Executive Director of the Clarke Center for International Comparative Legal Studies Larry S. Bush, who currently oversees the Cornell Law School’s relationships with twenty partner law schools located on four continents, worked with members of the University of Chile to negotiate the exchange.  Although a handful of Cornell Law students studied aboard in South America over the last ten years, Cornell’s exchange program with the School of Law at University of Chile in Santiago marks the first official partnership in the region.  The University of Chile’s law program is the oldest in the country and all courses are instructed entirely in Spanish. Each year, two students from Cornell can participate in the Chile exchange.

The second of the two partnerships is with University of Oslo in Norway. The formation of this partnership was spearheaded by Laura Underkuffler, the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Cornell Law.  She had previously worked with colleagues from this Scandinavian school and suggested the idea. The Faculty of Law at University of Oslo boasts ten multidisciplinary focus areas and is both the largest and oldest law school in Norway.

To learn more about these and other study abroad opportunities at Cornell Law, visit the school’s website.

This move is a change in the Council’s recent declaration that they would not monitor schools more closely. However, given the recent findings of schools forging numbers, namely Villanova University school of Law and the University Of Illinios, the organization has decided to act. The main motivation for this misreporting stems from pressure to have a positive showing on the annual U.S. News & World Report rankings.

Council President Dan Bernstine said “We are working to determine whether we can set up procedures through which we would be able to confirm school-reported LSAT scores and [undergraduate GPAs] in a reliable and responsible way. Unfortunately, this is going to take some time.”

Nonetheless, auditing the numbers would not be a simple process and the Council would not be able to implement measures for this year, since schools must send in reports by the end of October. The council would still need to rely on school’s self-reported data about students that they are admitting.

For the full press release, go here.

Reduce Credit Requirements – David Van Zandt, who served as dean of Northwestern Law School for 15 years, explains that the ABA requires students to complete a minimum of 80 credit hours, and, until recently, these requirements had to be over the course of three years.  He places the ABA, which dictates the law school accreditation and bar exam requirements, as the group with the power to instigate change.

Allow Anyone to Take the Bar – George Leef of the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy makes the argument that lawyers learn on the job, not in the classroom. “Law schools now enjoy a captive market, and if they had to compete against other modes of legal education, costs would fall and efficiency would rise.”

It’s Not a Trade School – Law Professor at Syracuse University, Kevin Noble Maillard, believes that law schools should take a liberal arts approach to education and teach students for the long-term as most won’t be lawyers for the rest of their lives.

Improving, Not Overhauling – Rose Cuison Villazor of Hofstra University School of Law states that the three year timeframe allows for students to learn at a steady pace and gain exposure to the range of opportunities in the legal field. Instead of moving to a two year degree, she argues, law schools should focus on increasing the quality of their programs by providing more skills-based courses, clinical programs and mentoring opportunities.

Bring Back Apprenticeships- David Lat of Above the Law proposes that law students begin apprenticeships after completing two years of law school.  The ABA is in the position to bring about law school reform as it’s not in the schools’ interest to lose money by promoting a two-year course of study.

Learning to Think Like a Lawyer – former dean of the University of Chicago Law School and current professor Geoffrey R. Stone weighs the benefits of legal education against legal practice and writes about what ratio is appropriate for aspiring attorneys. “Learning to think like a lawyer,” in addition to exposure to a range of subjects and experiential opportunities, he argues, can only be done well in three years. Schools that can’t provide their students with a quality education in three years time are failing the system.

A Priceless Degree – Linda Greene, a professor at University of Wisconsin, states that the issue at hand is access not cost. In her eyes, the cost of legal education should not be a reflection of the number of jobs available in the field because people go to law school for other reasons besides practicing the law. The key question is how we can ensure that all populations have access to quality legal services and that qualified individuals from all walks of life have access to legal education.

Three Years, Better Spent - Bryan A. Garner, research professor from SMU, believes in the importance of legal research, writing and editing skills and believes that most schools don’t emphasize these areas of the curriculum. An advocate for keeping the JD as a three year degree, Garner’s approach to legal education reform puts the onus on the educators to prepare students to communicate their ideas no matter which path they choose in the legal profession.

To read the full debate and cast your opinion, click here.

According to a detailed summary compiled by Law School Transparency, the new policies require ABA-accredited law schools to report employment status, employer type, employment location and state-specific salary information.  Schools must account for 100% of each graduating class with regard to employment status and employer type.  In addition to noting the number of jobs funded by the law school and full-time/part-time status, schools are responsible for revealing if a job requires passage of the bar exam, a JD degree, is unrelated to the legal profession, or is non-professional in nature.  For non-employed students, sub-categories include pursuing a graduate degree, unemployed and seeking employment, unemployed and not seeking employment, and unknown.  Employer type will largely remain the same with schools reporting on the same sub-categories.  The main change is the increase in the number of options for the law firm sub-category.  There will be a total of nine options for classifying the size of law firms.  Data on location will be limited to the three U.S. states where the most graduates are employed and the number of graduates employed abroad.

Salary data from all ABA-approved law schools will be complied by state and broken down by firm size.  The hope is that this approach will reduce skewed data, which leads prospective law students to believe that salaries are greater than they are in reality.

At this point, members of the Questionnaire Committee are working with NALP to improve the quality of the survey questions and discussing who should be responsible for inputting such sensitive data, particularly when law schools’ reputation are at risk.

To stay up-to-date on this ongoing debate, be sure to visit the Law School Transparency site.  Click here to read the official memorandum from the chair of the Questionnaire Committee.

Kaplan PMBR Bar Review Survey: Law School Students Say Facebook Rife with Incriminating Evidence – And Many Say Peers Among the Offenders Also: Most Say Their Legal Education Has Tempered What They Post on Facebook
Kaplan PMBR Bar Review

According to a recent Kaplan PMBR Bar Review survey of third-year law school students*, nearly half (49%) report that they have seen something on someone’s Facebook page that could get the poster in trouble with the law.  Surprisingly, 44% of that group said the alleged offender was a law school student or lawyer, begging the question: shouldn’t those who should know the law best know better?

On the plus side: 76% of survey respondents said that what they learned from their legal education has caused them to temper what they post on Facebook.

“The fact that nearly half have seen something illegal posted on Facebook doesn’t mean that we are a society of criminals. Illegal activity can mean minors drinking beer or someone smoking a Cuban cigar.  But also given their stage of professional development, law students tend to be particularly aware of the finer points of the law, in the same way that medical students can sometimes be hypochondriacs,” said Steven Marietti, executive director of academic programs, Kaplan PMBR Bar Review.  “Regardless, it’s smart to be cautious, since what you post on Facebook can potentially be held against you when coming before the bar or in court.”

Moreover, a 2010 Kaplan survey of law school admissions officers showed that nearly 20% had personally visited an applicant’s social networking site to help them evaluate that applicant – all the more reason for hyper-awareness.

*The survey of 428 third-year law students was conducted by e-mail in March 2011.

About Kaplan PMBR Bar Review
Kaplan PMBR Bar Review (www.kaplanpmbr.com) provides full-service bar review programs in 25 states (Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia) and Washington DC, making its courses available to more than 80% of the U.S. Bar-taking population.  Additionally, Kaplan PMBR Bar Review offers preparation for the Multistate Bar Exam (MBE) in all 48 states that require it.

This course, which is instructed by Lecturer of Law Peter Carfagna, is one of several offerings in the sports law program.  In addition to three courses, students can join the Committee on Sports and Entertainment Law, sit on the editorial board of the Journal on Sports and Entertainment Law and participate in externships with professional sports teams.

Carfagna was pleased to have Shaq visit his students, who in the past have welcomed tennis player Mario Ancic and NFL quarterback Brady Quinn.  Leading up to the big day, HLS students had been studying licensing agreements and negotiating and drafting endorsements, two things that Shaq and his agent were able to cover along with changes in the NBA, his nearly two decade professional basketball career and social media.

Shaq’s agent, Perry Rogers, ended the class by telling students that “empathy is the key to every negotiation. You have to feel what [others] feel. If you can do that, you can get a deal done.” He reiterated that this advice is relevant in any legal field one chooses to pursue.

To read about the details of Shaq’s visit, click here.

According to Donald Polden, who serves as the dean of Santa Clara University Law School and the chairman of the committee, “a substantial portion of the committee believes that [this] provision should be repealed.”  To date, nearly 10 law schools have waivers from the ABA that enable them to admit students who have not sat for the exam.  While such a rule could further open the flood gates to the masses of applicants seeking JDs, Loyola University Chicago School of Law Dean David Yellen believes that most law schools will keep the LSAT as a requirement as it serves as a necessary measuring tool.   The LSAT is also used by law school admissions committees to make merit-based financial aid decisions.

In addition to potentially giving law schools more freedom in deciding how they evaluate applicants and testing the relationship between the Law School Admissions Council and ABA, the standards committee is in the later stages of making recommendations regarding law school governance and faculty tenure.

In keeping with recently expressed concerns about law schools’ assessment methods, the ABA is drafting “standards [that] would require law schools to define their educational mission and learning goals for graduating students—a significant departure from the existing standards, which rely on more easily quantifiable measures such as bar passage rates.”

To learn more about these proposed standards and the fate of the LSAT in the law school admissions process, check out this article from the National Law Journal.

The new law school, which has yet to be officially approved by the Board, would open its doors on the University of Delaware’s Newark campus in 2015.   According to the timeline shared with the public in President Harker’s letter, Board members are scheduled to cast their votes in spring 2013. Pending approval from the Board, the search for the law school’s first dean would commence that fall.

Preliminary feasibility studies began over a year ago, the results of which were shared during the November gatherings of the Board of Trustees’ Executive Committee and the Trustee Committee on Academic Affairs.  The feasibility study and business plan that were given the green light at these meetings will be presented to the committees in May 2011.  There is currently only one other law school in the state; Widener Law School is private and located on the outskirts of Wilmington.

President Harker expressed the sentiment that “No matter what group of universities UD uses for comparison purposes, [they] stand out as one of the few without a professional degree program in law or medicine.”

To read his letter to the University of Delaware community, click here.

Members of the Penn Program on Regulation (PPR), which is under the auspices of Penn Law but includes faculty from six schools in the greater university, will conduct research over the next two and half years with the aim of reducing workplace injuries in the U.S.  The effort will be led by Cary Coglianese, the Edward B. Shils Professor of Law and Director of PPR, and Adam Finkel, who currently serves as Fellow and Executive Director of PPR.  Professor of Criminology and Statistics Richard A. Berk and Professor of Medicine Edward A. Emmett will also have key roles in analyzing three decades of OSHA data.  In Coglianese’s opinion, this project is “the kind of interdisciplinary collaboration that is the hallmark of both the Penn Program on Regulation as well as Penn Law.”

OSHA has the capacity to visit approximately one percent of workplaces deemed as potentially dangerous each year.  Coglianese and Finkel, who is a former director of health standards at OSHA, believe that they can take advantage of the data that has been collected but never analyzed to increase the chances that the agency will target firms for inspection that have not improved workplace conditions.  The Penn team plans to sift through enforcement and violations data in addition to company profiles to help OSHA identify consistently dangerous workplaces with the hope that inspections of these facilities will ultimately lead to a reduction in work-related injuries.