‘At Last, a Rational Explanation for Why Law School Tuition Keeps Rising’ up on the Am Law Daily

A revised, more entertaining version of last week’s post. “At Last, a Rational Explanation for Why Law School Tuition Keeps Rising“ I’d like to add that this is the first post I’ve busted out on the Colemak keyboard layout. I got sick of typing on QWERTY, and since I write for a living, I decided [...]

Two Worlds, Side by Side: ABA Journal & Letter from Law School

I received a letter from my law school subtly informing me that my name would be placed on “the permanent donor wall located near the entrance” if I gave a gift or commitment of $5,000. The same day, the ABA Journal published Bill Henderson’s article titled, “The Law School Bubble: How Long Will It Last [...]

It’s the Rent, Not the Regulations

“In 1995 … the Department of Justice in an antitrust suit … charged that A.B.A. standards had artificially inflated faculty salaries. The A.B.A. signed a consent decree, agreeing to a number of strictures intended to pry the process out of the hands of legal academics and end the fixing of salaries. Since then, the cost [...]

The Orthodox Assumptions in Amar’s and Ayers’ ‘Unorthodox’ Solution to the Law School Bubble

If only I had a dollar for every law professor who came up with a solution for saving the legal academy… Akhil Reed Amar and Ian Ayres, “Paying Students to Quit Law School,” in Slate At least from the descriptive title, we know this will be fun. The opener, though, starts us off on the [...]

The Law School Debt Blob

Many readers know of U.S. News’ “Graduate Debt Rankings” page, which contains crucial information on law graduate debt that for some reason is not published in the Official Guide even though the ABA is surely collecting it. Law School Transparency does us the favor of providing the same data from the previous two years on [...]

Petitions and Protests

Here’re a few things for you activists to keep an eye on: two petitions and a protest. There’s one petition going around the Internet asking the House of Representatives to pass a resolution favoring forgiving student loan debt per Michigan representative Hansen Clarke’s proposal (H. Res. 365). It’s close to getting the 90,000 signatures it’s [...]

Cooley Embarrasses the Legal Profession with Its “Report One: National Employment”

The purpose of Report One is to insert the nation’s most authoritative employment data into the public dialogue about the national legal employment picture. Since the onset of the recession and during the slow recovery, this public dialogue has been dominated by bloggers and a small element within the media. According to their posts and [...]

Speed Link: University of Baltimore Ousts Dean Phillip Closius

[UPDATE: UB president Robert L. Bogomolny responds here, claiming that releasing Closius was long-coming. President Bogomolny disagreed with Closius's characterization of the transfers the law school made to the university. He justified the tuition increases so the law school could compete regionally (prestige) and offer more scholarships (more net revenue); neither persuades me as necessary.] [...]

A Reading List for the “Conversation about Employment in the Law and Legal Occupations”

Expressing relief at not being named in Cooley’s lawsuit against four John Doe bloggers, BIDER’s Angel includes the e-mail by Cooley’s president, Don LeDuc, to his students assuaging their possible concerns that their law degrees may not be very marketable. He writes: The entire conversation about employment in the law and legal occupations is almost [...]

Quick Link: National Law Journal Praises Richard Matasar as He Steps Down

Karen Sloan, “Reformer Dean to Step Down after Long Tenure at New York Law School,” in the National Law Journal Sloan proclaims: Matasar has been one of the few legal educators publicly supporting controversial proposals to change the American Bar Association’s law school accreditation standards, including removal of what many law professors interpret as a [...]