Critical Issues in Legal Education

Two years ago there was a stand-off in legal education. The American Bar Association, prompted by the Bush administration, wanted to impose new requirements for bar pass rates.

Supporters of diversity in law school felt it would be “a tsunami to the African American community.” Some argued it would result in the closure of three to five law schools, all with large minority enrollments. It could also mean that many law schools would admit fewer minorities, in order to avoid problems with the bar pass standard.

Law schools have long known that first-time bar pass rates for minority are dismal compared to others, and the reasons have long eluded them. But that has not stopped schools from taking proactive steps to help students pass the bar exam.

Grade inflation may be nothing new at undergraduate schools, but the practice at law schools is getting plenty of recent attention, thanks to a New York Times article.

Miami lawyer Stephen N. Zack, a partner in the national law firm Boies, Schiller & Flexner, was elected as president-elect of the American Bar Association in August 2009 — the first Hispanic American to achieve that distinction. 

Zack is finishing a one-year term as president-elect before taking office as president in August 2010 at the ABA’s Annual Meeting in San Francisco. 

Mercer University recently announced the appointment of Gary J. Simon as dean of the Walter F. George School of Law.

Simon served as dean of Case Western Reserve Law School from 2006 through 2008. He also boasts experience as a professor of law at both Cornell University and the University of Texas, and as a clerk for the Second Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals.

According to a recent study by the National Association of Law Placement, the employment rate for new law school graduates has fallen nearly four percentage points in two years. The employment rate is higher than many expected, but the overall rate may disguise weaknesses in the job market.

Walter Pratt, Jr. announced last week that he will step down as dean of the University of South Carolina School of Law next year. His term as dean will end August 2011.

Pratt, who has been dean since 2006, was asked by law school officials to form a panel to review the school’s scholarly and teaching efforts, according to a statement released by USC. Pratt came to USC after teaching at the University of Notre Dame Law School for 20 years. 

New York Law School and Harvard Law School partnered up to produce a two-day conference called “Future Ed: New Business Models for U.S. and Global Legal Education.” The conference focused on ways to improve law schools, particularly improving the disparities between legal education and legal practice.

“The time has come to make our education more valuable,” announced New York Law School Dean Richard Matasar announced to a room bursting with legal professionals and law school deans.”

In conjunction with his golden anniversary of teaching, Loyola University New Orleans College of Law Dean Brian Bromberger will retire following the spring semester. “I’ve been teaching for 50 years,” Bromberger said. “Can you come up with a better reason than that to retire?”

He took the helm of the law school in August 2003 and has successfully navigated its faculty, staff and students through some of the college’s most difficult years in its nearly 100-year history.

I’ve written dozens of columns about law school in general, and you might expect me here to wax nostalgic.  It would be hard, though, for me to do that — to say I’ll miss law school, at least unconditionally.