University law clinic takes on mediation
By Tasha Kates

It was a bad night on the nursing home wing for incontinence.

Understaffed and underpaid, Nurse Phoebe was trying to clean up all 10 of her patients without any help. Allie, a resident’s daughter, arrived to find her mother in a mess and approached Phoebe about it.

Allie’s comments were the last straw for Phoebe, who was frustrated by Allie’s constant complaining. The women met again Friday in mock mediation, where two mediators-in-training helped the characters sort out their issues.

The role-play was part of a three-day basic mediation training session through the Mediation Center of Charlottesville. The latest session was held at the University of Virginia’s law school, where students received training as part of the new Family Alternative Dispute Resolution Clinic.

Patrice Kyger, the center’s acting director, said the 20-hour basic mediation course the clinic participants underwent will provide them with mediation basics and positive and reflective listening skills. The course prepares people to co-mediate cases referred from juvenile and domestic relations courts.

To the extent the strategy is forced and clumsy (that is, for example, simply mirroring the professor’s politics and world view), he has a great point.  On the other hand, keying your answers to the language and intellectual strategies of individual professors is very productive.  It’s a key element of The Law School Mastery Method and it is not a difficult skill to master, and as attorney Scott H. Greenfield writes in his blog post excerpted below, it is a very useful and essential skillset to have when you actually practice law in the future.

Mr Greenfield is right.  Here’s some excellent analysis and good advice at the Simple Justice blog.  Please visit and read his entire post: it’s very informative and wise.

How To Succeed In Law School. Maybe
by Scott H. Greenfield

Paul Horowitz, with whom I rarely disagree, urges law students to be themselves rather than “package” themselves to appeal to individual professors, in this post at PrawfsBlawg. In other words, don’t try to game the system.

A little of this advice is useful to some extent: if your professor says, for instance, that she wants you to cover all the issues on an exam rather than delve into a few at great detail, you’d do well to listen. But students who think this approach is the best or most efficient way to yield good grades are, I think, quite mistaken. This approach yields few long-term benefits and only uncertain short-term benefits.

These students are not trying to suit the preferences of Professor X or Professor Y; they are simply trying to be good lawyers (or at least good law students). They develop a skill set that gets them far better results, and with less duplication of effort, than if they had tried to game the system by figuring out each individual professor’s pecadilloes.

While this advice would meet with Pollyanna’s approval, and the suggestion that students would do better to strive to learn how to be a “good lawyer,” it reflects one of the fundamental errors of legal pedagogy as opposed to practical efficacy. Good lawyers win cases. Good lawyers figure out what they have to do to win cases. Good lawyers, amongst other things, learn about their judge, find out what arguments appeal to the specific individual who will be making decisions in their case, and hone their arguments to suit the person in the robe.

Law school recruitment fair offers advice for potential students
By Valen Emmert

Making decisions about higher education can sometimes be a difficult task. UT’s College of Law held a law school recruitment fair to make the decision easier. The overall goal of the day was to get prospective law students from UT and area schools to see the opportunities available to them.

For the event, which was attended by approximately 60 to 80 people, admissions officers from Georgia State, South Carolina, Mercer and Vanderbilt law schools traveled to be a part of a panel.

The panel discussed preparing for law school as an undergraduate, the law school admission process and legal employment with the current economic state. The panelists also held a question and answer session, followed by a meet and greet time where students could talk with them about their law school options.

During the Q&A, the panel discussed a wide range of topics. Students were interested in everything from letters of recommendation to the LSAT exam to differences between private and public law schools. Looking ahead, the students also asked about forming stand-out applications and effective personal statements.

Law School Admissions Counselor Hosts Informational Seminar
by Jordan Dailey

Rachel Wishum, admissions director of Jones School of Law at Faulkner University in Montgomery, spoke to Auburn students interested in law school Thursday, Sept. 3.

She spoke about important areas for all potential law students– LSAT scores and GPA.

“The LSAT tells us how you think and process what you read,” Wishum said. “Your GPA tells us what your work ethic is like.”

Though the LSAT measures students’ performance at one point in time, GPA spans a longer period.

“We look at trends,” Wishum said. “If your GPA started out badly, but has increased over time, it tells us you got serious and decided to work hard.”

Sara Duffy, a second-year student, or 2L, at Jones School of Law, graduated from Auburn in May 2008 in public relations.

“Law school is different than undergrad in that you’re learning how to be a good lawyer, not just memorizing a bunch of stuff for a test,” Duffy said.

Potential law students may wonder when is the best time to take the LSAT.

Wishum and Duffy recommend the June before a student’s senior undergraduate year.

“It’s not like the ACT where you take it over and over,” Wishum said. “This test is extremely difficult. You don’t want to take it more than once if you don’t have to.”

Read the whole article at LawJobs.com…

Reality’s Knocking as Law Schools Provide More Practical Training
by Karen Sloan

Washington and Lee University School of Law has thrown out its traditional third-year curriculum and replaced it with a series of legal simulations meant to prepare students to practice law in the real world.

First-year students at Duke Law School and the new University of California, Irvine School of Law will take a yearlong course examining different legal careers and the ethical and professional issues associated with those career tracks.

A new LL.M. program at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law is designed to give recent law school graduates the skills their predecessors would have developed as starting law firm associates.

The movement to incorporate practical skills into legal education isn’t new, but legal educators and researchers report that the floundering economy is increasing incentives for law schools to revamp their curricula to prepare students for the realities of the legal profession.

“A lot of the changes are in response to the marketplace,” said David Van Zandt, dean of Northwestern University School of Law. “Students are concerned about getting jobs, and everybody wants to be relevant.”

Graduates face stiff competition for law firm positions, and clients are balking at footing the bill to train new attorneys. Consequently, law school leaders consider it more important than ever to send students into the profession armed with practical skills, not just extensive knowledge of case law and legal theory. More law schools are modifying coursework and adding practical classes to help students develop the skills past graduates have had the luxury of learning on the job. In that vein, a growing number of law schools are emphasizing teamwork, leadership, professional judgment and the ability to view issues from the clients’ perspective.

“I think we are at a moment of historical change across the landscape of legal education,” said Washington and Lee Dean Rodney A. Smolla. “When we look back at this period in five to 10 years, we will mark it as the time when the whole mission of law schools made a fundamental turn.”

Read the rest at LawJobs.com…

Study: More students turn to law school in failing economy
Registration for LSATs has increased more than 20 percent during past year
By Alex Zielinski

An April study of prospective law students revealed a leading motive for attending law school: the failing economy.

The study, administrated by Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions, reported that 40 percent of the 1,040 students who took the February 2009 Law School Admission Test were motivated by today’s economic crisis to apply to law school. In addition, the registration for the Kaplan-administered LSATs has increased by more that 20 percent during the past year.

Since 2006, the University’s School of Law has seen the number of applicants rise by 113, with 2008’s enrollment around 531 students. The law school’s LL.M, or Master of Laws, class of 2010 will be the largest since the program’s initiation two years ago. The law school building itself can hold no more than its current students, so increased applications would mean more discretion when reviewing new applicants.

The survey highlighted many economic reasons why students would decide to go to law school now. Sixty-seven percent of survey participants said the high earning power of a law degree substantially affected their decision to pursue an education in the field.

Hamline law professor charged for evading taxes
According to the charges, the professor owes the state almost $5,000. The school said she will continue to teach.
By BOB VON STERNBERG, and JOY POWELL

An associate law professor at Hamline University whose law school bio lists tax law as one of her specialties was charged Wednesday with multiple counts of tax fraud and evasion.

Robin K. Magee, 46, of St. Paul, was charged in Ramsey County District Court with 11 counts of failing to file a tax return, filing a false or fraudulent return, and failing to pay taxes during a four-year period.

Magee, a longtime activist with the NAACP who has protested cases of police brutality, did not immediately return calls or e-mails Wednesday from Star Tribune reporters.

According to the criminal complaint, Magee owes the state $4,938 for tax years 2004 through 2007.

The alleged non-payments were discovered in an investigation by the Minnesota Department of Revenue; the agency’s records also show that Magee “has a history of failing to timely file Minnesota income tax returns.”

Charleston School of Law launches new, redesigned Web site

The Charleston School of Law has launched a newly redesigned Web site at www.charlestonlaw.edu. The new site went live Tuesday.

“The look and the feel of the Web site was developed to make it a lot more user-friendly, particularly to prospective students,” said spokesman Andy Brack.

A new search function and drop down menus were added. From the other end, the Web site switched over to a content management system, which makes it easier for different departments to load and update content, Brack said.

Dean Andy Abrams said, “Our new and improved Web site is the culmination of a tremendous amount of time and effort by a large number of dedicated individuals who have worked over the past year to design, develop and launch a site that is user-friendly, comprehensive and professional.”

University of Chicago Law names new dean

This just in: Michael Schill, dean of the UCLA School of Law, will become the new head of the University of Chicago Law School.

The school, one of the nation’s most highly regarded law schools, announced the appointment Tuesday. Schill, who will start Jan. 1, replaces Saul Levmore, who has been the dean since 2001.

Levmore announced earlier this year his intention of stepping down to return to full-time scholarship.

Schill, a scholar in property law, spent five years at UCLA, according to a University of Chicago news release.

Law schools in Silicon Valley add practical skills to help students compete

Let’s face it — it’s not the most advantageous time to be a second- or third-year law student. Big law firms are shedding associates, deferring recruits and shrinking the number of interns as they adjust to the mercurial economy.

Local law schools are responding to marketplace realities by developing curriculum better suited to law firm needs. Universities are retooling their curriculum and incorporating management, leadership and specialized disciplines.

“We realized that graduating students are going to have a hard time finding jobs, principally because of the restructuring of large law firms but because of the cascading affect,” said Fred Gonzalez, a Santa Clara University School of Law alum who now serves as general counsel at SonicWall Inc. “We’re trying to figure out how to make our students more attractive.”

Campbell Law School moving into new home
bySarah Ovaska

Come next week, nearly 400 wannabe lawyers will be walking the streets of downtown Raleigh as Campbell University throws open the doors for the new home of its law school.

Next Monday will mark the first day of classes at Campbell’s Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law, which left rural Buies Creek in Harnett County for the glitter and glamour of Raleigh this year.

The new facility, at 225 Hillsborough St., will be within blocks of the Wake County courthouse, large private law firms, state agencies, and courtrooms at the state’s two appellate courts, a federal courthouse and a federal bankruptcy court.

That’s a key component to giving students real-life exposure to the legal profession so they can better adjust to practicing law after graduation, said Melissa Essary, the law school’s dean.

“Our students are not the most important constituency in the building; it’s our student’s future clients,” Essary said. Giving students exposure to how the world works, and not just hypothetical situations, helps those future clients, Essary said.

Berkeley Law Expands Loan Program

UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law announced this week that it’s expanding its loan repayment assistance program for alumni who pursue public interest or government work.

UC Berkeley’s Loan Repayment Assistance Program has been helping graduates repay their student loans for the past decade. It will expand in January to offer unlimited help to alumni who earn up to $65,000 a year. Previously the amount had been capped at $100,000 for alumni who make less than $58,000 per year.

“The law school provides the graduates who meet the income and employment requirements with a forgivable loan. Every six months, they’re required to make their student loan payments,” explained Berkeley Law Assistant Dean of Financial Aid Dennis Tominaga. He said those loans are forgiven if the students maintain the income and job requirements and uses the money make student loan payments.

Read this entire blog entry at The Wall Street Journal…

Study: The Better the School, the Less Happy the Associate

The economy of the last 16 months has forced law firms to rethink a lot of their old ways of doing things vis-a-vis their associates. Firms have reconsidered salary structures, embraced new training techniques and reshaped evaluation processes. They’ve also, of course, taken the axe to hundreds upon hundreds of the equity-less masses.

But one thing they haven’t changed: whom they hire. Firms have tinkered with the formula at the margins, but they still largely flock to the top national schools and top schools in their area, and look to snatch up the students on law review and with the best grades — categories which often share a lot of overlap. If anything, given a reduction in hiring needs, the firms have become even more discerning with their hiring over the months.

But is this strategy — going for the best and brightest at the most gilded institutions — a mistake? The authors of a recent study think so.

Ronit Dinovitzer, a sociology professor at the University of Toronto, and Bryan Garth, the dean of the Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles, tracked the careers of a sample of 5,000 lawyers who began practice in 2000.

Their findings were two-fold. First, as described in the September issue of the American Lawyer, they found that “new lawyers working for firms of more than 250 lawyers are less satisfied with their jobs than their counterparts in smaller firms.” Um, okay. Frankly, were this all they found, we wouldn’t be writing about their study at all.

But they also found this: “that graduates of the most selective schools are the less satisfied with their jobs at large firms, while graduates of less selective schools are relatively more satisfied.”

The rationale behind the finding is interesting. Write the authors:

Why are elite graduates dissatisfied with these jobs? Part of the answer is that graduates of elite law schools are groomed to expect success . . . . [The] data shows that the graduates of elite law schools come to the job market with different career expectations than graduates of nonelite schools. Among other things, they are more likely to have considered careers in business consulting or investment banking. . . . Interviews with lawyers in this group reveal that they do not want to work the long hours generally required at law firms, and they especially do not want to put in those hours patiently for ten years to compete for the partnership prize. This is a relatively privileged group that expects to do well in life. For them, the corporate law firm apprenticeship is something to put on a resume and move on.

On the other hand, write Dinovitzer and Garth:

Students from less selective schools have a different disposition. They know they had to work harder simply to attain those positions, and they realize that their options are more limited. . . . Thus, for a segment of students from the lower echelons of the law school heirarchy, the large corporate law firm job is a coveted reward for hard work and is not to be squandered. . . .

The conclusion to all this, write the authors, isn’t one that too many law firms are likely to run out and adopt: hire more lawyers from nonelite schools.

The obvious point is to hire more law graduates from outside the elite law schools. Because of their backgrounds, they will be hungrier and more willing to make the sacrifices necessary to gain access to partnerships. . . . [L]aw firms are always going to need driven young lawyers who are committed to doing what it takes to make partner. We suggest that they are most likely to find these sorts of lawyers outside the elite law schools.”

Former UI law school assistant dean charged with stealing from Chicago agency

Authorities say a former assistant business dean at the University of Illinois College of Law had been charged with stealing $20,000 from a Chicago city agency.

Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez says 38-year-old Ming Liu of Urbana, also known as Ming Liu Bengtsson, was indicted for theft, official misconduct and forgery.

Liu is accused of stealing $20,000 intended to promote tourism while working as a project administrator with the city of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs from 1997 through June 2006.

FSU Ranked Nation’s 10th Best Value Law School

The National Jurist magazine has ranked Florida State University College of Law the 10th “best value” law school in the nation. The ranking, published in the magazine’s September 2009 issue, considers tuition, employment rate and bar passage rate.

The national ranking reflects Florida State Law’s strong student outcomes. Even in a down economy, 98 percent of the class of 2008 was placed within nine months of graduation. Florida State students also have had the best passage rate on the Florida Bar Exam four out of the last seven times it was administered.

“It is exciting to be able to deliver academic excellence at relatively low cost,” said Law Dean Don Weidner.

New Law School Ranking: Judicial Clerkship Jobs
by Robert Morse

Behind every great judge is his or her law clerk. Judicial clerkships are considered very prestigious. However, they are very difficult to obtain because they are highly coveted by law school graduates. Federal clerkships are considered the most prestigious, making them that much harder to get.

With this in mind U.S. News has just published our first-ever ranking of which law schools are sending the largest proportions of their graduates on to judicial clerkships for federal judges. The ranking is sorted by the percentage of the 2007 J.D. graduating class that was employed as clerks by federal judges. Yale, not surprisingly, came out No. 1.

Since they give clerks considerable knowledge of the law and court system, clerkships can provide a significant edge in today’s very competitive legal job market. In addition, some clerks are more highly prized by potential employers because of the valuable contacts that they develop during their clerkships.

What do clerks do? According the Indiana University Guide to Judicial Clerkships:

“The judicial clerk is a full-time assistant to the judge and usually performs a wide range of tasks including, legal research, drafting of memoranda and court opinions, proofreading and cite checking. A judicial clerk is often responsible for various administrative tasks such as maintenance of the docket and library, assembling documents or other administrative tasks necessary to meet the many obligations of the judge.”

Check out the chart of the new rankings here.

Are Law-School Applicants Like ‘Gatsby’s Revelers?’
By Nathan Koppel

…

Slater laments the fact that, even in the throes of one of the worst industry downturns in history, matriculation rates continue to rise unchecked at law schools, with close to 50,000 enrollees at the 200 ABA-approved law schools.

Worse, to lure students, some law schools offer a deceptive view of the likelihood that their graduated will land top-paying jobs. Slater points a finger at employment statistics posted on the Web sites of three low-ranked law schools in New York City. All three advertise that 45 to 60 percent of their 2008 graduates who reported salary information are making a median salary of $150,000 to $160,000, a statistic that Slater finds somewhat dubious.

Ultimately, however, Slater serves up the sternest language for students themselves:

“But will next year’s round of applicants heed the signals?” he writes, with that characteristic Slater panache. And then this, which deserves its own set-off block-quote:

Or, like Gatsby’s revelers, will they simply push on at an ever greater clip, boats against the current, toward that green light in the ivory tower and the promising future that, quite literally, recedes before them? After all, there will always be the possibility, however faint, of Big Law money and white-shoe prestige — those powerful tonics for every new batch of wandering liberal arts graduates.

UM’s law school named on ‘best value’ list

The University of Montana School of Law lands number six on a list of best value law schools in the nation.

The list was compiled by The National Jurist, a magazine that reaches an estimated 100,000 law students.

It appears in the September 2009 issue in an article titled “Best Bang for your buck.”

The UM law school was lauded for its $10,000 in state tuition, its bar passage rate of 95% and its 95% employment rate after graduation.

The top five schools on the list were North Carolina Central University, Brigham Young University, the University of Nebraska, Georgia State University and the University of Mississippi.

Maine university seeks approval for law school

Husson University is again seeking approval from the Maine Supreme Judicial Court to open what would be Maine’s second law school.

Officials at the Bangor school said Wednesday that they have submitted a new plan asking Maine’s highest court to allow graduates from the proposed law school to take Maine bar exams. The court last year rejected Husson’s request, saying the school’s accreditation requirements weren’t adequate.

If the new request is approved, the school would open in the fall of 2010.

It seems that some think that it’s not that there aren’t enough legal jobs, but rather, there are just too many lawyers.  Read more at The New York Times…

Another View: Lock the Law School Doors
by Dan Slater

This summer, in the staid world of legal education, where curriculum is uniform and scholars are trained in the art of like-mindedness, one dean hatched a contrary plan.

In a memo to incoming students, Patricia D. White, the dean of University of Miami School of Law, surmised: “Perhaps many of you are looking to law school as a safe harbor in which you can wait out the current economic storm.” She then urged them to “think hard” about their plans and offered incentives for those willing to defer for one year.

“The nature of the legal profession is in great flux,” Dean White observed. “It is very difficult to predict what the employment landscape for young lawyers will be in May 2012 and thereafter.”

…

The American Bar Association, which continues to approve law schools with impunity and with no end in sight, bears complicity in creating this mess. Yet a spokeswoman, citing antitrust concerns, says the A.B.A. takes no position on the optimal number of lawyers or law schools. So then how about the schools? Can they save future generations of students from themselves?

If it means shrinking classes, don’t count on it. Limiting education is un-American, not to mention anticapitalist, even if many law schools appear to profit from what may charitably be called an inefficient distribution of market information.

Take, for instance, the employment statistics posted on the Web sites of three low-ranked law schools in New York City, the country’s biggest market for legal employment. All three advertise that 45 to 60 percent of their 2008 graduates who reported salary information are making a median salary of $150,000 to $160,000.

Now, of course there must be some way of slicing and dicing the numbers to yield that magic result. But what happens, in practice, is that prospective degree-purchasers enroll in these $43,000-a-year programs believing their chances of landing that Big Law job are about one in two. Tempting odds.

Other schools market their degrees without six-figure promises. “If you counted on starting at $160,000 per year, then you’re in for a huge disappointment,” said Bryant Garth, the dean at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles, where enrollment is up 11 percent. He disagrees with Miami’s approach and believes that trying to shrink class size amounts to panicking. “I insist law is still a good career,” he said. “Students may just have to make it in a more entrepreneurial fashion.”

Be sure and read this article and the advice within at Law.com…

No Job Offer in Hand?  Then You Need a Plan
by Suzanne Dupree Howe

In the past, most summer associates working at large firms felt that if they showed up at a decent hour, acted respectably and did a reasonably good job on their assignments, they were all but guaranteed an offer of permanent employment. Barring any major gaffes, summer associates were likely to snag an offer or two by the end of their second summer in law school.

That probably won’t be the case as this summer winds to a close. Summer associates likely have been walking on eggshells, trying to provide the best possible work product and to make themselves indispensable. The days of almost automatic entitlement to a permanent offer surely are over.

Given the economy and state of the legal market, many third-year law students may find themselves without an offer at the end of this summer. Firms have fewer positions to offer, and they will have to be more discriminating in their choices than in years past.

Unfortunately, 3Ls left without an offer at the end of the summer may find that additional job prospects are bleak in this down economy in which firms are laying off attorneys. If a summer associate does not receive an offer, one can only assume he will have a steep uphill battle ahead of him this coming school year. Without a significant upturn in the economy, 3Ls without offers will compete with a large mass of laid-off junior and midlevel associates, and they will find themselves at a distinct disadvantage, since new graduates will lack the practical skills that these associates have had time to cultivate.

So, what is a 3L without an offer to do?

• Participate in OCIs: Third-year law students should participate in on-campus interviews this fall through their law school career services office; there always are a few firms looking to hire 3L students for permanent positions through the fall interview program.

• Consider small and midsized firms: Law students who had their hearts set on big-firm jobs after graduation but failed to net an offer would be well-served to consider alternative firms, namely smaller or midsize law firms. Due to competitive billing rates, many of these firms are seeing an increase in business and need warm bodies to do the work. And an associate could lateral to a large firm later once she gained practical experience.

• Look into different practice areas: Reflecting current trends, students should consider applying for positions in practice areas that are countercyclical and in higher demand. These practices include litigation, bankruptcy, white-collar crime, and labor and employment.

• Clerk for a judge: In this economy, 3Ls without offers should put a lot of time and effort into trying to secure a judicial clerkship after graduation. Not only will it give a new graduate time to ride out the storm and gain another year to find a job (hopefully in an improved legal job market), but a clerkship is an optimal way for new lawyers to enhance their resumes, regardless of their intended practice areas.

• Apply for a government job: Law students should consider applying for federal and state government positions in practice areas expected to be in demand in the coming years under the new administration, such as securities litigation, environmental law, and labor and employment. Consider seeking environmental attorney positions at the state and local level, positions at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and positions at the U.S. Department of Labor, among others. Firms often cherry-pick lawyers out of these agencies for associate positions due to the expertise they gain inside.

Read more at Law.com.

Anonymous Thoughts On Laptops In the Classroom

There is a lot of discussion going around lately about professors banning laptops in the classroom, so I feel the need to chime in. There are already related discussions on Volokh and here on Legal Geekery, and I want to raise my hand too.

Having had the opportunity to take a class this semester that banned laptops outright, my professor regurgitated the same arguments made by every other electronics-banning professor: facebook, inattentive students in general, lexis, research class or writing class, emails, blog checking, etc.

The way I see it, if you need to tell students (especially those over the age of 21) that they are not attentive enough and you have to ban laptops to get them to pay attention, maybe you should find a better way to teach the class. The law is and should be interesting and that’s the reason many of us have elected to pursue a law degree.

As a 1L, students need to pay attention because they need to hear you go on and on about the ever elusive how to think like a lawyer. But as 2Ls and 3Ls, we figured out that you, just like the bar, are testing our ability to memorize the nutshell/outline and how to argue both sides of your hypo, and that aside from the rule or exception that was the topic of that day’s class, nothing that you lectured about is on the final.

New York Law School Opens New Facility in TriBeCa

SmithGroup, one of the nation’s leading architecture, engineering, interior design, and planning firms, is proud to announce the opening of a new academic center for New York Law School located in the heart of New York City’s historic TriBeCa neighborhood.

The $145 million facility will serve over 1,500 students. Construction, which began in 2006, was completed in conjunction with BKSK Architects and general contractor Pavarini McGovern, both headquartered in New York.

“The new academic center celebrates the close connection of New York Law School to its community,” said Tom Butcavage, AIA, LEED AP, a SmithGroup vice president who served as design principal for the project. “The open modern design conveys the school’s values and legacy of integrity, collaboration and public service, and creates a new civic icon for TriBeCa.”

The 200,000-square-foot contemporary, glass enclosed facility, constructed upon the law school’s former parking lot, rises five stories above ground with four stories below grade. As part of the university’s mission to create a highly visible civic landmark, SmithGroup’s design showcases its student interaction and community spaces, which are located along the 200-foot long glass corridors. Event spaces including a large auditorium and multipurpose space provide opportunities for public lecture series and outreach programs.

From what I hear from my highly paced secret sources in some of the more elite firms out there, it’s going to get worse.

Read more at The Chicago Tribune…

Big firms cut back on law school recruiting
By Ameet Sachdev

The recession has made big law firms in Chicago even pickier when it comes to recruiting at law schools.

Firms have slashed the number of on-campus visits this year, as recruiting and hiring budgets have been cut. Seyfarth Shaw canceled its 2010 summer program. Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom, which has a large Chicago presence, has said it expects to hire nationally about 100 interns — also known as summer associates — next year, down from 225 in this year’s summer class.Other law firms also have downsized their summer programs but are not publicly talking about their plans. Mayer Brown and Winston & Strawn declined to comment Monday and Jenner & Block did not return a request for comment.

Law schools of every ilk are feeling the effects, from elite private institutions such as Northwestern to state schools such as the University of Illinois.

“Many law firms still are finalizing their overall hiring needs,” Don Rebstock, Northwestern’s associate dean of enrollment, career strategy, and marketing, said in an e-mail response. “Because of this, we may offer a second on-campus interviewing program sometime in the spring.”

Northwestern students have somewhat brighter job prospects than their peers at lower-ranked schools because big law firms remain prestige-conscious.

“We’ve had large national firms tell us they can only go to three or four law schools,” said Tony Waller, assistant dean for career planning and professional development at the University of Illinois College of Law. “For Chicago firms, that means [University of] Chicago, Northwestern and Michigan.”

JAG corps announces law school programs
By Capt. Eric W. Adams

Applications for the Funded Legal Education Program and Excess Leave Program are being accepted from January 1 through March 1, 2010. Interested officers are encouraged to compete.

“Our Air Force missions are constantly changing and commanders deserve to have access to legal advisors with a broad background of military experiences,” said Lt. Col. Todd Wold, 1st Fighter Wing staff judge advocate. The FLEP and ELP will ensure that we can continue to maintain a corps of officers whose military experience complements their legal training, providing commanders with the highest caliber of legal support.”

According to Colonel Wold, Air Force judge advocate generals do more than just provide legal assistance. In addition to prosecuting and defending clients brought before courts-martial, JAG officers routinely participate in nearly every facet of the Air Force mission, including developing and acquiring weapons systems, ensuring availability of airspace and ranges where those systems are tested and operated, consulting with commanders about how those systems are employed in armed conflict and assisting commanders in the day-to-day running of military installations around the world.

“Every facet of every Air Force mission is bound by elements of the law,” said Colonel Wold.

The FLEP is a paid legal studies program for active-duty Air Force commissioned officers. The FLEP is an assignment action, and participants receive full pay, allowances, and tuition. FLEP applicants must have between two and six years active duty service (enlisted or commissioned) and must be in the pay grade O-3 or below as of the day they begin law school. The FLEP is subject to tuition limitations, and positions may be limited due to overall funding availability. The Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) establishes the tuition limit, and the academic year 2010 is set at approximately $16,000 per year. This amount may change year to year.