Earlier today, we reported that protests over the proposed tuition hike at UCLA got a bit testy. But we also noted that the protests didn’t seem to include a lot of law students, even though their tuition is going through the roof as well. One friend had this apathetic response when asked about the protests:

Dude, I have finals. And my 2L grades matter because I’ll be doing 3L recruiting. Unless we’re protesting canceled summer programs, count me out.

We wanted to know how the law school generally was reacting to today’s festivities, so we reached out to the UCLA Student Bar Association President, Lenny Sandoval. We asked him why law student participation seemed lacking:

Being a third year with one foot out the door, it’s tough for me to give a totally representative view, but while I agree that the involvement of law students as a whole is a bit subdued, I think the reaction from the identity organizations and their leadership (Raza, BLSA, etc.) has been very supportive and vocal of the undergraduate led movements. Based on FB status updates and gChat blurbs I saw at least 6 or 7 people either returning from the protests or planning on going to the protests, so that’s something at least.

Sandoval also noted that law students need to be a little bit more careful when it comes to potentially getting arrested than college kids.

That’s certainly true, especially in this economy. There’s no sense having your tuition jacked up and hurting your chances at snagging a legal job.

But something other than fear and general apathy might be driving down law student participation in civil disobedience. We also spoke with UCLA Law professor Stephen Bainbridge and he notes that people at the law school might just be paying a little bit more attention to the general state of affairs with the U.C. system than your average college student.

Thoughts from Professor Bainbridge after the jump.

UCLA School of Law will lose its dean at the end of the year. Dean Michael Schill will leave the law school at the end of the year to assume the deanship of the University of Chicago Law School. Dean Schill just informed his students over email:

Dear Members of the Classes of 2010, 2011, and 2012,

A little over five years ago I came to UCLA School of Law from the east coast to become dean of one of the greatest educational institutions in the world. From the moment I arrived I appreciated the strength and depth of our student culture. Indeed, you are part of the reason my five years as the dean of this school have been the happiest and most fulfilling years of my life. Thus, it is with mixed emotions that I announce today that I will be leaving the deanship at the end of the calendar year for a new challenge as dean of the University of Chicago Law School.

Why is he leaving so suddenly? Why was this decision made now instead of over the summer? University of Chicago Dean Saul Levmore announced he was stepping down back in February. Why the late trigger at UofC?

Dean Schill offers some additional information about his decision process — and the University of Chicago touts its new dean — after the jump.

* UCLA Law students were successful in protecting our right to curbside carne asada. [Los Angeles Times]

* Apparently, Sonnenschein is “fat and happy” and moving its New York office. [New York Observer]

* Washington, D.C. lawyer Kenneth Feinberg has been appointed compensation czar and will get to set the salaries of CEOs at beleaguered companies getting government aid. [ABA Journal]

* The impeachment proceedings against Judge Samuel Kent — the first federal judge to be charged with a sex crime — will move on to the House of Representatives. [Associated Press]

* Sonia Sotomayor once called herself “an affirmative action baby.” [New York Times]

* San Diego lawyer Alfred Rava sued the Oakland A’s for sex discrimination after a 2004 Mother’s Day promotion that excluded males. Now ESPN columnist Rick Reilly is taking Rava and his men-ism suits for a round in the batting cage. [ESPN]

Just yesterday, we were able to report on Northwestern University School of Law taking the initiative to help deferred 3Ls. Today we’ve learned that UCLA is also stepping up to the plate.

UCLA School of Law announced its Transition to Practice LL.M. Program today. It will allow 3Ls to take an extra year of classes geared towards teaching them the skills and practices they would have learned as first-year associates. The school’s press release explains what students will be learning:

A core component of the Transition to Practice program will be capstone courses that will draw heavily on practice-oriented projects in addition to substantial research and written work. Capstone courses will include part-time externships within corporate legal departments, as well as clinical simulations, where students work with real legal problems in a controlled environment that permits reflection and generalization of lessons learned. The Transition to Practice program will also include a required workshop series designed to introduce students to the practical issues that confront new lawyers, ranging from how to define a work-product to understanding a client’s business and goals, and handling practical problems of ethics and confidentiality. Capstone classes will be taught both by the core faculty of the law school and prominent practicing lawyers. The law school expects to develop curriculum in conjunction with leading law firms and corporate legal departments and to draw on the expertise of the Los Angeles legal community.

After the jump, Above the Law speaks with UCLA School of Law Dean Michael Schill.

Sometimes readers complain that Above the Law focuses too much on the East Coast. Since our headquarters is here in New York, and since we lived in Washington from 2006 to 2008, we may have an East Coast bias.

But we do try to run a national legal news site. Even if we’re physically located in New York, wherever two or more lawyers are gathered in our name, there we are.

In recent months, we’ve been making a conscious effort to do more for the West Coast. For example, we’ve started posting — later in the day, to account for the time difference — material aimed at a West Coast / California audience.

And next week we’ll be in L.A., to participate in three events (all kindly sponsored by the Federalist Society). One is with a leading light of the federal judiciary, and another is with a top law professor/blogger. Here are the details:

1. A Judge in Full: Personality and Jurisprudence

When: Tuesday, January 13, 12 p.m. - 1 p.m.
Speakers: The Honorable Alex Kozinski, Chief Judge, Ninth Circuit; David Lat, Founder, Above the Law
Where: Omni Hotel, 251 South Olive Street, Los Angeles
MCLE Credit: One Hour
Cost: $38 if paid in advance; $40 if paid at the door. Public employees, students and law clerks may pay the discounted rate of $15.

2. Cocktail Reception with David Lat

When: Tuesday, January 13th, 7 p.m. - 9 p.m.
Where: Bel Air Bar and Grill, 662 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles
MCLE Credit: No. This will not be educational in the least — just gossip and booze.
Cost: Cash bar. Heavy hors d’oeuvres will be served. YUM.

3. How Bloggers Changed the Legal World

When: Wednesday, January 14, 12:45 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.
Speakers: Professor Stephen Bainbridge, Warren Professor of Law, UCLA; David Lat, Founder, Above the Law
Where: UCLA Law School, Room 1357
Cost: Free and open to the public. Lunch will be provided.

Please come to any or all of these events. We look forward to seeing you!

A Judge in Full: Personality and Jurisprudence [Federalist Society - Los Angeles Lawyers Chapter]
How Bloggers Have Changed the Legal World [Facebook]
Two Events / One Day with Chief Judge Kozinski and David Lat [Facebook]

Last May, we held an open thread about law school transfer students as second-class citizens, based on the University of Connecticut’s Maya Angelou-inspired “Phenomenal Transfer” poem. There was quite a lot of anti-transfer-student sentiment in the thread, though some former transfer students chimed in to say that they had experienced no animosity in their new homes.

For those put off by transfer students, there were three main themes in the thread:

Transfer students are gunners.

Transfer students get to skip out on the hellish first year at a top school, and then ride the curve to graduation.

Law schools game the system with transfer students. They get the extra tuition money and avoid hurting their US News ranking by not factoring in the GPAs and LSAT scores of transfer students.

Transfer students may well be gunners, but they are also being gunned… as in hunted. In “Northwestern Unapologetically Poaches 1Ls at Other Schools,” Paul Caron of the TaxProf Blog pointed us to a recent ABA Journal article that picks up on the themes of our open thread. From the Journal:

Northwestern University Law School is actively—and unapologetically—re­cruit­­ing top-performing law students from lower-ranked schools, a practice that some deans claim is becoming commonplace at elite institutions.

Each year, 150 or so of Northwestern’s 5,000 applicants turned down for first-year admission receive letters inviting them to apply again for “conditional acceptance” the following fall. [Ed. note: Northwestern later revised these numbers with the ABA Journal, saying they only extend 15-25 conditional acceptances each year.]

Deans of lower-tier schools resent the predatory practice. The Journal quotes Northwestern Dean David Van Zandt as saying the poaching allegation is “probably true,” but that, “Chrysler and General Motors don’t agree not to poach each other’s customers.”

Really, Dean Van Zandt? You’re looking to Chrysler and GM as your business role models?

More on transfers, and a look at the number of students bagged by top schools, after the jump.

Look on the bright side, Loyola 2L. Maybe you don’t have a post-graduation job lined up yet. But law students at your crosstown competition have their own challenges to deal with.

UCLA is a Tier One law school, per U.S. News & World Report (even if not a so-called “T14” school, as they like to say on the internets). But is trouble brewing in paradise?

More after the jump.