Thank you, Dean Gary Simson of Case Western!

According to this morning's WSJ Law Blog (here), Dean Gary J. Simson of Case Western's law school has suggested that deans say "dayenu" to the USNWR rankings.  Recognizing the insanity of tailoring an educational program to the whims of a news magazine, Dean Simson believes that law schools instead should use their own good judgment about how to allocate resources.  (After all, the race to the top of the rankings isn't a race that most law schools will win.)

Seems to me that any school with decent self-esteem doesn't need to be told where it ranks.  Take a look, for example, at Case Western itself (here).  Bravo, Dean Simson!

But wait! There's more! Bill Henderson gives us some data on the PT loophole issue

See Bill's post (here) over at Empirical Legal Studies.  Well done, Bill!

Just in case anyone missed TaxProf Blog recently....

Paul Caron's TaxProf Blog compiled some of Jason Solomon's very thoughtful posts on PrawfsBlog (here's the compilation at TaxProf Blog) regarding the "academic program"/"academic reputation" voting portion of the USNWR rankings.  Very interesting, nuanced thoughts.  Bravo, Jason (and Paul)!

Tail wags dog so furiously that dog falls off, leaving only tail

I was reading today's TaxProf Blog, as I do every morning, when I came across this post (here), in which Paul Caron pointed to a NLJ article (Deans dislike rankings proposals, here) about the proposed changes in the USNWR rankings.  Paul highlighted the following very, very scary quote:

The proposal is strongly opposed by deans at schools with part-time programs designed for students who are years past college graduation and often well into careers outside the law.  They warn that a school's place on the U.S. News list is so important that some schools would drop the part-time programs rather than list lower in the national rankings.

(Hat-tip to Paul for focusing us on this quote.)  But there's more.  In the very next paragraph of the article, Bill Treanor, the dean of Fordham Law School, clarifies how this change to the USNWR rankings would affect schools with part-time programs:

"If U.S. News starts combining the [LSAT and UGPA] scores of full-time and part-time students, the pressure to end evening schools will become overwhelming . . . ."

HOLY COW.  Has it come to this?  Have we really ceded educational policy to a weekly news magazine?  I completely understand Bill Treanor's point (oh, how I know!), because every single school with an evening program will face additional pressure to close that program unless its full-time students' median LSATs and UGPAs and its part-time students' median LSATs and UGPAs are identical.  (And the fact that they're often not identical is exactly why USNWR wants to factor the part-time scores in--schools have been gaming the rankings this way for years.)  Alumni, students, faculty members, and university administrators will be pressuring deans of schools with part-time programs to find work-arounds for the potential drop in the rankings.  

There are plenty of good reasons to have a part-time program, even though part-time programs are incredibly expensive to support.  Several urban schools have them as a way to help those people who can't afford to quit their jobs still pursue their dreams of becoming lawyers.  There are also good reasons for discontinuing part-time programs--declining enrollment, the disproportionate expense, a demographic shift.  Each faculty that's contemplating starting or stopping a part-time program must wrestle with these valid issues.  

But geez--the one reason that's not pedagogically valid is whether a news magazine is going to bump some school up five places or down five places due to the inclusion of the part-time students' median LSATs and UGPAs.  Are we so desperate for some sort of numerical validation of our place in this world that we are willing to cede our own sense of what type of educational program is appropriate for our mix of students?

I've said it before, and I'll say it again (see, e.g., here, esp. at p.361):  unless a school is in the tippety-top of the USNWR rankings (or in the very bottom, with a pass rate on the bar that is abysmal), there is precious little difference in even twenty or thirty places in the rankings.  The differences aren't significant.  The rankings just artificially spread out some insignificant differences among groups of tightly packed schools.  

If schools didn't take the USNWR rankings so damnably seriously, I could just point you to one of my two favorite scenes in This Is Spinal Tap (1984) (the other scene is the Stonehenge scene):

Nigel Tufnel:  The numbers all go to eleven.  Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven, and . . . .

Marty DiBergi:  Oh, I see.  And most amps go up to ten?

Nigel Tufnel:  Exactly.

Marty DiBergi:  Does that mean it's louder?  Is it any louder?

Nigel Tufnel:  Well, it's one louder, isn't it?  It's not ten.  You see, most blokes will be playing at ten.  You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar.  Where can you go from there?  Where?

Marty DiBergi:  I don't know.

Nigel Tufnel:  Nowhere.  Exactly.  What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?

Marty DiBergi:  Put it up to eleven.

Nigel Tufnel:  Eleven.  Exactly.  One louder.

Marty DiBergi:  Why don't you make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?

Nigel Tufnel:  [pause]  These go to eleven.

(Thanks to imdb.com for that quote.)  

My point is that we've fallen for the same trick:  USNWR has made us think that it's legitimate to let a news magazine dictate to us how we admit our students (by placing such a high premium on the inputs of LSATs and UGPAs) and how much we spend on publicizing our various accomplishments (because of those reputation surveys).  Even if the rankings "go to eleven," they don't make the quality of any single school any louder than it was before.  

Time to stop letting the tail wag the dog.

Also in this month's ABA Journal, more on flat fees for legal work

I'm telling you (again):  billable hours aren't going to be the future of the legal world forever.  See here.  

Arnold Peter is featured in this month's ABA Journal

Arnold Peter, one of my all-time favorite lawyers, is featured in this month's ABA Journal (here).  Arnold's a founding partner of Raskin Peter Rubin & Simon (here) and one of the founding members of AMEC, the Association of Media and Entertainment Counsel (here).  He and I first met years ago, when we did some programs for ACCA (now ACC), the Association of Corporate Counsel (here).  I've found him to be a true visionary--very creative, and a ton of fun, to boot.  Enjoy!

More on how to study for the bar exam

Ilya Somin's updated his post (here), and I agree with some of his points: (1) figure out your own, best way of studying and key your bar prep to that, (2) try not to overstress, (3) be disciplined in your studying, and (4) remember that failing the bar exam is not the end of the world.  (Ilya, did I summarize these points fairly?)  

Where he and I disagree is on how risk-averse the average law graduate should be when preparing for the bar.  And, of course, everyone should determine his own level of risk-tolerance.  When I took the California bar, a year after law school (after my clerkship ended), I took Bar/BRI, made flash cards, commiserated with my friends, and made it through the test relatively unscathed.  Twenty years later, when I sat for the Nevada bar, I looked a lot more like Kevin Costner in Tin Cup.  (Remember the scene where he's wearing every golf-swing gadget ever made?)  I took Bar/BRI again, bought flash cards and old bar review books off eBay, did the computer-generated review tests, made outlines of my outlines of my outlines (I'm not kidding!), and basically worried myself into a tizzy, because I know how awful I am at memorizing things and how bad I am at taking multiple-choice tests.

The stakes were much higher for me the first time around.  I had a law firm job and, even though the firm would have kept me around if I'd needed to take the bar exam a second time, my career would have been stalled for a bit during the extra time, and my stress level would have shot through the roof.  I was a tenured full professor when I took the Nevada Bar and my life wouldn't have changed one whit had I not passed (although I probably would have lost some credibility with my students had I failed).  

Here's what I think that Ilya and Jim Chen (his post here) and I are all saying (Jim, let me know if you agree):  like Robin Williams's character in the movie Dead Again, it's important to know what you are.  

In the movie, Williams plays a disbarred (or whatever you call a de-licensed doctor) shrink.  Kenneth Branagh plays a detective who, among other things, may be trying to quit smoking. Williams tells Branagh that "[s]omeone is either a smoker or a nonsmoker.  There's no in-between.  The trick is to find out which one you are, and be that.  If you're a nonsmoker, you'll know."

So, when it comes to studying for the bar, you're either risk-averse or risk-taking.  The trick is to find out which one you are, and be that.

Good luck on this summer's bar exams--in every jurisdiction.

Volokh Conspiracy's Post on Reducing the Pain of Taking the Bar Exam

One of our own law students directed me to Ilya Somin's post (here) on the Volokh Conspiracy blog, never a boring blog.  Prof. Somin's advice is to study less for the bar exam:  read the review books, take some practice tests, memorize the rules, and relax.

Hoo, boy.  I disagree heartily.  Maybe his advice is true for a few brave and risk-taking souls, but I can't imagine wanting to take that type of risk with the one barrier to entry to practice that's given only twice a year that would stand between me and my ability to practice my choice of career.  

Full disclosure here:  I am a lecturer for a bar review course, which may taint my perspective, but I also sat for a state bar a year ago.  In order to prepare for the Nevada bar, I took a bar review course (not, BTW, the one for which I'm now a lecturer).  Let me say right now that I was extremely grateful that I had taken that course, could not possibly have passed the bar without having had that level of review, would not have had the stamina or sitzfleisch to have studied that intensely on my own, did not have the knowledge base in at least six of the Nevada subject areas being tested, and could not have imagined having the chutzpah to have risked my results with LESS study than I had given any of my law school courses.  Moreover, I did not need to pass the bar to keep my job.  I'm a law professor, not a lawyer.  I took the bar because my husband and I had an understanding that, if he had to take the Nevada bar when we moved here, I had to take the Nevada bar as well.

And the Nevada bar is HARD.  Hard as in H-A-R-D.  Hard as in "I sweated out waiting for my results" hard.  (We both passed, but we both worried about passing.)  

So, Prof. Somin, I respectfully disagree with your post.  (So, by the way, does Jim Chen--see his post here.)  THIS law professor wants to send out a different message about studying for the bar.  DON'T slack off.  Embrace the pain of studying.  Suck it up.  Work your butt off.  Face it:  you'd rather have three months of pain now than three months of pain now and then three more months of pain later, when you have to retake the bar.  Maybe you'll have wasted your effort and, looking back, you could have worked less hard.  But is it so bad that you worked hard to achieve a goal?  

Thomas Sowell on college rankings

Loved Thomas Sowell's take on the rankings, including his reasons for disparaging USNWR's rankings (here).  In his column, Dr. Sowell quotes Professor Thomas Vedder, who observes that USNWR's use of inputs to measure quality "'is roughly equivalent to evaluating a chef based on the ingredients that he or she uses.'"  Bravo, Prof. Vedder, and Bravo, Dr. Sowell!