Salaries and Scholarship
Law professors teach a wide variety of subjects: Property, Civil Procedure, Legal Writing, Law & Economics, Business Associations, Feminist Legal Theory, Law Clinics. Professors bring diverse...
View ArticleProfessional Skills
Robert Kuehn has written a thoughtful review of the history of professional skills education in legal education. As Bob notes, the ABA has been notably reluctant to require law schools to educate...
View ArticleDaniel Cameron Merritt
My beloved son Daniel died in January from complications of pure autonomic failure, a rare neurodegenerative disease. Dan suffered from his illness for more than a decade; he fought his pain and...
View ArticleThe Justice Chasm
The justice gap has become a chasm. Almost one-fifth (19%) of Americans now live in poverty or near poverty (p. 16). These low-income individuals collectively experience about 140 million civil legal...
View ArticleThe Strange Case of the Case Method
The case method is legal education’s signature pedagogy. Law professors point to the method with pride, and that pride has considerable foundation. In theory, the case method accomplishes at least five...
View ArticleQuimbee
What is Quimbee? It’s a database of more than 13,800 case briefs summarizing the cases presented in almost 200 casebooks. The covered casebooks include all of the bar subjects plus many more:...
View ArticleBut Can They Read Cases?
I recently suggested that the case method fails to achieve one of its central goals: teaching students how to read and synthesize judicial opinions effectively. I identified three reasons for this...
View ArticleCan We Teach Students to Read Cases?
I suggested in my last three posts that law students don’t learn how to read judicial opinions as carefully and thoughtfully as they should. Can we fix this? Can we modify legal education so that JD’s...
View ArticleYou Too Can Check Out Quimbee
Since I posted about Quimbee, several colleagues have asked if there are ways to check out this new study aid. That’s easy: just sign up for a free 7-day trial. The trial really is free. You don’t need...
View ArticleNow They Just Need Jobs
Legal education is regaining some of its luster: The National Law Journal reports that applications for this year’s entering class increased 8% over last year. The news for next year is even better:...
View ArticleNALP Employment Data
The National Association for Law Placement (NALP) has just released data about employment outcomes for the Class of 2017. More than two-thirds of graduates (68.8%) found full-time, long-term jobs...
View ArticleWhat’s Your Story?
I’ve been attending the SALT Teaching Conference, hosted by Penn State Law in the aptly named Happy Valley, Pennsylvania. It was a great conference, with many thought-provoking ideas: I hope to share...
View ArticleWomen Law Students: Still Not Equal
The Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE) released its annual report just before the holiday break. This year’s report, titled “The Cost of Women’s Success,” explores the gendered nature of...
View ArticleRanking Academic Impact
Paul Heald and Ted Sichelman have published a new ranking of the top U.S. law schools by academic impact. Five distinguished scholars comment on their ranking in the same issue of Jurimetrics Journal...
View ArticleCOVID-19 and the Bar Exam
The news about COVID-19 gets worse by the hour. People are dying. The virus is spreading. Health care workers lack protective gear. Businesses are closed. We are sheltered at home. In the midst of...
View ArticleReopening
I retired from full-time teaching at the end of July and have decided to reopen the Law School Cafe. No promises: retirement holds lots of tantalizing possibilities and I may not maintain posting. But...
View ArticlePeter Lederer: A Modest Proposal
Peter Lederer brought unflagging inspiration and insight to the legal profession. On Sunday evening he sent me a copy of his latest essay, asking if I would like to publish it as a guest post here. I...
View ArticleCaste Revisited
I’ve written several times about the caste system in legal education: a hierarchy that favors professors who teach torts, contracts, and other legal “doctrine” over those who teach legal writing,...
View ArticleDoes Racial Diversity “Yield Educational Benefits”?
The Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of race-conscious admissions programs in higher education–but only on the ground that racial diversity improves the quality of education. Supporters...
View ArticleGrowth of the Law
How much has the body of legal rules grown over the last fifty years? Daniel Martin Katz, together with colleagues in the United States and Germany, offers some intriguing insights into that question....
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