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Something very good has just taken place on a college campus. After a two-year ordeal orchestrated by a group of mutinous faculty members, the Ave Maria School of Law has been given a clean bill of health by the American Bar Association and can continue with its work. I spoke on the campus last autumn and departed burdened by gloom. I feared the mutineers might win. They were the typical professorial grumblers, and such unhappy philistines so often have the upper hand on campuses. Truth be known, I spend very little time on college campuses. The life of the mind...

Justice says law degree 'worth 15 cents' By JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 8 minutes ago Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas testifies before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government regarding the Supreme Court's 2008 fiscal budget request on Capitol Hill, in Washington, D.C., in this March 8, 2007 file photo. The conservative justice says he was repeatedly turned down in job interviews at law firms when he graduated from Yale in 1974 in the years after affirmative action had taken hold at universities.    NEW HAVEN, Conn. - U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas...

African-American Enrollment in Law Schools Declinesby: Emmanuel Opati, October 03, 2007 There is increasing concern about enrollment decline of African-American male students in higher education and specifically Law Schools. Speaking in Washington, D.C at the Congressional Black Caucus forum last week, Chris Brown, General Motors (GM) Vice President General Counsel for North America, said there is need for diversity in the legal profession both in schools and law firms. He said diversity is part and parcel of GM policy. “General Motors was the first corporation to have a minority supplies program and a minority dealer program”, he added. At the...

A blond bombshell from Boston College Law School is ruffling Eagle feathers for posing semi-nude in just her briefs - and a strategically placed school pennant - in a free barroom magazine. Racy comments about the salacious spread in Barstool Sports got so out of hand on a BC Law Web page, the editors stripped the story off the site. “People were saying really nasty things,” one law school student said. Posts on other legal-oriented Web sites were equally biting: “This is why women shouldn’t be lawyers,” wrote one visitor to abovethelaw.com. In true lawyer fashion, the budding barrister herself,...

Attorney and law professor Joseph Casas, who is representing one of the Marines accused of war crimes in Hamdania, Iraq, has recruited some of his students at Thomas Jefferson School of Law to help work on the case. Photo:Jamie Scott Lytle SAN DIEGO ---- While eight U.S. servicemen sit in a military jail accused of war crimes and under an international spotlight, 10 young civilians, strangers to the defendants, are thumbing through legal books and organizing evidence to help the defense. It's nearly a full-time job for the civilians. And they are doing it as volunteers. The 10 are...

The Baltimore Sun has this story about an 80 year old lady who is trying to become a lawyer. Her kids and grandkids no doubt want her to stop wasting their inheritance on going to school. Age is less and less relevant to new students these days. With nearly 40 percent of college students above 25 years old, many of them are bringing 'baggage' to school with them. That is, they are bringing habits, kids, work loads, excuses, and the challenge of paying their tuition with their minimum-wage jobs. Schools have accomodated older students with special courses, accelerated courses and...

See for example this thread first. Harvard Law wants no laptops in class? Imagine if that came to pass: A little disclaimer there'd be no Jim Cramer The profs should shove it up their ass!

Law Professor Bans Laptops in Class Wed Mar 29, 8:21 AM ET MEMPHIS, Tenn. - A University of Memphis law professor has banned laptop computers from her classroom and her students are passing a petition against it. Professor June Entman says her main concern is that students are so busy keyboarding they can't think and analyze what she's telling them. Students have begun collecting signatures on petitions and tried unsuccessfully to file a complaint with the American Bar Association. Student Cory Winsett says if he must continue without his laptop, he'll transfer to another school. Winsett says he won't be...

Globalization guru Tom Friedman called Lou Dobbs, "a blithering idiot" in a lecture at Yale Law School last week... Friedman, three time Pulitzer Prize winner and author of bestsellers "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" and more recently "The World is Flat" (which sold a million and a half copies, far more than Dobbs' viewership), begins his answer. "One of the problems", he begins, explaining that we need leaders who can explain the complexity, not who will just stir the pot, "is we have politicians that are making us stupid, who are throwing sand in our eyes." But then he...

The ABA orders law schools to practice racial preference--even if they have to break the law. According to its mission statement, a primary goal of the American Bar Association is to "promote respect for the law." In the interest of mandating racial preferences in admissions, however, the ABA has just ordered law schools to do the opposite--in fact, to violate the law--and is resorting to blackmail to achieve its end. Meeting in Chicago this past weekend, the ABA's Council of the Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar voted in favor of "equal opportunity and diversity" standards. Under...

   Lowering The Bar January 5, 2006 Clifton Eames has been reading too much of René Descartes.  When Eames flunked the Texas bar exam four times in a row, he reacted although, “...there is a deceiver of supreme power and cunning who is deliberately and constantly deceiving me....”  Perhaps he is just a bit too obsessed by his belief in “Cogito ergo sum”. The State Bar of Texas has a rule which limits the number of times an individual can take the bar exam to five.  If you flunk all five times, that is the end of any ambitions to practice...

For the Seton Hall Law School students who watched the Manhattan skyline from the windows of their school library as the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks unfolded, the chance to take a seminar on terrorism and civil liberties was too relevant to pass up. Each week for two hours, under the tutelage of a distinguished federal appellate judge by the name of Samuel A. Alito Jr., the students would hash out issues they knew were or soon would be a big deal as far as jurisprudence goes. Typical of the class, just working out a definition of "terrorism" took the students...

My examinations start in a few weeks. I have seen flyers for the Legal Essay Exam Writing System (LEEWS), www.leews.com. What is your opinion? How much did it help you? what alternatives do you recommend? Thanks.

'We are proud of her'07:26 AM CDT on Friday, October 28, 2005 By KIMBERLY DURNAN / DallasNews.com Putting their political leanings and ideologies aside, students and professors at Southern Methodist University had taken pride in the idea that one of their own might become one of the most important judicial decision-makers in the nation. On Thursday, their hearts were heavy as news spread that the woman who had attended SMU as an undergraduate and law student had pulled out of the contentious battle for a spot on the U.S. Supreme Court. *snip* Joseph F. Kobylka, an associate professor in the...

"Who's In the Doghouse? Miers, Miers." Who Put Her In The Doghouse? Innerbelt Conservatives! I have the highest esteem for these conservative pundits, but they have shot a week of broadcast time condescending a woman who is an "unknown" to them. There is probably a lot they don't know. I just don't like hearing 7/24 what they don't know. Has Air America offered them better contracts?

HLS To Cooperate With Military Recruiters Kagan reverses policy after Pentagon threatens to cut off millions in federal grants By DANIEL J. HEMEL and JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ Crimson Staff Writers Harvard Law School will actively cooperate with military recruiters this fall, despite the Pentagon’s refusal to sign the school’s nondiscrimination pledge, Dean Elena Kagan announced last night. Kagan’s announcement marks a reversal of her November 2004 decision to bar Pentagon recruiters from using the law school’s Office of Career Services. For most of the last 26 years, the office has only provided its resources to recruiters who promise not to...

WHEN NAVY JUDGE ADVOCATE GENERAL RECRUITER Brian Whitaker visited Yale Law School in October 2003 to meet with students interested in serving as Navy lawyers, his reaction must have been something like that of the man who was tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail; if it weren't for the honor of the thing, he'd probably rather have passed on it. Virtually all Yale law students had signed a petition vowing that they would not meet with Whitaker or other JAG recruiters. The petition was publicly displayed inside the law school as part of a protest...

This is a call for help. I am a second year student at Ave Maria School of Law. This year I made law review and need to write a note (paper) on a legal topic. I need something that hasn't been beaten to death, yet is deep enough that I can write 40-60 pages about it. DOes anyone have any ideas? I have a fewof my own, but I feel like they are too limited and I will struggle with them. Thanks for any help.

Should law schools be allowed to block military recruiters from campus? That's one of the first questions John Roberts will decide as a Supreme Court justice, should the Senate confirm him. The case, called Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic Rights, concerns the constitutionality of the Solomon Act, which mandates that law schools will lose their federal funding if they ban military recruiters. In 2003, a coalition of schools sued. Last year, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in their favor and declared the Solomon Act unconstitutional. The Supreme Court is scheduled to take up the matter in hearings beginning...

The feigned outrage over Karl Rove's criticism of the liberal response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on this country forced me to recall what liberals I encountered were saying in the days immediately after the savage attacks.