David Van Zandt

What Does the Future Hold for American Legal Education?

One law professor offers a new model for U.S. legal education, while another tries to view the law school glass as half-full rather than half-empty.

Lawyerly Lairs Update: Ex-Northwestern Law Dean Sells Magnificent Mansion

Last summer, David Van Zandt announced that he was stepping down as dean of Northwestern Law. In the fall, he put his magnificent mansion on the market -- for a whopping $4.7 million. A buyer has closed on Van Zandt's former home. How much did he get for it?

Musical Chairs: Northwestern Law Announces Its New Dean

Northwestern Law School just named its next dean. Who will attempt to fill the big shoes of David Van Zandt?

The 2012 U.S. News Law School Rankings Are Out!

Santa Claus — aka Bob Morse, rankings czar at U.S. News & World Report — is letting us open our presents early (or at least before midnight). The U.S. News law school rankings were supposed to come out on Tuesday, March 15, but Morse and his colleagues at U.S. News kindly posted them sometime around […]

Size Matters: Forget You, Biglaw (oo, oo, ooo)

Ed. note: This is the latest installment of Size Matters, one of Above the Law’s new columns for small-firm lawyers. Like many unhappy lawyers, I find Cee Lo Green’s F**k You — which has been picked up by radio stations in a more family-friendly version, Forget You — to be a personal theme song (a […]

Lawyerly Lairs: Dean Van Zandt’s Delicious Listing

Isn’t it nice when people who do good also do well? David Van Zandt — the outgoing dean of Northwestern Law, and the incoming president of The New School — is a beloved figure, at NU Law and beyond. Professionally, he’s an innovator in legal education; personally, he’s a great guy. We’re big fans of […]

Legal Education Loses a Warrior: Northwestern’s David Van Zandt Leaves to Take Over The New School

Law school deans come, law school deans go, but this departure hurts. As Dean of Northwestern Law School, David Van Zandt has been a strong voice for a more practice-oriented approach to legal education, and he’s been doing it from the unusual perch of top 14 law school. But at the end of the year […]

Rankings Are Valuable (And Here to Stay) <br><em>So let’s focus on making them better.</em>

Ed. note: In advance of the soon-to-be-released U.S. News and World Report law school rankings, we wanted to get a fresh take on why the rankings are something we should care about. So we reached out to one of the most well-known proponents of law school rankings, Dean David E. Van Zandt of the Northwestern […]

Most Influential Lawyers of the Aughts

Today, the National Law Journal lets us in on an ambitious project. The publication has tried to identify the 40 most influential lawyers of the decade. The 40 people they came up with are relatively well known to the general Above the Law readership, but they won’t be household names to your lay-friends: The list […]

Changes in Legal Education: Some Thoughts from Dean David Van Zandt

Earlier this week, at the PLI Law Firm Leadership and Management Institute — which was excellent, by the way (and not just because we presented there) — Dean David Van Zandt, of Northwestern University School of Law, offered some reflections on the future of legal education. (We used one of his comments as a recent […]