ZiefBrief

Read Law Professor Barack Obama’s Final Exams

There has been a lot of commentary about an article in the New York Times that discussed Barack Obama’s 12 years as a law professor at University of Chicago (click here to see article). Turns out he was generally considered brilliant by most students but enigmatic by some fellow professors. What the readers of the print version of the article didn't get to see is a collection of Professor Obama's final exams and the syllabus to his class Current Issues in Racism and the Law.

Links to the materials:

Syllabus: Current Issues in Racism and the Law

2003 Final Exam
2002 Final Exam
2001 Final Exam
2000 Final Exam
1999 Final Exam
1998 Exam
1997 Final Exam | Answer Memo
1996 Final Exam | Answer Memo

McSweeney's List on Law School Classes

At this point in the semester, everybody needs a little dark humor, right?  Check out this McSweeney's List of "Classes My Top-Tier Law School Should Have Offered As Warnings About the Profession."  Thanks to Above the Law for posting this link.

The Man Behind the Curtain

The ABA Journal's April 2008 cover story on U.S. News & World Report's law school rankings includes an interview with the man who devised the ranking system, Bob Morse.  After reading the article, I found out that Bob Morse has his very own blog, Morse Code.  How very clever.

For those of you who would like to pose some questions to Morse about law school rankings, you can find him answering questions live at ABAJournal.com on Friday, April 11, from 3 to 4 p.m. Eastern Time (that's Noon to 1 pm Pacific Time, California natives!). 

Revamping Third Year

Washington and Lee's law school announced recently that it is completely changing the structure of its third year curriculum by replacing all academic courses with experiential courses.  According to the school's press release, "traditional classroom instruction will be replaced by practice simulations, real-client interactions and the development of law practice skills. All third year students will be required to obtain a Virginia practice certificate and participate in at least one real-client experience during the year."  Students will have a choice of practice areas, and the school plans to include transactional courses focusing on areas like banking and corporate finance.  Most of these recent curricular changes at law schools are being driven in part by the 2007 Carnegie Report, which called for changes in how law students are taught so that students have more practical, "real-life" experiences before they begin practicing law.  And I have to think that students themselves will be pleased with these changes.  My third year of law school definitely felt a bit superfluous, and I would have jumped at the chance to gain some real practice skills before I graduated.  I hope we see more law schools moving in this direction soon!

Does Blogging Count?

I received information about the Santa Clara Law roundtable discussion, "Blogging, Scholarship and the Bench and Bar," but wasn't able to attend.  Fortunately, the National Law Journal has a transcript of the roundtable discussion available online, and it makes for fascinating reading.  Lots of interesting debate about whether law professors' blogs should count as legal scholarship in tenure decisions and how blogging is breaking down communication barriers between practicing attorneys and legal academics.  Cindy Cohn, legal counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, had this to say about blogs and legal scholarship:  "I don't have the time to read a law review article from beginning to end very often on my issues. I'd like to see legal scholarship be more accessible to practitioners, more useful to us."  Other interesting tidbits:  Judge Michael Daly Hawkins of the Ninth Circuit noted that the Ninth Circuit judges do read blog posts about cases that they've either decided or will decide soon -- compiled for them by the Ninth Circuit's librarian, of course!. 

Boalt No More?

The Recorder is reporting this morning that Boalt Hall, UC Berkeley's law school, will announce a new name in January.  Apparently, there is concern that the name "Boalt" is not well-recognized outside of California.  I can certainly attest to that -- I lived in California for four years before I realized that Boalt was part of UC Berkeley, and I only found out that little tidbit of information because I started applying to law schools in the Bay Area.  No word yet on what the possible new names might be!

Chemerinsky's Back!

According to WSJ's Law Blog, Chemerinsky and Chancellor Michael Drake had a little sit-down over the weekend, and Drake hit the "refresh" button and offered the UC Irvine law school dean position to Chemerinsky again.  Law Blog has a copy of Chemerinsky's farewell e-mail to Duke's law school community.

Dean for a day...

The law blogs are abuzz today with the news that prominent Constitutional scholar and Duke Law professor Erwin Chemerinsky was recently hired as Dean of the new UC Irvine Law School -- then promptly fired.  According to Brian Leiter's Law School Reports, UCI Chancellor Michael Drake flew to Durham yesterday to notify Chemerinsky, who had just been hired the week before, that he was being terminated.  The reason?  Chemerinsky's liberal political views, which might not sit well in the largely conservative, Republican Orange County, where UCI is located.

The Wall Street Journal Law Blog picked up this story and spoke to Chemerinsky, who confirmed the Chancellor's expressed concern that he would be a "lightning rod" and a target of criticism for conservatives.  Chemerinsky told the WSJ that a significant opposition to his appointment had developed, but the Chancellor did not name names.

As a fledgling law school at a major UC campus, it's unfortunate that UCI Law is already generating negative publicity.  The search for Dean continues...

How Not to Succeed In Lawschool!

According to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, a prospective law student (who had graduated magna cum laude from Rutgers University) attempted to purchase a copy of the LSAT from employees of the Law School Admission Test for $5,000. He made his initial contact with the employees through notes slipped under the wipers of their cars. The notes had $100 bills taped to them -- a sure-fire attention getter. The dutiful workers notified their supervisors who arranged a sting operation with the local constabulary. The miscreant has received five years’ probation and was ordered to undergo a psyche evaluation. No word as to his future career plans.

eLangdell: A CALI - Harvard Joint Venture

Last Monday at CALI, I attended a fascinating session on interactive, online casebooks.  Professor Steve Bradford from the University of Nebraska Lincoln College of Law presented his thoughts on what an online casebook should look like:

• It should have plenty of hyperlinks, leading to primary and secondary materials cited in the text, interactive tutorials (such as CALI exercises, of course!), multimedia files (oral argument audio files would be a natural here);
• The content should be highly malleable -- instructors should be able to change the organization of the casebook contents to meet their own individual teaching agendas, and they should be able to turn off hyperlinks when it suits their pedagogical needs;
• Students should be able to highlight and take notes in digital form.

Sounds pretty exciting, but is anyone doing anything to make online casebooks a reality?  I learned that the answer to this question is a resounding "yes." 

First, CALI announced at the conference that they are partnering with Harvard's Berkman Center to create a "new educational resource sharing platform."  The venture will establish the Legal Education Commons -- known as eLangdell -- "where law faculty can share and use openly-licensed course materials to offer students free or low-cost course packs, casebooks, podcasts, and video."  The venture will also concentrate on developing "innovative teaching tools to advance practice skills like client interaction, negotiations, and trial advocacy."

Thomson West is also entering the field with their new Interactive Casebook Series.   According to promotional materials, West's interactive casebooks will feature the following:

• Simultaneous print version and electronic publication (user may only access e-version by purchasing print book), with a searchable text that can be highlighted or otherwise annotated by users;
• Electronic version includes extensive hyperlinking to Westlaw versions of legal materials, Black's Law Dictionary, supplementary online resources, and internal cross-references;
• Layout departs from the traditional, all-text casebook format through use of marginalia/text boxes, diagrams, and color/border segregated feature sections for hypotheticals, references to scholarly debates, or other information.

I find West's insistence on packaging the online and print versions of casebooks in this series pretty annoying, but at least they're working on moving casebook publishing into the 21st century.  If you're interested in seeing an example of West's venture yourself, you can view one of the chapters of Spencer's Civil Procedure, the first book in the interactive series.