AALS Tax Section Call For Papers Due Aug. 15: New Voices In Tax Law & Policy

The AALS Section on Taxation has issued a Call for Papers to be presented at a works-in-progress session at the 2020 AALS Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. The works-in-progress session is tentatively scheduled for Friday, January 3, 2020. This program will provide speakers the opportunity to present their work and receive feedback from commentators in the field.

Eligibility: Scholars teaching at AALS member schools or non-member fee-paid schools with seven or fewer years of full-time teaching experience as of the submission deadline are eligible to submit papers. For co-authored papers, all authors must satisfy the eligibility criteria.

Due date: 5 p.m. PDT, Thursday, August 15, 2019.

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LatCrit/SALT Annual Faculty Development Workshop

We are writing to invite you the LatCrit, Inc./SALT Annual Faculty Development Workshop (FDW), which will take place on October 17, 2019. The FDW will be held the day before the 2019 LatCrit Biennial Conference The Dispossessed Majority: Resisting the Second Redemption in América Posfascista (Postfascist America) in Atlanta, Georgia.

The FDW is designed for those who are planning to enter or who have recently joined the legal academy. The day-long workshop includes sessions on topics facing prospective, junior, and pre-tenured faculty, while providing generous opportunities to network and form mentoring relationships with established faculty. The FDW is an invaluable learning and professional development opportunity!

Registration for the FDW is free for attendees of the LatCrit conference. Please see the attached flyer for more information. Additionally, please feel free to e-mail Professor Ron Hochbaum at rhochbaum@luc.edu with any questions.

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Symposium: Uncomfortable Conversations About Legal Education — Student Debt, Diversity, And More

The ABA Young Lawyers Division and Law School Transparency are hosting a symposium on Uncomfortable Conversations About Legal Education: Student Debt, Diversity, and More today at the ABA Annual Meeting in San Francisco:

Introduction
Kyle McEntee, Abhay Nadipuram, Tommy Preston Jr.
Law schools face an unrelenting system of incentives that make lowering prices, equitable access, and curricular innovation extremely difficult. This half-day program examines how to cause positive change in legal education.

Law School Deans Panel: Obstacles to Lowering Costs
Ben Barros (Toledo), Camille Nelson (American), Carla Pratt (Washburn)
Three current law school deans will discuss barriers to more accessible and affordable legal education. The discussion will cover U.S. News & World Report rankings, accreditation, university culture, and more.

Lightning Talks
Introduction to the Blue Sky Initiative (more here and here)
Maggie White, an Iowa attorney and member of Law School Transparency’s board of directors, will describe a wide-ranging initiative from Law School Transparency and other partners to address the cost of legal education.

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Tax Panels Today At SEALS

Tax panels today at the 2019 SEALS Annual Conference in Boca Raton, Florida:

Tax Law Workshop: Tax Law and Practice — A Critical Review
This panel considers both the realities of tax practice and tax practitioners in the 21st Century, as well as necessary updates to the tax law in a variety of areas. In particular, panelists in this group consider the future of the uncovering and punishing of tax evasion, standards of professionalism for tax practitioners, the role of blockchain technology in tax evasion (particularly in the international context), philanthropy and the tax law, and the role of the states in creating and enforcing tax laws.

• Jennifer Bird-Pollan (Kentucky) (moderator)
• William Byrnes (Texas A&M)
• Alyssa DiRusso (Samford)
• David Hasen (Florida)
• Young Ran (Christine) Kim (Utah)
• Stephanie McMahon (Cincinnati)
• Andrew Swain (Indiana)
• Richard Winchester (Seton Hall)

Tax Law Workshop: Tax Policy Reforms in the 21st Century

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Today's Tax Panel At SEALS

Tax panel today at the 2019 SEALS Annual Conference in Boca Raton, Florida:

Tax Law at the Crossroads
The ever-changing social and political landscape makes it necessary to constantly revisit the tax law and determine whether the current status of the law matches the needs and goals of the society it serves. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is the most recent example of a massive overhaul in the tax system but even that significant reform effort left many issues unaddressed. The papers on this panel consider a variety of tax law concerns related to families, businesses, and international transactions. Both federal- and state-level tax matters are addressed.

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Caron Presents A Dean's Perspective On Diversity, Socioeconomics, The LSAT, And The U.S. News Law School Rankings Today At SEALS

One of the Legal Ed panels today at the 2019 SEALS Annual Conference in Boca Raton, Florida:

Building Bridges: Socioeconomics, the LSAT and U.S. News and World Report Rankings
This panel explores methodologies and programs that will help students from low income and diverse backgrounds have opportunities available to them to attend law school. AALS President Wendy Perdue of the University of Richmond has said: “As our society struggles with this problem of deep polarization, lawyers and law schools have an important role to play. Lawyers, are, after all, in the dispute resolution business. Resolving conflict is central to what we do. And today, perhaps more than ever before, the skills that we as lawyers have, and we as law professors teach, are of critical importance.” In order to resolve these conflicts, we need to make sure that all communities have access to engage in these important conversations. The Before the J.D. Study shows that African American and Hispanic students think about going to law school before going to high school and college. In addition, the study highlights that over 60% of students report the most important advice about going to graduate or professional school comes from a family member or relative. Many students from low-income backgrounds do not have family members who are lawyers and are at a disadvantage in getting advice about going to law school because they may not be encouraged by these close family members or friends. There is still a small percentage of African American and Latino/a attorneys Nationwide 5% of lawyers are African American and 5% are of Hispanic origin. These percentages have remained consistent for almost the past ten years. So many students from these racial and ethnic backgrounds also can’t readily turn to family members or friends for inspiration and advice about going to law school. The ABA reports that the entering class for 2017 has an aggregate African American enrollment of 8.6% and 13.2% for Hispanics. Meanwhile, African Americans consist of approximately 13% and Hispanics approximately 18% of the overall U.S. population. These two racial groups, along with Asian Americans, are on target to be a majority of the U.S. population in the next 30 years. Given the growth trends in these demographic groups, there will be an insufficient percent of lawyers from these groups to meet their (and society’s) legal needs in the next few years. Moreover, some scholars have argued that there is a strong tie between socioeconomics and law schools admissions. There has recently been a very passionate Twitter discussion of this issue on Lawprofblawg. Some believe that the LSAT and U.S. News privileges those from middle- and upper middle-class backgrounds. Others point out the LSAT’s strength in providing an accurate assessment of core skills required for success in law school and that an admission process that correctly uses the LSAT as one factor in a multi-factor holistic admission process is fairest to applicants. Recently, U.S. News attempted to reduce economic privilege in its rankings of undergraduate schools by injecting socio economic factors. The formula now includes indicators meant to measure "social mobility" and drops an acceptance rate measure that benefited schools that turned the most students away. A recent Politico article reported that U.S. News will change its methodology at the college level. This panel consists of experts who examine these issues in terms of the LSAT, U.S. News & World Report law school rankings, and socioeconomic and diversity issues.

• Leonard Baynes (Dean, Houston), Pre-Law Pipeline Program: We’ve Got The Power
• Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), A Dean's Perspective on Diversity, Socioeconomics, the LSAT, and the U.S. News Law School Rankings
• Victor Quintanilla (Professor & Co-Director, Center for Law, Society & Culture, Indiana), Initial Results on Relationship Between the LSAT, USNWR, SES, and Demographics From the Productive Mindset Intervention Study
• Robert Morse (Chief Data Strategist, U.S. News), Building Bridges: Socioeconomics, the LSAT and U.S. News and World Report Rankings  
• Kellye Testy (President & CEO, LSAC; former Dean, University of Washington), Adversity and Admission: Tackling “Opportunity to Learn”

Today's Tax Panel At SEALS

Tax panel today at the 2019 SEALS Annual Conference in Boca Raton, Florida:

New Tax Scholars Workshop
This workshop gives New Scholars the opportunity to present a work-in-progress in a welcoming and supportive environment and to receive feedback on their presentation from more senior scholars in their fields. New Scholars are also assigned a mentor. The program is open to junior faculty at member schools. New Scholars are nominated to participate in the New Scholars Workshop by the deans of their respective law schools.

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Classism In The Legal Academy Panel Today At SEALS

One of the Legal Ed panels today at the 2019 SEALS Annual Conference in Boca Raton, Florida:

Discussion Group: Classism in Academia
Lawprofblawg, an anonymous blogger, has raised some compelling critiques about race, class and gender issues in academia. Specifically, he has called out the academy’s top cited list as being classist, pointing out that few of the faculty on that list ever graduated from a law school lower than top 10. Few on the list are women, and few on the list are people of color. Moreover, many of those on the list currently work and write at a top 10 law school. These critiques have garnered a great deal of publicity of late, including a rebuttal on Prawfsblawg. Topics would include the following questions: Why are 94 percent of all Faculty members at top 10 schools graduated from top 10 schools? Why are nearly all of the 2017 top 10 law review authors from those schools as well? Why are only 30 percent of those academics at top 10 law schools women? Why don’t we care about the most cited legal writing professors, clinical professors, or law librarians? Why can’t they seem to get published in top 10 law reviews?

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Webinar Today: How Law Schools Can Save $150 Million Using Open Casebooks

AALS Summer Webinar Series: How Law Schools Can Save $150 Million Using Open Casebooks:

The casebook is over 100 years old. It’s mostly filled with public domain cases, but yet, it often costs over $200. The economic system that outsources casebook production to traditional publishers could be handled by a nimble non-profit and paid authors — paid MORE than they get from royalties, I claim.

This would also fuel innovations in teaching materials, better updates, richer interaction. Is this all a unicorn hunt?

In this presentation, John Mayer, Executive Director of CALI, will talk about open casebooks. Besides CALI’s eLangdell Press, many other law faculty are self-publishing or opening up their casebooks for students to freely download. You should too.

The webinar is today at 2:00 p.m. EST. Registration is here.

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