Report: Law Faculty Increasingly Drawn from Academia, Not Practice

Law schools looking for new faculty members are increasingly likely to value candidates with advanced degrees and publication records over those with professional legal experience, observers say.

The trend is said to be especially strong among top-ranked law schools like Harvard and Yale. Hiring committees are especially interested in candidates who hold advanced degrees in addition to a J.D. and who have published articles in scholarly journals.

A professor at the Vanderbilt University Law School noted that when she changed careers from practice to teaching, in the late 1980s, Vanderbilt required J.D.s to have a certain amount of practical experience before being hired as instructors. Now, she said, it's not uncommon to see new faculty members who have directly from their own studies into teaching.

Source: "Still Publish or Perish," Tracie Powell, Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, November 30, 2006

UC Irvine Hopes to Launch Law School in 2009

The University of California Board of Regents has approved a proposal to establish a new law school at UC Irvine. Assuming the plan wins the support of the California Postsecondary Education Commission, the school would enroll its first students in the fall of 2009.

The UC Irvine law school would be the first public law school established in California since the mid-1960s and the second public law school to serve the southern part of the state.

Under the proposal, UC Irvine would enroll up to 69 law students in 2009. Class sizes would increase in subesequent years, building up to a total enrollment of 600 students.

Source: "UC Irvine to Get Long-Sought Law School," by Rebecca Trounson and Roy Rivenburg, the Los Angeles Times, November 16, 2006

Pepperdine Wins Civil Trial Competion

A team of Pepperdine Law School students were the winners of the 5th annual National Civil Trial Competition hosted by the Loyala Law School in Los Angeles.

Over 50 law schools applied for places in this year's contest, which involved arguing a hypothetical case in which a journalist alleged that a private investigator had threatened him in ways that kept him from pursuing his work.

Students from 4 law schools competed in the semi-final round of the competition. The schools were Pepperdine, Loyala, the University of Maryland School of Law, and St. Johns' University School of Law. The final round came down to St. John's and Pepperdine.

Loyala began the National Civil Trial Competition in 2002, with sponsorship by the Santa Monica, California-based law firm of Greene Broillet & Wheeler. The competition gives second- and third-year law students a chance to develop and demonstrate their civil litigation skills.

16 law schools were selected to send teams to this year's competition. In addition to the semi-finalists and finalists mentioned above, they were:

The University of Akron School of Law
The Brooklyn Law School
The University of Buffalo Law School
The University of Denver College of Law
The George Washington School of Law Center
The University of Houston Law Center
Loyola University Chicago
The South Texas College of Law
The Stetson University College of Law
The Syracuse University College of Law
The Temple Law School
Washington University in St. Louis

Source: "Pepperdine Law School Wins Loyola Law School's 5th Annual National Civil Trial Competition," press release, Loyala Law School (Los Angeles, CA), November 13, 2006

Stanford Curriculum Reform Would Highlight Joint Degrees

Stanford Law School is considering changes to the second- and third-year J.D. curriculum that would encourage clinical study and make it easier to pursue dual degrees.

In a recent email to faculty and students, Law Dean Larry Kramer argued that one problem with the existing curriculum is that it challenges students during their first year but tends to be merely 'more of the same' in the second and third years. He argued that the last two years of the J.D. program should instead be used to expose students to broader perspectives on the practice of law.

One of the major reforms under consideration is a move to create 20 joint J.D. - master's degree programs. Unlike many existing joint degree programs, these would be designed so that students could complete both degrees in three years. Dean Kramer says that these joint degree options would prepare students to work with clients in fields of particular interest to them without requiring an additional investment of time or money.

Source: "Kramer Proposes Overhaul," by Niraj Sheth, the Stanford Daily News, November 7, 2006

Georgetown Reading '07 Application Files

Georgetown University has already received around 3,500 applications for fall 2007 admissions, Dean of Admissions Andy Cornblatt reports on his "Georgetown Law Admissions Talk" blog (gulcadmis.typepad.com).

Dean Cornblatt and his colleagues are reading files and "making decisions every day." He notes that this stage of the admissions process always reminds him of how important the personal statement is in bringing an applicant's profile to life. "Never forget that what I have in my office are files - lots and lots of files," he writes. "Through your letters of recommendation, your resume, and most importantly your personal statement, you suddenly become three dimensional to us."

Indeed, a well-crafted personal statement can make all the difference between an application that gets a second look and one that is immediately consigned to the reject pile. To read more about personal statements and law school admissions, click here.

U of Maine Welcoming for Older Students

If you're thinking of going to law school as part of a mid-life career change, you might want to put the University of Maine School of Law on your list of schools to consider.

Over a third of the 262 students currently enrolled in the School's J.D. program are over 30, putting Maine at the top of the "Most Welcoming of Older Students" category in this year's Princeton Review rankings.

Other law schools on the Princeton Review's 'Most Welcoming' list are Rutgers and the City University of New York.

Personal statements often play a pivotal role in older applicants' admissions outcomes by persuading (or failing to persuade) law school admissions committees of the applicant's reasons for wanting to begin a rigorous academic program at a later stage of life.

Source: "Best Law Schools" (2006), The Princeton Review