It was a GOOD week for….
Phoenix School of Law, which was awarded the Diversity Matters award by the Law School Admissions Council. The award is given every year to a law school in recognition of outstanding diversity efforts. Phoenix Law achieved full accreditation by the ABA in June 2010, and puts an emphasis on diversity through its Diversity Committee, Dean’s Diversity Council, an annual Diversity Day for high school students, and a diversity pipeline project that partners with minority students at a local middle school.
Litigation law firms after two litigation-focused firms, Quinn Emanuel and Boeis, Schiller & Flexner, jumped up several spots in the recently released Vault Law 100. Other winners in the rankings, based on surveys given to over 16,000 law associates, included Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, which maintained its dominance over the number one spot, and Latham & Watkins, who recovered from a rankings drop in last year’s list to claim the number eleven spot this year.
It was a BAD week for…
Accommodations for the blind after two different blind students sued legal organizations over law tests. A Vermont law student who is legally blind, Deanna Jones, sued the National Conference of Bar Examiners and Act, Inc. (a test company) for failure to provide the computer software she says she will need to successfully take the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination. In an unrelated case, Angelo Binno, a prospective law student from Michigan who is also legally blind, sued the ABA over the LSAT. Binno’s suit alleges the ABA forces law schools to use the LSAT in their admissions criteria, a test Binno alleges relies discriminatorily on test of spatial reasoning and the ability to diagram.
