"The reason why job prospects are improving for law students is because the amount of people in law school is going down."

"We're not creating more real lawyer jobs, we're just decreasing the supply of would-be lawyers."  

"Is that a bad thing?"

We're #6.

"The Top 10 Law Schools For Best �Social Life� (2015)."

"Part of being a student is the freedom to hold all manner of idealistic stances with the tenacity of a petty commissar."

"Every arguably 'moral' conflict is an all-or-nothing proposition within the Ivory Tower because there�s pretty much no downside to ranting about every slight, real or perceived. And that�s generally a good thing. It lets students work out the kinks in their personal ethics � learning to pick and choose their battles � so they won�t grow up to be hopeless, untethered rage-aholics. But part of that learning process is smacking down that unfettered idealism from time to time and forcing the students to get some perspective. That time has come for the assembled NYU Law students throwing a fit over the school letting Harold Koh teach an international law course...."

Writes Joe Patrice at Above the Law in a piece titled "NYU Law Students Need To Get Off Their High Horse."

From the law students' letter:

While we believe that NYU Law should remain committed to academic freedom, we take issue not with Mr. Koh�s opinions but rather with his actions � that is, his direct facilitation of the U.S. government�s extrajudicial imposition of death sentences on U.S. citizens along with civilians of other nationalities....

"Why does law�s power and ubiquity require law school?"

"Because law school teaches students not only what the law is but also what it can be," writes Harvard lawprof Noah Feldman.

Yeah, but do law schools teach subject-verb agreement?

Or am I thinking only of grammar as it is and not also as it can be?

Maybe "law�s power and ubiquity" are � in a subtler manner of thinking, in a truer, better world � really just one thing: the big amazingness of law.

"Many law school deans, bristling from criticism that they are replenishing their ranks with less academically qualified students as the number of law school applicants has fallen sharply..."

"... began to openly question the mechanics of the bar exam. About 80 law school deans last November jointly asked, for the first time anyone remembers, for details on how test questions were chosen and scored. The situation was already touchy after remarks made the previous month by a top bar exam official, who defended the results as indisputably correct, and then, in what the deans viewed as verbal dynamite, labeled the test takers as 'less able' than their predecessors."

From a NYT article titled "Bar Exam, the Standard to Become a Lawyer, Comes Under Fire," which contains the juicy nugget: "All states but one, Wisconsin, require passing the bar exam to become a licensed lawyer...".

The new U.S. News law school ranking is out.

Read and react.

My school stayed in exactly the same place, so... boring. Good boring, I guess. An interesting thing is that where we are is one slot below UC Irvine which appears in the ranking for the first time:

UC Irvine Law debuts at 30: University of California�s Irvine School of Law opened its doors in 2009, but this is the first time it was eligible to be ranked. The school was granted full accreditation by the American Bar Association in June. So how did it do? Not too shabby. It placed 30th, just behind William & Mary and a spot ahead of its sister public school, University of California-Davis.

ADDED: From the Above the Law analysis:

There�s a three-way tie for #31, a six-way tie for #34, a four-way tie for #42, a three-way tie for #47, a tie for #50, a four-way tie for #52, a three-way tie for #56, a four-way tie for #59, a four-way tie for #63, a four-way tie for #67, a four-way tie for #71, a three-way tie for #75, a four-way tie for #78, a five-way tie for #82, a seven-way tie for #87, and an eight-way tie for #94. There are 22 rankings ties within the Top 100 alone. UGH!

What the hell is with all of these ties?

All those ties are going to play havoc with the minds of applicants who were planning to make their decisions based on ranking.

"As a constitutional law professor myself, I'd like to say that being a constitutional law professor is likely to lead you to disrespect the layperson's belief that there are any significant constitutional limits on presidential power."

"At least being a governor, a person learns respect for the role of state government and one gets executive experience. A conlawprof doesn't have to run anything of any significance. It's a one-person show and it's mostly based on observing how other people have manipulated language over the years. I think that's a dangerous background!"

A comment I left in a Facebook thread based on that WaPo titled "Scott Walker gets a crash course in foreign policy," which displays in Facebook with the decidedly different title "The making of Scott Walker, statesman." Upthread, there was discussion of Obama's lack of foreign policy experience and a suggestion that being a conlawprof might have counted for something.

Above the Law's Elie Mystal compares the LSAT to a condom and to a manhole cover.

In this post about the decision by a some law schools to accept applicants who have not taken the LSAT.

These law schools are trying to turn the purchase of legal education into an impulse buy. Don�t buy a prep course that costs a thousand bucks, instead spend $150,000 bucks on a lark. This is the law school version of the guy who tells you that he doesn�t use condoms because it �kills the mood.� The LSAT is a de-minimus prophylactic that, if used properly, can help protect students from harm. But Iowa and SUNY just want you to trust them.

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Law school applications are in decline because "machine intelligence is beginning to substitute for lawyers..."

"... particularly at the low end of the legal profession. Document discovery is moving from human to machines. Legalzoom and similar services are encroaching on the production of simple documents, like many wills and trusts. And once machines get into an area, they dominate over time."

Writes lawprof John O. McGinnis.