Law Librarian Blog

Checking Out Exotic Scraps and Marvellous Rarities on The Public Domain Review

A project of the Open Knowledge Foundation made possible by funding from the Shuttleworth Foundation, The Public Domain Reivew "aspires to become a bounteous gateway into the whopping plenitude that is the public domain, helping our readers to explore this rich terrain by surfacing unusual and obscure works, and offering fresh reflections and unfamiliar angles on material which is more well known," writes Timothy Vollomer on Creative Commons, quoting from the Review's Mission Statement, in Launch of The Public Domain Review website.

The Review is a website with weekly updates in which scholars, writers, artists, librarians and others present an interesting or curious work (including films, photographs, texts and audio) from the public domain and write short accompanying articles about it that provide background, context, history, or other commentary or criticism.

From the Mission Statement:

The public domain is a vast commons of material that everyone is free to enjoy, share and build upon without restriction. All works eventually enter the public domain – from classic works of art, music and literature, to abandoned drafts, tentative plans, and overlooked fragments.

...

By providing a curated collection of exotic scraps and marvellous rarities and linking to freely distributable copies of works in online archives and from far flung corners of the web, we hope to encourage readers to further utilise and explore public domain works by themselves.

We believe the public domain is an invaluable and indispensable good, which – like our natural environment and our physical heritage – deserves to be explicitly recognised, protected and appreciated.

Like the image, above right, from the Review's website!

Hat tip to Gary Price's INFOdocket post. [JH]

Law Grads Working As Clerks in California Are Exempt, Not Entitled To Overtime

As recent law graduates consider ways to ingratiate themselves to prospective employers, consider the case (literally) of Matthew Zelasko-Barrett, a former law clerk at the law firm of Brayton-Purcell, LLP.  Zelasko-Barrett worked at the firm for two years before he took and passed the bar.  He was designated an associate attorney with the firm when he passed.  Hooray, got a paying job, right?  Well, no.  He sued the firm for not paying him overtime when he was a clerk.  He lost at trial based on the Court’s reading of California Industrial Welfare Commission wage order No. 4-2001 which exempts employees in the “learned professions,” one of which includes the legal profession.  Zelasko-Barrett appealed.

The California Appellate Court’s opinion included this:

For this contention, plaintiff has relied heavily on the decision of a federal district court in Campbell. That decision unquestionably provided colorable support for plaintiff‘s position. However, subsequent to the conclusion of briefing in this case the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the district court decision. (Campbell, supra, 642 F.3d 820.) That case now provides compelling additional support for the trial court‘s decision in this case. We concur in the Ninth Circuit‘s analysis.

Remember to Shepardize, kids (or KeyCite if you prefer), even after you think you are done.  And while you are at it, check out the administrative labor decisions as well:

More persuasive is the decision of the California Labor Commissioner in the matter of Yarnykh v. Brayton Purcell LLP, No. 11-38365CT (Oct. 27, 2010), reaching the same conclusion as do we with respect to another law school graduate not yet admitted to the bar who was employed by Brayton in what appears to have been a position comparable to that filled by plaintiff.  The Labor Commissioner concluded that the plaintiff in that case had acquired knowledge of an advanced type in the field of Law and not of general routine manual labor.  The evidence indicates Plaintiff exercised discretion and independent judgment in the preparation for Asbestos civil litigation.  Therefore, Plaintiff is found to be an exempt employee and not entitled to overtime pay. (Id. at pp. 4-5.)  We do not invoke the doctrine of collateral estoppel here as plaintiff suggests, nor do we consider this opinion to control our decision, but we do consider the Labor Commissioner‘s reasoning to support the conclusion we have reached, namely that all of the evidence shows plaintiff to be an exempt employee.  (Cf. Bell v. Farmers Ins. Exchange (2001) 87 Cal.App.4th 805, 815.)  Summary judgment therefore was properly granted to Brayton.

The full opinion is here.  [MG]

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a TR Tax & Accounting Catalog on the Same Day as an Advance Renewal Invoice for a WG&L Print Title

I should add luckily both appeared before my wondering eyes on the same day ... that would be yesterday. While any regular reader of LLB knows that I am less than delighted with the editorial quality and pricing of many of the treatises TR Legal publishes, particular ones that were once published by publishing houses the Company acquired, I've also mentioned that I still find the editorial quality of some of TR's Tax and Accounting treatises to be very good, a bit expensive but I'm a buyer of some of their titles. So yesterday I received an advance renewal notice for one WG&L print title we still have on our shelves. Yesterday, I also received a TR Tax & Accounting print catalog. Guess what I found? Yup, the renewal invoice pricing was exactly the same cost as buying the title new at list price (no discount offered in either).

Has this always been the case? Frankly I don't know if I've been paying 100% of buy-new list price for renewing the few WG&L titles we have retained in our little county law library. But I sure as hell will not do so now or in the future. The WG&L titles aren't essential; there are substitutes available. 

So I called the Customer Service number about this little issue and was offered an X% discount. After saying something like, "you need to do better than that," I was offered an X-plus% discount after being put on hold briefly. I emphasize briefly because I do not want to convey the impression that calling the 1-800 number for TR's Tax & Accounting division (whatever) was the sort of 1-800-Nameless experience many institutional buyers have had with TR Legal.

The X-plus% discount offer was a bit high but in the ballpark of what we have all come to expect from WEXIS for many, if not most, print renewals compared to buy-new list prices. I proceeded to ask the TR Tax & Accounting customer service staffer if I was going to have to repeat this call when my other WG&L titles came up for renewal. He politely suggested I contact my rep -- ah, when I was given his name, it did ring a bell if ever so softly. Yes, I will be calling him.

Is there a moral to this story? You bet. Hello, TR Tax & Accounting, make sure product catalogs are not received the same day advance renewal invoices are! Revenue stream that bad? (In this case the title wasn't up for renewal until December of this year). I did experience "sticker shock" at the renewal pricing, might have checked out alternatives, but also might have just paid it but for also having the product catalog in hand. Now, this is damn good "customer education and experience."

Also in today's mail from TR Legal. For some time now I've been wondering whether TR Legal's opt-out Columbia House Book Club had ceased operation. Or, alternatively, wondering if I just wasn't receiving any postcards because I've killed off so many West print titles in this Shed West Era. Well, I'm still a member of the TR Legal's Columbia Book Club! Oh boy, West's jurisdiction-specific 'key rules" for federal and state court rules is now offering bankruptcy rules as an additional pamphlet volume. My response is in the mail. [JH]

Friday Fun: Understanding the Law after Lectures and Casebook Reading Assignments

An introduction to basic secondary sources available in the law library as study aids when class lectures and casebook reading assignments produce confusion. [JH]

Do Systems Establishing Quasi-Peer Review of Articles Submitted to Student-Edited Law Journals Make Sense?

Recently Chicago made a provisional decision to join the ranks of law reviews like Harvard, Yale and Stanford by establishing a quasi-peer review system for article submissions. In Chicago Law Review Chutzpah, Stephan Bainbridge, William D. Warren Distinguished Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law, writes

Either the student-edited format makes sense or it doesn't. The whole purpose of peer review is to get students OUT of the process, not to supplement a decision that would remain in the hands of second and third year law students. A pure peer review/edit system has several advantages. First, more informed and experienced decision makers should make better decisions. Second, one key function of peer review is to provide expert advice at a stage at which the authors can still tweak the paper. Hence, the advice should go directly from the reviewer to the author, rather than being mediated through students. Third, making the decision dependent on peer review provides a strong incentive for authors to heed the advice and to improve the paper. Giving students final say means the author is incented to make the students editors happy rather than the more knowledgeable reviewer. Finally, leaving the final decision in the hands of students means that the reviewer has less incentive to provide his/her best analysis, since his recommendations presumably will not be conclusive and may not even impact the final product. The proposed Chicago system being neither fish nor fowl, there is no reason to think it will combine the best attributes of peer and student journals.

For details about the Chicago form of peer review, see Bainbridge's post.

On PrawfsBlawg, Boston College law prof Brian Galle adds in Peer Review at Student-Edited Journals: Best Practices?:

For now, though, my impressions are that: 1. journals often disregard or weight lightly the advice they get from outside reviewers; 2. reviewer comments are not shared with authors; 3. authors cannot respond to reviewer comments; 4. reviewers are anonymous but free to reveal themselves; 5. reviewers don’t know author identity (except perhaps in the new case of Chicago, which does not use blind review). I think 1 & 2 are significant problems, 3 sucks but is probably hard to fix, 4 needs some tweaks and 5 seems a'ight.

What do you think? Is something like this better than nothing? [JH]

Time to Scramble for Ways and Means to Get Published in Law Journals

While it is fairly obvious that the bench (and bar) don't read legal scholarship published in law journals, that is not going to stop law profs from churning them out, particularly junior profs scrambling to add publication credits to their CVs in advance of tenue review time. Summer is over ... draft law journal articles have been written ... time to submit them for publication. UMKC's Allen Rostron and Nancy Levit come to the aid by updating their Information for Submitting Articles to Law Reviews & Journals [SSRN]:

This document contains information about submitting articles to law reviews and journals, including the methods for submitting an article, any special formatting requirements, how to contact them to request an expedited review, and how to contact them to withdraw an article from consideration. It covers 202 law reviews. The document was fully updated in July 2011.

Very useful. Even a self-contained community of unworldly dreamers sometimes needs professional guidance counseling. [JH]

Cornell Student Wants Unlimited Campus Internet Access

I read, with some amusement, a story in the Wired Campus blog at the Chronicle of Higher Education about Cornell University sophomore Christina Lara’s petition for the school to drop Internet bandwidth caps.  Lara apparently goes beyond her allotted quota of bandwidth and is regularly hit with charges of around $90 a month according to the blog post.  She has a fondness for Skype and Netflix, both big bandwidth hogs, and she mentions them in the petition as what should be the right of any college student.  Ithica is such a boring place that there doesn’t seem anything else to do besides stare at a screen.  She concludes the petition by stating “With a pricetag $57,000 per year, Cornell University should give it's students unlimited internet usage.”  I’ll leave that statement for the grammar police.

The petition notes that the Internet is “free in virtually every college and university in the country.”  Feel free to run the search “Internet university bandwidth caps” in Google (or Bing if you must) and result after result will show that statement is hardly the case.  Many universities place restrictions on bandwidth ranging from 500 megabytes a week for undergraduates to about 16 Gigabytes per week.  The most common figure I’ve seen is around 50 Gigabytes per month.  The penalties for going past the cap are slowing the download speed and/or overage charges.  Cornell hardly seems out of the mainstream with this type of policy.

Another objection is “By charging us for our internet usage, the Cornell University administration hinders our ability--and our willingness--to use the internet for recreational purposes.”  Most policies I have encountered do not include campus work, such as downloading documents from reserve, against the cap.  Christina, my advice to you is that Cornell is preparing you for the real world.  Try living the full digital lifestyle with a cap courtesy of AT&T or Comcast, or virtually any other commercial Internet provider.  Our friend Andrew Vrignaud found out the hard way about that one.  

I remember speaking to a student at one of the other law schools where I worked and fielded a question that included the “I pay X dollars in tuition, why can’t I have…” statement.  I responded by saying if you want that, then perhaps your tuition should be more.  To quote the Wizard of Oz, “What a world!” [MG]

ABAJ Seeking Recommendations for Annual Blawg 100 List

From the announcement:

There is no specific criteria that a blawgger can meet to be guaranteed a spot on the Blawg 100. And we think our list would suffer if there were. A blawg’s whole can be greater than the sum of its parts, and a blawg that never fails to post that daily update, has a beautiful design and an unwavering topical focus can very often have less of an impact than another blawg that is less consistent on all fronts.

That said, please keep these criteria in mind when submitting Blawg 100 amici:

• We’re only interested in blawgs in which the author is recognizable as a lawyer or law student in the vast majority of his or her posts.
• The blawg should be written with an audience of lawyers or law students—rather than potential clients or potential law students—in mind.
• The majority of the blawg’s content should be unique to the blawg and not cross-posted or cut and pasted from other publications.
• We are not interested in blawgs that more or less exist to promote the author’s products and services.

Recommendations using this fill-in form are due no later than Sept. 9, 2011. [JH]

"Trusted Legal Resources:" A Recognized Brand Will Not Retain Its Strength by Continued Dilution of Editorial Quality

At MIT last year, my favorite global publishing CEO, Tom Glocer, explained to MIT students that a "strong brand" is a signal for quality content (video below). Hardly a new idea. I don't know any law librarians who don't check the publishing house as a filter for reliable content quality be it in the context of legal research or collection development. The question not asked by the MIT students to Tom Glocer -- remember MIT doesn't have a law school -- was does TR meet that strong brand metric? Kudos to Tom for not pitching TR Legal as belonging in that class.

"Trust:" The New WEXIS Marketing Buzz Word. Both TR Legal and Lexis are pitching themselves as the legal publishers you can trust now. Just check out their eCommerce sites. Trust, however, is not the same as expertise.

These days, the first think I look for when it comes to West-branded titles is the infamous "By Publisher's Staff" attribution. I am not a buyer if West's Publisher's Staff is involved in any way, shape or form in a West title, even if the title page lists a named author with "and Publisher's Staff." I'm just not going there when there are alternatives, even if the alternatives are more expensive, rare as that oftentimes is.

For comparable topical coverage offered by West, I'm a buyer if a title is written by CCH staff, I'm a buyer if a BNA title is written by practitioners (and sometimes taken over by ABA Sections) and I'm even a buyer of a Matthew Bender title, although I do more closely examine MB editorial content before acquiring it.

Teaching Brand Iiteracy. Today's law school students? Well, that's a different matter, one that LWR and ALR instructors have to try to address. I'm not just referring to "information literacy" in the content of depending on website info found by way of Google searches. I'm also referring to monitoring and evaluating trends in editorial quality of recognized publishing house brands. IMHO, at least part of class, if not an entire class in LWR and ALW should explain who and how titles are created and maintained by BNA, CCH (WK), Lexis (MB) and TR Legal (West). Might want to include a section of the class on "advertising literacy," too, to educate future consumers of legal products and services. [JH]

As the World Turns: Welcome to the Blogosphere Inside the Law School Scam

A "LawProf" Sampler

Welcome to My Nightmare What does it mean to call law school a scam? Understanding the rage of recent law school graduates

There has been a fair amount of speculation about an anonymous blogger who recently joined the law school scamblog genre because he is not the typical criticial unemployed or underemployed law grad graduate in this genre. Author of Inside the Law School Scam, the blogger known as "LawProf" claims to be a tenured faculty member teaching at a top tier school. At A Tenured Top-Tier Law Professor Joins the Ranks of the ‘Scambloggers’, ATL's David Lat writes

With respect to Inside the Law School Scam, ... the site has the ring of truth to it; there’s enough behind-the-scenes and historical knowledge about legal academia to suggest the author truly is a law professor. (If not a law prof, the writer has gone to an awful lot of trouble to sound like one.)

Insider Higher Ed confirms that "LawProf" is a law prof:

He agreed to reveal his identity to Inside Higher Ed, and his description is accurate. He teaches at a law school that doesn't make the "top 10" lists, but that is generally considered the best in its state and is well regarded nationally. His C.V. shows plenty of scholarship and professional involvement. And while "LawProf" (as he calls himself) is disdainful of the prestige hierarchy of American law schools, he said in the interview that it was important for the law school world to hear from someone "at a better law school," because so many law professors write off the current complaints from new graduates "as the concerns of third-tier law schools, which don't matter."

For more, see Hostile Witness.

"LawProf" was also interviewed on Constitution Daily. See Behind Inside the Law School Scam. Based on that one, the interviewer thinks  "LawProf" is a law prof at Georgetown, Texas, or Duke. In Isn't it obvious who the "LawProf" writing the latest "law school scam" blog is?, Brian Leiter adds:

It was obvious to me after reading the blog, with its reckless and inaccurate generalizations (cf. Paul Horwitz's commentary), since the author has written in this vein under his own name in the past.  And the clues as to his identity the author provided--the number of years in teaching, best law school in his state, a "tier 1" law school, etc., as well as the interview he gave [on Constitution Daily] -- just confirmed that impression. 

Out of respect for his school and his colleagues, who deserve much better, I will not be posting his identity.

In his PrawfsBlawg commentary, I Am LawProf ("Actually, I'm not.") Horwitz writes "[t]he kind of writing LawProf is engaging in from behind the veil of anonymity has lots of foundation in fact, and just as much exaggeration.  That means it puts some genuine and important problems in high relief, but also distorts the overall picture." Leiter adds "[t]he fact-free ruminations of our Scamming LawProf might be usefully contrasted with the criticisms of law schools and legal education by Brian Tamanaha (Wash U/St. Louis), which, while not always persuasive, are always based on pertinent evidence, and avoid wild generalizations." 

So welcome to the soap opera that is the law prof and/or law school scamblog genre(s) of the blogosphere, "LawProf." No matter what, the world is going to turn and turn and turn. [JH]

Opening: Associate Director for Library Services, Charlotte School of Law

Charlotte School of Law (CharlotteLaw) seeks applications for an experienced Associate Director for Library Services. This is a new position due to growth.

The Charlotte School of Law seeks energetic and creative candidates for the position of Associate Director for Library Services.  Charlotte School of Law, which opened on August 28, 2006, is the first law school in North Carolina’s most populous city. Located in the heart of Charlotte, NC, a growing, cosmopolitan community, the CSL Library maintains a collection of over 110,000 physical volumes and volume equivalents in print, electronic, and multimedia and micro-formats. The Library supports the teaching, research, and service activities of CSL, a growing school of over 500 students and over 30 faculty. The School recently received full American Bar Association (ABA) accreditation in June 2011.

The school is a member of The InfiLaw System, a consortium of independent law schools committed to making legal education more responsive to the realities of new career dynamics. Its mission is to establish student-centered, American Bar Association (ABA) accredited law schools in underserved markets that graduate students with practice-ready skills, and achieve true diversity programs aimed at student academic and career success.

Primary Duties & Responsibilities: The position is primarily responsible for oversight of all law library services and operations; Reference, Circulation, and Bibliographic. This includes key accountability for faculty and students services, maintaining collaborative working relationships with other law school staff, and oversight of programs designed for other library patrons.  This position improves existing services and processes, plans new programs, and does project tracking. This manager is primarily responsible for addressing faculty and students concerns and issues with other patrons using the library. The Associate Director advises the Associate Dean for Library and Information Services in areas of collection development and bibliographic control, ensuring the Law Library’s effectiveness in serving the academic and research mission of the School. The Associate Director oversees the reference, circulation, interlibrary loan, collection management, acquisitions, cataloging, preservation and serials activities of the library. This position reports to the Associate Dean for Library and Information Services and serves as a member of the CSL management team in the absence of the Associate Dean, This management position is responsible and accountable for all policy, service, and operations matters specific to the library.

Qualifications:

Minimum Qualifications include: An MLS and J.D. from accredited programs; five (5) or more years of academic law library experience, including three years of progressively responsible administrative experience; experience in library technical and bibliographic services, significant experience working collaboratively with technical services staff on related Public and Technical Services issues, or a relevant combination of experience and skills; demonstrated ability to communicate effectively, both verbally and in written form, and to maintain positive working relationships with faculty, students, staff and other users of the law library; experience with Library 2.0 and/or information technology in addition to knowledge of LEXIS, WESTLAW, Innovative, OCLC, and other related systems; experience supervising professional librarians and support staff; collection development experience; and evidence of professional activity at a local and national level.

Preferred Qualifications include: Experience teaching legal research or other law school teaching and in conducting library workshops, experience with Library 2.0 tools, planning tools; and progressive experience managing and supervising employees.

Salary is commensurate with experience. CharlotteLaw offers a full benefits package. For more information about Charlotte School of Law, please visit www.charlottelaw.edu.

If helping others and working in a dynamic workplace is what you feel passionate about and you are looking for a new challenge and a chance to put your experience to work in an innovative environment – Charlotte School of Law may be the place for you.

Please send a resume, the names of three references (including addresses and phone numbers) to humanresources(at)charlottelaw.edu or via mail to:

Charlotte School of Law
Human Resources
2145 Suttle Avenue
Charlotte, NC, 28208

Charlotte School of Law is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

A Bit More on Senator Grassley And The ABA

I wrote yesterday about the most recent letter Senator Charles Grassley sent to the ABA seeking additional information about the organization’s oversight of law schools in regard to mounting graduate debt and poor job prospects.  See my post Grassley to ABA: I'm Not Going Away That Easily.  I want to point out that the ABA is not completely ignoring the problem.  The House of Delegates passed two resolutions at the last general meeting in Toronto that touch on the problem.

The first is Resolution 111-A which calls on the federal government to provide financial assistance to those with huge piles of debt.  This would take the form of extended repayment terms, payments based on income, and better terms for deducting loan interest on income taxes.  The second half calls on the financial industry to offer voluntary relief for those saddled with debt.  I can't imagine Congress doing any of this given the revenue situation and the recent fight over raising the debt ceiling.  Banks have an obligation to stockholders, so I don't see them changing their business practices.

The second is Resolution 111-B. It “urges” law schools to provide more detailed employment data such as “whether graduates have obtained full-time or part-time employment within the legal profession, whether in the private or public sector, or whether in alternative professions and whether such employment is permanent or temporary.”  The resolution additionally calls for reporting salary information, the costs associated with law school, and making it available to prospective students on a school’s web site.  Another section “urges” the Section on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar to consider revising the Standards for Approval of Law Schools to require these reports.  A provision “urging” the Section to add this reporting to the Annual Questionnaire all law schools complete is struck out.

I suppose “urging” is taking a stand on the issue, though it probably has the same effect as a lawyer urging a jury to find his or her client not guilty.  The call to action is a good one but it comes off a bit squeamish is requiring attention to the problem.  One part of Senator Grassley’s letter I didn’t highlight in yesterday’s post is the last two questions:

9. The Section also states, “[R]egardless of what some may see as the desirability of denying access to the legal profession on the basis of even medium-term employment opportunities, the accrediting agency simply cannot lawfully do so.” Please explain how a more restrictive accreditation standard would “deny access to the legal profession” and would violate the law.

10. The Department of Education’s policies for accreditation standards, which you have provided in attachment #3, specifically cite “job placement rates” as a standard by which to accredit institutions. Is it your opinion that this section of the statute grants the ABA the power to craft regulations which would consider “job placement rates” as a standard by which to determine accreditation of individual law schools?

Why can’t the ABA take economic data into account when establishing accreditation standards?  The earlier responses to Senator Grassley suggest the ABA doesn’t want to react to current economic conditions.  Isn’t it possible, however, to craft standards that account for good times as well as bad?  “Requiring” schools to report law school costs compared to graduate prospects may be the better way to inform prospective law students and then leave the decision with them.  Since I don’t have the same leverage that the ABA has with itself, all I can do is “urge” them to be more proactive on jobs and debts.  Coverage on the resolutions is in the ABA Journal.  [MG]

Should Law Profs Who Demonstrate a Lack of Expertise in Providing Real World Legal Advice Be Allowed to Teach Doctrinal Law Classes?

The Practitioner "Exodus" from the Law School Faculty

Even the great Christopher Columbus Landell had some experience practicing law before becoming dean of Harvard Law School. But he hired James Barr Ames to joined the HLS faculty. In 1870 on [Ames'] return from Europe, he entered the Harvard Law School. It was an interesting and critical moment in the history of that school. A young New York lawyer, Christopher C. Langdell had just been made Dean, a regular course of study and examination had just been introduced, and Part I of the first case-book, "Langdell's Cases on Contracts," was presented to the students. The use of this book was a touchstone of intellectual ability. To the great majority of the class it was mere folly; they wished to learn the law as the older professors in the school had settled it to be, and they felt sure that no way was easier, quicker, or surer that that of listening while these professors told them. Landell's courses were soon practically deserted by all except a few devoted admirers, whose distinguished carreer at the bar and on the bench has justified their choice. The most devoted of all, and the one whose devotion was most effective in securing the success of the new method, was Ames." Memoir of James Barr Ames, Ames, Lectures on Legal History and Miscellaneous Legal Essays (With a Memoir) at 4 (Harvard University Press, 1913) Why is this important? Ames was the first regular HLS faculty member who never practiced law before teaching at HLS (quite possibly the first law faculty member in the entire legal academy to hold that distinction at the time). Second, Ames later replaced Landell as dean at HLS. Third and most significant, while Landgell's casebook method of teaching was still very tradition-bound because Landgell lectured students about "good law" based on his idiosyncratic selection of case he thought exemplied sound legal reasoning, that really was not all that different from the lecture method of HLS profs who taught what the law "ought to be" based on then current commentaries, a pedagogy established at HLS by Joseph Story. Although the above quote illustrates the push-back from HLS faculty and its objections by most HLS students at the time, I bet many HLS students acquired or went to the "laboratory of the law" know as the law library to read the commentaries and treatises available to follow Landell's lectures. The contribution Ames made was to introduce the "Socratic Method" into the classrooms, using court opinions as lecture fodder. This is the origin of teaching students to "think like lawyers." Educating students to think like lawyers was, however, an intellectual exercise in case law analysis. While it aided in the development of critical logical analysis and modes of legal reasoning, it did not and still does not produce law school grads prepared to "practice like lawyers."

As previously noted, Harvard Law School is a rarity in the legal academy in that it unofficially bifurcates faculty members who are hired to teach and those hired because they are recognized rock stars (or potential rock stars) who do offer courses (even 1L courses) but are essentially members of the HLS faculty to retain and enhance Harvard Law's reputation by scholarly publications and by being players on the national, even international, stage. Stanford Law's Faculty Director, Miller Institute for Global Challenges and the Law and Professor of Law, John Yoo, is both a recognized scholar and has been a player on the national stage. While author of The Powers of War and Peace: The Constitution and Foreign Affairs after 9/11 (University of Chicago Press, 2005), War by Other Means: An Insider's Account of the War on Terror (Grove/Atlantic, 2006), and Crisis and Command: The History of Executive Power From George Washington to George W. Bush (Kaplan, 2010) plus numerous articles as well as speaking engagements on the law prof lecture circuit, Yoo is best known for his work in DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel during George W. Bush's War on Terror administration. You remember his DOJ OLC work product, the "Torture Memo" advice he rendered, right?

While the ABA and the legal academy muddles through the issue of providing "legal skills" so that law students can graduate with what is needed to actually practice law -- ah, I wouldn't let an freshly minted MD come near me if medical schools followed the legal academy's educational example -- Chapman law prof Lawrence Rosenthal poses a substantially different question about law prof qualifications in his provocative article, Those Who Can't, Teach: What the Legal Career of John Yoo Tells Us About Who Should be Teaching Law, 80 Mississippi Law Journal 1563 (2011) [SSRN]. The issue Rosenthal presents for this debate is:

[W]hether John Yoo—and his like—ought to be teaching law.

Yikes! But In the introduction to his article, Rosenthal explains that his reference to John Yoo is just an example of a more systemic problem in today's law professoriate; Yoo illustrates significant issues in legal academy. One might say Rosenthal has applied theBschool case study analysis to the business of law school education:

Perhaps no member of the legal academy in America is more controversial than John Yoo. For his role in producing legal opinions authorizing what is thought by many to be abusive treatment of detainees as part of the Bush Administration‘s "Global War on Terror," some have called for him to be subjected to professional discipline; others have called for his criminal prosecution. I aim to raise a different question—whether John Yoo—and his like—ought to be teaching law. Thus far, consideration of this question has been confined to rather brief essays in the popular press. In the academy, there has been little disagreement voiced with the view of Christopher Edley, Professor Yoo‘s dean at the University of California at Berkeley‘s School of Law, who, after noting that Professor Yoo enjoys not only security of employment and academic freedom, but also First Amendment and Due Process rights, concluded: "Assuming one believes as I do that Professor Yoo offered bad ideas and even worse advice during his government service, that judgment alone would not warrant dismissal or even a potentially chilling inquiry." I will offer a different view.

John Yoo provides something of a case study in the problems in legal education today. As a scholar, Professor Yoo is considered something of a superstar; he has been described as "a leading scholar on the relationship of international law and war powers to constitutional commands." Even so, he teaches at a law school — an entity engaged in preprofessional education. Prior to tenure in the Bush Administration, Professor Yoo had little experience in the practice of the law; as we will see, this makes him typical of the current generation of legal educators. Professor Yoo also represents something of a natural experiment of a type that we rarely see — the unusual case of a leading legal scholar with the limited professional experience typical of his generation who leaves the academy and practices law on a regular basis. When Professor Yoo actually practiced law, however, he made quite a hash of things. To use Dean Edley‘s characterization, Professor Yoo‘s time in legal practice produced "bad ideas and even worse advice." No medical school would employ an incompetent physician to teach the practice of medicine; such a teacher would surely be thought a menace to the professional development of its students, and to their future patients as well. Surely it is remarkable that the legal academy could regard as something of a superstar an individual who proves unable to practice — at least at an acceptable level — the profession for which he is training his students. Professor Yoo‘s case is unusual in that he took the rare step of leaving the academic cocoon and venturing into a position where his professional deficiencies were likely to be exposed, but there is reason to believe that his lack of professional judgment is common among the scholars of his generation. All of this suggests that there is something deeply wrong with the state of legal education today.

(Citations omitted.)

Later in the article:

[B]oth scholarly and constitutional conceptions of academic freedom offer rights and correlative responsibilities; scholars are expected to conform to professional norms. Thus, any discussion of Professor Yoo‘s legal work and academic freedom necessarily focuses to the question whether, under the norms that govern preprofessional education, those who lack the skills to practice law at an acceptable level should nevertheless teach the practice of law.

Dean Edley agrees that "Professor Yoo offered bad ideas and even worse advice during his government service." The concept of academic freedom therefore requires inquiry into the question of whether shielding "bad ideas and even worse advice" from academic scrutiny is consistent with relevant preprofessional norms. According to the accrediting authority, "[a] law school shall maintain an educational program that prepares its students for admission to the bar, and effective and responsible participation in the legal profession." At a minimum, that ought to mean that the faculty is capable of understanding and conveying to students the ability to provide responsible advice to clients concerning pertinent legal constraints. A teacher charged with conveying the skills necessary to practice law surely ought to be capable of recognizing ?bad ideas and even worse advice? before passing them along to his client. One would hope that academic standards for preprofessional education cannot be satisfied by such a performance; certainly that seems to be the view of the accrediting authority. Beyond that, Professor Yoo‘s work at the OLC is just the kind of shoddy, superficial, and intemperate work for which prevailing norms of academic freedom provide no safe haven.

...

To be sure, the conclusions offered here can be no more than tentative. Professor Yoo may represent a natural experiment in the legal theoretician suddenly tasked with important professional responsibilities, but he represents a sample of one. One needs little grounding in statistics to agree that the sample size makes any conclusion hazardous. Nevertheless, as we have seen, the emergence of the theoretician in the legal academy has corresponded with growing concerns about the ability of law schools to prepare their students for competent legal practice. There is surely enough smoke to warrant serious discussion and debate, if not yet a declaration that the legal academy is on fire.

It is, moreover, possible to take the position advanced here too far. I do not mean to argue that any academic would replicate Professor Yoo‘s errors if given the chance. Nor do I mean to suggest that there is no place on law faculties for philosophers, social scientists, or others who may lack competence to practice law, but who can nevertheless make an important contribution to the intellectual growth of law students. It may also be that there are other means by which academics can develop and demonstrate professional judgment other than spending substantial time in practice. Nevertheless, it is critical that law schools understand which of their faculty are capable of teach-ing students to practice law, and ensure that their own students do not mistake a course in social or political philosophy as providing guidance for representing clients in the practice of law. Judge Posner, for example, has proposed that law schools identify faculty skilled in legal analysis by placing them in an appropriate department, while placing scholars with a primarily interdisciplinary expertise in departments with an interdisciplinary focus. Short of such a reform, however, there is a real problem illustrated by Professor Yoo. The University of California at Berkeley did not label him as competent only in areas unrelated to the practice of law.

(Citations omitted.)

The *-ed law prof. Perhaps an asterisk after the names of some faculty members in their web profiles should is required, one that signals "only qualified to teach seminars on theoretical topics" so law school student know what to expect when selecting law courses. John Yoo's profile here.

Few law schools can do what Harvard does. Hold on, as long as law students pick up the employment costs for increasing the size of law faculty, this sort of bifurcation could justify hiring even more full-time faculty. That in turn would reduce the student to faculty ratio which could enhance the prospects of a law school moving up in the US News Rankings, at least until every other law schools does the same, because student per capita spend is what really drives US News Law School Rankings.

Far-fetched? Don't think so. The ABA Accreditition Standard requires that the student-to-faculty ratio be no higher that 20:!. There is no requirement on how low the ratio must be. Law schools hungry for moving up the US News Rankings have been heading for a ratio below 10:1. See Will the Student-to-Faculty Ratio in Law Schools Be 7.6:1 in 2038? An asterisk requirement might be welcomed in the legal academy because it could justify hiring more tenure-track law profs.

Should law profs be required to regularly offer proof that they are qualified to teach doctrinal legal courses? How would they be tested if one thinks the answer is "yes"? Certainly passing the state bar once every X-years won't do. A good test would be to require law profs to engage in transactional and/or litigation to prove they can offer sound legal advice to real world clients on some sort of regular basis for evaluation. Hell, I'm thinking the regular granting of sabbaticals to tenured law profs for the purpose of scholarly pursuits can be put to better use by replacing it with required sabbaticals that send law profs out into the real work to practice law, assuming law firms and government agency would accept them. No need to pay them as temp employees for a year since sabbaticals are already paid by the legal academy.

OK, call me a dreamer but I also think tenured academic law librarians should be sent out to practice law librarianship in the private or government sector when granted sabbaticals, too. Public service academic law librarians could acquire hand-on research experience in current practices using resources they tend not to use regularly, understand the types of research assignments actually asked, their drop-dead deadlines plus real costs and legal resource restrictions associated in completing them at various institutions. Nothing beats this sort of experience for producing "teachable moments" upon returning to the legal academy. I, for one, found that the research illustrations and assignments I taught were better when I was a law firm librarian. The longer away from that, the more canned they became. Academic tech services librarians are not or should not be exempt. For example, how many times have you heard acadmic law librarians ask for information about online and print pricing paid by private and government sectors?

Combining the hands-on experience acquired by real world sabbaticals for academic public and technical services law librarians might could be very productive for improving legal research instruction. Such sabbaticals could also result in the publication of useful, even scholarly articles, on teaching law school students to be effective legal researchers and informed legal consumers. But I digress ... or do I? The same disconnect issue is presented in the context of teaching doctrinal law courses.

I think many law profs would prefer an asterisk after their name rather than taking a sabbatical into the real world. US News could even add a new metric to its ranking methodology: ratio of faculty members qualified to teach doctrinal course to faculty members only qualified to teach seminars on theoretical topics. Just think of the PR fodder from law schools: "we have more theoreticians... ." From the concluding paragraphs of Rosenthal's very interesting Those Who Can't, Teach: What the Legal Career of John Yoo Tells Us About Who Should be Teaching Law:

Professor Yoo‘s example, coupled with the evidence that his lack of professional experience is far from unique among those in the legal academy, suggests that the problem of law professors who have too little familiarity with the type of professional judgment that young lawyers must develop is not rare. It may be that a great many law students re-ceive insufficient instruction in the interaction between theory and practice from teachers who are only theoreticians with lit-tle understanding of the interaction of theory and practice. As we have seen, complaints about the quality of professional preparation at law schools among their graduates are prevalent and may, in turn, be explained by the prevalence of the theoretician in legal education.

Whatever the value of creating within the academy repositories for theoretical scholarship unconnected to the practice of law, as we have seen, the vast majority of law students devote considerable time and money to law school on the understanding that they will obtain marketable skills. Surely law schools have some obligation to provide faculties capable of imparting those skills—anything else is a species of consumer fraud. The fact that our leading law schools have on their faculties individuals who claim to be able to teach students to practice law, but in fact cannot provide their own clients with defensible legal advice and may well be incapable of teaching their students how to do so, suggests that something has gone very wrong in the legal academy.

Perhaps it is time for a change.

(Citations omitted.)

The Punch-drunk legal academy takes another hit to its solar plexus. Rosenthal's article and Preaching What They Don't Practice: Why Law Faculties' Preoccupation with Impractical Scholarship and Devaluation of Practical Competencies Obstruct Reform in the Legal Academy, 62 South Carolina Law Review __ (Nov. 2010) [SSRN] by Brent E. Newton, (Deputy Staff Director, United States Sentencing Commission and Adjunct Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center and Washington College of Law, American University) offer a one-two punch to the gut of the legal academy. While certainly not a knock-out combination, if both were read by incoming 1Ls I think they would start wondering about what the hell they got themselves into. Ah well, they will experience that soon enough. [JH]

Let's call this post an addendum to last year's launch of the academic year LLB series, Why Can't Johnny Research Practice Law?:

• Would you hire a law prof to represent you? (Aug. 23, 2010)
• Academic law libraries are not wasting a perfectly good recession to develop collections that look more "real world." (Aug. 25, 2010)
• Is Johnny thinking like "Chad," the LRW instructor, instead of thinking like a law librarian? (Aug. 26, 2010)
• The legal education system has broken the Social Contract (Oct. 6, 2010)

Welcome to the 2011-2012 Academic Year: The Law School Bubble

Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds on Instapundit. [JH]

From: The Best Colleges

Opening: Two PT Research Assistants for the Digital Public Library of America planning initiative (Paid Internship Opportunity), Cambridge, MA

Are you a student interested in helping to launch a large-scale digital public library in the United States? Excited about the future of online access to information? Want to collaborate closely with innovative partners in public and research libraries, government, publishing, and elsewhere?

The Berkman Center seeks two part-time Research Assistants for the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) planning initiative. The DPLA planning initiative is bringing together representatives from public and research libraries, the educational community, cultural organizations, state and local government, publishers, authors, and private industry in a series of meetings and workshops to examine strategies for improving public access to comprehensive online resources. More information about the initiative can be found here. These positions are ideal for students who are looking to learn more about, and contribute to, these efforts.

Position Responsibilities: Primary responsibilities will be to support the DPLA Secretariat, which includes staying abreast of developments in the digital library field (including news related to e-publishing, copyright, linked open data, and other areas), blogging regularly on these issues, writing weekly round-ups of the DPLA public listserv, and contributing to the DPLA wiki and forthcoming website. The RAs will also assist with preparations for the DPLA plenary meeting in October and occasional workshops, including opportunities to create related multimedia. This position represents an ideal opportunity for those interested in digital humanities, intellectual property issues, and access to knowledge and information.

Required Education, Experience and Skills:

• Advanced writing and editing skills, with the ability to quickly draft and contextualize written materials within the suite of the project outputs;
• Excellent critical reading comprehension, with the ability to absorb material quickly;
• Attention to detail;
• Strong knowledge of basic HTML;
• Familiarity with common social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube;
• Prior wiki editing experience or a willingness to learn.

Additional Skills/Interests Helpful for This Position:

• Expertise in fields such as digital humanities, library and information science, law, or journalism;
• Media production, including experience recording and/or editing audio and/or video;
• Prior blogging experience;
• Familiarity with WordPress.

The Research Assistant Will Have the Opportunity to:

• Boost his or her research credentials;
• Creatively bridge research and practice;
• Become a key member of the Digital Public Library of America team;
• Participate in the greater Berkman Center community and engage in ongoing dynamic conversations at the forefront of thought on technology and society.

Time Commitment & Payment: RAs work approximately 8-12 hours per week. Compensation is the standard Harvard RA/intern rate of $11.50/hour. No other benefits are provided.

This position is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and remote participation is not possible for this opportunity.

The start date is September 1st, 2011, or as soon as possible.

To apply: Please send your current CV or resume and a cover letter summarizing your interest and experience to Rebekah Heacock at rheacock(at)cyber.law.harvard.edu with “Application for DPLA RA” in the subject line.

Grassley to ABA: I'm Not Going Away That Easily

Senator Charles Grassley is back, asking the ABA follow-up questions based on its response to his previous inquiry.  See my posts, Senator Asks ABA Questions About Scholarships and Debt, and ABA Responds To Senator Grassley for details of the earlier events.  The current letter is polite enough, though his August 9, 2011 press release is called Grassley Pursues Answers After American Bar Association's "Inadequate" Response.  The questions this time are lengthy and contain multiple sub-questions that demand specific answers about ABA policies and attitudes about regulating law schools.

Here is question 1 as an example:

1. The ABA’s report states:

Students are now competing for half as many jobs at top law firms…. Recruitment at many levels of the job market is declining by similar amounts. Although numbers are not available yet, many members of the class of 2010 and 2011 may graduate without a job, and those who are lucky enough to find employment likely will collectively have lower salaries than their predecessors. In short, the job market is more challenging than it has been in many years, as well-paying jobs are in short supply.

a. Given these sobering statistics, are you concerned that graduates will have difficulty paying off their student loans?

b. If so, what proactive steps is the ABA taking to address this problem in order to reduce the taxpayer dollars at risk?

I’m sure the ABA will find a way to express concern about high debt while stating it can’t regulate a law student’s financial decisions.  Or something similar.  Should that be the case, additional questions get to the same point:

7. This section also states, “The purpose of accredited law schools is to graduate attorneys who can serve the justice system and the long term need for lawyers over a lifetime. …[A]djustments in the number of students enrolling in law school to begin their careers cannot and should not be affected by short-range economic developments.” Given the current lack of employment opportunities for attorneys, what economic research has the ABA conducted which shows that there will be a dramatic increase in attorney employment opportunities in the long term?

a. What innovations and changes does the ABA expect to drive this increase?

b. There are many divergent views among economists regarding the current state of our economy and the prospects for an economic recovery. How has the ABA determined that our current economic state falls into the category of “short-range economic developments”?

c. Has the ABA taken steps to prepare for a situation in which our current “economic developments” persist into the long term?

1. If so, what are those steps?

2. If not, why has the ABA decided that this is an unlikely possibility?

I’m not sure how the ABA would respond to this.  The organization really does prefer the status quo when it comes to regulating law schools.  It has worked, from its perspective, for many years.  The ABA’s previous response to Senator Grassley shows that the organization is aware of the current and prospective job outlook for law graduates, though it seems to not want to connect that situation to overseeing law schools.  It’s much more comfortable to focus on square footage, number of seats, student faculty ratio, and other finite categories.  I suspect that the ABA does not want to get underneath the employment statistics reported by each school.  

A case in point is the organization’s reaction to the discovery that Villanova reported fraudulent admission statistics.  The school could have lost its accreditation, though it didn’t.  It got censured, whatever that means, based on the fact that the school corrected the mistake as soon as it became aware of the problem.  The censure notice will appear on the Villanova Law School web site and copies distributed to law school deans.  I’m not being critical of Villanova by any means.  The school did the right thing by investigating and taking action.  I wonder, though, how realistic was the option of a second tier law school losing accreditation?  

By the way, here are the last two paragraphs of the Philadelphia Inquirer story on the Villanova situation:

Villanova's disclosure of falsified admissions data triggered fresh scrutiny of law school statistics. Much of the focus has been on the reported success rate of graduates in finding jobs.

Two ABA committees are examining the employment issue and the reliability of the data. Those examinations are not likely to be as intensive as the review of Villanova and its admissions data.

We want accuracy.  We’ll leave the deeper meaning to someone else.  Maybe the Inquirer got it wrong, but that conclusion had to come from somewhere.

Senator Grassley may want to open a parallel line of inquiry by contacting individual law schools for their opinions on the current economics for law graduates.  How would they like it if an accrediting agency took the law student/graduate economics into account as part of their continued approval to operate?  They have a stake in how the ABA regulates them, though I’m willing to bet that most of them are fine with the current level of oversight.   A deeper review might make some schools uncomfortable.

Keep it up, Senator.  I’m curious how the ABA will respond to your direct inquiry.  The latest letter with all 10 questions is here.  [MG]

Editor's Note: Text of ABA Letter to Villanova (includes text of Censure Notice). See also ABAJ's article, ABA Raps Villanova re Inaccurate Admission Data, Says Law School Must Post Censure Online. [JH]

Paywalls Coming to Main Street Newspapers

Paywalls are coming to small and mid-sized newspapers. paidContent's Laura Hazard Owen reports the online content for 23 of MediaNews Group's newspapers in California, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Massachusetts and Vermont are now behind metered paywalls. The change became effective yesterday. "Readers at the 23 affected newspapers will be able to read five pages of editorial content for free each month before they’re required to subscribe. Print subscribers will pay $1.99 per month or $19.99 per year for online access, while non-print subscribers will pay $5.99 per month or $59.99 per year." Three other small MediaNews Group newspapers were paywalled earlier. Publisher of 57 daily newspapers in 11 states, Owen reports that the online content of Media News Group's larger newspapers remains free. See also Some Lee Papers Adopt Metered Model, Even For Print Subscribers. [JH]

A "Modern" Update by the Folks from the Land of 10,000 Invoices for Modern Tort Law

Quoting from a recent law-lib message:

For those who subscribe to West's Modern Tort Law in paper format, did you get your June update? We just did. We received the new table of contents and revised chapters 6 & 14. But then we opened another box, and instead of the supplement in it, we received all new text and binders with the supplement. The text looks the same as we already have.

Shipping mistake? Watch your monthly statement! Note to self: at the moment, I can't remember if I killed this title last year. WestMart's entry does indicate that the work was supplemented on June 29, 2011 but the ad's filing instructions were only current to the June 2010 supplement when the below screen capture was taken. That would be on August 15, 2011. Do note, however, the title is offered at a discount price. Sometimes that signals something is afoot. Not, it was not yesterday's "Deal of the Day."

Now, I'm not going to disclose the identity of the law librarian who posted this message because he or she probably violated AALL's antitrustism policy by using one of AALL communication mediums for this heads-up. I don't want this person to end up placed on double secret probation by one of our professional association's official Wormers.

"There is a little known codicil... . And that foot is" AALL. [JH]

Double Secret Probation
Animal House — MOVIECLIPS.com

"A picture is worth a thousand words" for illustrating law grads' corporate sector career paths in the "New Normal"

The caption for the image, right, in Vanessa O'Connell's WSJ story, Cut the Law Firms, Keep the Lawyers, reads "Dargie Anderson Bowersock had expected to go to a law firm—the "traditional path"— but now works in H-P's legal department in Palo Alto, Calif."

I know more than a few damn good attorneys who moved to the private sector as assistant GCs after acquiring an equally damn good post-graduate education by practicing at a BigLaw firm. Typically, they accepted positions for one of our law firm's clients. Not a bad thing for client-BigLaw relationships. I'm not sure if any had this career objective but after 3-4-5 years grinding out billable hours back then they were willing to take a pay cut to have a life. I've also known a few partners who made the switch, ones who having served the client well for many years and knew their legal matters so intimately they moved into the office of GC-VP without losing a step -- also not a bad thing for client-BigLaw relationships. Hell, when a former law firm partner who had turned GC-VP was about to retire, it was just a matter of wondering which partner who worked on the client's matters regularly would fill the slot.

That was back in the 1980s but times they sure have changed. Vanessa O'Connell reports on a new trend -- hiring grads right out of law schools, one who have not benefited from the post-graduate education in the practice of law provided by BigLaw firms. Of course, without that education, one that teaches law grads how to actually practice law, the jobs offered by the private sector aren't what they once were.

About this new trend, O'Connell writes:

Companies used to depend on elite law firms to train new lawyers they could bring in-house years down the road.

Now, some are just doing it themselves, hiring directly from law-school campuses rather than recruiting lawyers who had previously spent a few years at a major firm. These companies are growing weary of paying high hourly rates for inexperienced law-firm associates.

Hewlett-Packard Co. was one of the first known companies to bypass law firms in recruiting new lawyers.

"I think it's the wave of the future," said Michael Holston, H-P's general counsel.

Hat tip to Stefan Padfield's Congratulations, You're a Lawyer! on Business Law Prof Blog. [JH]

Opening: Assistant Director for Public Services (Librarian), Charlotte School of Law

Charlotte School of Law (CharlotteLaw) seeks applications for an experienced Assistant Director for Public Services (Librarian). This is a new position due to growth.

CharlotteLaw is the first law school in North Carolina’s most populous city. Booming with economic, commercial and cultural activity, Charlotte is a dynamic community that combines warm Southern hospitality with a modern, world-class city.

The School recently received full American Bar Association (ABA) accreditation in June 2011.  This position will be particularly attractive to candidates seeking a dynamic, changing environment that encourages cultural and creative growth and fosters the same in a rapidly growing staff, faculty, and student body.

The school is a member of The InfiLaw System, a consortium of independent law schools committed to making legal education more responsive to the realities of new career dynamics. Its mission is to establish student-centered, American Bar Association (ABA) accredited law schools in underserved markets that graduate students with practice-ready skills, and achieve true diversity programs aimed at student academic and career success.

Primary Duties & Responsibilities:

• The Assistant Director is primarily responsible for developing library policy and systems affecting all aspects of library service; for planning, implementing, and documenting programs, and for coordinating the work of Public Services, Circulation, and Access Services.
• Works directly with the Assoc. Dean and Assoc. Director in developing, planning, and implementing programs, and library-wide special projects.  Coordinates and oversees the work of Public Services Librarians for reference, short and long term Library projects, technology planning, and information services policy development.  Assists in directing library activities in the Assoc. Dean’s or Assoc. Director’s absence.
• Develops and implement policies and procedures relating to teaching and reference services. Teaches in the LP program and consult with faculty in creating opportunities for teaching and assessing legal research skills.
• Develops training processes for librarians in consultation with the Associate Director for the Library.
• Oversees the recruitment, selection, training evaluation, counseling, and staff development of Public Services personnel including reviewing job descriptions and overseeing the administration of personnel paperwork.  Coordinates with Associate Director in providing professional development opportunities.  Provides assistance to other Public Services managers with personnel administration in their departments and works with staff to resolve problems in Public Services.
• Consults with other key personnel on electronic, Web 2.0 tools, and other media based resources.
• Provides reference assistance at the library’s reference desk, including some evenings and weekends.
• Assists in setting institutional policy for use of information services for faculty, staff, and students.  Investigates, recommends, and assists the Associate Director in the development of new patron and information technology services.
• Is strongly committed to engaging in continuing professional development.
• Other Duties as assigned.

Qualifications, Required:

• Master’s degree from an ALA-accredited library school; J.D. from an ABA- accredited law school
• A minimum of two to three years of progressively responsible experience in at least two of the following areas: management, reference, or electronic resources management; academic law library experience highly desired. This experience should include serving in a supervisory capacity in public services administration.
• Extensive supervisory experience; strong oral and written communications skills; ability to access library trends and create new program initiatives based on those trends; knowledge of database and systems technology; the ability to balance priorities and meet deadlines; customer service orientation and experience; commitment to enhancing service through teamwork and responsiveness to clients; flexibility and enthusiasm.

Salary is commensurate with experience. CharlotteLaw offers a full benefits package. For more information about Charlotte School of Law, please visit www.charlottelaw.edu.

If helping others and working in a dynamic workplace is what you feel passionate about and you are looking for a new challenge and a chance to put your experience to work in an innovative environment – Charlotte School of Law may be the place for you.

Please send a resume, the names of three references (including addresses and phone numbers) to humanresources(at)charlottelaw.edu or via mail to:

Charlotte School of Law
Human Resources
2145 Suttle Avenue
Charlotte, NC, 28208

Charlotte School of Law is an Equal Opportunity Employer.