Law Schools

University of Nebraska tops list of best value law schools

The University of Nebraska College of Law has claimed the No. 1 spot on a list of the nation’s best value law schools. The National Jurist explains why the college is at the top of its list. The average student debt of University of Nebraska law students is $62,985 and…

Oct 7, 2015 8:20 AM CDT

Judge tosses ADA suit against BigLaw firms, cites plaintiff’s ‘outright speculation’

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit (PDF) contending that BigLaw firms’ reliance on law school rankings in hiring discriminated against the disabled. U.S. District Judge Gerald Pappert of Philadelphia tossed the suit by William Joseph Hanrahan in an Oct. 2 decision, the Legal Intelligencer reports. The decision is a…

Oct 6, 2015 9:43 AM CDT

LegalForce is looking for a few good apprentices

Raj Abhyanker's Trademarkia search engine has become a popular spot for inventors and entrepreneurs to learn whether their ideas have already been trademarked. Abhyanker estimates that Trademarkia draws 2 million visitors a month, 60,000 visitors a day or "one person every couple of seconds."

Oct 1, 2015 7:40 AM CDT

Which states had the greatest growth in lawyer population?

Is Texas’ 28 percent growth in lawyer population over the last decade all that unusual? Stories in the Wall Street Journal Law Blog and the Dallas Morning News reported on the number, which represents the growth in the active lawyer population from 2004 to 2014. That compares to a 20…

Sep 29, 2015 7:47 AM CDT

Law prof sues university over concealed-carry ban

An associate law professor has filed suit against the University of Missouri, contending that its ban on having firearms on campus contradicts a new state constitutional provision. Royce de R. Barondes, who teaches a class on firearms law, seeks a court order declaring that the ban is unconstitutional under an…

Sep 28, 2015 1:20 PM CDT

Will dropping bar passage rates create too few lawyers for available jobs? Experts assess the stats

Should the ABA create its own bar exam? Or should the exam be dropped altogether for top law graduates? Those are some of the ideas suggested by experts weighing in on the continued drop in scores for law graduates taking the multistate portion of the bar exam. Writing at the…

Sep 24, 2015 11:20 AM CDT

Jonathan Zittrain: Fighting ‘link rot’ in court opinions and legal scholarship

Fighting ‘link rot’ in court opinions and legal scholarship

Sep 24, 2015 9:00 AM CDT

‘Prudent innovation’ at William Mitchell: Extending the reach of learning

In my last piece on Prudent Innovation, I suggested there were five schools of thought in response to the “disruption” taking place in law: • Denial. It’s just a blip, and things will return to normal. • Nostalgia. Things used to be better in the autonomous, professional, nonmarket, pre-Am Law,…

Sep 24, 2015 8:30 AM CDT

Professor Tanina Rostain has her students developing access-to-justice apps

Professor Tanina Rostain has made a 180-degree turn in her work on the ethics of lawyering. For nearly 20 years she pushed to reform organizational pressures that increasingly had lawyers bending and breaking rules on behalf of corporate clients. (Think dodgy tax shelters.) Now she’s focused on the essence of…

Sep 23, 2015 9:00 AM CDT

ABA committee for third time proposes eliminating ban on academic credit for paid externships

For the third time in less than two years, an ABA committee has proposed lifting the ban in the law school accreditation standards on students receiving academic credit for paid externships. But the Standards Review Committee, which met Friday and Saturday in Atlanta, also agreed to forward such a proposal…

Sep 22, 2015 1:55 PM CDT

Some law professors blame student quality for continued drop in bar exam scores

The national mean score of bar exams’ standardized multiple-choice sections fell again for July 2015 test takers, resulting in the average being at its lowest in more than 25 years, the National Conference of Bar Examiners reports. According to Bloomberg Business, the mean score for the July 2015 multiple choice…

Sep 21, 2015 5:45 AM CDT

Businessman donates $10M to establish new Islamic law center at Yale Law School

A Saudi Arabian businessman with an estimated net worth of nearly $20 billion has donated $10 million to Yale Law School to establish an Islamic law center there. “The contemporary challenges of Islamic law are broadly relevant to political events throughout the entire Islamic world and those are developments that…

Sep 14, 2015 7:30 AM CDT

Trial court should not have dismissed law student’s disability complaint, 9th Circuit says

A federal appeals court Thursday revived a man’s disability claim against the University of Idaho concerning his treatment as a law student there. The trial court should not have summarily denied James Shirley’s pro se motion to file a second amended complaint in a so-called screening dismissal, the San Francisco-based…

Sep 11, 2015 1:38 PM CDT

‘Prudent innovation’ in law school—Colorado moves forward

Last month, I talked about Prudent Innovation for law firms. This week, I want to talk about Prudent Innovation in law schools. The argument for Prudent Innovation is based on some simple ideas: • The world is changing pretty fast, but law is both resistant to change (so naturally changes…

Sep 10, 2015 8:19 AM CDT

Aspiring law profs face tough job market

Newbie lawyers aren’t the only legal professional facing a tight job market. The market for entry-level law professors “has constricted dramatically” since 2011, and legal educators don’t see a likely full recovery in the near future, the National Law Journal (sub. req.) reports. Since 2011, the number of new law…

Sep 8, 2015 9:38 AM CDT