Law School

It?s (Some) Man?s World

Posted on July 05, 2008
In the last few months both Marie and Belle have written feminist oriented posts. I agree completely with Marie about sexism and the Clinton campaign. I am somewhat less sympathetic to Belle?s for the reasons stated in a comment. Since reading those, two related ideas have come to mind...

Jesse Helms, Racism, Manners, Law, and Cognitive Dissonance

Posted on July 05, 2008
(Cross-posted at Legal Profession Blog)Jesse Helms, the former North Carolina senator, described by the New York Times as having a "courtly manner and mossy drawl," died.  He was also an unrepentant and nasty racist and segregationist with a courtly manner...

Is Law School Graduate School?

Posted on July 04, 2008
My sense is that on most campuses, law schools are not regarded a quite up to par as far as other graduate programs. I was discussing this with a close faculty friend (really) who said part of the reason is that legal scholarship only seems to rise to graduate school level when it is combined with another discipline and involves empirical work...

The Fear Factor

Posted on July 04, 2008
It would be easy enough to sit back in my virtual Barca-Lounger and chuckle as Ilya Somin dukes it out with Jim Chen and Nancy Rappaport over the best way to win the Bar Exam game. After all, I took the "very difficult New York" bar exam and passed it easily...

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Litigation or Transactional Law Career: Some Advice to Law Students

Posted on July 01, 2008
An incoming law student sent me an interesting question about choosing between a litigation and a transactional career in law, and I've offered up some thoughts over at Legal Profession Blog.

A lawyer walks into a bar

Posted on June 30, 2008
By way of Prettier Than Napoleon and The Volokh Conspiracy comes this news flash: There is a documentary about the bar exam. The moviemakers' MySpace page contains this preview of A Lawyer Walks into a Bar:The MoneyLaw point, however, doesn't lie so much in the movie as it does in Ilya Somin's commentary on The Volokh Conspiracy:I think many law school graduates get overly stressed out and obsessed about taking the bar, and spend too much time studying...

Summer wages

Posted on June 26, 2008
In honor of Deven Desai's post, Summer reading, which in turn lauds Patrick O'Donnell's fantastic bibliographies, which we may and should contemplate even as "the years are gambled and lost / like summer wages," I offer this rendition of Ian Tyson's classic cowboy tune:Never hit seventeenWhen you play against the dealerYou know that the oddsWon't ride with youAnd never leave your woman aloneWith your friends around to steal herShe'll he gambled and goneLike summer wagesOther versions:Emmylou Harris joins Ian and Sylvia Tyson in a 1986 performance of Summer Wages (1986) (YouTube video — embedding disabled by request)Nanci Griffith, 1998 cover, on Other Voices, Too (A Trip Back to Bountiful)And we'll keep rolling onTill we get to VancouverAnd the woman that I loveShe's living thereIt's been six long monthsAnd more since I've seen herYears have gambled and goneLike summer wagesChorus:In all the beer parlorsAll down along Main StreetThe dreams of the seasonsGet all spilled down on the floorAll the big stands of timberJust waiting for the fallingAnd the hookers standing watchfullyWaiting by the doorSo I'll work on the towboatsWith my slippery city shoesWhich Lord I swore I would never do againThrough the gray fog-bound straitsWhere the cedars stand watchingI'll be far off and goneLike summer wages[Repeat chorus]Never hit seventeenWhen you play against the dealerYou know that the oddsWon't ride with youAnd never leave your woman aloneWith your friends around to steal herShe'll be gambled and goneLike summer wagesAnd the years are gambled and lostLike summer wages

Rating Law Schools

Posted on June 25, 2008
As some of you know from reading classbias, I have had a wonderful experience teaching in Rio for the past month. Today I was chatting with some Brazilian law professors who know about the ratings madness in the U.S. What one told me was particularly interesting since I have always felt that the best law school is the one that takes a group of students and moves them along in terms of knowledge, skill and analytical ability more than other schools...

Mentally gifted, emotionally stunted

Posted on June 24, 2008
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Narciso (ca. 1598)Two tales of the mentally gifted but emotionally stunted, from different corners of a law school:From the admissions office:Our heavily recruited 1L is exceptionally gifted, scored 178 on the LSAT, and sports a 4...

So you want to be a law clerk?

Posted on June 23, 2008
Behold So You Want to Be a Law Clerk?, which touts itself as "[a] place to find the latest federal law clerk openings, advice about the application and interview process, and, in general, how to land that coveted offer."As an example of this site's content, consider this poll currently on its front page:If presented with two offers, which would you accept, a clerkship with a federal district judge in the S...

Some recent developments in legal education

Posted on June 23, 2008
For Northwestern Law's new two-year JD curriculum, see here, here, here, here, and here (among others).For Thomas Sowell's take on the rankings, see my post here.  

At the pit of hell lives a Blue Devil

Posted on June 22, 2008
In addition to its immense wealth, Duke University enjoys a rich sports tradition. There's the basketball program, to be sure, but don't forget Bull Durham and the 1942 Rose Bowl. Despite all that, Duke has the gall to argue — with factual but not legal accuracy — that its football team is so bad that Duke University owes the University of Louisville no damages for breaching a contract to pit the Blue Devils against the Cardinals...

You're no good: An ongoing MoneyLaw series

Posted on June 21, 2008
You're no goodLinda Ronstadt, You're No Good, Heart Like a Wheel (1974):Feeling better now that we're throughFeeling better 'cause I'm over youI learned my lesson, it left a scarNow I see how you really areMany things in academic life are simply no good...

Silver threads, golden needles, and ClassBias

Posted on June 20, 2008
As homage to Class Bias in Higher Education and the proletarian rage that Jeff Harrison so eloquently expresses, I offer one of the many versions of Silver Threads and Golden Needles now playing at Danzig U.S.A.:I grew up in faded gingham where love is a sacred thingYou grew up in silk and satin where love's the passing gameI know now you never loved me, and I know I was a foolTo think your pride would let you live by the golden rule

How The University Works

Posted on June 18, 2008
All MoneyLaw readers should be reading Prof. Marc Bousquet (media studies, Santa Clara), editor of How The University Works (and currently guesting at The Valve, a literary studies blog).Of particular interest might be his suggested Academic Labor Bookshelf, and the posts Teach the University! and High Noon for Academic Freedom.

The Quiet Desperation of Academic Women

Posted on June 17, 2008
That's the title to this article in Inside Higher Ed, on a new study by Kristen Monroe (who happens to be a former professor of mine when I was a political science major at UCI). Here's the abstract of the paper (full article available with academic subscription)...

Almost purgatory

Posted on June 16, 2008
Ending a tenure as brief as it was tumultuous, West Virginia University president Michael Garrison will resign, effective September 1. After six weeks of shielding Garrison from outraged faculty, students, and alumni, WVU's Board of Governors swiftly accepted Garrison's resignation on June 6...

MoneyLaw: The art of winning an unfair academic game

Posted on June 16, 2008
»  Cross-posted from The Cardinal Lawyer  «I presented MoneyLaw: The art of winning an unfair academic game on June 14, 2008, at the University of Louisvlle's Weekend College event in Los Angeles. The presentation summarizes many of the things I have articulated in this forum...

What Homo academicus can learn from Pan troglodytes

Posted on June 11, 2008
Homo academicusPan troglodytesThe December 2007 issue of Philosophy of Science contains a fascinating article with important implications for complex social organizations, including universities:Game theory has played a critical role in elucidating the evolutionary origins of social behavior...

The rise and fall of the American Jewish Ph.D.

Posted on June 10, 2008
Daniel Sokol recommends the following paper:Barry R. Chiswick, The Rise and Fall of the American Jewish Ph.D..Daniel Libeskind's Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco.This paper is concerned with trends over the post-WWII period in the employment of American Jews as College and University teachers and in their receipt of the PhD...

Rock, Paper, Scissors, Shoot

Posted on June 10, 2008
It's the ultimate alternative dispute resolution technique. Hands down.Penn State Student, Derek Hines, knows it. He's won the right to represent Penn State University in the Rock Paper Scissors National Championship in Las Vegas, June 20-22. The winner will pick up $50,000 and will travel to Bejing for the inaugural International Rock Paper Scissors Federation Championship (IRPSF) to face Rock Paper Scissors champions from Canada, Guam, Hong Kong, Ireland and Malaysia...

Sexism or Something Else?

Posted on June 06, 2008
As Hillary Clinton's presidential bid sinks into the horizon, pundits contemplate what went wrong. The Telegraph reported that as Clinton's campaign workers were leaving headquarters Tuesday night, a Japanese television camera crew offered them the chance to express their views as to what went wrong by placing a sticker on a board next to the reason of their choice...

Anna Karenina and the art of academic management

Posted on June 01, 2008
Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoi (???? ?????????? ????????), Portrait of an Unknown Woman (1883)??? ?????????? ????? ?????? ???? ?? ?????, ?????? ???????????? ????? ??????????? ??-??????.— ??? ?????????? ???????, ???? ???????? (1877)Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way...

Another brick in the wall

Posted on May 28, 2008
To be watched only on those days regrettably wasted on dark sarcasm in the classroom:Another brick in the wall

Elite trappings

Posted on May 26, 2008
?Over the last 20 years, every president has been a graduate of Yale.?— Elizabeth Bumiller, The snare of privilegeThe race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination has been as bizarre as it has been long. The battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, perhaps because it has stressed symbol and style over substance, has shed powerful light on one MoneyLaw point: the political and practical impotence of elite educational credentials...

The instruction of youth and the welfare of the state

Posted on May 22, 2008
The University of MinnesotaNorthrop Auditorium, 1929Founded in the Faith that Men are Ennobled by UnderstandingDedicated to the Advancement of Learning and the Search for TruthDevoted to the Instruction of Youth and the Welfare of the StateLet's read that again: Devoted to the Instruction of Youth and the Welfare of the State...

Law's double helix

Posted on May 19, 2008
?Beauty is truth, truth beauty,? ? that is allYe know on earth, and all ye need to know.John KeatsOde on a Grecian Urn (1819)The concluding couplet in John Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn (1819) — ?Beauty is truth, truth beauty,? — that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know...

Innovative Thinking: From the ABA to the "G-Man"

Posted on May 19, 2008
[My apologies for the delay in posts, but I have a good excuse. We added a new baby to the family, which required some time off.]Innovative thinking often comes from unlikely sources. With March Madness behind us and the excitement of the NBA playoffs hitting its peak, it is time to pay tribute to the ABA...

Classroom Access and the "5 Whys"

Posted on May 17, 2008
(Cross-posted at Legal Profession Blog)I considered giving this post an Onion-like title, something to the effect of "UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LAW SCHOOL PROPOSES LEAD DOME OVER HYDE PARK; DEAN LEVMORE DERIDES CITY-WIDE WIRELESS HOT SPOT AS 'ANTI-INTELLECTUAL...

Legal Education from the Demand Side

Posted on May 15, 2008
We law professors spend a great deal of time thinking about how to help our students graduate and pass the Bar?how to supply the market with lawyers, in other words. We spend far less time thinking about the demand side of the equation?whether our students will find jobs...

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