Law Librarian Blog

EDUCAUSE Policy Analysis of Pending Data Privacy Legislation

EDUCAUSE has released Data Privacy Legislation: An Analysis of the Current Legislative Landscape and the Implications for Higher Education. 18 bills have been introduced in Congress on data privacy.

These privacy bills generally fall into three distinct areas: comprehensive online privacy protection, geolocation and mobile devices, and data security and breach notification. If enacted, many of the bills have implications for data collection, storage, and use that could affect higher education and campus IT operations and academic research.

Hat tip to DigitalKoans. [JH]

Even More Law School Unhappiness

Law schools are easy targets for lawsuits these days, what with students suing their schools for fraud or faculty suing their administrators when collegiality is replaced by bad blood.  One of the latest comes against the University of Pittsburgh, which is being accused of age discrimination.  The case was filed recently by William J. Brown.  He had taught at Pitt since 1968, and was tenured when he left for Duquesne University to become Director of the Graduate Tax Program for the business school.  He was invited back to Pitt in 2006 to fill in for other tax professors who were on leave. 

Brown won the Excellence in Teaching Award on his return.  He expressed an interest in one of the tenure track positions for that opened up for tax instruction, and alleges that he was blocked by administrators who expressed concern that the median age of the faculty had increased.  Pitt hired a much younger person for the tenure track position that Brown wanted.  The result is the lawsuit at hand.

I can’t say whether Brown can prove his allegations.  I’ll point out that if this was in fact a concern, it’s not as if U.S. News has a ranking category for average faculty age.  I doubt that prospective law students care about such things.  I always thought that schools were more concerned about whether their faculty wrote or how many times an article was downloaded from SSRN.  I guess the moral of the story is that once tenure is granted, never let it go. 

More coverage is in the Pittsburg Post-Gazette and the National Law Journal.  [MG]

Creating a Total Package to Compete with Wolters Kluwer in the 21st Century: BLaw+BNA and BGov+BNA in the Specialist Law, Regulatory and Business Marketplace

Assuming a majority of BNA former and current employee-shareholders tender their shares, an assumption that must take into account that many current employees are union-represented, Bloomberg, a company not known for acquiring other companies, will have made its largest acquisition in its history. The $990 million price tag represents 3 times BNA's 2010 revenue of $331 million and a whooping 36 times BNA's 2010 net income of $27.61 million. The share buy-back price for BNA employees and retirees during the Company's most recent opportunity was $17.50. Bloomberg's tender offer share price is $39.50. You can do the math. Should BNA shareholders take the offer made by privately owned Bloomberg? No publicly owned company could or will offer a better premium.

The major media and financial press correctly calls the obvious -- the acquisition of BNA by Bloomberg will beef up Bloomberg Law's legal publishing business. Most, however, point to enhancing BLaw's competitiveness with WEXIS by this acquisition. I don't think so, at least not yet, at least not by this acquisition.

WEXIS is competing in the generalist legal market. BLaw+BNA will offer serious competition to Wolters Kluwer in the premium legal market, that niche market, albeit a large one willing to pay for quality, which offers specialized produces and services to legal, regulatory and business consumers over and above what WEXIS offers. We've always had this bifurcation and now it will continue to exist post-acquisition: TR Legal vs. Lexis and CCH Wolters Kluwer vs. BLaw+BNA.

Whether BLaw likes it or not, and based on conversations with BLaw execs, "not" in terms of characterization, my sense is BLaw's online legal service is primarily viewed by BLaw's current user pop as a premium, specialist service by business and law consumers, a market niche. Like it or not and based on official statements and private conversations with BLaw execs, "not," secondary legal content in print, online and eBooks was needed for BLaw to be a full-fledged player in this market. Bloomberg's tender offer for BNA indicates it has recognized this. Why reinvent the wheel when you can acquire a company that has the catalog and the brand strength needed?

The only observation I read that goes beyond referring to WEXIS in reporting on this potential acquisition is one stated by Reuters Breakingviews' Jeffrey Goldfarb in Bloomberg LP spares no expense on first big deal:

Bloomberg also wants to broaden its power beyond the nation’s financial capital to its political epicenter. It launched Bloomberg Government earlier this year. But employee-owned BNA, started 80 years ago, has already stealthily established clout among lawmakers, regulators and lobbyists. And though its areas of coverage generally represent a departure for Bloomberg, there should be sufficient overlapping interest from its existing audience of financial professionals to help justify the premium.

That's a damn good point and should be factored into the equation: Acquisition = (BLaw+BNA) + (BGov+BNA).

Reportedly, Bloomberg will operate BNA as a standalone subsidiary, at least for now. I doubt that will last very long. It is just a matter of when BNA becomes a "brand" under BLaw (think "Matthew Bender" for Lexis Legal & Profession or "West" for TR Legal, assuming the "West" brand name has any long-term staying power in TR Legal's grand scheme of things) or disappears under the BLaw corporate masthead (think Wolters Kluwer for brands once known as "CCH," "Aspen," etc.). 

What's more important than how the products are branded is the editorial quality provided by BNA. Since the recession hit, the largest employer of laid-off associates in NYC has been BLaw. While they may be damn more qualified than hiring recent law school grads for editorial production, BNA's authorship model -- hire recognized practitioner-experts to write treatises and retain long-term in-house subject experts to produce serial and online editional content -- better be maintained if Bloomberg want to maximize its substantial ROI. 

In addition to acquiring print and online resources, both Bloomberg and BNA brings something valuable to the table. Marketing, a weak point in BNA's corporate structure, could be significantly enhances by a heavy dose of Bloomberg expertise. Sale force, a weak point in BLaw (and BGov), could be significantly improved by a heavy dose of expertize from BNA's account reps.

While we law librarians have a long history of criticizing the consequences of merger mania in the legal publishing industry and rightly so in the context of the anti-competitive consequences of the WEXIS duology in the generalist legal publishing market (sorry TR Legal and Lexis if your egos are bruised), I could not see a long future for BNA as a separate company competing against the likes of Wolters Kluwer. BNA simply does not have the investment capital needed for the 21st century New Normal. Top-notch editorial quality and an experienced sales forces is not enough these days. The specialist legal, regulatory and business market could have ended up having just one player providing the "total package" -- online, print and eBooks -- Wolters Kluwer. Not now; at least not if BLaw+BNA and BGov+BNA garners a majority of BNA employee and retiree owned shares from Bloomberg's tender offer.

One additional consequence not mentioned in the major media is a matter of corporate focus; Wolters Kluwer's Euro-centric focus will have to be adjusted. The Company will have to stop taking its current US subscription base as a given. In other words, a Bloomberg-BNA combination will ratch up competition in the US speciality legal market.

Wait 'n see. The tender offer will begin on Sept. 8. If successful, it will be the end of an era for BNA but the beginning of a new one for Bloomberg. I don't view that as a "bad thing;" I view it as necessary. 2012 could be very interesting. [JH]

For some additional commentary and analysis, see

1. Simon Chester's The Significance of the BNA Purchase on Slaw, and
2. Greg Lambert's Bloomberg Law Finally Steps Off Manhattan on 3 Geeks.

Friday Fun: Congress Considers Cutting 12 States from the Union to Reduce Spending

The Onion News Network's Brooke Alvarez gets reaction from ordinary Americans. [JH]

Girls (Strike out that) Law Profs Gone Wild

The once anonymous "LawProf" blogger of Inside the Law School Scam has identified himself. As most readers of LLB know, Mark Giangrande reported that he is Colorado Law prof Paul Campos. I don't know if the WSJ Law Blog broke the story but Nathan Koppel's interview of Campos with a Aug. 22, 2011 datelined post, A Q&A With the Creator of 'Inside the Law School Scam', probably was the most widely read post:

WSJ: Why have you written the blog anonymously?

Campos: I didn’t want it to degenerate into an ad hominem conversation. I’ve written on many controversial subjects and have gotten vociferous criticism from authority figures. I wrote an article in The New Republic about how law schools are cooking their employment statistics.

WSJ: Why did you eventually decide to offer hints about your identity?

Campos: It is ironic but my anonymity had given rise to a junior high “Gossip Girl” contest of figuring out who I was, which was even more detrimental to actual debate than straight, ad hominem invective.

Noting that some law prof-bloggers intended to find the information needed to "out" him, Campos recognized his days of anonymity were numbered. In Anonymity, the critical perspective, and taking things personally, Campos wrote on August 19, 2011:

Anonymity isn't my style (this blog is the first anonymous thing I've ever published , and I've published a lot), but I thought I would give it in a try in this context, for at least a little while, as a kind of stylistic experiment.  Anyone who does genuinely critical work soon learns that the classic knee-jerk response on the part of those who don't like the criticism is to attack the messenger rather than the message.  So I thought it be worth authoring this blog more or less anonymously, at least for awhile, to try to keep the focus on the substantive criticisms. I also didn't want to give the impression that these criticisms are directed at my law school in particular: they most certainly aren't. I'm talking about systemic and structural failures, rather than those of particular institutions (let alone particular individuals).

But the law school world being what it is, this has proven more difficult to do than I anticipated.  Law students and lawyers are all familiar with the kind of emotional regression that tends to take place in law school, where the social atmosphere often resembles a particularly gossip-ridden junior high school (Indeed one of my most strident public critics has constructed an entire legal academic career around trafficking in junior-high level gossip). So I'm not sure how much longer maintaining formal anonymity will make sense in the context of this project.

That said, it's still striking how much law professors personalize criticisms that are in no real sense personal, but rather systemic. If most law school teaching is bad and most legal scholarship worthless this can hardly be a result of anything but the results of a system that takes lots of bright, ambitious, otherwise-accomplished people and turns a very large number of them into bad teachers and poor (or perhaps more accurately pseudo-) scholars. If, under present circumstances, we law professors as a group are in many ways scamming our students, that isn't because law professors just happen to be people of poor moral character, but rather because we have, despite our best intentions, ended up embedded in a scam-like social structure.

On Content in the Law Prof Blogosphere. I've read some but certainly not all of the posts critical of the content published in Inside the Law School Scam including posts by law profs who think blogging has no scholarly value but proceed to criticize Campos for being unscholarly. I've also read some of the blog posts Campos published as "LawProf."

So let's just recognize what the content of Inside the Law School Scam is -- it is commentary authored by one law prof who has been a member of the legal academy for a sufficient length of time to have a first-hand perspective to speak his personal opinion about his profession and its institutional setting. Like many of his cohorts, Campos has been a law prof for two decades and joined the legal academy after a very brief stint practicing law.

In any newspaper, the content of his blog posts would be found under the heading of "columnist,"signaling think-pieces in the op-ed section. If "blogging is thinking out loud," which in my opinion, that is all it is, one law prof's commentary and opinions on the legal academy as he sees it. I can think of no law prof blogger critical of Campos who has not also engaged in such activity in the law prof blogosphere.

On Aug. 20, 2011, Campos wrote in An apology:

The whole point of this blog is to help continue a conversation that should have started much sooner than it did about the financial viability, educational and professional value, and ethical status of contemporary legal education.  This is a conversation that requires contributions from all parts of the legal profession in general, and the legal academy in particular, and again, it is heartening to note that, despite the substantive disagreements which exist on these subjects -- which are of course considerable -- and whatever reservations people may have about matters of tone and professional etiquette, that conversation is starting to take place in a sustained and serious way.  (I chose initial anonymity in an effort to keep the argument focused on the substance of the debate, rather than on the hierarchical status and personal qualities of those participating in it.)

Anonymous Commentary in the Law Prof Blogosphere. A comment to Mark's LLB post observed:

So far, most of the arguments against Campos simply say "he's a jerk." I still haven't seen much in the way of substantive engagement with the issues he raises.

Yup. I personally think choosing to post anonymously was a distraction from responsing to Campos' commentary with law prof blogging reply-back commentary. In An apology, Campos adds "it's good to see that in just the last day a couple of law professors whose work regarding problems in contemporary legal education I was already familiar with, and admire, have engaged substantively with issues I'm discussing." Unfortunately, prior to revealing his identity, that was not the typical law prof blogoshere reaction.

Campos joined the legal academy some two decades ago after a brief stint practicing law. He fits the typical tenured law prof profile of his generation. He could sview the hue and cry about the legal academy not producing "practice ready" graduates as a threat to the status quo but he does not.

In The Tenured Law Prof Turned ‘Scamblogger’ Reveals Himself, it sounds like ATL's David Lat wants to elevate Campos to hero status.

Should Professor Campos’s authorship of Inside the Law School Scam come as a surprise? In hindsight, perhaps not. The universe of law professors writing negatively about the legal academy is not huge. For a law prof, saying that the status quo in legal education has problems constitutes a declaration against interest.

Some commenters on our prior post mentioned Professor Brian Tamanaha, who wrote this critique of legal education, “Wake Up, Fellow Law Professors, to the Casualties of Our Enterprise.” Aside from Professor Tamanaha, the other major critic of the law school system — and by “major critic” I mean “major critic,” not someone arguing that the current scheme is imperfect and needs some minor tweaking — would be Paul Campos.

Yes, Tamanaha has repeated criticized the legal academy and in additional posts. See for example the following:

Are Law Professors "Selfless" Teachers and Scholars Engaged in "Public Service"? The Fight Against Change in Law Schools (March 30, 2011){"Frankly, these claims about what we do as law professors are embarrassing. I'm not selfless. Exceedingly few of the many law professors I know strike me as selfless. This is a fantastic job, for which we are generously compensated. Law school deans--many of whom earn between $200,000 and $400,000--are definitely not selfless. We don't model selflessness for our students. And the truth, contrary to Hansen's above assertion, is that many law professors engage in scant interaction with law students, so we do very little modeling of any kind outside of the classroom.")

The Irresponsibility of Law Schools (Oct. 18, 2010) (Law schools thus responded to the worst recession in the legal market in at least two decades by letting in more law students.)

Tamanaha's posts fall into the category of "commentary" about the current state of affairs in the legal academy, critical commentary. But other law profs have done the same and not merely in the vein of "minor tweaking." (Citations omitted but a sampling can be found under the Law School News & Reviews and Law Firm News & Views tags for LLB posts.)

Campos identifies several additional law profs in Law school politics and the English language. However, I disagree with his assessment that "the number of law professors who were talking about these issues in any sort of serious and sustained way could be counted on the fingers of one hand." Since the MacCrate Report, Roy Stuckey et al., Best Practices for Legal Education: A Vision and a Road Map (Clinical Legal Education Association, 2007) and particularly the Carnegie Foundation's Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law (2007), the issue of legal education reform has been a topic of much debate in the law prof blogoshere as well as in the legal literature (mass media and law journal articles). The critical chorus is substantially louder than the apologists for the status quo who appear to be hiding in their offices under their desks hoping this controversy will just wither away. And it might if it is left to the ABA law school accreditation czars. But see, Mark Giangrande's post, Grassley to ABA: I'm Not Going Away That Easily and my Who Ultimately is Master of the Domain? (ABA responds to Senator Boxer's request for information).

Lat writes "How are Professor Campos’s fellow law professors reacting? We’ve collected some links at the end of this post. It’s fair to say, though, that the general consensus is negative, at least among law profs. (Not surprisingly, law students and practicing lawyers, like Scott Greenfield, feel differently.)" ATL also launched a poll asking readers about their opinion about Professor Campos "aka LawProf of Inside the Law School Scam." Not surprisingly, 75% view Campos favorably or very favorably.

Is "Thinking Out Loud" in the Blogosphere Heroic? However, Lat appears to want to make Campos out to  be some sort of "major critic." I don't think so. In this case ATL needs to do its homework. Just because ATL finds a kindred spirit for its own criticism of the legal academy, doesn't make Campos heroic. Do note, I do not recall Campos ever claiming this status in any Inside the Law School Scam posts I have read. Campos has even admitted that he is a late arrival to the party debate about reforming legal education:

I certainly never intended to give the impression that I was the first person in the legal academy to raise these issues. (Indeed, as I've noted a couple of times, until about 18 months ago I was embarrassingly clueless about many of the most basic economic facts regarding law school budgets, student debt loads, and the employment situation for recent graduates, even at my own school).

Also note, some of the law prof bloggers criticizing Campos have also b-slapped ATL around a time or two or three. Personally I find both blogs interesting reading if their content is accepted as intended, namely commentary.

Law profs are an opinionated lot and by that I mean they have opinions about many matters outside their special areas of legal expertise. I think it comes from being practitioners of critical analysis. Certainly one area of expertise is could be law school administration; the policies and decisions made in the context of law faculty being some form of self-governance. Some, many, whatever, law profs like to think they are running the show, at least until they are criticized for the status quo. Campos readily admits to being clueless about such matters until some 18 months ago. Ah, that would be about the time the ABA started reviewing accreditation standards.

In A Few Thoughts on “LawProf” and Law School Scam Blogs, Orin Kerr writes

The law school scam blogs often overlook the important difference between a law school’s administration and its teaching faculty, and their arguments sometimes miss the mark because of it. In my view, the blogs have some legitimate complaints about the lack of transparency at some law schools; of the way scholarships are structured; and the way tuition is set. Those are important issues. We should talk more about them. But for the most part, decisions about those issues are made by the law school administration instead of the teaching faculty.

...

Building on [the] above, I think the scam blogs should see professors as natural allies on these issues instead of natural enemies. Some of the blogs envision professors as enemies because the professors seem to have a sweet life and students aren’t finding jobs. They reason that professors are scamming students by getting their sweet life based on the students’ suffering. But many of the students are suffering right now mostly because of the weak economy for lawyers. The professors don’t control that economy today any more than they controlled it five years ago when the economy for lawyers was booming.

More broadly, I think there’s less of a gap between the interests of the professors and the students than the blogs imagine. A lot of the professors share the same concerns that the students do. They want law school to be the best value, and to give the best education, and to train students to get the best careers. They’re frustrated by the status quo, and they want to they are open to new ways of doing business. Setting up a bogus faculty-vs-students narrative draws eyeballs to a blog. But it also alienates the group that is most able and willing to enact reforms that could actually improve things.

So here we have a statement of deflection based on some sort of misunderstanding about who really runs the legal academy. It's not law profs; its their appointed deans and university administrators. Kerr is a pretty smart law prof, one who routinely expresses his own opinions frankly on the one of the best damn law prof blogs, The Volokh Conspiracy. Perhaps, he has never voted "yes" to increasing the the number of tenure or tenure-track faculty slots at his law school or at least has never voted "yes" because he was motivated to reduce the all important faculty-to-student ratio metric used in the US News rankings. But "setting up a bogus faculty-vs-students narrative [that] draws eyeballs to a blog," really? The Volokh Conspiracy is one of the most eyeballed blogs in the law prof blogoshere planet. It is not topic-specific and can be a vehicle for discussing this issue, one that would be widely read,

"Alienating" Potential Law Prof Allies, Really? Kerr explains

Students may not be fully aware of the difference between the administration and teaching faculty, but it’s a pretty important one. If you’ll let me paint with a very broad brush, the Dean and Associate Deans run the law school and determine the school’s policies while the professors teach their classes, grade their exams, and write their articles. The kinds of law school policies attacked by the scam blogs are mostly in the realm of law school administration. The professors who make up the teaching faculty usually learn about these things when they read them in the New York Times or Above the Law just like everybody else. That doesn’t mean the professors should escape criticism. But there’s a big difference between the guilt of creating a bad policy and the guilt of not learning that the policy exists where you work.

Campos picks up on Kerr's post in To what extent are law faculty innocent bystanders?:

This is, as far as it goes, a fair point.  But how far does it really go? That comes down to the answer to the question of the extent to which this arrangement -- in which law school deans make, in conjunction with university central administration, most of the big decisions about the cost structure of legal education, while in effect telling the faculty not to worry our pretty little heads about such things -- is something that's imposed on faculty, as opposed to chosen by them, if only by passivity and inertia.

In a nutshell, Campos is telling his colleagues, "time to wake up from your dogmatic slumber!" While admitting that he too has been slumbering. If law profs truely are allies, get over being "alienated" and assume responsiblity.

There Are No Innocent Bystanders. As I have mentioned before, I believe "'truth" is an existential process of unveiling. It is not what one person says. It is the result of exchanging full and frank professional opinions publicly available for all to read... . It is the result of the disclosure of issues that must be addressed and are addressed by multiple professional assessments. There are no innocent bystanders. People will be held accountable for their institution's behavior, their own statements or lack thereof and their own behavior, or lack thereof. We all have seen this regularly in the context of AALL and vendors but it is not an isolated example. It is also present in the legal academy and its accreditating body with respect to changing a model for legal education that was established and institutionalized in the late 19th century and has gone to such extremes that it is no longer relevant but still entrenched in the 21st century.

Folks can marshall empirical evidence for either side of the legal education reform argument "objectively" (assuming ELS scholars know the limitations of their stats -- some do, some don't; Bill Henderson, for one, does a damn good job on this topic) but writers can publish commentary based on their perspectives which also contribute to the process of unveiling.

Law Profs Gone Wild. Campos is thinking out loud in the blogosphere. I agree that there have been some ad homenim attacks about what he has written in the law prof blogosphere. It's law profs gone wild time as they too think out loud. This reaction is the sort of stuff anyone who has worked in the legal academy knows goes on in the faculty lounge all the time.

A fair amount of the negative law prof reaction to what Campos is saying is because of how he is saying it. In Law school politics and the English language Campos responds:

One thing that has displeased a number of my colleagues throughout the legal academy is what they consider the excessively shrill tone of some of my posts, which have lacked that delicacy and circumspection that marks a well-bred gentleman's discourse, whenever he engages in the unpleasant task of suggesting that all might not be for the best in this the best of all possible worlds.

...

In a crisis of the magnitude to which legal academia is suddenly awakening (one which, of course, law school graduates have been keenly aware of for years now, including well before the present recession, as many of the comments on this blog attest) there is a place for dispensing with intellectual circumlocution, and simply saying things in a straightforward fashion, even though toes will be stepped on and egos will be bruised.

Is there anything wrong will a full and frank conversation? I certainly don't think so. Let's just say that Campos is not following the passive-aggressive behaviorial norm expected from members of the legal academy.

In the WJS Law Blog interview, the following question was asked and answered by Campos:

WSJ: Which of your posts have attracted the most criticism?

Campos: Among academics, the posts about how bad most legal scholarship is. Most law faculties have a lot of people who are reputedly lawyer academics, but they are neither. They know very little about the practice of law and they are not trained as academics in anything like an adequate fashion to do serious academic work. You have something that is neither less filing nor tastes great. So, students end up paying a lot for something they are not getting: an intellectually rigorous experience. Of course, I’m not saying that there are no good academics or lawyers in American law schools.

I'm thinking that struck a nerve with those law profs still enjoying their dogmatic slumber. But, if so, his response resonates with members of the bench and bar who find law journal scholarly publications irrelevant and debt-laden law school grads wondering why they are not "practice ready."

If one views Inside the Law School Scam as commentary, then the content of the posts can be thought-provoking. See, for example:

• The Road to Serfdom (Aug. 24, 2011)
• To what extent are law faculty innocent bystanders? (Aug. 23, 2011)
• Legal academia and the problem of bad faith (Aug. 22, 2011)

Ah well, once again welcome to the law prof blogosphere, Professor Campos, As the World Turns: Welcome to the Blogosphere Inside the Law School Scam. [JH]

Opening: Director, Harris County Law Library, Houston

Harris County Law Library: The Director of the Harris County Law Library is responsible for the administration of the Harris County Law Library which is located at 1019 Congress in downtown Houston, Texas. It serves the judges, attorneys, and litigants of Harris County, Texas. Harris County is the third largest county in the United States. The Law Library has a current staff of eight, and a current annual budget of about $1.5 million. It is a division of the Harris County Attorney’s Office, which provides general oversight and interaction with other county departments including the Budget Office and Commissioners Court. The Director is a practice group level manager in the Office of the County Attorney, participates in County Attorney manager meetings, and reports to the Chief of Staff for the County Attorney.

Duties:  Responsibilities include, but are not limited to, managing the overall operation of the Harris County Law Library, long-range strategic planning, budget development and implementation, acquisition of legal subscriptions and new technologies, supervision of the library staff, and management of the day-to-day operations of the Law Library.The Director will be expected to:Develop and facilitate relationships between relevant stakeholders, including government officials, other law libraries, and local bar associations; Maintain a modern, high quality library that serves both lawyers and non-lawyers with a proper balance between electronic and non-electronic resources; Publicize and promote the Law Library; Oversee training programs for the public, including lawyers and non-lawyers.

Qualifications:  Applicants should have a Masters Degree in Information or Library Science from an ALA accredited graduate school and a J.D. Degree from an ABA accredited law school. Excellent analytical, organizational, interpersonal, oral and written communication skills, a customer-service orientation, and strong people-skills in interacting both with patrons and staff are essential to be successful on the job.

Salary: Depending on experience and qualifications. Includes standard Harris County employee  benefits.

Closing Date: Open until filled. To ensure consideration, submit resume by September 15, 2011

Application Procedure: Please submit your resume via email to:

Robert W. Soard
Chief of Staff/ Executive Assistant County Attorney
Office of Vince Ryan Harris County Attorney
1019 Congress, 15th Floor
Houston, Texas 77002
Phone: (713) 755-3489
Fax: (713) 755-1553
Email: robert.soard(at)cao.hctx.net

Google Drops Some Content and Search Features

Google has made a number of quiet de-enhancements to its news and search services recently.  One, highlighted by ebrandz.com is that the Google News Archives search is no longer available as a direct search, nor will there be any new content added to the project.  Google had digitized many old newspapers from microform and offering them as free search results.  The content that currently exists should still be available through a general search and through the Advanced Search option in Google News.  The latter offers a search box option retrieve articles against a date range.

The Genealogy In Time website laments the loss for obvious reasons, and puts the blame on a combination of complaints from newspaper publishers and a shift of publishers to the Apple iPad platform.  Never mind that much of this material is not in copyright any more.  The site suggests that anyone who knows a newspaper by name and date can use this page to browse.  Some of the content goes way back.  Issues of the Glasgow Herald start at January 17, 1806 and end at February 17, 1990.  That's 42,868 issues.  Results appear as resizeable images.  The quality of each image, not unexpectedly, varies, though most are readable.  Anyone who has ever used microforms of older documents would not be surprised at this.  Google does have a link on the page where users can flag images as unreadable.  I'm not sure that would mean anything now with the discontinuance of the archive project.  It is, as they say, better than nothing.

Another search enhancement that seems to have disappeared is Google Government search.  There was a dedicated search page that was hardly promoted by Google at the url http://www.google.com/unclesam that now redirects back to the main search page.  It was useful as the native search in some government web sites is woefully inadequate for finding materials.  I'm talking to you FCC, FTC, et al.  Google Government search was a nice alternative that weeded out the non-government junk.  The alternative now is to use the Advanced Search page and limit search to a specific domain such as .gov or fcc.gov.  

While we're on the subject of advanced search in Google, note that the option for Advanced Search no longer appears on the main Google page.  You can still get there by going to http://www.google.com/advanced_search.  The option still appears next to the search box on a results page for a previous search.  Advanced Search has been vastly dumbed down simplified in its filtering options, suggesting that Google thinks its omnivorous general search is good enough.  The filter that limits search by domain or site is still there for the time being.  I'm not sure I would call any of this progress.  [MG]

Bloomberg To Acquire BNA!

I've written that I thought Bloomberg Law should acquire BNA. In Philly, I even asked BLaw execs if I would get a "finder's fee" if "we could make that happen," LOL. It just makes sense. BNA only has about 1% of the world market and Bloomberg Law is light on secondary legal literature. Its topical analytical reports were replicating what BNA has done for years and BNA's treatises are "quality-proven" by being written by practitioners who have a vested interest in "getting it right" because their reputations are on the line (and oftentimes with supplements drafted by ABA sections; unlike "By Editorial Staff" working in an information factory) in business and law practice areas BLaw is targeting for its online user pop. So two premium legal publishers are joined as one. Too soon to say what will happen to BNA but not too soon to say, watch out Wolters Kluwer, your world has changed! 

Greg Lambert is I think the first to report in the law librarian blogosphere that Bloomberg is going to acquire BNA for $990 Million. Well, damnit all to hell, there goes my retirement nestegg! See Greg's posts, Bloomberg & BNA — Q&A's Related to Acquisition and Breaking News: Bloomberg is Acquiring BNA for $990 Million for details. [JH]

Friday Fun on Thursday: Because my head is in the cloud and I forgot what I was going to blog about today

From The Colbert Report: "Technology turns people into empty flesh terminals that rely on it for all their ideas, memories and relationships." [JH]

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Opening: Electronic Legal Information Specialist, Bilzin Sumberg, Miami, FL

Description: Bilzin Sumberg Baena Price & Axel is seeking a tech savvy Legal Information Specialist with strong interpersonal skills.  Reporting to the Director of Library and Knowledge Management, the successful candidate will conduct basic legal research as well as advise and assist in developing and maintaining the Library's technology applications.

The ideal candidate will be responsible for a multitude of duties, including but not limited to:

• Content entry, maintenance, and continued development of key areas of the firm's SharePoint Portal
• Training and promoting efficient use of research tools including, Westlaw, WestKM, Westcheck, Onelog and the firm's SharePoint Portal
• Responding to patron requests by identifying and locating information to meet their needs, including analysis and synthesis information to solve problems under tight deadlines and fluctuating work loads
• Troubleshooting and monitoring electronic library resources usage and providing reports using Onelog password and resource management system
• Coordinating vendor trainings and demonstrations
• Receiving/Processing library mail, routing library materials
• Performing and understanding all duties of the library staff including Cataloging, Interlibrary loan, Serials (EOS Library system)
• Providing monthly reports of library metrics in key areas
• Providing back-up for due diligence research librarian

Desired Education, Skills and Experience:

• Masters degree in Library and Information Science from a program accredited by the American Library Association
• Strong Technical Skills
• Excellent organizational skills, attention to detail and strong written and oral communication skills
• Experience with basic legal research
• Knowledge of EOS library catalog
• Experience and familiarity with use of document management systems and knowledge management
• Proficient in Microsoft Office and SharePoint applications
• Experience working in a law library/corporate library setting preferred

Competitive Salary and Relocation Assistance Available 

Read more about the library here.

Interested candidates should submit a resume, cover letter and salary requirements to Jackie Fleites, Director of Human Resources, at jfleites(at)bilzin.com.

Should The Legal Profession Be Deregulated?

An opinion piece called Time to Deregulate the Practice of Law (subscription) appeared in the Wall Street Journal on Sunday.  It was written by Clifford Winston and Robert W. Crandall.  Winston is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution while Crandall is a nonresident fellow there in the Economic Studies Program.  Crandall is probably better known as the former president, chief executive officer, and chairman of the board of the AMR Corporation, parent of American Airlines.  

Both argue that the market for legal services would be better served if occupational licensing for legal services were removed.  The costs for legal services would drop because of competition, as would the cost of acquiring a legal background.  That legal background would not necessarily come from law schools.  It could come from vocational programs, or at least some form of general awareness.  They point to LegalZoom as one example where online automation conveniently takes the place of an expensive consultation in a law office.  I agree that there are simple document preparation mechanisms that can reduce legal costs and work for many individuals who want to use such a service.  The rest of their argument gives me pause.

The essay implies that anyone with enough knowledge should be able to provide legal services.  The mechanisms to becoming a lawyer, three years of law school plus the bar exam, is too expensive and keeps prices for legal services artificially high.  Competition for education and services would change all that.  Accounting firms, management consulting agencies, investment banks should all be able to offer legal services.  The consequence is lower prices an innovation in delivering legal services.  What about the possibility that the legal profession would be filled with the unscrupulous or the incompetent?  Not to worry:

Large companies seeking advice in complex financial deals would still look to established lawyers, most of whom would probably be trained at traditional law schools but may work for a corporation instead of a law firm. 

I don’t know if I’m reading the implication correctly.  Are they suggesting that commercial interests would want an established lawyer, trained and certified for their legal affairs, while everyone else makes do with the quality they can afford, or not?  I suppose on the positive side the rest of us would have more choice.

As I’ve said earlier, I don’t have a problem with opening up some simple legal services to automation.  LegalZoom works because the documents it offers are legally vetted even in their generic form.  The company was started by Robert Schapiro, of OJ Simpson fame.  I have even less of a problem off-loading consultation and simple legal tasks to non-lawyer legal professionals.  Many people point to nurse-practitioners handling some routine medical requests in that profession.  However, nurse-practitioners are certified.  They prepare for their careers through certified programs.

I can’t see deregulating the legal services industry without establishing a floor of competence that certification provide.  Cosmetologists have to be licensed in most states, why not the non-lawyer legal professional.  I’m not comfortable at all with letting the market decide this one.  I’m not sure judges would care to hold a non-law school advocate to a lesser standard of representation in court.  Consider how the deregulated market would handle ethical obligations and, more particularly, legal malpractice.  I think West would have to add new topics and key numbers to handle the malpractice suits.  There is a lot more to opening up the legal profession than saying it should be deregulated.  Especially when the those saying it suggest they would rather use a traditional lawyer in such a market.  [MG]

Legal Research Fantasies: Finding the Answer and Saving Time

On 3 Geeks, Greg Lambert takes exception to what Rich King, TR CTO, says at the 42 second mark in the below video. King states

One page from one jurisdiction may be exactly what that attorney is looking for that allows them to win the case. And, if they can't find it, you haven't done your job.

Greg was not criticizing TR Legal's feel-good video per se. It is a more general critique about legal research expections. He writes in There's One Page, In One Jurisdiction, That Will Win Your Case – Go Find It or Lose!:

the thing that does worry me about fact-based inquiries and processes is the idea that if you don't find that "one page" in that "one jurisdiction" then the idea is that "you haven't done your job." That just seems like a very high-bar to hold up for the legal profession. If we are teaching our law students, Summer and Fall Associates, our Paralegals, and our Legal Research Professionals the idea that they must find that one case in that one jurisdiction, then we are setting them up for failure.

The Fantasy of Finding "The Answer." I certainly agree. It is pretty damn rare that one will find something completely on point in one document, be it primary or secondary literature in law. Legal research is a cumlative process of knitting together authorities to craft a legal argument. This one "page-one jurisdiction-one answer" notion makes me think the TR Legal's feel-good video presents a fantasy that legal research and analysis is akin to hard science research in physics, chemistry and biology.  Of course, it comes no where close to that. Perhaps TR CTO Rich King needs to read E. Scott Fruehwald's Legal Skills Prof Blog post, Five Methods of Legal Reasoning. The thought processes identified are part of the research process. 

The Fantasy of Advertised Time-Savings. There is no getting around the reality that legal research is a time-consuming process even in the context of online legal search. "You can spend less time researching and more time lawyering" if you believe WLN's marketing pablum. A lot less time researching if you believe TR Legal's advertized survey findings. Check out the huge percentage difference. 

But take note, TR Legal's in-house produced survey finding is refering to single digit minutes saved for very short (as in 10 minute or so) research sessions. When was the last time, any professional, lawyer or librarian, spend so little time performing legal research in the real world?

Was TR Legal's surveyed research issues intentionally designed to find that "one page from one jurisdiction" for the always hoped for but almost never found citation to something that hit all four corners of the square needed to produce a definitive answer to the research question by citing just one source? What utter nonsense. [JH]

LegalZoom To Settle Unauthorized Practice of Law Class Action Case

The big showdown in Missouri over whether LegalZoom is liable for the unauthorized practice of law via its documents service is turning into a big letdown, assuming that one wants to see some precedent in this type of case.  The class action case, brought by customers of LegalZoom who allege, by the way, no harm from using the service, is on the verge of settlement.  No terms are announced, but David Butsch LegalZoom's counsel was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying the settlement would compensate LegalZoom's customers in Missouri without changing it's business practices in that state.  Sounds as if the company is buying off the plaintiffs.  

I can only wonder how this settlement will stop any other enterprising attorney from attempting to shake down the company for cash with a future suit.  We'll see if the settlement extinguishes future claims of unauthorized legal practice.  [MG]

Are BigLaw Firms Gaming AmLaw Rankings?

We all know that some, many, most, whatever, law schools game placement stats for US News Law School Rankings but Citi Private Bank Law Firm Group is reporting that more than half of the nation’s top 50 law firms could be overstating profits per partner to the American Lawyer magazine.

ABAJ's Debra Cassens Weiss is reporting that "[a]n analysis by Citi Private Bank Law Firm Group reportedly found that 22 percent of the top 50 firms overstated profits per partner by more than 20 percent in 2010, the newspaper says. Another 16 percent inflated partner profits by 10 to 20 percent, and 15 percent boosted partner profits by 5 percent to 10 percent." See Are BigLaw Firms Inflating Partner Profits? Citigroup Unit Reportedly Finds Fudging (citing to the WSJ's paywalled article, Law Firms' Profits Called Inflated: Tallies by a Citigroup Unit Come in Lower Than American Lawyer's Measure). [JH]

Will ePUB3 Lead to the Enhanced eBook?

The enhanced eBook, by which I mean an interactive product that seemlessly integrates embedded audio, video and applications related to content contextually, will make current eBook offerings obsolute at least with respect to professional and educational eBook literature. ePub has become the defacto format standard. Will the forthcoming ePub3 spec advance the goal of transforming the eBook?

Eric Fresse, a member of the EPUB3 Working Group, writes

With speculation abounding since the introduction of the spec in the spring of this year, publishers have been waiting to see what’s really possible with EPUB3 — and what reading systems will support it.

To help manage expectations and alleviate confusion, I’ve provided a brief snapshot of some of the spec‘s new features, as well as what publishers can do to start preparing for them, and notes of caution as to what may, or may not, be available in EPUB3 reading systems.

Also of interest to law librarians, I think. For details see Fresse's Breaking it Down: the ePub 3 Spec post on Digital Book World. See also Keith Fahlgren, Fighting Complexity in EPUB 3: Modularization and Delegation, Journal of Electronic Publishing, vol. 14, no. 1, Summer 2011. [JH]

Law Faculty Highest Paid on Average in Academia

The Chronicle of Higher Education has published its latest survey on academics and wouldn’t you know it, law faculty members are the highest paid of all the disciplines listed.  The average salary of a full professor is $134,162.  The next highest figure comes from the ranks of engineering with an average salary of $114,365.  While it may pay to teach someone how to build a bridge, it is apparently more lucrative to teach someone how to sue the bridge maker for design defects when it falls down. 

Library Science faculty members comparatively earn $92,099.  Of the five categories listed, Full Professor, Associate Professor, New Assistant Professor, and Instructor, only faculty who teach business, management, marketing, and related support services get more at the Assistant Professor level, $87,248 to $84,374.  The figures, by the way, are averaged for 9 or 10 month contracts.  The full list of salary information by discipline and rank is here.

The number of degrees awarded in legal professions and studies grew 95% between the 1998-99 and 2008-09 academic years.  Library Science saw no growth over the 10 years listed.  The full list of programs and their degree numbers is here.

While we are on the subject of law faculty and what they earn for what they do, or how little of it they do, the anonymous faculty member who created the Inside the Law School Scam is no longer anonymous.  The author is Paul Campos of the University of Colorado Law School.  More on that from the ABA Journal and the TaxProf Blog.  See Joe's post As the World Turns:  Welcome to the Blogosphere Inside the Law School Scam for additional details.  [MG]

Is the Teaching Law Firm a Way to Produce "Practice Ready" Law School Grads?

The teaching law firm is a proposal offered by Bradley T. Borden, (Brooklyn Law School) and Robert J. Rhee (Univ. of Maryland School of Law) in The Law School Firm [SSRN] 63 South Carolina Law Review (forthcoming 2011). The authors propose that law schools can address the widespread criticism that the legal academy does not produce "practice ready" graduates by establishing affiliated law firms. From the article:

The basic idea is simple. A law school can establish a law firm that is separate and distinct from the law school. The law school firm will be a professionally-managed, revenue-generating, non-profit law firm. The CEO will be an experienced attorney with proven legal and business-development skills, who is committed to the profession and active in the legal community. The firm will hire several senior attorneys, each to manage a different practice group. The senior attorneys will be experienced attorneys with business-development and management skills, a public-service mentality, and commitment to the profession. As needed, the firm will hire more experienced attorneys to work under the practice-group managers, service clients, participate in business development, and train resident or provisional‖ attorneys.

The law school law firm operates just as any private law firm would. Although the law school firm would be non-profit organization, it would be non-profit as a matter of legal status and end motive. It should generate revenue and be self-funding (after perhaps an initial support from the law school and an organization period). This means that the law firm must find clients and source revenue just as a private firm would. The law school would be the economic owner of the law firm, and it may have profit allocation arrangements, but there would be a separation of ownership and control. We understand that this may require changes in the rules of professional responsibility regarding the sharing of fees with a non-attorney; there would be issues of accreditation; and there may be tax implications. These are also entrenched interests and concepts, and minds are not easily changed.

Two Models for the Teaching Law Firm. The authors offer two models: (1) two years of legal education with a third year attending the law-school law firm similar to the UK apprenticeship system and (2) one based on the US medical school model with three years of legal education that offers slots in the law-school law firm to select students.

Law schools may adopt one of several different law school models. Some law schools can provide the traditional three-year track and offer slots in the law firm to select students. Other law schools may provide an alternative law school firm track. Under the three-year model, the law school old offer practice-focused and advanced substantive courses. Members of the law school firm would help with instruction in the third-year courses. The practice-focused courses would available to students who intended to continue with the law school firm following graduation as resident attorneys and to students who intended to pursue other opportunities. Resident attorneys will commit to several years of work at the law firm.

Under the two-year model, law students would take a two-year curriculum that is largely the required curriculum at most law schools plus a few electives. It takes two years to develop essential skills: legal research and writing, ability to read case law and statutes, and construct an understanding of entire legal doctrines. Upon acquisition of these essential skills, a student can transfer to the law school firm to work under contract for a fixed period, perhaps three to six years after which time a provisional attorney should be prepared to begin a law practice or join another firm. Such an arrangement would be strictly in and out‖ meaning that the law school firm would not be an indefinite career option. In the firm, post-graduate law students, so to speak, would work as a provisional attorney‖ supervised by a permanent senior staff. Since the firm must be profitable and self-funding, we envision a traditional pyramidal structure of junior attorneys working under a small group of senior attorneys.

The authors offer the graphic, above right (click to enlarge), to illustrate the relationship between the law school and the law school firm.

The Economics of the Teaching Law Firm. Economic considerations abound. "Law schools and their faculties have deeply entrenched self-interest in not losing revenue," write the authors. The profits generated by the teaching law firm would have to flow back to the legal academy to compensate for lost tuition revenue. 

Under either the three- or two-year model, schools and students stand to gain economically. The law school firm should be self-funding and should strive to generate profit, which can flow back to the law school, legal education, or professional development. We don’t know whether there can be a precise one-for-one matching of lost tuition revenue with profit flow back under the two-year model, but that would be the minimum goal. Greater profit can flow back to the law school for its uses, or be plowed back into the law school firm for business or professional development.

There are obvious economic considerations for law students as well. Under the two-year model, students do not pay tuition during their third year of training. Instead they work as provisional attorneys earning a trainee’s salary commensurate with their level of knowledge (very low) and skill level (beginner). Lost tuition revenue for law schools and opportunity cost for law students can be offset by profitable law practice that delivered legal training and legal services. Under the three-year model, resident attorneys would start at salaries that are higher than those paid to provisional attorneys but below those paid at traditional firms. The law school firm would be attractive to students who recognize that several years at the law school firm will enhance their professional competency and outfit them with practice skills that will provide them with independence in the future.

Show Me the Money. And then there is start-up costs. If "owned" by the law school, the teaching law firm will have to financed by the law school with good old-fashioned cash. The authors do not address the matter in any costs specificity in their thought piece. Certainly such issues needed to be address would include: compensation for the practicing attorneys, office space, administrative and support staff, IT infrastructure, legal research resources, productivity "solutions" offered by vendors, malpractice insurance, marketing, etc. Some of the costs can be capitalized, some cannot. The size of the teaching law firm legal staff (practicing attorney and law school students) would factor into the overall cost of doing business and that size could be fairly large, particularly under the two year model. Where's that money coming from? Increasing tuition? Downsizing a/k/a "right-sizing" the existing full-time law faculty?

In theory, I like the teaching law firm idea. Either version is better than the current state of affairs. Personally I prefer the two-year model because all "3Ls" would "join" the firm. I take it that law students would not be admitted to the bar until completion of their "practice ready" education under either model but some accommodation for apprenticeships or "provisional attorney" status can be made by state bars if their work product is closely supervised by the teaching law firm's attorneys; otherwise, the students would fall under the category of paralegals.

The authors conclude

Law school education and law practice are more disconnected than they should be. It is unfortunate that the legal academy cannot match the medical and business academies in providing practice-ready professionals. Newly minted attorneys typically receive their practical training on their first jobs. However, that training must be funded. The business sector, the professional bar, or the legal academy, or a combination, must bear the cost of training. At the same time, the cost of legal education is skyrocketing and law students today face a large debt load. There is a confluence of adverse economic factors.

Our idea for a law school firm addresses the totality of these problems. From a training and educational perspective, it makes sense. Economically, it makes sense for law student who would earn a small wage in the third-year rather than pay large tuitions. If the economic arrangement between the law school and the firm can be made to the law school’s satisfaction, everyone wins. 

Who Wins? The students could "win" but I doubt that matters because the legal academy might not. I think it is fanciful to believe "everyone wins." If past is prologue, the moral irresponsiblity of the legal academy's current tactics right now offers plenty of evidence that the only thing that matters is keeping the legal academy's rice bowl full. Just look at the ABA's accediation standards review and proposed changes... .

A fundamental flaw in this otherwise very interesting proposition is that a law school-owned teaching law firm ends up competing for business in the marketplace with established law firms, big and small, and solo practitioners. It's not that the teaching law firm is not do-able but in these times, competing in the local market where many local law school grads practice is a convenient rationalization for not implementing a teaching law firm -- it just isn't a "good thing" for law schools to compete for business with local alumni practitioners.

Oh sure, the legal academy would explain that it does not want to interfere with its alum's livelihoods who somehow ended up becoming "practice ready" after graducation without institutionalizing a teaching law firm. But would that be the real reason? Ah, no. Local alumni are the first target for all but national law school development officers seeking donations. Certainly, competing with them by way of a local teaching law firm could be a factor but my hunch is successful alumni, the ones who who have really big checks, would ante up donations to capitalize a teaching law firm given that option. Oops. That won't do to maintain the status quo. 

While those alum may have deep pockets, my second hunch is that they would direct their donations go to the teaching law firm to benefit the profession in lieu of, not in additional to, donations that benefit the the law faculty. I am speaking from some experience wherein big $$$ donors seek out establishing personal relationship beyond the Dean and development officer to find opportunites to make donations that matter because they do not buy the legal academy's pitch. They do not want their pockets picked if their donations do not improve the quality of legal education. Oops, again. Law students could win but their law school might lose.

Possibility the only way "everyone wins" is if the US News Law School Rankings adds a metric for a teaching law firm. That's something Borden & Rhee toss out as a suggestion. Of course, the weighting any producing "practice ready" law schools metric in the US News ranking methodlogy would be crucial for the legal academy to jump on the back of and try to ride this tiger.

Who is Competent to Produce "Practice Ready" Law School Grads? There is, however, an interesting implicit admission in Borden & Rhee's article. Regular law profs are simply too incompetent to produce "practice ready" graduates. Commenting on Borden & Rhee's The Law School Firm article, in A Law School Law Firm??? Yeah Right!!! on Adjunct Law Prof Blog, Mitchell Rubinstein writes:

What I find most significant is that the professors recognize that this law school law firm would have to be staffed by attorneys-not by the professors. The major problem with law school professors today is that many, if not most of them, are simply incapable of practicing law and many never had. But, this is what we have, for the most part, training the lawyers of the future.
 
Now, I suppose that the law schools will respond by stating that is what us adjuncts are for. Really; law schools should rely on the lowest paid members of the staff who have no say about admissions or curriculum or running the school. But, that is exactly what most law schools today do.

What a system. I hope it changes, but I do not see any evidence of that in that virtually every law school is looking for the newly minted ivy P.hd. who also has a ivy law degree and may have done a federal clerkship for a year or two.

[JH]

ILTA 2011 is Underway

ILTA 2011: Rev-Elation is being held at the Gaylord Opryland Resort in Nashville, August 21 - 25. Check out the conference agenda. Like OMG dude, somehow these folks have managed to schedule peer group tracks alongside general interest tracks. What a novel idea. [JH]

Opening: Reference and Electronic Technologies Librarian, Northern Illinois University College of Law

DAVID C. SHAPIRO MEMORIAL LAW LIBRARY
NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF LAW
POSITION: Reference and Electronic Technologies Librarian
ACADEMIC RANK: Assistant Professor, Law Library

DUTIES: Provide reference service to faculty, students and other library users. Teach legal research to students both inside and outside of the classroom using electronic and print information sources. Collaborate with other members of the law library faculty and staff, and the College’s Information Technology Coordinator, to provide support to faculty and students in their use of instructional technologies. Engage in professional development activities and scholarship. Occasional weekend or evening work.

QUALIFICATIONS: Master’s degree in library science from an ALA-accredited library school and J.D. from an ABA-accredited law school (if in progress, degrees required by (employment start date). Knowledge of legal research technique using all formats. Knowledge of instructional technologies. Ability to be an excellent classroom teacher and to engage in professional development activities and scholarship. Strong service orientation and excellent communication skills. Ability to work both independently and as part of a team.

TERMS OF EMPLOYMENT: Regular, twelve-month, tenure-track faculty position. Available November 1, 2011. Minimum salary: $49,000.

BENEFITS: Health, dental, vision and life insurance. Participation in the State Universities Retirement System. 24 vacation and 12 cumulative and 20 non-cumulative sick leave days per year.

APPLICATIONS: Please address cover letter to John Austin, Director of the Law Library, and send it, resume and the names of three current professional references in .PDF format by email attachment to Betty Fewell, at bfewell(at)niu.edu . Preference will be given to complete applications received by August 19, 2011; however, applications will be accepted until the position is filled.

For information about Northern Illinois University College of Law, please visit the website.

Pre-employment criminal background investigation is required.

Northern Illinois University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. Applications from women and minorities are encouraged.

Round-Up of Law Practitioner Blogs

San Diego Injury Lawyers Blog
http://www.sandiegoinjurylawyersblog.com/
http://www.sandiegoinjurylawyersblog.com/index.xml
Examines injury cases, news, and opinions in San Diego California. Published by Johnson Attorneys Group
 
Philadelphia Personal Injury Lawyer Blog
http://www.philadelphiapersonalinjurylawyer-blog.com/
http://www.philadelphiapersonalinjurylawyer-blog.com/index.xml
Examines injury cases, news, and opinions in Philadelphia Pennsylvania . Published by Brent Wieand.

Chicago Illinois Car Accident Lawyer Blog
http://www.chicagoillinoiscaraccidentlawyerblog.com/
http://www.chicagoillinoiscaraccidentlawyerblog.com/index.xml
Examines injury and accident cases, news, and opinions in Chicago Illinois. Published by Elman Law Group LLC
 
Kentucky Bankruptcy Lawyer Blog
http://www.kentuckybankruptcylawyerblog.com/
http://www.kentuckybankruptcylawyerblog.com/index.xml
Examines bankruptcy cases, news, and opinions in Kentucky. Published by Denise Brown's Legal Direction
 
Florida Tax Lawyer Blog
http://www.floridataxlawyerblog.com/
http://www.floridataxlawyerblog.com/index.xml
Examines tax cases, news, and related tax law matters in Florida. Published by Law Office of A. Antonio Tomas, P.A.

Estate Planning and Tax Lawyer Blog
http://www.estateplanningandtaxlawyer.com/
http://www.estateplanningandtaxlawyer.com/index.xml
Discusses estate planning and tax matters, news, and opinions in Florida . Published by Wood, Atter & Wolf

Los Angeles Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog
http://www.losangelesattorneycriminaldefense.com
http://www.losangelesattorneycriminaldefense.com/index.xml
Reports on criminal law cases, reports and news in California. Published by The Law Office of Adam J. Post.