ContractsProf Blog

"Law Porn" 2.0? Unsubscribe!

This observation is law school related, so I will take the liberties of posting it to our humble blog about contract law.  And, since I have used the word "porn" in my post, we'll probably generate some traffic and maybe even get a few unexpected people interested in contract law....

So, is it me, or has "law porn" finally found my email inbox?  This year, it appears that there is a particularly high volume of junk email from law schools about how great they are... more than ever before and certainly a higher volume in proportion to the ordinary print brochures (though, I've received plenty of those too, they just don't interrupt me the same way as an email when it pops up).

[Meredith R. Miller]

C'mon, Fordham! Don't Blame It on Contracts!!

Two weeks ago, Meredith Miller shared news of the fate of the Community Shared Agriculture (CSA) organization of which she is a member.  CSA's are in the news again.  Today's New York Times carried this story describing the demise of "Farm to Fordham," an enterprise started early last year by a Fordham law student that brought fresh produce to the urban university.  

Farm to Fordham operates like most CSAs.  Members, which reportedly included Fordham Law's Dean, as well as his predecessor, paid $150/semester for regular delieveries of fresh produce.  As Above the Law points out, Farm to Fordham also tried to do good while doing well: with each delivery, nearly 100 pounds of produce were delivered to a local soup kitchen.  Then, last April, Fordham security refused to open a gate to permit delivery.  The reason for this action is unclear.   

Farm to Fordham founder, Michael Zimmerman, had been notified that his organization needed to apply for a caterer's license in order to continue its operations.  When Zimmerman attempted to do so, he learned that Farm to Fordham was not eligible for such a license because the organization was not a caterer (duh!).  

Soon thereafter received an e-mail from Fordham University's legal counsel stating that the university could not be placed in breach of the law.  But Fordham's own spokesperson had difficulty identifying what law could possibly be breached.  No catering contracts would be breached, as Zimmerman is not running a catering service (and anyway, breach of a private contract is not really the same as breaking the law).  The University also cited concerns about infestations from the produce, but that concern is hardly creditable, given that the produce is distributed outside of any university building.  It may well be true that students bing their produce in to the buildings after collecting it, but unless Fordham is going to institute a ban on all importations of produce into its buildings, it really is not doing very much to prevent such infestations.  

Above the Law provides the following quotation from Mr. Zimmerman:

The University’s most recent rationale for prohibiting community supported agriculture (CSA), nearby construction, is not credible. They came up with that excuse a week ago – six months after first banning the program. Over the intervening months the University has proposed, and Farm to Fordham has disposed with, at least six other rationalizations.

This strongly indicates that the University made its initial determination without a good reason, and has since dug in its heels. We still do not know why the University has chosen to oppose the CSA.

This pattern is all too familiar.  University administrators, like others exercising a form of executive authority, all too often use a shotgun approach, including invocation of sometimes fanciful contractual obligations, in order to shut down an initiative of which they disapprove.  The core reasons for the disapproval remain mysterious for reasons that are themselves mysterious due to a resistance to transparency that is not at all mysterious.

We note that all indications are that the Law School itself has supported Zimmerman and his endeavor to the best of its ability.

[JT]

Welcome New Law Students!

All over the country, tens of thousands of students are starting law school.  Law school gets a bad rap in many quarters, and so right here at the start, it's important to remind new recruits why we do it.

Bert Lahr poses the right questions:

What makes a King out of a slave?
What makes the flag on the mast to wave?
What makes the elephant charge his tusk, in the misty mist or the dusky dusk?
What makes the muskrat guard his musk?
What makes the sphinx the seventh wonder?
What makes the dawn come up like thunder?
What makes the Hottentot so hot?
What puts the "ape" in apricot? 

Consideration, that's what!

[JT]

Lipshaw's Intro to the "Contract as Promise" Symposium

Back in March, Suffolk University Law School hosted a symposium commemorating the 30th Anniversary of Charles Fried's book "Contract as Promise."  (You can download the lectures for free from iTunes).  The papers will be published in the Suffolk Law Review.

It was an enriching day of panels featuring many prominent contract theorists, so it was no small task for Professor Jeffrey Lipshaw to introduce the volume of the Suffolk Law Review containing the essays.  But, as he proves in this intro essay, no feat is too great for Prof. Lipshaw.  Here's the abstract:

This is an introductory essay to the volume of the Suffolk Law Review containing the papers from our symposium centered on Charles Fried’s iconic book, 'Contract as Promise' at 30: The Future of Contract Theory. My theme is the relation of theory to practice, particularly in contract law, and why a theoretical orientation, broadly speaking and whether or not so conceived by the practitioner herself, is fundamental to that practitioner making good judgments. Theorizing - imposing coherent and correspondent conceptual order on events in the real world - is not as unrelated to the ordinary work of lawyers (and others) as some critics of legal academy would suggest. I provide a summary of the papers, presentations, and commentary by the distinguished participating scholars, and consider how their work fits within the framework I describe. Finally, I consider the role of meaning in contract theory; in other words, how both descriptive and normative theory, whether directed to the legal institution of contract or to other phenomena, are all ways of making sense of the human condition, and thus an essential part of what practicing “lawyers-theorists” do every day.

[Meredith R. Miller]

Must See TV: Hot Coffee Premieres on HBO on Monday 6/27

Trust me when I tell you that it is very difficult to get friends, family, students and acquaintances engaged in a meaningful discussion of "mandatory arbitration."  Trust me further that there is now a wonderful documentary that manages to make this and other civil justice topics interesting and engaging for everyone.  (Indeed, my viewing companion, proudly not a lawyer, turned to me at one point in the movie and whispered "didn't you write a paper about something like that?")

Last night, I was fortunate enough to invite myself via twitter get invited to a screening of Hot Coffee at HBO.  Hot Coffee is a must see documentary about the way that business interests, "tort reform," judicial elections and "mandatory arbitration" have systematically worked in concert to deny plaintiffs access to civil justice.  It is the work of the energetic and passionate director Susan Saladoff who spent 25 years as a trial lawyer before becoming a filmmaker.  The documentary is well-conceived and thought provoking.  It takes some very complex topics and organizes them and presents them through compelling personal stories.  

The title "Hot Coffee" refers to the iconic case that is ubiquitous in pop culture as a symbol of the frivolous lawsuit: the woman who sued McDonalds because she was served a coffee that was too hot.  The film starts very strong by retelling this story through interviews with the plaintiff's family.  This challenged me (and from the gasps in the theater, I suspect everyone else viewing the film) to see the case in an entirely different light.  With that strong start, the viewer is engaged and ready to hear about damage caps, judicial elections and mandatory arbitration in consumer and employment contracts.

Here's the trailer:

After the film, there was a Q&A session moderated by Jeffrey Toobin.  He appeared to receive the movie very favorably, noting that the fine print in a cell phone contract is not one of the sexy topics that CNN hires him to discuss on the evening news segments (which reminded me of this Dahlia Lithwick piece in Slate, which seemed to begrudgingly report on AT&T v Concepcion).  

Toobin did mention one frustration, which could be leveled as a critique of the film -- that it only presents one point of view.  Notably absent and/or unwilling to participate were voices from the "other side," i.e., those in favor of damage caps and mandatory arbitration.  Saladoff's response, I thought, hit the nail on the head: in so many words, she said that she wanted to tell this side of the story, and the voices in favor of these reforms already had a well-financed platform (and, indeed, overtaken the public consciousness).  Perhaps I am partial to her response because her film paints a picture in line with my world view, and I am just so thrilled to finally see an engaging and accessible presentation explaining the systematic erosion of civil justice at the behest of corporate interests.

Our students come to law school generally ignorant of or misinformed about tort reform, mandatory arbitration and many of the other topics presented in this film.  However, they do at least know of handful of cases -- OJ, Bush v Gore and, of course, the hot coffee case.  I have no doubt that this film will be used in the classroom.  It is masterfully done and captivates those uninitiated with these topics as well as those who have studied them (and even includes a few clips of interviews with George Lakoff).  Please tune in to HBO on Monday night.

[Meredith R. Miller]

New Transnational Commercial Law Blog at NYU

The Center for Transnational Litigation and Commercial Law at NYU recently launched a new blog,dedicated to, well, litigation and commercial law around the globe. It's called Transnational Notes and is edited by Franco Ferrari, with assists from other NYU Law faculty and students. It also welcomes outside contributions.

The first month or so has already produced a number of interesting posts on such topics as the CISG, international arbitration, and cross-border mobility of European corporations. It bids fair to be a very popular and useful resource to keep up on new developments from one of the country's top commercial law centers.

FGS (via Clay Gillette)

NY Times on Law School Merit Scholarships

As if our co-blogger Meredith Miller had not depressed us enough on Friday with her thoughts on job prospects for recent graduates, the New York Times piled on in its Sunday Business section with this article about merit scholarships that may not be all that they seem.

The story is about students who are lured to schools with merit scholarships that will free them from their obligation to pay law school tuition, so long as they maintain a certain grade point average.  Most students assume that this will be no problem, because they arrive at law school with gaudy GPAs.  As this chart compiled by Stuart Rojstaczer shows, the average undergraduate GPA was 3.11 in 2006-07.  In such a Lake Wobegon world where all the students are above average, it seems reasonable for newly admitted law students to think they can make the grade without breaking a sweat. 

The Times concludes that schools are luring students in with merit scholarships and then withdrawing those scholarships from a shockingly high number of students.  Why?  The answer is obvious to anyone inside the legal academy: to pump up their U.S. News numbers, of course. Law schools want high LSATs and undergraduate GPAs in their first year class.  So they use fellowships to draw in students whose test scores and GPAs would otherwise take them elsehwere. 

But is there injustice involved?  The report states that the phrase "bait and switch" comes up a lot and that students are "shocked when their scholarships disappear."  Would the injustice not be greater if an underperforming merit scholar got to keep her scholarship while a dark horse student with a 3.5 GPA still had to pay her way?  And is it really too much to expect students who are admitted with merit fellowships to ask about grade distributions or use -- I don't know, perhaps the internet -- to find out how likely it is that they will keep their fellowships?  Law schools frequently use current students to recruit newly admitted students.  Contacts with current students are an ideal way to get just this sort of information. 

Moreover, what U.S. News-conscious law schools take away, other U.S. News-conscious law schools may give.  That is, let's say a student went to a 4th-tier law school in order to get the free ride.  After the first year, the student loses her free ride because of a low GPA.  She likely can transfer to a 3rd-tier school, perhaps even one that wouldn't have taken her at all as a 1L -- let alone with a scholarship -- because the other side of gaming the U.S. News system is poaching transfer students from lower-ranked schools.  The student will still end up paying full tuition for two years of law school, but the alternative is paying full tuition for three years of law school.

Yes, law schools should be up front with information about the likelihood that students will lose their fellowships.  My guess is that, because of the optimism bias, providing that information would not hurt law school recruitment.  According to the Times, Chicago-Kent offers students the choice between a guaranteed $9000/year fellowship and a $15,000 fellowship contingent on maintaining a 3.25 GPA.  Ninety percent of the students assume the risk. 

[JT]

 

Depressing... But, Maybe an Opportunity

Other than AT&T v. Concepcion (which may or may not really be about contracts), it has been a pretty slow news week for the blog.  While most people were focused on a birth certificate and/or a royal wedding, this important article about law student employment rates was published in The New Republic.  

Prof. Paul Campos (Colorado) isn't a contractsprof, but he was nevertheless dead-on in exposing the smoke and mirrors that law schools use in reporting inflated employment numbers.  I am sure that this is not news to most of us on law school faculties.  Though, Prof. Campos summed up nicely something I have been struggling with lately: 

If you’re a law professor and you want to get depressed, try to figure out how many of your recent graduates have real legal jobs that pay enough to justify the tuition that funds your salary, and also involve doing the kind of work they wanted to do when they went to law school.

This has given me the blues.  It nags at me.  Law schools are pumping out too many lawyers.  And the ABA keeps approving more law schools.  And tuition keeps increasing, entirely out of pace with inflation and stagnant/declining salaries.  With law school applications down significantly, it may just be that the law school bubble has burst.

The legal market has changed.  It doesn't take any special clairvoyance to predict that law schools will change too.  They have to.  While I definitely would not decline a raise, law school professor salaries may be too high and this market is an opportunity for correction.  And, while I love contract theory as much as the next guy reading this blog, the academy has overvalued lofty, disconnected, highly theoretical scholarship that is of little use to the practice of law (and arguably comes with a very high price tag).  This is the currency in academia but a joke to practitioners (which, once they hopefully find a job, our students will become).  (And I say this even though I am just weeks away from my tenure vote with a file full of scholarship that just might fit this harsh description).

To serve our students and the bar, the academy needs to be reconnected to the actual practice of law.  For so many years, I have heard about applying the medical school model to law schools.  I am not an expert on this, but at least anecdotally, I have heard that most medical and dental school professors practice a few days a week.  I think this could be the future of law schools.  I am not suggesting that law schools should or will staff classrooms entirely with adjuncts (though, this is the trend in academia generally).  This is an opportunity for law schools to hire full-time, dedicated teachers who also spend some time "in the field" (whether in law school clinics or outside the school).  Law schools could, thus, pay professors less and take some of the tuition burden off of the students.  Faculty scholarship would likely decline in quantity but would likely increase in its actual contribution beyond the ivory tower.  It would likely be more grounded in practice, and so would the classroom discussion.

In that connection, for example, 3 out of 4 dental school graduates are self-employed in solo practices.  There has been a lot of discussion lately about the values (and burdens) of solo and small firm law practice.  In this market, I have seen this type of practice regain a dignity that may have been lost because it was too often (incorrectly) seen as a default for those graduates who could not get big law firm, public interest or government jobs.

Law appears to be returning to a "small" model, which gives attorneys more control over their work/workload ("work life balance," which is coincidentally of higher priority to Gen Y) and also makes legal services more affordable for the clients they serve.  Like so many business models that looked to get bigger, bigger, bigger..., we have seen that the "big law" firm may not be a sustainable model.  (An analogy to industrial farming comes to mind, but I digress).  And, even if "big law" is sustainable, it is not a long-term employment situation for most young lawyers who land jobs there.  

So, law schools need to ask themselves: how can we graduate students who are in a position to employ themselves (if they so choose) within 3 years of graduation?  How can we do this at a lower cost to the students?

Depressing, maybe.  But, I had a boss once who would have called it "an action opportunity."

[Meredith R. Miller] 

Suffolk Breaks The Mold!

Greetings from Boston!  Following brief greetings from Dean Camille Nelson, Suffolk Law Review EiC Tyler Sparrow, and conference organizer Jeff Lipshaw, Charles Fried, whose Contract as Promise inspired today's conference, offered some initial warmly-received comments about what inspired him to write Contract as Promise three decades ago (irritation at arguments Grant Gilmore made in his Death of Contract and Patrick Atiyah made in his classic The Rise and Fall of Freedom of Contract about the nature of contractual obligations and "sound" and "unsound" jurisprudential approaches to understanding and analyzing contractual obligations), and promised to say more at the end of the day -- taking advantage of an opportunity unavailable to the subjects of most such "memorials."

Then came the realization that the first panel wasn't quite ready to go because the conference was running ten minutes ahead of schedule.  How promising!  We'll see whether the gap between the schedule and real time contracts as the day progresses.

 

[Keith A. Rowley]

Reminder: AALS Contracts Section Call for Proposals

The Executive Committee of the AALS Contracts Section solicits proposals for the Section’s Annual Meeting program Navigating Lombard Street in a Fog: Seeking (or Ignoring) Landmarks of Intent and Context, scheduled for Thursday, January 6, 2011 from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m.

The Topic: Consent supposedly distinguishes contracts from other private or public rights and duties by requiring that each contracting party manifest its intent, at the time it enters into the contract, to be bound to the contract.  This program will explore:

♥   whether intent – objectively manifested or otherwise – is or should be an integral part of contemporary contract law, practice, and theory;

♥   the extent to which context affects or should affect a party’s ability to consent, the significance of its manifested consent, or both; and

♥   assuming that intent and context matter, how best to determine and give effect to the parties’ intent in the context of their transaction.

We are particularly interested in fostering discussion of (1) intent to be bound, (2) intent to be bound to specific terms, (3) the intended meaning of agreed terms, (4) intended circumstances under which a party may avoid or delay performing their duties, and (5) intended remedies available or foreclosed if a party does not perform as agreed under circumstances that neither invite nor allow avoidance or delay.

The Program: Inspired by last year’s lively roundtable discussion of pedagogical approaches and by a fairly robust body of recent scholarship relevant to our topic, and paying homage to the increasingly rare, but fondly remembered, two-semester Contracts course, we seek speakers for two (or more) discussion panels, which the planning subcommittee will organize topically.  We have secured a 180-minute time slot, which should facilitate a broader, more diverse, and more participatory discussion than the typical 100-minute AALS program permits.

Publication: While we hope that this program will ignite or further fuel already-burning scholarly interest across its broad scope, we do not require an original paper proposal and have not pre-arranged publication of any papers discussed at or arising from the program (although we may explore publishing a program transcript if we can find a suitable venue and all of the speakers consent).

Submitting a Proposal: If you would like to participate as a panelist, please contact program chair Keith Rowley (keith.rowley@unlv.edu), no later than 12:00 p.m. PST, Monday, December 6th, indicating the aspect(s) of the topic that most interest(s) you; from what perspective(s) you propose to discuss it/them; if applicable, the scholarly work – yours or someone else’s, published or in progress – you plan to draw upon; and how best to contact you between now and December 10.  While the program planning subcommittee will reserve some spots for submissions received by the foregoing deadline (and may consider late proposals), we will begin to review proposals as we receive them and may begin extending offers as early as Monday, November 29th.

We apologize for the short notice, but hope to capitalize on it by attracting participants who might have been unwilling or unable to commit themselves in September or early October or who, like some of us, were stymied by the ongoing labor strife at the AALS headquarters hotel.  We are meeting; we are meeting elsewhere; and we ask that you help make this a well-attended, informative, and interactive program.

Thank you for your consideration.

[Keith A. Rowley]

Texas Wesleyan names former law dean as President

I'm personally very happy to announce that Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth has just named Frederick G. Slabach, CEO of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation in Washington D.C., as the 19th president of the 120-year-old university.

Slabach was dean of TWU's law school from 2003 to 2006  He's continued as Dean Emeritus and Professor of Law while holding the top leadership position at the Truman Foundation.  He replaces Harold Jeffcoat, who led the university for 10 years.

Before becoming dean at Texas Wesleyan, Slabach was vice dean and professor of law at Florida Coastal, associate dean for academic affairs at Mississippi College, and interim dean and associate dean at Whittier. He was an aide to Senator John Stennis and was Assistant Secretary of Agriculture for Congressional Relations in the Clinton Administration.  He also served a term as Executive Director of the Mississippi Democratic Party.  His wife is Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer Melany Nielsen.

Welcome back home, Fred.

FGS

Steamy Photo Shoot at Brooklyn Law School Challenges Stereotypes about Libraries

Oscar Wilde said: "There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."  That was my first thought in the grocery store today when I noticed that Brooklyn Law School (my alma mater) got front page press in the New York Post.  Why?  Because of a salacious photo shoot in the library that, well, depicted everything that was the opposite of my experiences in that library (really, in law school generally).  

The school allowed Diesel to use the library for a photo shoot under the impression that it was for a jeans ad.  The photos do not feature any models in jeans.  Actually, the models are only wearing underwear and they are writhing on top of each other in the library stacks.  Apparently, the law school claims that Diesel is, therefore, in breach of contract.  

New York Magazine reports:

Officials at the prestigious Brooklyn Law School rented the school's library to the fashion brand Diesel for an undisclosed fee, "expecting a tasteful photo shoot," because apparently they've never seen a single Diesel ad, and didn't bother to Google it. Shocking: True to its brand, Diesel's resulting ads aren't even Dolce & Gabanna-style suggestive, they're just quirky soft-core porn stills. In this case, the images are a whole bunch of campy, fairly cute library fantasies, featuring "students" wearing underwear reading "Tonight I am your teacher," and mounting each other on bookshelves. (See diagram.) One would think a place like Brooklyn Law might welcome this sexy attention, but no! Some uptight students now claim the ads are "gross" and "embarrassing," and the school might sue the brand. It's not yet determined whether the ads will even run outside the Diesel website, since Brooklyn Law claims they're a breach of contract.

That would make for the beginning of a fun exam question, unless you are at Brooklyn Law School.

[Meredith R. Miller]

Law schools and the changing legal job market

Via our colleagues at TaxProf, this piece by William Henderson (Indiana-Bloomington), looking at how changes in law practice will affect the historically credential-heavy recruitment of young lawyers.

It's an interesting piece, and I agree with much of what he's talking about.  The key to getting a job in this market is to be the kind of young lawyer that clients want to hire.  Clients are much less interested in credentials, and much more interested in expertise and communications skills, than the law firm hiring partners have been.  Lawyers who have clients have much less trouble getting jobs than lawyers without clients.

The whole article is here.

FGS

Harvard betting on inflation

Via Taxprof, the report that the World's Wealthiest Universitty,^TM after piling up a cash hoard outside its endowment of over a billion dollars, is now raising another billion from the bond markets.  The money will pay down existing debt and be used for capital improvements.

Investors are very interested.  The rate is just under 5%, and you have to figure that Harvard's credit rating is much better than, say, California's.

All of you who are borrowing money to contribute to that cash hoard can feel feel very proud.  If the university gets enough money, maybe tuition will go down.  Someday.

FGS

Smart, talented, pretty, and she seems to like fat guys

There are lots of lawyers who want to be pop music stars.  It’s more unusual for a pop star to want to be a lawyer.  But that’s the story of popular Korean singer Nikki (So Eun) Lee, who’s now apparently at 2L at Northwestern, and having a great time.  This is her.  (She?):

 

FGS

 

N.J. law school clinics subject to Open Meetings law

A New Jersey court has apparently ruled that law clinics at the state’s two government-owned law schools (Rutgers-Camden and Rutgers-Newark) are subject to the state Open Public Records Act. Material protected by the attorney-client privilege can be withheld, but other records will have to be produced.

The court rejected arguments by the American Association of University Professors, the Clinical Legal Education Association, and the Society of American Law Teachers, who argued that compliance with the law would have a negative impact on the services they provide.

FGS

San Diego law school in talks with UC-San Diego

California has five public law schools but none of them are in the state's second biggest city, San Diego.  That might change in the future, as talks are under way between the private California Western School of Law and the University of California-San Diego.

The North County Times reports that the proposal would not involve any state funds:

There would be "no start-up costs" to merge the law school with the university, nor any additional operating costs, Smith said. "We cannot do this if it costs any money."

Tuition covers the costs of running Cal Western, Smith said, adding that the school has operated in the black for 15 of the past 16 years.

Cal Western tuition ---- about $40,000 for a full-time student ---- is in the same ballpark as what students pay at UC law schools, he said.

As envisioned, a law school at UCSD would remain financially self-sufficient without any state funds.

FGS

BC 3L offers a contract modification

A Boston College 3L -- who describes himself as "desperate," "discouraged," "scared," "hopeless,""terrified," and "resentful" -- has posted an "open letter" to the dean of Boston College Law School offering an unusual deal:

I’d like to propose a solution to this problem: I am willing to leave law school, without a degree, at the end of this semester. In return, I would like a full refund of the tuition I’ve paid over the last two and a half years.

This will benefit both of us: on the one hand, I will be free to return to the teaching career I left to come here. I’ll be able to provide for my family without the crushing weight of my law school loans. On the other hand, this will help BC Law go up in the rankings, since you will not have to report my unemployment at graduation to US News.

(Via TaxProf).  It's hard not to feel sympathy for law students caught in a brutal job market that few people foresaw two years ago -- I have students in this situation -- but the most striking thing about this particular letter is the writer's apparent total refusal to take any share of responsibility for the decision.  That's not a good trait for a future lawyer.

Over at Above the Law, though, Elie Mystal is much more sympathetic:

If you buy something, and it’s a piece of crap, you should be able to give it back and get your money back.  Boston College sold him a promise, and Boston College cannot fulfill that promise; why can’t he get his money back?

But this is a very bad analogy.  If you buy a new television so that you can watch the Yankees in the World Series, you can't return it because the Yankees are knocked out and the set is now useless to you.  The 3L is paying for a credential which will do precisely what it was promised to do: permit you to take the bar exam.

A better doctrine might be mutual mistake, assuming that at the time the contract was made both parties assumed that BC grads would have no trouble getting jobs upon graduation; that this was a "basic" assumption on which the contract was based; and that the lack of jobs had a "material effect" on the exchange.  See Rest. 2d (Contracts) § 152.

FGS

Shortfalls are bustin' out all over

Via Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution, a grim story of pending budget cuts and tuition increases in the United Kingdom.  The bad news -- tuition looks like it will double.  The good news -- it will still be only about $11,000.  This year.

FGS

Best law schools for big-firm partners?

THe indefatigable Paul Caron at TaxProf has a rundown on some work by Loyola-L.A.'s Ted Seto (left) on which law schools produce the most partners at America's biggest law firms.  The list looks a lot like what you'd expect, but there are some big surprises.  If you want to go the big-firm route, long-established (but not "elite") big-city schools like Fordham, Hastings, Boston College,Loyola-Chicago, and SMU are heavily represented among big-firm partners.   Some schools (USF, Loyola-L.A., and Loyola-Chicago) do much better on this metric than they do in the U.S. News rankins.  Seto's description of his initial findings on the MoneyLaw blog is here.

A perceptive comment, though, from one reader of the TaxProf blog:  "This is like looking up at the stars. All you see is an image of the past. How long ago were these partners in school?"

FGS