By Law Schools for Poor Graduate Employment Outcomes

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Hello again from the 2013 annual education conference of the Association for Legal Career Professionals (aka NALP). People here are very friendly — although, as noted earlier, the law firm folks tend to be more welcoming to us than the law school crew.

That’s to be expected, given our sometimes critical coverage of law schools. We seek to promote consumer awareness when it comes to legal education, but some schools — especially those schools with weaker job outcomes for their graduates — perceive this as an attack.

Yesterday I attended a NALP panel discussion about law school transparency. In the course of discussing what we talk about when we talk about transparency, the panelists provided five defenses that law schools can use when faced with criticism over unemployed or underemployed graduates….

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Open Thread: 2014 U.S. News Law School Rankings (The Second Tier)

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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 traditionally made up what used to be the alphabetically listed third tier. It was only very recently that the law schools that once constituted the “third tier” received the gift that keeps on giving (no, not herpes): numerical rankings.

Today, we’ll be talking about the schools that used to comprise the fourth tier, but now have a new name. These days, this segment of the U.S. News list is referred to as the “second tier,” and although they’re all ranked, those rankings aren’t published (presumably because no one wants to brag about going to the worst law school in the nation — as if being tied for 144th place is better).

Let’s use this post to discuss these schools, collectively or individually, and to compare and contrast….

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Open Thread: 2014 U.S. News Law School Rankings (102 – 144)

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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 half of the traditional second tier (no, not the U.S. News second tier). This time, we’ll be taking a look at what was once known as the “third tier” — a group of law schools that was previously unranked.

Two years ago, these law schools were visited by Bob Morse, the U.S. News rankings fairy, who left a now-treasured numerical rank under each of their pillows. Now the deans at these schools can proudly boast that even if they dropped in rank, they’re “in the first tier,” an accomplishment that only the most gullible of prospective law students could be impressed by. Sigh.

Anyway, let’s see if there were any movers and shakers this year in this section of the list….

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Quote of the Day: I Got 99 Problems and the Fourth Amendment is One

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If this Essay serves no other purpose, I hope it serves to debunk, for any readers who persist in believing it, the myth that locking your trunk will keep the cops from searching it. Based on the number of my students who arrived at law school believing that if you lock your trunk and glove compartment, the police will need a warrant to search them, I surmise that it’s even more widespread among the lay public. But it’s completely, 100% wrong.

– Professor Caleb Mason of Southwestern Law School, in a Saint Louis University Law Journal article that analyzes the legal issues in Jay-Z’s smash hip-hop hit, 99 Problems.

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Non-Sequiturs: 06.08.12

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There's no legal angle to this picture, and this picture is not involved in any of the blurbs.

* How many cops does it take to kill a man? [Simple Justice]

* Professor Paul Campos has been having fun with the NALP numbers. Well, fun for him, and for me. Less fun for anybody unlucky enough to have been part of the class of 2011. [Inside the Law School Scam]

* And if you don’t like to read, here’s some video about how bad the job market is for the class of 2011. ARE YOU LISTENING, PROSPECTIVE LAW STUDENTS? CAN YOU TAKE IN AND PROCESS INFORMATION? [Bloomberg Law]

* How come my anonymous readers don’t drop $25 million on me? I’d name a whole wing of my new house after them. And give them a T-shirt. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]

* In the recession, we cling to what we have instead of striking out into the unknown. In related news: if you leave your law job, there’ll be a stampede of people happy to take your spot. [What About Clients?]

* I don’t even think you should be allowed to defend yourself pro se. [Underdog]

* Southwestern Law’s Dean Bryant Garth is stepping down. One of these days, somebody will let me run a law school. [Southwestern Law School]

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Non-Sequiturs: 03.01.12

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* Defense lawyer: “I think you’ll be returning a verdict of ‘guilty’ on each and every one of these counts. I mean, crap… Scratch that, reverse it.” [NewsNet 5 Ohio]

* It really stinks that Chick-fil-A is a little bit evil, because their food is SO GOOD. [TaxProf Blog]

* Attorneys with more pronounceable names rise more quickly to superior positions in their firms. Apologies to Elie Mystal. [The Atlantic]

* Southwestern Law School 3L freaks out about looming debt, records EP entitled “Financial Aid,” and lands gig at SXSW. I’m actually kind of jealous. [Mike Bauer, Facebook]

* KLM is allowing you to upload your Facebook profile before you pick your seat, so you can hand pick your seatmate. How long before people start trolling with fake Kim Kardashian accounts? [The Not-So Private Parts]

* The job interview shame thread. Lord, this is painful. And hilarious. [Dealbreaker]

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Twelve More Law Schools Slapped with Class Action Lawsuits Over Employment Data

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Back in October, we informed our readers that law school litigators Jesse Strauss and David Anziska intended to file class action lawsuits against 15 additional schools, on top of the two they’d already filed against Cooley Law and New York Law School. In mid-December, we brought you an update on the status of those potential filings after Anziska told us that at least three named plaintiffs had been secured for 11 out of the 15 law schools on October’s target list. And now, about a month and a half later, have we got some news for you.

Anziska quipped in an interview with us last year that he hoped to turn 2012 into the year of “law school litigation.” Well, the class action crusader is off to a great start, because today, Team Strauss/Anziska partnered up with six other law firms and filed lawsuits against 12 law schools around the country. According to Anziska, “these lawsuits will define a generation.”

Which law firms have joined in their mighty quest, and which law schools have been sued? Find out all of this information, plus additional details that we learned during today’s media conference call, after the jump….

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Law School Transparency: Who’s Naughty and Who’s Nice?

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Kyle McEntee (left) and Patrick Lynch (right), co-founders of Law School Transparency (LST).

Late last year, plaintiffs’ lawyer David Anziska pledged to make 2012 “the year of law school litigation.” Anziska, who’s currently spearheading efforts to sue law schools over allegedly misleading employment statistics, told my colleague Staci Zaretsky that he and his team members “want to sue as many law schools as we can to bring them into the fray.”

That’s all well and good — for plaintiffs’ lawyers, and for news outlets like ours seeking juicy stories to cover. But there are other ways to achieve reform. So here’s another thought: Could 2012 instead be the year of law school transparency? Transparency achieved voluntarily, by law schools coming forward on their own to share comprehensive data about how their graduates are faring in the job market?

In the weeks since we wrote about the University of Chicago Law School providing very detailed employment data about its recent graduating classes, based on our interview with Dean Michael Schill, we’ve heard from deans, professors, alumni and students of other law schools, all with similar messages. They believe that their schools, like Chicago, are also transparent about graduate employment outcomes — and they want to be recognized for it.

This chorus of “me too!” messages raises a promising possibility: Is law school transparency becoming, for lack of a better word, “cool”? Will honesty about employment data become the hot new trend for U.S. legal education?

Perhaps. But there’s still a long way to go, as shown by a report issued this week by Law School Transparency….

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Calling All Disgruntled Law School Graduates: Will You Ring in the New Year By Suing Your School?

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Back in October, we brought you the news that Jesse Strauss and David Anziska intended to sue 15 more law schools over their post-graduate employment rates, in addition to their already pending class action suits against Cooley Law and New York Law School. As mentioned during their October 5 media conference, Team Strauss/Anziska will not sue a law school unless they are able to gather three named plaintiffs to represent the class.

Now that it’s mid-December, we’re still waiting for these lawsuits to be filed. What’s the hold up? These crusading lawyers say that they are ready, willing, and able to sue all 15 law schools, but there’s just one teeny, tiny problem. Here’s where our loyal readers come in.

Are you a disgruntled law school graduate? Did you rely on your law school’s employment data, only to find that you are now unemployed or unemployable, despite your law degree?

If so, then consider heeding this call, if you want to help crowdsource a lawsuit against what Anziska calls the “law school industry cartel”….

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