Given the state of the legal economy, I don’t have a problem with grade inflation at top law schools. The job market is terrible enough as it is. If an extra (inflated and totally BS) third of a grade helps a student get a job right now, I think that is fine. Whatever, sometimes you have to “juke the stats,” and I understand that.

But it’s not cool when schools institute grade inflation secretly and hope nobody will notice. It’s not cool when schools try to pass off grade inflation as something other than grade inflation. Law schools have to do what they have to do, but there is no reason to pretend that everybody is stupid.

At Harvard Law School and at Georgetown University Law Center, the administrations have decided that their students need things to be a little easier. But neither law school seems willing to admit that the economy played a role in their sudden embrace of grade reform.

[Above the Law]

After a feasibility study and an external evaluation, Binghamton University is one step closer to having a law school affiliated with the institution.

“We are waiting for a written report from the external evaluators,” said Mary Ann Swain, provost and vice president for academic affairs at BU. “Both the State University of New York system administration and State Department of Education require this external evaluation.”

According to Swain, once this written report is received, it will be included with a formal proposal and sent to the system administration and Department of Education.

“Reviewers have not given us an exact date [for when the written report will be complete], but we are hoping for later this month,” she said.

According to Gail Glover, spokeswoman for BU, in their exit interview, the evaluators indicated they support BU’s efforts in creating a law school.

There are many steps for approval that the law school must go through before it can become a part of the University.

“The law school was a big plan [since before 2000],” said James Van Voorst, vice president for administration at BU. “It’s not like somebody woke up one morning and went, ‘Hey, lets have a law school.’ We’ve had consultants in, we’ve looked at the need, we’ve looked at the program and budget from all different angles, and that’s the way we’ve worked it.”

Last year, the planning started as a campus-based initiative and was approved by the provost’s office and the campus administrators.

[BU Pipe Dream]

It’s been 18 months in the mapping, measuring, color coding and other planning, but moving day for the University of Memphis Law Library is finally here.

Gary Thomas and Oscar Martineztake shelves of books into the new University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law on Front Street on Tuesday.
Actually, that would be “moving days” since it involves relocating some 200,000 books — nearly 5 miles of books and materials in all — to the law school’s new Downtown building on Front Street.

“The physical move is really just the tip of the iceberg,” said law library director D. R. Jones, an associate dean for Information Resources and assistant law professor. “It’s really just the culmination of the planning that we’ve done and hiring a company that specializes in the moving of libraries. It’s going very well and very quickly.”

Movers began Tuesday and aim to have the job completed by next Saturday, well before Jan. 11. That’s the date when the school’s 400-plus students and 50 faculty members move into what was once home of the U.S. Customs House, Court House and Post Office.

A $42-million renovation has turned the aging building into a state-of-the art law school that, at 140,000 square feet, is more than twice the size of the old school.

The plan has been to coordinate the

library move with the schedules of both the construction crews and the law students.

“We’re in exams now, so they’re not really using the library materials,” said Jones, who spearheaded a similar move when she was at Case Western Reserve School of Law in Cleveland. “We have isolated one area of the library and I’m sending out e-mails every day to let them know what’s moving and when: This is the area that’s noisy; this is the good area to go study. So far, we’re doing fine.”

[Commercial Appeal]

In 2008, Princeton’s applicants were less successful than Yale’s in gaining acceptance to the nation’s top law schools, according to data provided by both universities.
Roughly 32 percent of Princeton applications to the top 12 law schools of U.S. News & World Report’s 2009 rankings were awarded admission in 2008, according to the Office of the Dean of the College.

This figure includes applications from seniors as well as alumni. The University declined to provide additional statistics from past years to indicate how the implementation of grade deflation in 2004 may have affected these acceptance rates.

Princeton’s 2008 acceptance rate is lower than the 37 percent acceptance rate for Yale applications to the same schools, according to the Yale Undergraduate Career Services website.

MIT applicants to the top schools were slightly less successful than Princeton ones, though, with an acceptance rate of 30 percent, according to the MIT Career Development Center website. This does not include data for MIT applicants to Northwestern Law School, which were not available.

[Daily Princetonian]

The University of Florida’s Levin College of Law is getting another major donation from the family of its namesake.

Teri Levin is donating $1 million to complete the college’s Martin H. Levin Trial Advocacy Center, college officials announced Thursday night at a reception in Pensacola. The gift will fund construction of classrooms and offices on the second floor of the center.

“The Levin family has cared a lot about the law school and been among our most important benefactors,” said Robert Jerry, dean of the college.

The latest donation brings the amount of money that the Levin family has contributed to the college to nearly $30 million, if matching funds are included.

Teri Levin is making the donation in honor of her late husband, Gulf Coast developer Allen Richard Levin. He was among five Levin brothers, all of whom earned degrees from UF.

One brother, Frederic Levin, is a Pensacola attorney who was a key player in Florida’s $13 billion tobacco settlement. He made a $10 million donation in 1999 that led to the college being named after him.

He gave another $2 million in 2006 for the advocacy center, named after his son. Martin H. Levin is a law school graduate who is an attorney with his father’s firm.

[The Gainesville Sun]

A University of Michigan Law School student reported missing last month hanged himself, Washtenaw County sheriff’s deputies said.

The body of 35-year-old Casey Neil McGinnis was found Wednesday afternoon in a wooded area behind the Washtenaw County Recreation Center on Washtenaw Avenue, deputies said.
Recreation center employees contacted the sheriff’s department to report a car had been parked in the lot for a couple weeks, said Derrick Jackson, the sheriff’s department’s director of community engagement.

Deputies responded Wednesday and discovered it was McGinnis’ car, Jackson said. They searched the area and found the body about 80 yards behind the building, Jackson said.

It’s unclear when McGinnis died. The Washtenaw County Medical Examiner’s Office is investigating, Jackson said.

McGinnis’ family members contacted Ann Arbor police Nov. 12 to report him missing. McGinnis, who lived at an apartment on Prospect Street in Ann Arbor, hadn’t contacted family members since the previous day, and they were concerned for his well-being.

[Ann Arbor.com]

The University of California Berkeley Law School is poised to become the most expensive publicly owned law school in the world. Over the next two years, fees will increase by 32 percent. That means that California students will soon pay almost $52,000 a year in tuition, only a few thousand less than equivalent private law schools. Out-of-state students will pay the same as if they had gone to Harvard or Yale.

With these tuition changes, there will be no more Berkeley public law school. The California public law school dies today.

In this new world, Berkeley will be much like Stanford or Duke, except that the California government will act much like a well-respected alumnus, one that can put its name on a very large plaque in the donor lobby. Much like Stanford, Berkeley will offer generous financial aid for low-income students, provide a loan repayment program for public-interest lawyers, and finance various public policy institutes that will serve the public good. Like Yale, Berkeley will send about 15 percent of its students into public service.

If a private law school can do all these things, in what sense, then, is Berkeley a public school?

The doors of Berkeley are not open to the public, as it is one of the most exclusive in the nation. Neither are its finances, since it provides less financial aid for low-income students than Stanford or Harvard. Aside from being selected by the governor, the Board of Regents functions much as any other private nonprofit management board, since it is given nearly complete leeway by the state government. Much like any other private nonprofit, it must fundraise from wealthy donors, build its prestige to encourage alumni giving and closely watch its rankings on U.S. News and World Report.

[Berkeley Daily Planet]