University of Maryland School of Law

Can’t Get a Job? Lacking Lawyer Skills? Try Working for Your School’s Law Firm

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Under new management?

There has been a lot of talk in the media lately about how law schools are failing to adequately prepare recent graduates for the working world. Because after having your nose in a book for three years, let’s face it, you probably don’t know how to do “useful things with the law” that would actually help a client.

Law schools have also been under fire for their apparently inability to employ recent graduates in the legal work force. While some law schools are simply gaming their employment numbers, others are creating temporary employment opportunities so their graduates can be employed at graduation.

And in the spirit of killing two birds with one stone, law schools may soon have a solution for both of these problems. Instead of inventing temporary jobs to make you “practice-ready,” they might invent a whole law firm….

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If Tuition Stays Down, I Don’t Give A Damn What They Call It

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They're going to need a new logo.

If your law school sells its naming rights but keeps tuition flat, would you protest? That’s the question facing students at the University of Maryland School of Law. They woke up on Monday morning to find out that instead of going to an easily identifiably state law school, they’ll soon be going to something called the Francis King Carey School of Law.

(Good thing you can spell that name without the letter ”T.”)

Of course, so long as U.S. News keeps identifying the school as “Maryland” in some fashion (the same way that “Levin School of Law” never obscures the University of Florida affiliation), I doubt this name change will affect how the school is regarded. And since Maryland is not raising tuition, the administration needed to raise cash in some other fashion.

So all things considered, I’m guessing Maryland Law students are pretty happy with this outcome. Right?

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Start Your Whining (Part 2): U.S. News Makes Law Schools Squirm All Across the Land

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Big deans don't cry?

Yesterday we talked about a couple of schools that fell in this year’s U.S. News law school rankings, whose deans promptly devoted school-wide emails making excuses for their programs dropping. Predictably, they criticized U.S. News’s latest methodology, even though this year’s formula did a better job of focusing on factors law students actually care about (like jobs, not donuts).

We asked you to send us other responses from law school administrations regarding this year’s rankings. And, ye Gods, foot soldiers with no clear mission or exit strategy in Afghanistan aren’t bitching and moaning as much as law school deans are just because U.S. News prefers schools that get their students jobs. If these crybaby deans could care about the employment outcomes of their students half as much as they care about the U.S. News rankings, then going to law school wouldn’t be such a financially dangerous option and their schools would do better in the rankings.

We were overwhelmed by the responses. Keep ‘em coming! But we’ll have to deal with many of them when we get to the appropriate point in our series of open threads on law schools.

Today I just want to focus on a few schools that did better in the rankings this year, yet still found the time to bitch about U.S. News. You expect schools that drop to be dismissive of the rankings, but when schools that are bathed in rankings glory are unsatisfied, that’s a little bit more interesting….

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Law Schools Join the Ranks of Institutions Averse To Profiteering During a Rough Economy

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You can’t call it a trend just yet, but the University of New Hampshire School of Law has joined Maryland Law and Miami Law in the fight to keep law school tuition down during a still-recovering economy. The school reports it will not be raising tuition for the 2011-2012 academic year.

It’s a sad state of affairs when a law school holding the line on tuition is breaking news. But with nearly every other law school rushing to bilk students who will pay anything for a legal education (law schools at Stanford, Arizona State, and Minnesota spring to mind), it’s nice to see at least a couple of schools that regard their students as something more than profit centers.

Maryland announced its tuition freeze in December. The National Law Journal reports that Miami recently announced it would be maintaining a tuition freeze already in place. Now UNH Law is joining their ranks. There’s still plenty of room on this bandwagon if your law school would like to take a brief break from molesting your financial future.

Not that UNH Law is cheap, especially for a third-tier law school. But this tuition freeze is another indication that UNH is at least trying to think about legal education in a somewhat realistic way…

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Kudos to Maryland Law for Protecting Its Students from Tuition Increases

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Next month I’ll be appearing on a panel at the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools. The subject of the panel: how to get good press for your law school.

One obvious answer: do good things for your students. Just like the University of Maryland School of Law.

Our coverage of UMB hasn’t always been kind. See, e.g., discussion of former Dean Karen Rothenberg’s controversial pay packages (here and here).

This time, though, Maryland Law is doing the right thing. In a time of strained state budgets, it has succeeded in holding the line on tuition increases (which, as we’ve discussed, are running rampant throughout the law schools). UMB law students won’t see their tuition go up next year, academic year 2011-12, even though students in other schools at the university will.

How did Maryland manage this feat? Let’s take a look — which might prove instructive for other law schools….

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Maryland State and Perdue v. Maryland Law and Reason: An Uneasy Compromise

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Over the past few weeks we’ve lightly touched on the fight between Maryland State Legislators and Maryland Law School. To bring you up to speed: the Perdue Chicken corporation was annoyed by a lawsuit filed with the aid of Maryland’s Environmental Law Clinic. So, like all good corporations, the bigwigs at Perdue reached into their back pocket and unleashed the Maryland State Senate upon the University. The spineless state politicians ostensibly did what they were told and threatened to withhold hundreds of thousands of dollars from the University unless various conditions were met, including disclosure of privileged information.

I guess it’s nice to know that the American oligarchy is still going strong.

But thankfully, the story doesn’t end there. After weeks of intense public pressure, it appears that the Maryland legislators backed down…

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Morning Docket 03.30.10

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* Could dirty chickens take money away from legal Terrapins? [Food Safety News and Maryland Reporter]

* The Ninth Circuit finds that Seattle police officers were justified in Tasering a seven-month-pregnant woman three times when she refused to get out of her car and sign a speeding ticket. Dissenting judge Marsha Berzon thinks justice was aborted though. [Courthouse News Service]

* A victory for the ACLU and the Public Patent Foundation at Cardozo Law School: Judge Robert Sweet struck down patents on two genes linked to breast and ovarian cancer. [New York Times]

* Is being abandoned at sea worth $4 million? [San Jose Mercury News]

* Felony charges for the Massachusetts teenagers who bullied freshman Phoebe Prince to suicide. [New York Times]

* The rise of the anti-law school blogs. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Do not overstate your firm’s diversity. [Denver Business Journal]

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