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By Casebook Sherpa, on January 26th, 2010
Dr. Bombay and I talked about the Citizens United decision recently. If your head has been so far in a casebook that you missed it, the bottom line is that the Supreme Court ruled that First Amendment protections apply to corporations as much as to individuals. Corporations as associations of individuals, therefore, may make independent expenditures to engage in “express advocacy,” calling for the election or defeat of specific candidates.
As with many things political right now, my response was rather ambivalent.
Frankly, I’m open to seeing how it works. I’m certainly sympathetic to the idea that the First Amendment provides a blanket protection for political speech, regardless of corporate identity. My gut also tells me that (a) corporations like Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Exxon-Mobil will tread lightly in this arena and (b) allowing such direct expenditures and requiring disclosure of donor identities to groups like Citizens United will increase transparency, a principle that should be central to political spending.
Because of this my negative reaction to the decision was more tempered than Dr. Bombay’s. However, I’m sympathetic to the notion that the use by corporations of economic power can distort the political marketplace. That’s really the heart of the competing strain of decisions. Frankly, I could care less whether corporations have the fundamental “right” to air advertisements in support of one candidate or another and I doubt the Framers felt they were granting such a right. Call me a raging liberal, but the idea of yet more money flooding the process does not sit right with me and the people should be able to control the flood gates.
Continue reading Random Rumination on Citizens United
By Casebook Sherpa, on January 20th, 2010
I think there’s a point in some semesters where you genuinely question whether you’ll make it through. Monday, January 18th was that point of this semester for me.
I didn’t think it would be a problem this semester. I have one class and the clinic, plus my editor’s responsibilities on the Journal.
Then I was assigned my cases at the Clinic. Then we got our student submissions to the Journal. Then I realized that the class I’m taking is, actually, Commercial Transactions (and not one of the other “dumbed down” 4-credit elective, but staple, courses you take in law school). And then I got pretty sick and could barely focus on a thing.
If before I felt like I was barely staying afloat, today I feel like I’m at least dog paddling toward the end of semester.
Resiliency is the name of the game right now. Pressing forward despite feeling tired, confused, overwhelmed. Taking action when all you want to do is watch one more episode Mad Men on DVD.
By Casebook Sherpa, on January 13th, 2010
Maybe you had to be there but this exchange was pretty funy…
Commercial Transactions Professor: “And by now your asking yourself whether any of these facts really matter. The answer is no!”
Student: “So what’s your question? I thought you wanted the story, the facts.”
By Casebook Sherpa, on January 7th, 2010
I’m intrigued by these stories this week about North Carolina Central School of Law being the best buy for law school.
The law school combines low in-state tuition, focus on clinical skills (they have 14 clinical programs), high first-time bar passage rates, and low debt loads for graduates. The school admits to being a “no frills” law school, unconcerned with rankings and prestige but obsessed with value and quality.
Could this be a “model” for other schools to follow? Smaller, localized schools that eschew rankings manipulation and bells and whistles in favor of quality and clinical acumen?
My initial impression was that perhaps this is the beginning of a trend, a move away from rankings-obsession. But as I think about it, NC Central doesn’t seem all that different from many schools.
While there may be too many law schools out there overall, many law schools actually and exclusively serve a regional demographic that prepare students to be good lawyers. This doesn’t always (often?) lead to a good USNWR ranking. If anything, the attention they divert to upping their US News ranking only distracts them from doing what NC Central is trying to do – focus on clinical skills, reduce debt load, and graduate competent lawyers who pass the bar in one try and are better prepared than peers who paid 6 times as much for school.
NC Central isn’t a new model so much as a school that provides permission, in a sense, to ignore the rankings if you believe in what you’re doing and you’re graduating good lawyers. Of course, this is all notwithstanding the prestige and alumni network factors. But I think if you’re graduating quality people those things take care of themselves.
What it does for the prospective law student is challenge the notion that you should go to the most highly ranked school you get into. I don’t think it’s a fatal challenge, but if you live (and intend to stay) in the Raleigh/Durham, NC area and your choice is between Duke, UNC, Wake Forest, and NC Central perhaps NC Central isn’t as bad a choice as the US News rankings would suggest, particularly if it means the difference between $80K in debt and $20K (or less) with even somewhat similar job prospects in the region. (UNC, incidentally, is #22 on the best value list.)
I guess it depends what you want and what you value…. and, definitely, depends on the job market and anticipating future market trends.
By Casebook Sherpa, on January 5th, 2010
Today, I’m reading this interesting debate over at the New York Times website, asking the question whether MBA students are “students” or “consumers.” I wouldn’t say the arguments made are earth shattering or particularly insightful. But the question posed is an interesting, albeit purely theoretical, one to me. So pardon the completely impractical discussion, but feel free to opine away with me…
Are law students “students” or “consumers”?
Students who learn or consumers who purchase a good?
Students being trained to join an institution or consumer viewed simply as a cost and profit center?
Students to whom a teacher’s duty is owed or consumers who are simply economic actors and entitled only to having certain material information disclosed?
My gut reaction is to say that we are more student than consumer. In spirit – the very heart of a legal education, the animating spirit behind it – we are most certainly “students” in the classical sense of the word. Learning how to think and reason and question. Of course, we don’t really learn what we need to learn for the real world. We learn, perhaps, how to stay afloat in the “real world” as a lawyer but not how to actually swim. The consumer moniker, in this sense, is helpful to frame law school as a place to serve the law student and provide the very best product possible with the market rewarding innovation, excellence, and return on investment. (However, I think it’s fair to question whether the supply and demand principles of any market have applied to law schools or lawyer salaries at all for decades.)
But I think the fairer metaphor is that we’re more an investor in something. In return for our vast sum of money and sweat equity we are promised a spot in a relatively lucrative, stable, challenging career path. Law school administrators and faculty are officers of this undertaking charged with maximizing profit and reducing costs. Or perhaps they are fiduciaries of a trust we place in “law school,” a risk we absorb by enrolling, and the trustees are, consequently, obligated to ensure the return we expect is relatively likely to be realized. Not guaranteed, but that those in a position to take care of our investment are acting with our best interests in mind and that the information they provide and we rely on is reliable, transparent, and devoid of false (fraudulent?) promises of any future, guaranteed earnings.
On this side of graduation – with roughly 16 months until that glorious day – I have serious misgivings about how this enterprise will turn out. In my more honest moments with myself and others (often after a slug of whiskey or two), I find myself bitterly lamenting the work load, job prospects, and, most of all, the seemingly endless stream of stories about disenchanted attorneys writing about “How to use your J.D. to fix up old cars” or some such alternative career for an attorney.
Yet, I’m hopeful as well. Law school has enabled me to take charge of my career and be challenged in ways that I never have before. Intrinsically, I think it’s been a worthwhile investment. Kind of like hol Whether it yields real world, external returns remains to be seen. But I think they’re far more likely to be realized with a J.D. than without it.
So… are we students or consumers? Or something else, like an investor or stakeholder? Are you bullish or bearish on the long-term prospects of your investment?
By Dr. Bombay, on January 3rd, 2010
Happy New Semester! I’m sure it will be far better than spending time with your family and friends. Here’s some poorly modified verse for motivation.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our transfer students.
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a student
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of class blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o’erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O’erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill’d with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest Student.
Whose blood is fet from fathers of class-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Cardozas,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought
And sheathed their pen for lack of argument:
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call’d fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to study. And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in America, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry ‘God for GPA, Degrees, and Future Employment!’
By Casebook Sherpa, on December 28th, 2009
The Fight the Hypo crew has scattered to various places for the holidays. I’m back from the Philadelphia suburbs after a wonderful trip to see my family. Over the last 2-and-a-half weeks since my last final I have completely forgotten about law school, student loans, and Fight the Hypo. Well, except for the day last week when we got our Criminal Procedure grades. (Seriously. Exam was on 12/7 and we had grades within 10 days. Many kudos to our professor on that one.)
Now the wait for our other grades continues. It has always been strange to me that you start a new semester without having any idea how you did in the previous one. You are paying for a new semester without ever getting an ROI on the semester you just paid for. (Or, rather, the semester you just mortgaged your future on.) So, 1Ls out there wondering when you’ll see grades, just let it go. It might be awhile.
The new year brings new possibilities. This next semester sees yours truly with just one class, the 4-credit Commercial Transactions. The rest of my credit load is taken up by Clinic (6 credits) and Law Journal Editing (1 credit). I’ll have time demands from the journal and from my article, on which I’m STILL working, more than a year later.
In terms of resolutions, I’m always one to have delusions of grandeur that fizzle out by March. For this year, it’s simple – lose 20 pounds. Some more regular exercise and a diet plan are all that I’m counting on this. No “exercise every morning for 90 minutes” or “stop eating all sweets for a year” or “cut out all beer from my diet” or whatever other things. 20 pounds in a year through a more active lifestyle and relatively flexible diet plan that is manageable. That won’t get me all the way back to my athletic peak days. For that I’d need to reverse the clock about 12 years and drop 30 pounds. But it will put me pretty close and I’m sure will make me feel a hell of a lot better about myself. I’ll try to blog about this now and then.
In terms of things I’m thankful for:
- My wonderfully patient wife. Mrs. Sherpa is a remarkable woman and person. I was reminded of this during our car ride to Pennsylvania. It’s easy to forget how long it’s been since you really connected with a spouse as you go through law school. I mean really connected. You know, the kind of talks that are difficult and wonderful and joyful and gut wrenching all at the same time. Her schedule and mine have been so hectic this last year that we haven’t really done that much. This Christmas break has been a great time for that.
- Plenty. We have relatively good health, loving families, great friends, a nice home, and stable jobs. It is not lost on us how blessed by abundance we are right now. We only pray that prudence and planning can help us prepare for when the blessings look less like times of plenty and more like times of less – seasons that are no less a blessing, but can be much more difficult to endure.
- My grandparents. I am blessed enough to have three of them still alive. I learn more from them and about them (and, as a result, about myself) every year. I’m thankful for every moment I get to spend with them.
- My summer job. I never reported here that I snagged a Summer Associate position with a firm in the DC area. I’m pretty stoked about it, though have played it down as I figure out scheduling with my current job (to which I intend to return next fall) and to see how things play out with friends who are still looking. We’ll have a few posts about this in the New Year along with some thoughts on spring recruiting and post mortem on fall recruiting.
Anyway, our best to you and yours during this holiday season. We hope that you enjoyed a very merry Christmas and will ring in the new year in true law student style – joined by good friends for more than a few drinks BUT not too much bitching about school.
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