Pepperdine Caruso Law Bibles For The Class Of 2022

One of my favorite things to do as dean: signing the Pepperdine-branded Bibles we will be giving to our graduates at tomorrow night's Baccalaureate Service for the Class of 2022 and their families. I write in each Bible the graduate's name and the five Bible verses I will be talking about in my message that have shaped my life (and that I hope will shape theirs).

Leading Courageously With Data To Diversify The Legal Profession

Evan Parker (Founder, Parker Analytics), Leading Courageously With Data:

The graphic above tracks demographic representation across 12 law firms working for BASF Corporation, 2016 to 2021. On average, shares of BASF work grew +11% for diverse ethnicity partners and +46% for associates. For women, shares grew +24% for partners and +28% for associates. Additionally (not pictured), ethnicity and gender representation in firmwide leadership grew +10%.

What explains this blockbuster growth? To me, it’s the courageous leaders using data to achieve a shared mission.

Each year, BASF’s in-house leaders request diversity data from outside counsel. Parker Analytics (PA) then prepares individualized data scorecards and action items, which BASF shares with its firms. As the graphic clarifies, firm leaders responded, driving growth in diverse representation in BASF legal teams and the firm overall.

The most successful data projects I know include a shared mission—between clients and firms, firm leaders and analysts, etc. Achieving mission goals together enriches these professional relationships. So, in leading courageously with data you are powering a virtuous cycle.

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Day 2 Of The Retrial Of Katherine Magbanua In Dan Markel's Murder: Jury Selected, Ex-Wife Wendi Adelson And Hitman Sigfredo Garcia To Testify

Tallahassee Democrat, Dan Markel Murder: Jury Seated in Katherine Magbanua Murder Trial:

A 14-person jury has been selected to serve in the murder trial of Katherine Magbanua, who is charged with first-degree murder in the killing of FSU law professor Dan Markel. Seven women and seven men comprise the jury.

WTXL, Jury Selected in Magbanua's Retrial:

One witness the jury will hear from is Wendi Adelson.

That's Dan Markel's ex wife.

Adelson will testify with immunity as a state witness as early as Thursday.

Florida Politics, Markel Trial Day 2: Jury Seated, Witness List Clarified, Internet Chatter Ramps Up:

The Markel murder has been a hot topic for eight years in online circles, with engagement ramping up on Twitter with various hashtags, including #danmarkel and #justicefordanmarkel, and on WebSleuths, Facebook, and increasingly, on Reddit.

WCTV, Wendi Adelson’s Attorney Asks Judge to Quash Defense Subpoena:

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After Roe Leak, Yale Law Students Call For Ostracizing Conservative Classmates

Aaron Sibarium (Washington Free Beacon), ‘Unrelenting Daily Confrontation’: After Roe Leak, Yale Law Students Call for Ostracizing Conservative Classmates and Tossing Out Constitution:

It’s been a rough couple of weeks for students at Yale Law School, who are responding to news that the Supreme Court may overturn Roe v. Wade with calls to accost their conservative classmates through "unrelenting daily confrontation" and toss the Constitution by the wayside.

Members of the law school’s conservative Federalist Society, first year law student Shyamala Ramakrishna said in an Instagram post, are "conspirators in the Christo-fascist political takeover we all seem to be posting frantically about." Why, she asked, are they still "coming to our parties" and "laughing in the library" without "unrelenting daily confrontation?"

Simple Justice, Short Take: Have Yale Law Students Suffered Enough?:

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McGinnis: Lawyers For Radical Change

John O. McGinnis (Northwestern), Lawyers for Radical Change:

The transformation of the legal profession marks a fundamental change in American democracy. In the republic’s early days, lawyers provided ballast for stability and served as an anchor against excessive populism. The judiciary’s sober attachment to formal order was a primary reason for giving it the power to review the constitutionality of legislation. Law was the profession most likely to preserve the enduring framework of republican government against the mutable passions of the hour.

Nowadays, lawyers are a force for often-radical progressive change. Nothing symbolizes that shift better than the American Bar Association. Once an embodiment of conservatism, it has been captured by the Left. Its resolutions at its annual meeting constitute a wish list of Democratic Party proposals. It also deploys its influence in the accreditation process of law schools to make them even more monolithically left-wing than they already are.

The reasons for the shift lie, at least in part, in the reorientation of lawyers’ interests. Since the birth of the modern regulatory state, lawyers are no longer primarily the allies of commercial classes, as they were in the early republic, but instead the technocrats and enablers of regulation and redistribution. The more the nation intervenes in economic affairs to regulate and redistribute, the greater slice of compliance costs and transfer payments lawyers can expect to receive. Thus, they cannot be counted on as supporters of property rights or even of a stable rule of law. Their interest lies frequently in dynamic forms of legal transformation and the uncertainty they bring. Far from supporting a sound, established social order, they are likely to seek to undermine it. Only an ideological attachment to older forms of legal orders, like that which Federalist Society members manifest, can call lawyers back to the essential role they play in the civic life of our republic. ...

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Day 1 Of The Retrial Of Katherine Magbanua In Dan Markel's Murder: Jury Selection

Tallahassee Democrat, 'Conspiracy to Murder': Jury Selection Goes Behind Closed Doors in Katherine Magbanua Retrial:

The second trial of Katherine Magbanua — the alleged conduit between the hired gunmen who killed Dan Markel and his in-laws who allegedly hired them — began Monday with jury selection.

Magbanua, whose first trial in 2019 ended with a hung jury, is on trial on charges of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and solicitation of first-degree murder.

The court set aside two days to select a 12-person jury and four alternates. Because the case has gotten so much publicity, lawyers questioned potential jurors individually and behind closed doors at the Leon County Courthouse.

• Florida Politics, Markel Trial Day 1: Civics Lessons, Sealed Motions, and Evolving Witness Lists
• WCTV, Jury Selection Underway in Katherine Magbanua Retrial
• WTXL, Judge, Attorneys in Katherine Magbanua Retrial Sift Through 100 Potential Jurors

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Legal Ed News Roundup

• ABA Journal, Alito Sidesteps Question About Collegiality During Remote Appearance at Law School
• Above the Law, 3LOL Is Not Always The Joke Everyone Says It Is
• Above the Law, Deans Only Like Preferential Treatment When It Benefits Their Law School
• Above the Law, Law Schools Are Bringing Out The Best Legal Names As Speakers For In-Person Graduation Ceremonies
• Above the Law, The Only Thing Better Than A 180 On The LSAT Is A 187
• Above the Law, Want More Lawyer Diversity? Sure, Axe The LSAT, But The Real Problem Is Inside The Profession
• Above the Law, We Should Tell The Truth About Judicial Clerkships
• The American Lawyer, Big Law Firms Welcome Larger Summer Associate Classes to In-Office Work and Entertainment

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Two Tax Court Paid Internship Programs: Diversity, Case Processing

The U.S. Tax Court offers two paid internship programs:  

Diversity in Government Internship Program
The DiG Tax program is separate from the Court’s legal internship program, and you need not be a law student to apply.  DiG Tax interns may assist on projects with departments throughout the Court, including Case Services, Facilities, Finance, Human Resources, Library, Information Technology, and Public Affairs.  For more information, see here.

Case Processing Legal Student Intern

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Retrial Of Katherine Magbanua In Dan Markel's Murder Begins Today: 'Prosecutorial Desperation' Or 'Nefarious Nexus'?

Tallahassee Democrat, 'Prosecutorial Desperation' or a Nefarious Nexus: Two Takes on Katherine Magbanua's Retrial:

For six years prosecutors have alleged that Katherine Magbanua was the link between Dan Markel’s estranged in-laws and the two killers who brutally murdered him in his Betton Hills garage.

They’ve said she helped hire the father of her two kids, convicted gunman Sigfredo Garcia and his childhood friend Luis Rivera, coordinated payment of $100,000 for the hit and helped further a conspiracy that has spiraled into one of Tallahassee’s most notorious murder cases.

On the eve of Magbanua’s second trial on May 16, her attorneys say she is the unwitting suspect in a spat between the man who shot Markel and the Florida State law professor’s former brother-in-law, Charlie Adelson.

Magbanua narrowly escaped being convicted in Dan Markel’s murder by a hung jury deadlocked in a 10-2 vote in favor of guilty, two sources with knowledge of the vote confirmed weeks after the trial.

For the do-over, a dozen jurors will be selected starting on Monday with trial expected to commence Thursday and end by May 27. Court administration issued 500 jury summonses and expects roughly 200 potential jurors to report.

The first person Garcia called when his phone was picked up on cellular towers in the Lake City area after the July 18, 2014 shooting was Magbanua. Throughout the day, Magabanua was in contact with him and Adelson, according to evidence presented at Magbanua's 2019 trial.

Police found between Markel’s killing in July 2014 and Nov. 2015, Magbanua deposited more than $56,000 in cash into her bank account. The deposits, according to arrest records, were made mostly through ATMs in increments of $300 to $2,000.

But her defense team has never waivered in their contention their client is innocent and have labeled their client's arrest as "prosecutorial desperation," to make other arrests in the case.

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The Cost Of Academe’s Fixation On Productivity

Chronicle of Higher Education Op-Ed:  What Is the Real Cost of Academe’s Fixation on Productivity?, by Maria LaMonaca Wisdom (Duke):

A few months ago, I took part in a virtual conversation at my university about how to rebuild campus relationships fragmented by Covid. Faculty members and administrators asked the same sorts of late-pandemic questions vexing colleges across the country: What could we do to mitigate the isolation and disengagement that everyone — students, professors, staff members — seemed to be feeling? And how could we begin to rebuild the academic and intellectual fellowship lost since the pandemic?

In my role as a faculty coach at Duke University, I jumped in with some ideas, based on what I was seeing and hearing from academics during our coaching conversations. My recommendations — that small, incremental changes at the personal and local level could be more effective than top-down solutions — ended up as an advice post on our faculty-advancement website. ...

But the more I thought about it, the more I felt like I was proposing a dam to hold back a tsunami — one that started well before Covid and has been eroding social relationships for years both in higher education and in many other sectors of American life. Long before the pandemic, academics were finding it difficult to foster “intellectual community.” To attribute all of the problems we now face to the pandemic risks covering up a much larger, long-term issue. ...

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TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup

Saturday:

• This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts
• Law Schools Are Becoming The New Business Schools For Future Leaders
• Azam: Online Taxation Post Wayfair
• A Year After Abruptly Ousting Tony Varona As Dean, Miami President Names David Yellen New Law School Dean

Sunday:

• WSJ Book Review: America's Book — The Rise and Decline Of A Bible Civilization
• NY Times Op-Ed: If Roe Is Overturned, Where Should The Pro-Life Movement Go Next?
• NY Times Op-Ed: Too Much Church In The State For This Catholic
• The Top Five New Tax Papers

WSJ Book Review: America's Book — The Rise and Decline Of A Bible Civilization

Wall Street Journal Book Review:  ‘America’s Book’ Review: The Word Out of Season, by D.G. Hart (Hillsdale College) (Reviewing Mark A. Noll (Notre Dame), America's Book: The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization, 1794-1911 (2022)):

Many Americans born after 1960 have trouble imagining that for much of the country’s history the Bible was a chief source of national identity. ... Whether ceremonial or therapeutic, Bible-reading in public schools was, by the 1950s, among the last uncontested conventions of America’s Bible civilization.

Mark Noll’s Mark A. Noll (Notre Dame), America's Book: The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization, 1794-1911 explains how the Bible achieved this status. The new nation’s rejection of European forms of Christendom such as sacral monarchy and state churches left the Bible to bear the burden of America’s attempt to create a Christian civilization. A completely secular republic was never a possibility except for the most free-thinking of free thinkers. The Founders virtually to a man insisted that a republic depended on a virtuous citizenry, and that the best source of morality was religion. Despite the variety of Protestant denominations, church leaders and public officials agreed that the Bible was the best and most reliable guide for determining moral consensus.

“America’s Book” documents the extent of the Bible’s reach—from the printing and distribution of Bibles and the creation of Sunday schools to the intellectual dead ends into which unwise handlers of the Bible were led. The book’s breadth is a tribute to Mr. Noll’s career as an interpreter of Protestantism in North America, even if its encyclopedic quantity occasionally obscures the overarching argument. ...

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NY Times Op-Ed: If Roe Is Overturned, Where Should The Pro-Life Movement Go Next?

New York Times Op-Ed:  If Roe Is Overturned, Where Should the Pro-Life Movement Go Next?, by Tish Harrison Warren (Priest, Anglican Church; Author, Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep (2021) (Christianity Today's 2022 Book of the Year)):

Pro-life activists have been working toward overturning the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision ever since it came down in 1973. But as I spoke to folks from pro-life and whole-life movements last week after the leak of a draft opinion that indicated the court will overturn Roe, the mood was complicated. I did not find unalloyed jubilance or triumph.

Most people I talked to expressed cautious optimism and hope but also concern. This was in part because they worried that the court’s draft opinion may shift in weeks to come. But more so because those who take a holistic approach to reducing abortion feel that legally restricting abortion, while a win for justice and the voiceless and vulnerable, is not alone enough to create a culture that is holistically pro-life and addresses the needs of both women and unborn children.

The sense I got is that, for many pro-life and whole-life leaders, this Supreme Court decision would represent a starting line, not a finish line. There are no credits rolling with a victorious pro-life movement marching into the sunset. One activist told me, “I feel joy and relief, but it is kind of like the joy and relief one feels in getting into college, being cast in the school play or making the varsity team. The conditions for the possibility of achieving the goal have been met, but there’s so much more hard work to do.”

What lies ahead is the continued need to enact policies that address the underlying reasons that some women feel they need abortions in the first place. I asked pro-life or whole-life thinkers and leaders: If Roe is overturned, where should the pro-life and whole-life movements direct energy to support women, unborn children and families?

Here are some of their responses: ...

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NY Times Op-Ed: Too Much Church In The State For This Catholic

New York Times Op-Ed:  Too Much Church in the State, by Maureen Dowd:

As a Catholic whose father lived through the Irish Catholics “need not apply” era, I’m happy to see Catholics do well in the world. There is an astonishing preponderance of Catholics on the Supreme Court — six out of the nine justices, and a seventh, Neil Gorsuch, was raised as a Catholic and went to the same Jesuit boys’ high school in a Maryland suburb that Brett Kavanaugh and my nephews did, Georgetown Prep. ...

[T]his Catholic feels an intense disquiet that Catholic doctrine may be shaping (or misshaping) the freedom and the future of millions of women, and men. There is a corona of religious fervor around the court, a churchly ethos that threatens to turn our whole country upside down.

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This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts

1. Bryan Camp (Texas Tech), Lesson From The Tax Court: Avoiding The 2-Year Lookback Period In Bankruptcy
2. Wall Street Journal, Annual Reviews And OKRs Are A Terrible Way To Evaluate Employees
3. Philadelphia Inquirer, As Temple Dean Begins Serving 14-Month Sentence For U.S. News Rankings Fraud, Tenured Professor Is Defiant At Sentencing Hearing: 'Every Single University Has People Doing The Same Exact Operations'
4. FedSoc Debate, Should The ABA Be Stripped Of Its Monopoly Law School Accrediting Power?
5. New York Times, ABA May Eliminate Standardized Tests for Law School Admissions
6. Tallahassee Democrat, Following Charlie Adelson's Arrest, Attention Shifts To Katherine Magbanua's May 16 Trial In Dan Markel's Murder
7. Jasper L. Cummings, Jr. (Alston & Bird, Raleigh, NC), Louis Brandeis, Antitrust, And A Functioning Tax System
8. New York Times Op-Ed, Why I Pray To A God I Don’t Believe In
9. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, University Pays $1.65 Million To Settle Tuition Refund Class Action Claiming Online Classes During Covid Were 'Subpar'; Students Get $185 Each; Lawyers Get $550,000
10. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), 8th Annual Parris Awards At Pepperdine Caruso Law School

Law Schools Are Becoming The New Business Schools For Future Leaders

Inc., How Law Schools Are Becoming the New Business Schools for Future Leaders:

There's a revolution going on right now in top law schools across the country. They're starting to teach leadership — and trust me, it's not an easy task. Some, however, are succeeding beyond their wildest dreams. 

Law students aren't used to learning about how to develop leadership skills, and professors certainly aren't used to teaching it. Getting left-brained, analytic, hyper-competitive law students to genuinely embrace soft and squishy concepts like empathy and teamwork requires a different mindset. In fact, it requires a new way of educating altogether. Century-old Ivy League law schools, chock full of Socratic professors like the fictional and highly cantankerous Professor Kingsfield in the movie Paper Chase, simply won't suffice any longer. A new paradigm is needed. A fundamentally new approach is required. 

But it isn't easy to teach old dogs new tricks. That's why most come up short or avoid the challenge altogether. ...

Fortunately, some law schools aren't shying away from reinventing themselves. A handful of administrators are at the forefront, including Dean Heather Gerken and former assistant dean Anastasia Boyko at Yale Law School, Jennifer Leonard at the University of Pennsylvania, and Scott Westfahl at Harvard Law School.

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A Year After Abruptly Ousting Tony Varona As Dean, Miami President Names David Yellen New Law School Dean

Miami Herald, UM Hires Cornell Law Grad as its Law School Dean, Following Tumult After Varona Demotion:

About a year after abruptly ousting Anthony Varona as law school dean, University of Miami President Julio Frenk hired his replacement: David Yellen, a New Jersey native who has devoted most of his career to reforming the justice system and leading two other law schools.

Yellen, 64, who earned his bachelor’s in politics from Princeton University and his law degree from Cornell University, will start July 1, according to the Thursday posting from the Coral Gables-based private university.

“I’m very excited,” said Yellen. “The University of Miami School of Law, I’ve known and admired for decades, so I’m really excited to join them.”

Yellen will move to South Florida in June from Colorado, where he has served since last June as the CEO of the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, a research organization at the University of Denver. ...

The turnover of UM’s law school deans began when Frenk announced last May that Varona, an openly gay man of Cuban heritage, would step down as dean. Frenk’s abrupt decision to demote the popular Varona — without prior consultation of the faculty, alumni or students — led to an outcry in the legal community, locally and nationally. ...

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Weekly Legal Education Roundup

• ABA Journal, Are more law schools needed in areas where InfiLaw campuses closed?
• Claudia Angelos (NYU), Mary Lu Bilek (Former Dean, CUNY, Massachusetts) & Joan Howarth (UNLV; Dean Emerita, Michigan State), The Deborah Jones Merritt Center for the Advancement of Justice
• Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), 8th Annual Parris Awards At Pepperdine Caruso Law School
• Robert Kuehn (Washington University), The Economic Value Of Law Clinic Legal Assistance
• Law.com, 'Arbitrary and Unfair': Dispute Over Limited Seating, Preferential Treatment for DC Bar Exam Continues—But Court Isn't Budging
• Lynn M. LoPucki (UCLA), The PowerPoint Channel
• New York Times, American Bar Association May Eliminate Standardized Tests for Admissions

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Next Week’s Tax Workshop

Thursday, May 19: Alex Raskolnikov (Columbia) will present Should Only the Richest Pay More? as part of the OMG Transatlantic Tax Talks Series. This event does not require registration. 

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Kuehn: The Economic Value Of Law Clinic Legal Assistance

Tax Prof Blog op-ed:  The Economic Value of Law Clinic Legal Assistance by Robert Kuehn (Washington University):

Each year law school clinics provide free legal assistance to tens of thousands of clients, most of whom would otherwise go unrepresented. The work of clinic students and faculty allows clients to advance or defend their rights or obtain assistance or funds to which they are entitled, assistance that is in many ways invaluable to clients and their communities. While the benefits of clinic work can be difficult to monetize, it is possible to estimate the dollar value of the millions of hours of free legal assistance law clinics provide each year to individuals, governmental agencies, and non-profit organizations. As explained below, law clinic students alone provide tens of millions of dollars in pro bono legal services each year.

During academic year 2020-21, 114,520 J.D. students were enrolled in ABA-approved law schools.[i] The ABA ceased collecting data on law clinic course enrollment in 2016. But in the six years prior, schools reported that enrollment each year in their clinics (“seats filled”) was between 85% to 76% of the total number of seats available for enrollment (“seats available”), decreasing in percentage each year from 2011 to 2016.[ii] Because there is no evidence of a noticeable increase in enrollment in experiential courses since 2016,[iii] a reasonable assumption is that of the 32,062 reported seats available in 2020-21, around 24,000 students (75% of 32,062) actually enrolled in one of the school’s clinics (21% of all J.D.s). Only a handful of clinics charge a fee for their services and approximately 10% of the clinics in the 2019-20 Center for the Study of Applied Legal Education (CSALE) survey might assist some for-profit organizations, though even those are generally of limited means.[iv] After excluding those categories of clinic work, it is reasonable to conservatively assume that in 2020-21, approximately 22,000 clinic students provided their free assistance just to individuals, government entities, and non-profits.

The CSALE survey collected information on 950 law school clinics. The median number of credits awarded for just the clinic student’s field or casework (i.e., non-classroom activity) on behalf of clients was 3.5, with each credit representing 42.5 hours of work under the minimum standard set by the ABA. The average clinic student, therefore, worked 149 hours during the term on the casework portion of their law clinic course. Thus, during the 2020-21 academic year, the 22,000 students in law school clinics are estimated to have provided approximately 3,278,000 hours of free legal assistance to individuals, government entities, and non-profits.

The Supreme Court held that in awarding legal fees to prevailing parties, paralegals and law clerks are to be awarded fees at market rates, and courts also award fees for comparable clinic student work at market rates.[v] One national survey of typical billing rates for paralegals found that law firms charge their clients between $100-$200 per hour, with most falling in the median of that range;[vi] another survey found that rates for non-lawyers across states ranged from $99 to $220 per hour.[vii] If law student work is conservatively valued at a market rate of $100 per hour, as cases support,[viii] clinic students are estimated to have provided over $325 million in free legal assistance in 2020-21.

Clinic Students	2020-21 Hours	Value/Hour	Total Value
Market Rate	3,278,000	$100.00	$327,800,000
Wage Rate	3,278,000	$27.03	$88,604,000

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D.C. Court Of Appeals Increases Bar Exam Seating Capacity By 41% After Outcry From Deans Nationwide

Following up on Wednesday's post, Dispute Over Limited Seating, Preferential Treatment For DC Bar Exam Continues—But Court Isn't Budging:  D.C. Court of Appeals, The DC Court of Appeals Adds 450 Seats to the July 2022 DC Bar Exam:

The DC Court of Appeals has continued to seek additional venues to administer the DC Bar Exam in July, and today we are happy to announce that we have increased our seating capacity to 1550 seats.

The University of the District of Columbia will provide 450 extra spots above the 1,100 seats available at the DC Armory.

The priority registration period opened today and will close May 17th at 11:59pm.

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University Pays $1.65 Million To Settle Tuition Refund Class Action Claiming Online Classes During Covid Were 'Subpar'; Students Get $185 Each; Lawyers Get $550,000

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Lindenwood U. to Pay $1.65 Million to Settle Claim Online Classes 'Subpar':

The nearly 6,000 Lindenwood University students who had spring 2020 classes move online during the COVID-19 pandemic soon will be getting some money back.

U.S. District Judge Ronnie L. White approved a $1.65 million settlement Wednesday between the St. Charles university and a class action group of students led by Dylan Martin, of Eldon, Missouri. Each student will receive roughly $185, and the students' attorneys will receive roughly $550,000. ...

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LoPucki: A Comprehensive Theory And Style For Using PowerPoint To Teach Law

Lynn M. LoPucki (UCLA), The PowerPoint Channel, 17 U. Mass. L. Rev. 41 (2022):

This Article is the first to present a comprehensive theory and style for using PowerPoint to teach law. The theory is that presentation software adds a channel of communication that enables the use of images in combination with words. Studies have shown that combination to substantially enhance learning. The style is based on an extensive literature regarding the use of PowerPoint in teaching law and other higher education subjects as well as the author’s experimentation with PowerPoint over two decades. The Article states fourteen principles for slide or slide sequence design, provides the arguments from the literature for and against them, and explains the techniques by which the author implements them. It argues that PowerPoint is effective for eight kinds of presentation:

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The Deborah Jones Merritt Center For The Advancement Of Justice

Claudia Angelos (NYU), Mary Lu Bilek (Former Dean, CUNY, Massachusetts) & Joan W. Howarth (UNLV; Dean Emerita, Michigan State; Google Scholar), The Deborah Jones Merritt Center for the Advancement of Justice, 82 Ohio St. L.J. 911 (2021):

When invited to write an essay on clinical legal education honoring our friend, we were struck by the importance of a focus on clinical legal education in any collection of work paying tribute to Professor Deborah Jones Merritt. Legal education has benefited from a fifty-year movement for clinical education. This movement necessarily interrogates and seeks to overcome the anachronistic, inherited Langdellian paradigm that dominates and continues to define the curricula and policies of our law schools. But the movement for clinical education has been exponentially confounded by contemporary legal education’s shape as a pyramid of statuses and privileges accumulated over time and embedded in the straight, white, male, ableist, classist structures of American universities, our legal system, and our laws.

Progress has been made. Thousands of lawyers now enter the profession with the advantage of having practiced under the supervision of faculty who choose to live in the fray of the reality of clients’ lives, the ambiguity of the real world, and the politics of the profession. Thousands of lawyers have learned through clinical education the habits of planning, doing, and reflecting that are otherwise invisible in the academy.

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Law Students Left Behind: Law School's Role In Remedying The Devastating Effects Of Federal Education Policy

Sandra Simpson (Gonzaga), Law Students Left Behind: Law School's Role in Remedying the Devastating Effects of Federal Education Policy, 107 Minn. L. Rev. __ (2023):

Due to the unintended consequences of misdirected federal education policy, students come to law school with underdeveloped critical thinking and cognitive adaptability skills. As the products of the No Child Left Behind Act (“NCLB”) and its progeny, students educated in the United States after 2002 excel at memorization and multiple-choice exam strategies but were not afforded the practice needed to fully develop other critical professional attributes. This is problematic as these are the very characteristics law students need to be a successful student and lawyer. Further, legal employers are demanding their new lawyers possess these capabilities upon graduation from law school. The Uniform Bar Exam may also be substantially changing to test these essential qualities.

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A Human Being Wrote This Law Review Article: GPT-3 And The Practice Of Law

Amy B. Cyphert (ASPIRE), A Human Being Wrote This Law Review Article: GPT-3 and the Practice of Law, 55 UC Davis L. Rev. 401 (2021):

Artificial intelligence tools can now “write” in such a sophisticated manner that they fool people into believing that a human wrote the text. None are better at writing than GPT-3, released in 2020 for beta testing and coming to commercial markets in 2021. GPT-3 was trained on a massive dataset that included scrapes of language from sources ranging from the NYTimes to Reddit boards. And so, it comes as no surprise that researchers have already documented incidences of bias where GPT-3 spews toxic language. But because GPT-3 is so good at “writing,” and can be easily trained to write in a specific voice — from classic Shakespeare to Taylor Swift — it is poised for wide adoption in the field of law. 

This Article explores the ethical considerations that will follow from GPT-3’s introduction into lawyers’ practices. GPT-3 is new, but the use of AI in the field of law is not. AI has already thoroughly suffused the practice of law. GPT-3 is likely to take hold as well, generating some early excitement that it and other AI tools could help close the access to justice gap. That excitement should nevertheless be tempered with a realistic assessment of GPT-3’s tendency to produce biased outputs. 

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Dispute Over Limited Seating, Preferential Treatment For DC Bar Exam Continues—But Court Isn't Budging

Law.com, 'Arbitrary and Unfair': Dispute Over Limited Seating, Preferential Treatment for DC Bar Exam Continues—But Court Isn't Budging:

“I cannot understand the rationale for such favoritism and I think it is likely unconstitutional," wrote Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky in a follow-up letter to the D.C. Court of Appeals on Monday.

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WaPo: How Merit Scholarships Perpetuate Racial Inequities

Washington Post, How Popular Merit College Scholarships Have Perpetuated Racial Inequities:

“The Bright Futures Scholarship Program offers opportunity and prosperity for all Florida families!” the Department of Education there tweeted this spring.

The message seems simple: Anyone can get most, or even all, of their tuition paid through the state’s signature program. Students just have to get the right grades and standardized test scores.

Bright Futures has loomed large, then, in the work of people like Sherry Paramore. As the president of Elevate Orlando, a nonprofit group, she helped Florida high school students get to college. Every September, Paramore would go over finances, walking through the types of aid. She’d work with tutors to help her students improve their grades. She connected them with mentors to plan their careers.

To Paramore, they’re exactly the kinds of students a state scholarship should help. They worked hard and got accepted to college. But when it came to Bright Futures, there was a mismatch.

Over three years, Paramore worked with nearly 200 students. Many were the first in their families to attend college; most were Black. But they struggled with the standardized tests. So in the end, how many qualified for a Bright Futures scholarship — the ticket Florida created to educational opportunity? Not a single one.

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The ABA Should Be Required To Disclose Law School Accreditation Information

Following up on last week's post, FedSoc Debate: Should The ABA Be Stripped Of Its Monopoly Law School Accrediting Power?: Henry Webb (Palm Beach Atlantic University), Patrick Baker (Tennessee) & Kaleb Byars (J.D. 2021, Tennessee), Accreditation Information Produced by United States Law Schools to the American Bar Association Should be Made Available to the Public From Both Law and Policy Perspectives, 34 Loy. U. Chi. Consumer L. Rev. ___ (2022):

This article argues that, from a legal perspective, the American Bar Association (“ABA”) is the functional equivalent of a government agency and so is subject to the United States Freedom of Information Act. Under Soucie v. David and related cases, the fact that the ABA has the final decision-making authority to decide whether a United States law school is or is not to be accredited renders it the functional equivalent of a government agency, and the ABA’s refusal to make available to the public the voluminous amount of important information produced to the ABA by law schools going through the accreditation and accreditation review processes is illegal and would not likely survive a challenge in court.

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WSJ Essay: In Praise of Anxiety

Wall Street Journal Essay:  In Praise of Anxiety, by Tracy Dennis-Tiwary (Hunter College; Author, Future Tense: Why Anxiety Is Good for You (Even Though It Feels Bad) (2022)):

Anxiety can be used to create a deeper sense of personal fulfillment by striving toward excellence and savoring having a purpose in your life.

Nobody likes to feel anxious. Anxiety is among the most pervasive and reviled of human emotions. An entire industry has sprung up to aid us in eradicating it, from self-help books and holistic remedies to pharmaceuticals and cutting-edge cognitive behavioral therapy. Yet we are an ever more profoundly anxious society. Epidemiological studies show that over 100 million people in the U.S. will suffer from an anxiety disorder in their lifetime. Rates, especially among the young, have been rising for the past decade. Our efforts to contain anxiety aren’t working.

As a clinical psychologist and neuroscience researcher, I have devoted the past 20 years to understanding difficult emotions like anxiety, and I believe that we mental health professionals have made a terrible mistake. We’ve convinced people that anxiety is a dangerous affliction and that the solution is to eliminate it, as we do with other diseases. But feeling anxious isn’t the problem. The problem is that we don’t understand how to respond constructively to anxiety. That’s why it’s increasingly hard to know how to feel good.

This “bad” feeling isn’t a malfunction or failure of mental health. It’s a triumph of human evolution, a response that emerged along with one of our greatest attributes: the ability to think about the uncertain future and prepare for it. Anxiety places us in the “future tense” (pun intended)—a state in which we are motivated not only to survive but to thrive, by being more persistent, hopeful and innovative.

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Legal Ed News Roundup

• Above the Law, Drowning In Debt? You Might Be A Graduate Of One Of These Law Schools
• Above the Law, Law Professor Responds To Supreme Court Leak With Racist Commentary. Gee, I Wonder Which Law School...
• Above the Law, Law School Changes Exam. .. Via Email ... Which Students Couldn't Check ... BECAUSE THE EXAM HAD STARTED
• Above the Law, So Uhh ... About That Con Law Final Next Week...
• Above the Law, The Best Law Schools For Diversity (2022)
• Bacon's Rebellion, How Partisan Bias Affects Law School Rankings
• Daily Business Review, Miami Law Offering Free Virtual Summer Legal Academy for Third Year

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As Temple Dean Begins Serving 14-Month Sentence For U.S. News Rankings Fraud, Tenured Professor Is Defiant At Sentencing Hearing: 'Every Single University Has People Doing The Same Exact Operations'

Following up on my previous post, Former Temple Dean Sentenced To 14 Months In Federal Prison For Rankings Fraud:  

Poets & Quants, Moshe Porat, Denied Bail, Will Begin Prison Sentence On May 9:

Philadlphia Inquirer, Ex-Temple Employees Sentenced to Probation for Fraud Tied to Business School Rankings:

A former administrator and a retired statistics professor at Temple University were sentenced to probation this week for assisting the former dean of its business school in a scheme to inflate its position in national rankings publications.

But standing before a federal judge in Philadelphia, Marjorie O’Neill, a onetime finance manager at the Fox School of Business, and Isaac Gottlieb, who was a tenured professor, struck vastly different tones when it came to accepting responsibility for a scandal that has since cost the university millions in legal settlements.

O’Neill admitted last year that she, under the direction of former dean Moshe Porat, had falsified data on students at the school to help propel it to the top of influential lists like U.S. News and World Report’s ranking of top business school programs. She told U.S. District Judge Gerald A Pappert during a hearing Thursday that she was “thoroughly ashamed.” ...

Meanwhile, Gottlieb — who helped Fox cheat more effectively by reverse engineering the criteria by which U.S. News ranked schools — showed flashes of defiance at his sentencing hearing Wednesday. “Every single university in the United States has people doing the same exact operations,” he said. ...

“It is important for other institutions to realize that this chase for rankings is not worth it,” the judge said Thursday. “There are lines you can’t cross. It’s important for people to see there are going to be criminal consequences and penalties for doing that.” ...

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Following Charlie Adelson's Arrest, Attention Shifts To Katherine Magbanua's May 16 Trial In Dan Markel's Murder

Updates on Katherine Magbanua's May 16 trial:

• Tallahassee Democrat, Katherine Magbanua Trial Still on for May 16 Despite Charlie Adelson Arrest
• WCTV, Judge Says Magbanua’s Retrial Will Go on as Scheduled
• WFSU, Magbanua's Retrial in Dan Markel Murder Case Will Go Forward May 16
• WTXL, Court Holds Hearing to Include, Exclude Evidence in Magbanua Trial
• WTXL, Leon County Judge Approves Several Motions Before Magbanua's Trial
• YouTube Video, Judge Approves Several Motions Before Katherine Magbanua's Trial

Upates on Charlie Adelson's arrest:

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TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup

Saturday:

• This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts
• NY Times: ABA May Eliminate Standardized Tests For Law School Admissions
• Louis Brandeis, Antitrust, And A Functioning Tax System
• 8th Annual Parris Awards At Pepperdine Caruso Law School

Sunday:

• NY Times Op-Ed: How To Cultivate Joy Even When It Feels In Short Supply
• WSJ Op-Ed: The Blessing Of A Mother’s Love
• NY Times Op-Ed: Why I Pray To A God I Don’t Believe In
• The Top Five New Tax Papers

NY Times Op-Ed: How To Cultivate Joy Even When It Feels In Short Supply

New York Times Op-Ed:  How to Cultivate Joy Even When It Feels in Short Supply, by Tish Harrison Warren (Priest, Anglican Church; Author, Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep (2021) (Christianity Today's 2022 Book of the Year)):

In the Bible, there’s a question that Paul asks in his letter to the Galatian church that has haunted me for the last couple of years: What has happened to all your joy?

I don’t think that many people looking at the church in America today or at broader American society would say, “Now, there is a group of people marked by joy.”

In a 2020 survey, happiness and well-being among Americans reached a 50-year low. But it’s a deeper issue than just that. Joy is hardier and sturdier than mere happiness or positive circumstances, closer in meaning to contentment than amusement. The current state of our cultural discourse seems to be joylessness writ large. ...

Our culture desperately needs to rethink and rediscover joy. ...

How can I possibly cultivate joy? ... There will inevitably be traffic jams and illnesses, afternoons when I feel grumpy or mornings that I don’t want to get out of bed. But joy can be taken up, even when things aren’t going great. “Joy is both a gift and a practice,” I wrote in my last book, “but it isn’t primarily a feeling any more than self-control or faithfulness are feelings. It is a muscle we can strengthen with exercise.” ...

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WSJ Op-Ed: The Blessing Of A Mother’s Love

Wall Street Journal Op-Ed:  The Blessing of a Mother’s Love, by Mike Kerrigan (Hunton Andrews Kurth, Charlotte, NC):

In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis writes: “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” I understand this insight more fully when I reflect on the earthly blessing of a mother’s love.

Contemplation of this doesn’t require a doctorate in theology. I’ve always found the bond between a mother and her son, from the latter’s perspective, to be the most uncomplicated of human relationships. She’s your mom and you love her, simple as that.

Memories of her positive influence in my life are legion, yet the best evidence of the transcendence of a mother’s love is the spell it casts on its beloved. While the years have been good to my mom, I’m told she is aging. I say “I’m told” because whenever I gaze at her, I see only the cool lady in her mid-30s picking me up after soccer. In my mind’s eye, she is forever young.

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NY Times Op-Ed: Why I Pray To A God I Don’t Believe In

New York Times Op-Ed:  How to Pray to a God You Don’t Believe In, by Scott Hershovitz (Michigan; Author, Nasty, Brutish, and Short: Adventures in Philosophy With My Kids (2022)):

The world is awful at the moment. Millions have died of Covid-19. Authoritarianism is on the rise, abroad and at home. And now there’s war, with all the death, destruction and dislocation that entails.

In dark times, many people seek refuge in religion. They hold fast to their faith. ... But darkness also drives many people away from God.

[T]he “problem of evil” [is] an old philosophical question. [I]f you think about God (who’s supposed to be all-powerful and endlessly empathetic), the existence of evil poses a serious puzzle: Why does God let us suffer?

People have proposed many answers, but most are poorly reasoned. For instance, some say that good requires evil — that it can’t exist without it. It’s not clear why that would be true. But the bigger problem is that if you take that view, you call into question God’s omnipotence. It turns out there’s something God can’t do: create good without evil.

But also: If good requires evil, maybe just a little bit would do. Is absolutely every evil in the world essential? Why can’t we have a world that’s just like this one — except without that twinge of pain I felt last Tuesday? What kind of God can’t soothe my sciatica? My physical therapist, Tony, makes my back feel better, and he doesn’t even claim to be a deity.

He is a hero, though (at least to me). And some say that’s why God allows evil in the world. He doesn’t care about pleasure and pain. He cares about what pleasure and pain make possible — compassion, redemption and heroic acts, like Tony mending my back. To get those goods, though, God has to give us free will. And once we have it, some of us abuse it.

This is, historically, the most influential answer. ... But I don’t buy it. Why can’t God create only those people who would use their free will well? Why can’t he wave Paul Farmer through and keep Vladimir Putin out? He knows in advance how each of them will act — if he’s really omniscient.

Some believers feel the force of these arguments, but maintain their faith nonetheless. Marilyn McCord Adams, a philosopher and Episcopal priest, doubted that we could explain the existence of evil. But that didn’t bother her. A 2-year-old child, she explained, might not understand why his mother would permit him to have painful surgery. Nevertheless, he could be convinced of his mother’s love by her “intimate care and presence” through the painful experience.

For those who feel the presence of God or have faith that they will feel it later, I think Ms. Adams’s attitude makes some sense. But if I’m honest, it sounds too optimistic to me. ... I think the problem of evil poses a serious barrier to religious belief.

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NY Times: ABA May Eliminate Standardized Tests For Law School Admissions

New York Times, American Bar Association May Eliminate Standardized Tests for Admissions:

No more LSATs?

A committee within the American Bar Association recommended late last month that law schools eliminate the requirement of “a valid and reliable admission test” as part of their admission process.

Its memo added, however, “Law schools of course remain free to require a test if they wish.”

The recommendation was made on April 25 by the Strategic Review Committee, four years after another group, the A.B.A.’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, approved similar changes to its standards for rules and admissions. The council is made up of 21 people, including lawyers, professors, administrators and others. ...

Leaders in the bar association have said that they are less concerned about student performance on an entrance exam than how students do in law school — whether they remain enrolled and how soon they pass the bar exam after graduation.

LSAC:

Studies show test-optional policies often work against minoritized individuals, so we hope the ABA will consider these issues very carefully. We believe the LSAT will continue to be a vital tool for schools and applicants for years to come, as it is the most accurate predictor of law school success and a powerful tool for diversity when used properly as one factor in a holistic admission process.

For a thoughtful detailed analysis, see Derek Muller (Iowa), What Happens If the ABA Ends the Requirement That Law Schools Have an Admissions Test? Maybe Less Than You Think

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This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts

1. Bryan Camp (Texas Tech), Lesson From The Tax Court: Distinguishing Employees From Independent Contractors
2. ABA, New Bar Pass Data By Race, Ethnicity, Gender
3. Wall Street Journal, Annual Reviews And OKRs Are A Terrible Way To Evaluate Employees
4. Alliance Defending Freedom, Christian Legal Society Members Sue Law School For Punishing Them For Expressing Their Religious Beliefs
5. Wall Street Journal, Jones Day Finds USC Dean Intentionally Reported False Data To U.S. News To Goose Its Ranking
6. Tax Prof Move, Daniel Hemel Leaves Chicago For NYU
7. Neil Hamilton (St. Thomas) & Lou Bilionis (Cincinnati), Law Student Professional Development and Formation: Bridging Law School, Student, and Employer Goals
8. Christopher Mathis (Iowa), An Access And Equity Ranking Of America's 63 Public Law Schools
9. Sloan Speck (Colorado), Blue J's Use Of Machine Learning To Predict Tax Litigation Results
10. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine Caruso Law), The Chosen At Pepperdine Caruso Law

8th Annual Parris Awards At Pepperdine Caruso Law School

Congratulations to our student, staff, and faculty winners at the 8th Annual Parris Awards at Pepperdine Caruso Law:

Student Awards

Evan T. Carthen 1L Inspirational Leadership Award
Section A: Phillip Allevato
Section B: Grace Ramsey
Section C: Mason Folse

Excellence in Service
Rebecca Voth

Excellence in Professionalism
Alina Ahmed

Excellence in Peacemaking
Tyler Clark

Excellence in Courage
Natalie Burkholder

Excellence in Leadership
Lindsey Kirchhoff

Excellence in Character
Thurgood Wynn

Pepperdine Award
Joseph Castro

Preceptor Award
Awards are also presented to alumni preceptors, who are paired with first-year students as mentors during their first year of law school

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Weekly Legal Education Roundup

• AccessLex Institute, 2022 Legal Education Data Deck
• Alliance Defending Freedom, Idaho Law Students File Suit After University Punishes Them For Their Religious Beliefs
• Kevin Brown (Indiana) & Ken Dau-Schmidt (Indiana), Racial and Ethnic Ancestry of the Nation’s Black Law Students: An Analysis of Data From The LSSSE Survey
• Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine Caruso Law), The Chosen At Pepperdine Caruso Law
• Cyra Akila Choudhury (Florida Int'l) & Shruti Rana (Indiana), Addressing Asian (In)Visibility in the Academy
• Federalist Society 10th Annual Executive Branch Review Conference, ABA Accreditation of Law Schools
• Scott Fruehwald (Legal Skills Prof Blog), "Teaching" Professional Identity: A New Book for Administrators and Professors (For more on this book, see after the fold)

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D.C. Limits Seating For July Bar Exam, Sparking Outcry

Law.com, 'Tremendously Disruptive': DC Court of Appeals Limits Seating for July Bar Exam, Sparking Outcry:

Law school deans across the country have expressed outrage over the D.C. Court of Appeals’ May 2 announcement that seating for the July 2022 Uniform Bar Exam will be limited to 1,100 and that preference will be given to students from D.C.-area law schools.

The standard administration of the July 2022 Uniform Bar Exam will take place at the D.C. Armory on July 26 and 27 with the seating capacity for the exam set at 1,100, which includes all standard and accommodated seating with registration closing once the seating capacity is reached, according to an announcement on the D.C. Court of Appeals website.

This morning, a letter, signed by more than 100 law deans, was sent to Court of Appeals Chief Judge Anna Blackburne-Rigsby, expressing concern about the limited seating. ...

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2022 Tannenwald Tax Writing Competition

The Theodore Tannenwald, Jr. Foundation for Excellence in Tax Scholarship and American College of Tax Counsel are sponsoring the 2022 Tannenwald Tax Writing Competition

Named for the late Tax Court Judge Theodore Tannenwald, Jr., and designed to perpetuate his dedication to legal scholarship of the highest quality, the Tannenwald Writing Competition is open to all full- or part-time law school students, undergraduate or graduate. Papers on any federal or state tax-related topic may be submitted in accordance with the Competition Rules.

Prizes:

• 1st Place:  $5,000
• 2nd Place: $2,500
• 3rd Place:  $1,500

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Symposium: Epoch — Going Beyond A Racial Reckoning

Symposium, Epoch: Going Beyond A Racial Reckoning, 44 Seattle U. L. Rev. 623-654 (2021):

• Foreword, 44 Seattle U. L. Rev. 623 (2021)
• Michael Rogers (J.D. 2021, Seattle), Hannah Hamley (J.D. 2021, Seattle) & Rayshaun D. Williams (J.D. 2022, Seattle), Introductory Remarks, 44 Seattle U. L. Rev. 625 (2021)
• Mario Barnes (UC-Irvine; Former Dean, University of Washington), Majidah Cochran (J.D. 2021, Seattle), Danielle Conway (Dean, Penn State-Dickinson), Tamara Lawson (Dean, St. Thomas-FL), L. Song Richardson (President, Colorado College; Former Dean, UC-Irvine) & Angela Onwuachi-Willig (Dean, Boston University), Deans Roundtable, 44 Seattle U. L. Rev. 627 (2021)
• Marissa Jackson Sow (St. John's; Google Scholar), Whiteness as Contract, 44 Seattle U. L. Rev. 635 (2021)

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Choudhury & Rana: Addressing Asian (In)Visibility In The Academy

Cyra Akila Choudhury (Florida Int'l; Google Scholar) & Shruti Rana (Indiana-Maurer), Addressing Asian (In)Visibility in the Academy, 51 Sw. L. Rev. 287 (2022):

In this Essay, we first examine the dynamics of representation and how they impact and circumscribe the experiences, opportunities, and advancement of Asian American law faculty. We aim to draw attention to the real rather than perceived problems facing Asian American law faculty as well as Asian Americans in the legal profession more generally. We argue that while Asian Americans are, in fact, diverse in their identities and experiences, the predominant perception about them in the legal academy is that they are a monolithic group assimilated to the dominant culture and reflect various iterations of the “model minority myth.” This narrative not only obscures the complexity of the discrimination against Asian American law faculty but also allows the academy to blame individuals for their own marginalization, ignoring the systemic forces at work. Together, these factors elide and mischaracterize the challenges Asian American law faculty face and create obstacles to effective solutions—all with a high human cost.

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FedSoc Debate: Should The ABA Be Stripped Of Its Monopoly Law School Accrediting Power?

Federalist Society 10th Annual Executive Branch Review Conference, ABA Accreditation of Law Schools:

The U.S. Department of Education provides oversight of postsecondary institutions or program accreditation by reviewing federally recognized accrediting agencies. There is one such agency for accreditation of legal education institutions or programs: The American Bar Association's Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar. The Secretary of Education, by law, is the official responsible for recognition of accreditation agencies based on her determination that the agency is a reliable authority as to the quality of education or training provided by the entities and programs the agencies review. The Secretary of Education has exercised that authority to recognize the ABA's Council as the single accreditation agency for legal education. The ABA has held this position since its adoption of comprehensive standards in 1973—nearly fifty years.

But the ABA writ large is an organization in decline as its substantial drop in membership—and resulting revenue—demonstrates. At the same time that ABA membership is declining, the ABA's public and official positions on cultural and divisive issues remain. And now those positions are taking root not just in the ABA's policy bodies but also within the Council itself. Most recently, the Council adopted new "anti-bias" educational requirements as part of its accreditation standards. 

• Hon. W. Scott Bales, Former Chief Justice, Arizona Supreme Court
• Prof. William Jacobson, Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Securities Law Clinic, Cornell Law School
• Dr. Nicholas Lawson, Commissioner, ABA Commission on Disability Rights
• Prof. Derek T. Muller, Professor of Law, University of Iowa College of Law
• Moderator: Hon. Trevor N. McFadden, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia

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A Tenured Professor Who Says He Contracted Long Covid In The Classroom Blames His R1 University, Laterals To New School

Chronicle of Higher Education:  This Is Life-Changing’: What It’s Like to be an Academic With Long Covid:

Gregory T. Cushman is an associate professor of international environmental history at the University of Kansas. He contracted Covid-19 in August 2020 and, since then, has coped with symptoms of long Covid. This is his account of his experience, as told to Megan Zahneis. (The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.)

The first week of classes at the University of Kansas in August 2020, I, beyond a reasonable doubt, contracted Covid in the classroom.

Covid has so many different symptoms associated with it. I especially had low oxygen levels, great difficulty breathing. The worst of all was just this soul-killing, unrelenting fatigue. ...

For academics, our jobs and our lives are premised on our ability to think clearly, to think quickly, to do so in a focused way, to be able to speak, to be able to write. Post-Covid disrupts our focus and our thoughts in ways that are extremely discouraging, because if you don’t have this capacity, you’re done, it’s over. You have to rethink what you’re doing with your life, and I had moments — many moments — when I was fearful that I would have to end my career if this didn’t go away. Then I would have a good day, and have the hope that maybe I’ll be turning the corner. It was always such a tease that way. ...

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An Access And Equity Ranking Of America's 63 Public Law Schools

Christopher L. Mathis (Iowa; Google Scholar), An Access and Equity Ranking of Public Law Schools:

Over the past few decades, several comprehensive ranking systems, including the influential U.S. News and World Report’s Best Law Schools rankings, have emerged to provide useful information to prospective law students seeking to enroll in law school. These ranking systems have defined what is measured as “quality” and what outcomes law schools focus on to gain a better position in the ranking. These rankings fail to measure what many law schools claim to be one of their longstanding goals— diversity, access, and equity.

One of the problematic and shocking reasons U.S. News cites for not including diversity measures in the ranking is that law schools themselves have no consensus on diversity. I counter this argument, asserting that while there may not be widespread consensus—for certain people—on diversity, there is substantial academic scholarship and agreement on the tenets of diversity that ranking enthusiasts can use to design an effective diversity measure. I maintain that any ranking that does not include diversity, access, and equity measures often leave communities of color and their interests in the margins. Therefore, this Article seeks to center the needs of Black and Latinx prospective law students through a new ranking system

Given that public law schools aim to increase racial/ethnic diversity—that is, the number of racial/ethnic minoritized students—because of their institutional missions, the Article provides the first ranking of public law schools on “Access and Equity” measures. It describes ranking law schools based on measurable outcomes related to diversity, access, and equity. This ranking uses twelve access and equity measures that are significant to Black and Latinx law school fit. This “Access and Equity Ranking” is the only ranking to date that will help Black and Latinx students identify which public law schools centers their needs.

The Top 25 law schools under this measure are:

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Hamilton & Bilionis: Law Student Professional Development and Formation: Bridging Law School, Student, and Employer Goals

Neil W. Hamilton (St. Thomas; Google Scholar) & Louis D. Bilionis (Cincinnati), Law Student Professional Development and Formation: Bridging Law School, Student, and Employer Goals (Cambridge University Press 2022):

Law schools currently do an excellent job of helping students to 'think like a lawyer,' but empirical data show that clients, legal employers, and the legal system need students to develop a wider range of competencies. This book helps legal educators to understand these competencies and provides practical ways to build them into a law school curriculum. Based on recommendations from the American Bar Association, the American Association of Law Schools, and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, it will equip students with the skills they need not only to think but to act and feel like a lawyer. With this proposed model, students will internalize the need for professional development toward excellence, their responsibility to others, a client-centered approach to problem solving, and strong well-being practices. These four goals constitute a lawyer's professional identity, and this book empowers legal educators to foster each student's development of a professional identity that leads to a gratifying career that serves society well. This title is Open Access.

Reviews:

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ABA Releases New Bar Pass Data By Race, Ethnicity, Gender

Press Release, ABA Releases New Report on Bar Pass Data by Race, Ethnicity, Gender:

The Managing Director’s Office of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar released today a new set of bar pass data for American Bar Association-approved law schools that provides national “ultimate” and first-time percentage pass rates based on race, ethnicity and gender.

The charts, which are incorporated into the section’s Legal Education Statistics, include aggregate data in nine different ethnicity categories for information collected in 2021 and 2022 broken down by gender. The data was reported to the ABA by the 196 law schools accepting new students in their ABA Standard 509 questionnaire, which covers about a dozen categories including employment and bar passage outcomes among other areas.

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