Fight The Hypo » Law School Experience

More For Me

Casebook Sherpa — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 16:08:13 +0000

Ethan Haines is on a hunger strike. As the self-appointed spokesman for all law students, he is “disillusioned by law school employment statistics, commercial school rankings, and antiquated career counseling programs.”

Evidently, he’s “being the change” he wants to see. (What does that even mean anyway? I want my law school to do more to get me a job so I’ll starve myself? If law schools are really as negligent and out of touch as Ethan appears to believe, would they really care if he starves himself to death?)

Go get em, Ethan. In the meantime, I’ll eat the food you would have. Seriously. Can you pass that month-old cookie over here?

While I sincerely hope that Ethan’s protest has some impact, I doubt it will.

I’m glad for the attention Ethan’s effort is focusing on the shortcomings of law school career counseling offices. I wonder what more they can do though? The travesty that is employment data reporting and commercial rankings formulations have been well-documented. But the law school career office has not gotten as much attention.

Our career office manages fall recruiting, hosts a job board, schedules mock interviews, runs lectures, maintains an alumni database, helps with resume and writing sample review, publicizes and co-hosts job fairs and networking events. At some point, isn’t up to the graduate students to do some legwork too?

Obviously, it’s not that simple. And in many ways it’s not the career office’s fault that the economy has tanked and they have very little control over the size of their budget. However, when I think of my interactions with our career office, I wonder what value they really add. Herein is what intrigues me about Ethan’s effort.

Despite all the “activity” the career office appears to be engaged in, I have a hard time knowing whether that activity is worth anything, or whether it really can be worth anything. The career office isn’t a placement service or a staffing agency. They help students put themselves in a position to find a good job by providing resources to connect with other alumni and notifying students of open, publicized opportunities. Beyond that, the career office is at the mercy of the law school’s budget (often just an allocation from the University and not a direct correlation to tuition payments) and the quality of students and education the law school produces – neither of which the career office has any control over.

So… there are a few of my thoughts. What do you want your career office to be doing that it’s not already?

The Sense of Impending Anything

The Sense of Impending Anything

Casebook Sherpa — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 15:04:14 +0000

Have I told you my new favorite joke?

Most don’t find it funny.

Frankly, I love it.

I crack myself every time I tell it. That’s probably because I’ve never been much of a joke teller and this one qualifies more as a witty rejoin than full on joke.

Anyway, goes something like this…

Someone: Wow! Entering your last year of law school. That must be a great feeling.

Me: Definitely.

Someone: Must be nice to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Me: It is. I just can’t tell whether it’s daylight or a train. Either way, it’ll all be over soon.

Someone: *Stares quizzically* (Unless they’re a lawyer or law student. In that case, I get a chuckle.)

Me: **Laughing uproariously** (mostly on the inside)

Some gallows humor never hurt anyone I suppose.

I think it’s the sense of impending… what exactly? doom? elation? freedom? crushing debt payments?…. what?….

It’s this sense of impending anything (and everything) that’s exhilarating and frightening at the same time.

Thousands of law students in classes past entered this last year with that future, at least in the short-term sense, determined. A job offer in hand, ready to be bored to death during their last year of school. The last few years have changed that, particularly at second tier schools like ours where even summer gigs have been hard to come by.

For my part, my summer has given me much more hope that the daylight I’ll at some point emerge into will in fact be what I’d hoped – a hard won, rewarding career.

Still, I’ll never let go of the truth to my joke that this economy and any long-term changes it has yielded may not make it easy or possible to emerge unscathed into a job that is relatively well-paid and stable as many of our predecessors have done.

Sure, that weighs on me, but not nearly as heavily as some assume when I tell the joke or talk about school or law or whatever.

It is after all really just a joke.

And I am after all generally optimistic about my last year in school and what comes next.

11-week job interviews

Sometimes, It Just Doesn’t All Fit

Casebook Sherpa — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:21:25 +0000

Pardon my ending of our recent hiatus with a bit of whining…

Sometimes the accumulated fatigue of working full-time and going to law school part-time catches up with you and you need a day off. This normal mental health breather is to be expected.

Other times school and work stand in direct conflict. Even when you are eager to do both, your commitment to one must override the demands of the other. I ran smack into such a time yesterday – or rather, learned yesterday that next week such a collision was going to happen.

For my day job, I’ll be in California next week for some market research we’re doing for a client. It’s a good project and the research will yield good results. I travel Tuesday evening through Friday morning with my flight on Friday getting back to DC around 4:30 p.m. Next week is our Spring Break so I thought it would be a good time to take my turn traveling since my co-workers often pick up the slack when my school schedule keeps me from traveling or attending evening events. No problem, right?

Enter the clinic.

Yesterday, I received a call from the professor who serves as Managing Attorney of the clinic I’m working in. It seems that the Judge in a case I’m managing would like to hold a hearing on a request we filed in November 2009. The hearing is set for next week. On Friday morning. Of the 15 weeks I’m working in clinic and the three months this request has been pending, the hearing is scheduled on one of the three days I’m traveling this entire semester. One of the three days I just can’t be there.

Ugh.

I’ll be out of town, but I know my partner in the clinic is spoiling to get into court so I gladly point out to our supervisor that I’m sure he could do it.

Later that night I begin to wonder whether I can rearrange my flights and meetings in California to get back.

The airline I’m flying offers either a 2:55 p.m. flight on Thursday or the Friday morning flight that I’m already booked on. The Thursday flight won’t work as it’s right in the middle of our work in CA.

Okay, what about other airlines? The cheapest one-way ticket I can find is more than $350. Since I’d be paying this one myself that’s just not doable right now. I could drive an hour or (during rush hour) two to get to another airport but even the Thursday night redeyes I can afford don’t get me back to DC until late morning.

Ugh.

Work and school have collided in the past. But it’s never really bothered me in the past. It’s just how it is.

This one bugs me.

The important thing is that our client is in good and capable hands in court next week. I just wish they could be mine.

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Bull or Bear Market for your Law School Investment?

Casebook Sherpa — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 16:16:53 +0000

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?

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CUA Law Professor on e-textbooks

Casebook Sherpa — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:09:43 +0000

Catholic University Law School Professor, Robert Destro, was quoted in this New York Times piece about the prospects for e-textbooks in the classroom…

Electronic textbooks may one day offer a convenient way to study, said Ms. Epps, literally lightening a student’s load. That’s already happened at Catholic University of America in Washington, where Robert A. Destro, a professor of law, and his students are testing a version of the eDGe. Professor Destro has 13 textbooks on his device.

“It’s wonderful not to have to lug those books around,” he said.

I’d be all for having an electronic way to store and read my casebooks, so long as it actually reduces overall cost and allows for adequate note-taking or copying and pasting of text into my notes.

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“At least, that is how I read Hubbell. No one is really sure.”

Casebook Sherpa — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:19:30 +0000

This was a quote at the bottom of a page of our Criminal Procedure syllabus.

Hubbell refers to United States v. Hubbell, a case that grew out of Ken Starr’s Whitewater investigation (which, of course, grew into the Monica Lewinsky investigation, President Clinton’s impeachment, etc).

The case itself is significant in that it dealt with the questions of how the act of producing documents in response to a subpoena does, or does not, impact a person’s 5th Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and whether a government’s offer of immunity in order to secure production of such documents precludes prosecution of the person producing the information.

There is some disagreement among lawyers over Hubbell‘s effect and our professor has a reading of it that seems reasonable to me. Naturally, for the purposes of the class, the professor’s view is the “correct” approach for the exam, whatever ends up being the “correct” approach in real life. (Though the professor in question is a former prosecutor, has decades of teaching experience, and has written extensively on issues in evidence and criminal procedure. So I’m inclined to think he’s more likely to be at least mostly right.)

The interesting thing is that this isn’t the first time we’ve encountered an unsettled area of case law (Crim Pro is basically all case law) where our Professor has proposed what he thinks is the correct way to settle the conflicting cases and principles (another one being Montejo‘s impact on the 6th Amendment right to the assistance of counsel).

This is an interesting function of a professor and it hasn’t really happened in other classes where the rules we needed to know are more settled. But it’s a vital function for students to rely on.

It’s not we’re not capable of figuring this all out on our own. We are. Really once you’ve completed first semester you’re capable of doing that.

But let’s face it: professors know more than us at this point and we don’t have the time to catch up fully. Plus understanding how an experienced attorney settles these issue provide a good picture, a learning experience, of how we will do it when we’re out of school.

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Our Law School’s New Website

Casebook Sherpa — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:11:56 +0000

Our law school has a new website.

It’s an improvement in look and feel.

In integrating the design of the University’s page, it serves as an important reminder of the law school’s connection to the college. This connection is often forgotten, but with the increased visibility and popularity of interdisciplinary approaches to the law (law and economics, feminist theory, law and religion, etc), the closer a law school and university interact the better.

The important thing to remember, for those who follow such things, is that this is an important step forward. The site organization is hugely improved and things fit together a little more neatly. It looks better than the old site and looks more like other law school websites. It’s also important to remember that law school websites are difficult. Pure and simple. Who’s the primary audience? To what extent should your website be the same as those of other schools?

That said, it still misses an opportunity to use the school’s online presence as an effective marketing presence. Overall, there are no regular communications tools that engage the user – blogs, e-newsletters, etc. Along with this point, it carries over – at least at this initial launch – the shortcomings of the old site.

I don’t intend for this to become a bash session, but I’ve listed some concerns here and welcome you to suggest some other ways to improve the site. If we have some constructive ideas, I’ll send them along to the school.

There are several things that I think make Catholic Law unique:

highly respected clinical programs
a reputation among law firms and employers in town that outpaces our US News rankings
significant focus on social justice
collegial environment and good facilities
good speakers that focus on issues of the day (including an ongoing series of panels at the National Press Club focusing on various issues)
highly regarded securities and communications law programs
growing focus on jurisprudential studies and, at the same time, wider offerings of professional skills courses
respect for the role of religion in society

Yet, when you push through the website content and organization, these are not the things that jump out at you. While some of these may be addressed as they finalize the launch of the new design, I’ve listed the things that jump out at me.

In terms of navigation, how do you get back to the homepage once you’ve drilled down into a section of the page? This no longer applies to all areas of the site, but there are still some places where you can’t get back to the homepage.

Many of the event detail pages are available only in .pdf. See, e.g., the event on the homepage called “The Consequences of Human Differences.” Why can’t I access an html version?

Where are the law review/journal pages and information? And why isn’t the Commlaw Conspectus, a very well respected Communications Law journal highlighted? (Having these included under publications might help.)

The “Latest News” “feature” on the front page does not allow you to link to more information about the event allows you to link to more information about the event, but it’s static – you can’t comment on it, or give you a link to save to twitter, facebook, delicious, StumbleUpon. (Folding the latest news into a blog for the entire site could remedy this.)

It is hard to find the clinical programs. (Placing clinical programs higher in the navigation choices or having clinical work and achievements being a prominent feature could remedy this.)

Professor scholarship is hard to find. The location of student achievements and organizations are not immediately apparent. (These are things that could easily be listed under “news” and could also be highlighted in the blog.)

Blogs that are on there are dated, unupdated. Seems to me that you should just drop them or develop an editorial calendar for them and stick to it. (I’m suggesting that the site have ONE blog on which all of this information is posted. This will act as a funnel, so to speak, linking the user to the other static components of the site.)

Video and audio of events are actually posted (buried, really) in the undergraduate website. Having these more prominently available (perhaps via a vimeo or youtube page) would be helpful and make the site more engaging.

What did I miss? Or am I being too critical?

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Wisdom from Land Transactions.

Dr. Bombay — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 22:37:26 +0000

A quote from my Land Transaction and Finance Professor today:

“Just remember this when you’re in practice: don’t ever try to answer hypotheticals. [My associate] was trying to answer a client’s question today, and I had to intervene. I told her that ‘there was no question because there were no facts.’ We don’t deal in hypotheticals when dealing with real property.”

Indeed.

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Mid-Term Time

Casebook Sherpa — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:55:06 +0000

I’m working on two take-home mid-terms at the moment.

One is not graded. Well it’s self-graded and then the professor grades it pass-fail. You pass so long as you give a reasonable effort at answering and evaluating your own answer. The professor gives you some feedback but none of it affects your final grade.

The other is graded, but it can only help you not hurt you. If you do well it can bump up the score on your final. If you do poorly it won’t be held against you. (“up not down” is how the professor phrases it)

In my other class we have take-home quizzes – distributed on Wednesday and due by the following Monday. We’ve had two so far and I suspect we’ll get our third this week or next. I don’t remember off hand how much they count toward the final grade, but I’d bet they will be about 20%.

I’m torn about these things. On the one hand, they’re good exercises at forcing you to digest the material and kickstart your outlining. On the other, they’re yet another demand placed on your time that may or may not help your grade.

I certainly don’t mind the practice. But I could do without the added time it takes to complete these things. On my last quiz (for the third class above) I simply didn’t have much time to devote to it and my grade on the quiz proved that. But at some point you need to let one or two things slide a little to get the mandatory stuff done.

So what’s your take on things like this? Do you find them helpful? Or are they more annoying than anything? What about when they don’t really affect your grade?

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Stop and Smell the Lawsuits: GW and Those Troublesome Evening Law Students

Magnus Wellborn — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:46:14 +0000

Every now and again, we all need a diversion from the rigors of work and law school. Being devoted law students, however, we don’t have time for real pleasures or dalliances like stopping to smell roses, so we must find joy in that last remaining respite: daydreams of suing Deep Pockets. This is the first of hopefully many (or at least several) distractions I can provide you with as we collectively dream about those large negotiated settlements, jury awards, and attorney’s fees.

Sherpa and I came up with the idea for this feature last week as we discussed this story. If you haven’t already heard, The George Washington University Law School (nice title, but it’s no The Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law) dropped in the U.S. News & World Report Rankings, from #20 in 2008 to #28 in 2009. Senior Associate Dean Greg Maggs blamed the tumble on U.S. News’ decision “to count full-time and part-time students mixed together.” Apparently U.S. News made this decision “without giving [GW] any notice.” How did GW respond? The same way any reasonable law school would respond: by slashing the size of the evening program so there are now fewer slots for those underachieving part-time dolts!

Personally, I think GW’s ranking at #20 was an inflated ranking based on incomplete statistics. They haven’t accepted worse students in the last year. They just had to disclose data that they’d previously swept under the rug. It’s no secret that many law schools have gamed the system to achieve higher rankings. There are plenty of stories of schools admitting students with lower GPAs and LSAT scores into part-time programs to avoid reporting those credentials to U.S. News, only to then transfer those same students into full-time programs after making the report. In that case, GW has always been around a #28 school, but it was able to manufacture a #20 ranking through gamesmanship. And now GW has taken steps to once again manufacture a higher ranking by allowing fewer students into its school. They’re taking less tuition money now to appease U.S. News and increase their prestige so they can have higher contributions from alumni later.

The point, though, is not that GW may have made a bad decision and done wrong by its evening students. The point is that U.S. News wields an incredible amount of power over law schools. U.S. News giveth, and U.S. News taketh away. And its 200 or so law school lapdogs bend over backwards for the chance to move up incrementally in the rankings. Moving up a few slots in the rankings is cause for much celebration and rejoicing; moving down a few slots is cause for weeping and gnashing of teeth.

U.S. News pulls the strings, which is why I dream of suing them. I think I could do it if the Perfect Client walks through my door. Imagine:

Perfect applied to GW’s part-time program, but was not admitted after GW slashed the size of its part-time program from 100 slots to 50 slots. Perfect found out GW ranked him as the 52nd-best candidate, so he easily would have been admitted had GW not reduced its class size. GW cut its part-time program solely as an attempt to increase its standing with U.S. News and to get a higher ranking. U.S. News, then, is directly responsible for GW denying admission to Perfect.

U.S. News would argue that there are about 200 ABA-accredited law schools in the country, and if Perfect was almost good enough to get into GW’s part-time program, he is certainly good enough to get into numerous other programs. But let’s assume that other law schools follow GW’s lead to such an extent that Perfect is denied admission to Tier 1 schools and now must attend a Tier 3 school. This leads to (arguably) a lower-quality education which leads to lesser job prospects and lesser career earnings. In that scenario, the actions of law schools to appease U.S. News and regain their illusory higher rankings have had a significant impact on Perfect’s life.

U.S. News would counter that nobody has a right to go to law school and that law schools should be free to exercise their autonomy to make determinations regarding admissions standards and class sizes. But it’s arguable that, while Perfect does not have a right to go to law school, he has the right to a free and equal opportunity to compete, which U.S. News denied. U.S. News denied Perfect this opportunity because its ranking system creates an inflated sense that some schools are of a higher caliber than they truly are, and this leads those schools to deny admission to qualified candidates who are otherwise capable of succeeding at those schools. U.S. News would counter that Perfect had an adequate opportunity to compete during the application process and simply failed to secure a slot. Perfect would probably reply that the application process was neither free nor equal because U.S. News’ influence on the law schools he applied to skewed it from the start.

It’s a tough case, but I think it’s colorable. What do you think? Any other theories on going after U.S. News? Any antitrust whizzes out there who have ideas about whether U.S. News’ monopoly (or at least current predominance) in the rankings game could saddle them with any duties that they arguably violated? Anyone want to be my co-counsel? Better yet, anyone want to be my Perfect Client?

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