Is lower admission standard to blame for less lawyers gaining admittance to California bar?

As law schools receive fewer and fewer applications for admission, is one tactic for their own survival to admit students who are unlikely to ever pass the bar exam?

Article here (via the lawyerist). 

The article notes the low passage rate of the July 2015 California bar - at 46.6% of takers having passed that exam. By comparison, the Michigan Bar exam passage rate for the same exam was 61%.

Why laptops should be banned in law school: Comprehension of material suffers

Whether the laptops are used solely to take notes, or not, laptops are not a great way to aid learning:

The study of undergraduate students compared comprehension for students who took notes on laptops and those who took handwritten notes, according to Suffolk law professor Steven Eisenstat. The students using laptops had no access to the Internet and no other computer distractions, yet their performance on later tests was worse than those who took notes by hand.

Comprehension suffers for the laptop users because they tend to type their professors’ words verbatim, without trying to understand the meaning, Eisenstat says. He makes his case in an article available at SSRN that is set for publication in the University of Detroit Mercy Law Review. TaxProf Blog notes his paper.

Article here. 

Studying law ruins reading for pleasure. It's a fact.

OK, maybe not a fact. But I know it took me a few years after law school to begin reading for pleasure again. Why? Because after all the case books and exams, reading fiction seemed pointless. No fictional character needs to have a problem solved by the the book's reader (except maybe in a choose-your-own-adventure novel).

And the ABA anecdotally backs up my anecdote:

In the November issue of the ABA Journal, Black’s Law Dictionary editor-in-chief Bryan Garner writes about an encounter with a law firm partner who approached him with a problem: Ever since law school, she’s found herself scouring whatever she’s reading for the most relevant, skimming “for the main point—as if for a holding. But in literature, it’s not there.”

Article here (via ABA journal). 

Law school hypotheticals, and "cautionary tales:" Do they make you freak out?

Oh yes, you remember this scenario. You're doing the reading for class (way ahead of time, of course, because you were a good law student). And part of the reading includes this hypothetical that seems, well, bizarre. There is no way, you tell yourself, that this is based on an actual case. But once you attend class, the professor tells you, lo and behold, it's based on a case the professor actually knew about! Sheesh, you tell yourself. How odd the real world is.

Fast forward to the next class, where the prof tells you that "It was a mistake in the brief" that caused this whole problem. Yikes, you think, I am going to be sooooo cautious once I get into practice.

Then fast forward to 2 years in the future. Law school is in the rear-view mirror, you passed the bar and are now practicing (gulp) law! And your mind is beset by those hypotheticals, and "cautionary tales" of what to do. And you're overcome by indecision and insecurity. What happened? You're supposed to be decisive and a natural leader once law school was over with.

Blame law school! Here's an article about how law school hobbles you for future practice.

Good news for prospective law students

Deciding whether or not to enroll in law school is a big decision, with the potential for a lot of debt (and a degree) at the end. (Related: So you think you want to become a lawyer?) So prospective law students often ask: Is it going to be worth it?

In this article, The Economic Value of a Law Degree,

[t]he authors conclude that ”a law degree is associated with a 60 percent median increase in monthly earnings and 50 percent increase in median hourly wages…[and] estimate the mean pre-tax lifetime value of a law degree as approximately $1,000,000.”

See more here. 

In praise of practical legal education

Law school has a lot of required classes. Things like Torts, Contracts, Criminal Law, Civil Procedure, Business Organizations, and Taxation (required at my school) to name but a few. But at some point in law school, students are able to choose electives to round out their legal education. This is when some students start to "specialize" in law school. There is no requirement that a student specialize their studies in law school, all students will end up with a JD. And there are classes which are designed to offer "practice" versus theory, for example Trial Skills versus Conflict of Laws. Some classes seem downright arcane, with little practical application. Law schools are attacked for having classes that seem designed to drain tuition dollars while offering little in return for the students' future practice knowledge.

But, in this article, the author discusses some practical classes that have come under fire (Health Care law, internet privacy) but which end up having been quite useful.

article here.

Are you an attorney? Do you always feel pressed for time? Blame law school.

Time management complaints begin early in students’ legal education and generally go unresolved. As a result, practicing attorneys identify time famine as a leading cause of job dissatisfaction. To better arm graduating students, law schools must treat time as an essential component of practice-readiness. Unfortunately, most law schools ignore their students’ time management concerns, despite growing calls for greater “skills” training in legal education.

Article here. 

What has changed in law schools in 25 years, and what hasn't?

The Lawyers, Guns and Money blog posts some feedback about its earlier entry, about law schools losing money.

From the article:

For example, at the University of Michigan, all the traditional first-year classes continue to be taught, and continue to be taught in very large sections, as they were when I was a student there in the mid/late 1980s. First-year students still take Contracts, Property, Torts, Criminal Law, Civil Procedure, and Constitutional Law — exactly the same courses I took as a first-year in 1986. Indeed three of these courses are being taught by the very same professors I had nearly 30 years ago. (The one significant alternation to the first-year curriculum is the addition of a Legislation and Regulation class, as law schools are now beginning to acknowledge that knowing something about the contemporary administrative state may be of more practical relevance than memorizing The Rule In Shelley’s Case.)

full article here. 

Law Schools losing money?

Paul Campos, the University of Colorado law prof (and Michigan grad) who gained fame and notoriety as the anonymous "scamblogger" of the since-retired Inside the Law School Scam blog, writes on on his new blogging homesite, Lawyers, Guns & Money, that he has looked at the operating budgets of a "representative sample" of law schools and estimates that 80-85% of law schools are losing money -- about 15% in real terms down from three years ago. 

article here.  

Law School student debt could be even more terrifying in the future

Thinking your student loan repayment is high? Well, be glad your tuition is still not charging, according to this article.Even though enrollment is down, cost remains the same at many law schools. But according to the article, costs will get even higher in the next few years.

Part of the problem in my opinion is that tuition rates change as you're enrolled. So that means what cost you A when you enrolled costs A x2 by the time you graduate. So why can't students only agree to pay the tuition rate they were enrolled at? Sounds fair to me.

Are lawyers happy in their work?

My new library book: The Happy Lawyer.
This was published in 2010, and its goal is to examine what makes lawyers happy. It's a good read so far, but I've only gotten to comparison of studies asking lawyers (in various ways) whether they are happy being lawyers.

Here's a link to read reviews or buy it on Amazon.