Archive for April, 2009
Ave Maria Bankrolled Until 2017
The Ave Maria School of Law’s big move this summer from Michigan to Southwest Florida comes with a big promise.
Tom Monaghan, the law school’s founder, has pledged to cover future operating deficits at the law school through 2017, according to a December letter to Florida education officials.
That means Monaghan will have backed the law school financially for more than 17 years since its inception in 2000. He’s spent $56 million already to start and support the school, he said in the letter.
Posted in 
Tags: Bob Morse Updates Rankings Blog; No New Information
Bottom Line: The U.S. News law rankings are providing valuable information that has proved to be useful to prospective students, as well as to practicing attorneys and legal academics, in evaluating the relative merits of different law schools and legal programs.
[US News]
Harvard Law School and Slavery
Harvard Law School was founded with money amassed through slavery.
This is a fact that HLS does not try to hide. But it is a truth that is not exactly advertised either. If you visit the “Our History” page of the law school’s website, you get a somewhat-whitewashed version of the school’s heritage. More than a third of the 311-word synopsis of HLS history discusses the legacy of Isaac Royall. In 1781, Royall bequeathed the money used to establish Harvard’s first endowed chair in law. And in 1806, Royall’s heirs sold the remainder of his estate to establish the law school itself.
Matthew Diller Named Dean of Cardozo Law School
Matthew Diller, a prominent scholar of social welfare law and policy, who from 2003 to 2008 was associate dean for academic affairs at Fordham Law School, has been named dean of Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University, announced Yeshiva President Richard Joel. Diller is the Cooper Family Professor of Law and co-director of the Louis Stein Center for Law and Ethics at Fordham Law, where he has taught since 1993.
[Cardozo]
Yale Law Students Save Shaw’s Supermarket
Through pro-bono clinic work, a team of Yale Law School students have closed the deal on a $11.5 million refinancing of Shaw’s Supermarket on Whalley Avenue. In a process that spanned four semesters, Annita Zhong LAW ’09, Scott Grinsell LAW ’09, Will Bornstein LAW ’11 and Nar Dao SOM ’09 provided counseling services and prepared the package, soliciting banks’ proposals for the refinancing loan.
Akron Hikes Law School Tuition, Freezes Undergrad Tuition
”I am not pleased at that kind of increase, but I don’t see any way to not do what we are required to do,” Belsky told trustees. ”I don’t think we have any choice at all.”
He said the American Bar Association has found fault with the law school building and with some instruction of first-year students in its reaccreditation visit this spring and its previous visit seven years ago.
Belsky said both he and the ABA view the current building at Wolf Ledges Parkway and University Avenue as outdated.
Classrooms are not tiered and are too large, while the heating and air-conditioning systems routinely malfunction.
AmLaw Discusses 3L Deferral Dilema
“Nobody knows the answers,” says Susan Guindi, assistant dean for career services at University of Michigan Law School. Michigan’s career service center held a town hall meeting for students on these issues the first week in April. “Is it riskier to be away from the office, and not establish the connections, or are they more likely to get laid off if they go directly to the firms, but do not have enough work to do?”
While the firms have maintained that the year-long deferrals are optional, several law students told The Am Law Daily that they felt an implied pressure to take the year off.
[AmLaw]
