This episode is brought to you by BarBri Law Preview. They’re giving away a $10,000 scholarship for a 1L this fall. If you want to apply, go to LawGiveAway.com.
In this episode, Kyle McEntee (LST’s executive director) and Derek Tokaz (one of IATL‘s hosts) discuss three episodes from the archives. They reflect on what they found more interesting and important, emphasizing the value in researching legal careers early and often.
The three episodes are:
My talented colleague Chris Walker is blogging this month at PrawfsBlawg with a series of posts about how junior scholars can maximize the impact of their scholarship. As Chris explains in his initial post, he hopes to crowdsource answers to questions that junior scholars frequently ask.
I hope Chris’s discussion will attract both junior scholars and more senior ones. A lot has changed in the world of legal scholarship over the last thirty-five years:
Given these changes, how do we choose to use the time given us for scholarship? The opportunity to engage in unfettered scholarship is a great privilege–one that we should execute in the public interest. That doesn’t mean that the public should dictate our scholarship; great discoveries sometimes come from meandering, seemingly “irrelevant” explorations. But we, the scholars, should regularly reflect on the ways we use our privilege.
There’s an old saying: When the facts are on your side, pound the facts. When the law is on your side, pound the law. When neither is on you side, pound the table. But if you’re an appellate lawyer? All you have is the law because the record (facts) is set at the trial level.
Virginia Whitner Hoptman is a 1981 graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law. Immediately following law school, she had back-to-back appellate clerkships. The first was with the Third Circuit and the second was with the U.S. Supreme Court. She changed course several times throughout her career, but has settled back where she started with a highly-specialized appellate practice.
In this episode, Virginia explains the appeals process for winners and losers at the trial level. She also talks to us about elitism in the world of appeals, how difficult it is to become a full-time appellate lawyer, and what makes appellate lawyers fundamentally different than trial lawyers.
This episode is hosted by Kyle McEntee, LST’s executive director. It is sponsored by ShouldIBeALawyer.com and Top-Law-Schools.com.
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Originally published on Above the Law.
Last week, Anna Alaburda lost her lawsuit against Thomas Jefferson School of Law. From what one juror said of deliberations, the jury only considered deliberate falsification of the data underlying the statistics she consulted before law school. Systemic deception by law schools, blessed by the ABA, was not on trial. While I am disappointed in the result — I think it would have been an important symbol — I want to talk about the changes that we’ve seen over the last six years on the transparency front. We did not win on every count, but we long-ago declared victory. Here’s why. (more…)
» Read the full text for The Fall Of Systemic Deception At Law Schools
How many lawyering jobs does our economy support? Is that number still growing? Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shed light on these questions. Every other year, BLS counts the number of existing “lawyer” jobs as part of its Employment Projections program. This count is particularly useful because, unlike some other BLS reports, it includes both salaried and self employed workers. These biennial counts thus include solo practitioners, law firm partners, and practicing lawyers who earn a salary from any source.
By examining these counts, which are available online since 1978, we can chart growth trends for lawyering jobs. (For a full description of the jobs included in these figures, see the note at the end of this post.)
Anna Alaburda’s lawsuit against the Thomas Jefferson School of Law is over: a split jury returned a verdict for the law school earlier today. Nine jurors sided with the school, three would have found for Alaburda. One of the jurors stressed that their deliberations focused only on data reported in two editions of US News, rather than on later figures that might have been more misleading. He implied that even the nine jurors siding with the school were not completely comfortable with the school’s conduct.
What should legal educators make of this verdict? Some may sigh in relief; although graduates filed fraud claims against numerous schools, only one has produced a recovery for the plaintiffs. That one suit involved Golden Gate, which paid $8,000 to each of five plaintiffs in a settlement.
Others may celebrate, interpreting the Alaburda verdict as vindication of all employment reporting practices at law schools. If a jury of ordinary citizens found no fraud, then there must have been no wrongdoing.
I would interpret Alaburda and its kin as a more cautionary tale. The widespread reporting practices provoking these lawsuits damaged the reputation of legal education. Most educators now agree that our prior practices were–at the very least–not as informative for prospective students as they should have been. Some of the practices, such as failing to report the number of students supplying salary data, bordered on deceitful.
After the jury verdict, Thomas Jefferson’s attorney told a reporter: “This is not, you know, Trump University. It is so not that.” In my opinion, law schools should have worked harder to avoid even the possibility of that comparison.
This episode is presented by The United States Air Force Judge Advocate General’s Corp.
When you are a solo practitioner, you are a small business owner who happens to provide legal services. Many new lawyers fail to fully appreciate this right away, aggravating the already tall challenge of learning to practice law on your own.
Matt Swain is a 2009 graduate of the University of Oklahoma College of Law. Right after law school, he started his own criminal defense practice in a college town 20 miles outside of Oklahoma City. In this episode, Matt talks to us about the importance of understanding your business inside and out. He describes some of the techniques he uses that ultimately make him more efficient and more likely to notice opportunities to help his clients move forward with their lives.
This episode is hosted by Kimber Russell. It is sponsored by Barbri, ShouldIBeALawyer.com, and Top-Law-Schools.com.
Episode Links
The ABA’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar took several significant actions at its March 11–12 meeting. The first of these was approval of several changes in Standards 304 and 305, which govern experiential learning and non-classroom educational experiences. Some of the changes adjust guidelines for supervision of externships; the most controversial allows schools to award externship credit for paid positions.
I have written several times to express my support for this change. Individual schools may still choose to ban paid externships, but the path should soon be open for schools to integrate these externships within their educational programs. The ABA House of Delegates will vote on the change, probably at its August 2016 meeting, but that vote does not bind the Council. [Updated at 4:45 p.m. to correct meaning of ABA’s vote.]
The responsibility now lies with law schools to implement this change wisely. I supported the change because I hope it will help us find innovative ways to educate students more thoroughly for law practice, as well as to help employers develop lasting frameworks for education in the workplace. We won’t accomplish either of those goals unless law schools devote real resources, energy, and collaboration to working with employers on these externships.
If your law school has an innovative idea for creating paid externships–or if you’re an individual with such an idea–please send me an email (merritt.52@osu.edu). I hope to feature good ideas here and promote discussion around them. Few ideas are perfect at their inception but, through discussion and sharing, perhaps we can refine ideas that will achieve our educational goals. Consider it online workshopping of pedagogic ideas!
Cafe Manager & Co-Moderator
Deborah J. Merritt
Cafe Designer & Co-Moderator
Kyle McEntee
Law School Cafe is a resource for anyone interested in changes in legal education and the legal profession.
Have something you think our audience would like to hear about? Interested in writing one or more guest posts? Send an email to the cafe manager at merritt52@gmail.com. We are interested in publishing posts from practitioners, students, faculty, and industry professionals.