Yale Law School Going to the Dogs?

Abovethelaw.com ^ | Elie Mystal

[Immerito]

I routinely make fun of the U.S. News law school rankings for taking into account the size of a law school library when ranking law schools. We live in a world where you can get everything online.

Well, not everything. Leave it to the perennial U.S. News darling, Yale Law School, to come up with a library offering worthy of the school’s number 1 ranking. Here’s the wonderful catalog listing:

NOT CHK’D OUT – Ask at Circ. – DOG BASKET BEHIND CIRCULATION DESK – ASK AT CIRC:

Description 1 dog (border terrier mix) : brown hair, 21 lbs. ; 33 cm at shoulder.

Yep, at the Yale Law School library you can check out a dog…

Monty at play.

You could never check out a dog at a huge law school like Harvard without risking animal welfare violations. Too many assholes. But at a really small law school like Yale, it seems like librarians can exercise some quality control and make sure nobody mistreats the animal.

And for the students, it’s nothing short of brilliant. Just check out the rest of the entry and tell me that 30 minutes with a nice animal wouldn’t provide a welcome break during study time:

Notes Monty circulates for 30 minute periods. Graduate of Puppy School, 2000 (with honors), Certified Therapy Dog, 2010. Distinguishing features: white star on chest. Monty plays well with others and is fond of bacon. (Please don’t feed him hot dogs, that’s just wrong.) Woof (unknown script).

Subjects Monty (Dog) Therapy dogs. Dogs in libraries. Stress relievers for law students.

Additional author Aiken, Julian, owner.

Title note Full name: General Montgomery

Really, is there anything wrong with Yale Law School? It’s consistently ranked as the best law school in the nation, its students are on the fast track to Supreme Court clerkships, and everybody who wants a job has a job. Meanwhile, because everybody wants Yale Law grads, its professors can work on whatever philosophical or scholarly pursuit they want to without the pressure of teaching students actual lawyering skills. What, people aren’t going to take the time to give a Yale law grad some “on the job” training?

And they still barely have grades up there (Honors, Pass, Low Pass). It must be nice.

UPDATE: Sadly, Monty is no longer in circulation.

Encore: Monty [Lillian Goldman Law Library / Yale Law School]

[aliquando]

Common sense and a sense of humor! Are you sure there are lawyers involved?

[achilles2000]

Yale Law barely teaches law. A student coming out of many state schools will be better trained in the law when they graduate than a student from Yale. As a grad school in philosophy or government, Yale Law is utterly inferior to real academic departments. The only difference among the students at Yale and those at Harvard or Stanford, for example, is the extent to which the quality is diluted by affirmative action.