Education
ADA and the Bar Exam
Monday, August 18th, 2008The Americans With Disabilities Act requires special accommodations be given to students with learning disabilities when they take tests. The question is, what accommodations are appropriate? This is a scientific question and sometimes reasonable people can differ about both the diagnosis and the accommodations.
The West Virginia Law Examiners gave a bar candidate three days and [...]
ABA Allows Law Schools to Require Bar Exam Review
Wednesday, August 13th, 2008The ABA doesn’t require law schools to teach law, nor does it require them to prepare their students for the practice of law. Thanks to ABA Resolution 112B, it is OK for a law school to require that its students learn the law - for an extra fee - from outside teachers at bar exam [...]
Affirmative Action in Law School
Monday, August 11th, 2008Race and social class issues are complicated. Most people have strong feelings about them, and our debased corporate media doesn’t make it any easier to think clearly about our society.
UCLA Law Professor Richard Sander is an important scholar on affirmative action. This is a topic I care about. For a number of years, I have [...]
Law School Innovation
Saturday, March 22nd, 2008Washington & Lee is the cutting edge of legal education in the USA. Dean Rodney A. Smolla and his colleagues are kicking third year law students out of the classroom and into the real world. This is a brilliant idea and it is likely to be a big success for all concerned.
Loyalty Oaths are Wrong
Saturday, March 1st, 2008Here is a mind-numbing horror story about education. A teacher signed a state-required loyalty oath, adding the word “nonviolently” to her promise to defend the Constitution. A lawyer for the university said it was “clearly not acceptable” to change the wording of the loyalty oath.
OK friends, guess where this case took place. If you live [...]
Diversity and Bias in Law Schools
Thursday, February 14th, 2008Sadly, the legal profession is becoming less diverse. According to Columbia University, law school enrollment statistics show that Black and Mexican-American law school enrollment is down by more than 8.5% over the last fifteen years. (See also this article from law.com.)
The ABA House of Delegates has just approved a measure to link ABA accreditation [...]
NCBLE v. West
Wednesday, January 30th, 2008Today’s case comes out of North Carolina. Bar Bri Bar Review published essays from the North Carolina Bar Exam and designed lectures around how the material is tested on the exam.
The Board of Law Examiners sued, claiming a copyright in the essay questions and demanding a permanent injunction and an award of actual damages or [...]