On the Record

Sorry, University of Maryland and University of Baltimore law school students – you don’t have a shot of clerking for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

An ABA Journal story about the composition of current and past clerks at the highest court in the land quotes Scalia telling an American University Washington College of Law student earlier this year she should look elsewhere for a clerkship: 

By and large, I’m going to be picking from the law schools that basically are the hardest to get into. They admit the best and the brightest, and they may not teach very well, but you can’t make a sow’s ear out of a silk purse. If they come in the best and the brightest, they’re probably going to leave the best and the brightest, OK?

(The real chutzpah of the quote is that Scalia said it on AU’s campus after being invited by the law school.)

For this upcoming term, the Harvards and Yales of the world still dominate the clerkships, although Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. “caused a stir” by picking a Seton Hall alumnus as his one of his clerks, according to the story. The universities of Georgia and Texas and George Washington University are also represented this term.

One former justice who didn’t automatically gravitate to top-10 law schools was Byron White, who hired ”interesting people,” including a man who worked in a coal mine.

“Look, there are a hundred people a year that could to the job adequately,” the NFL-player-turned-justice told biographer Dennis Hutchinson. “I might as well have someone who’s interesting, and that doesn’t mean the ones that the fancy law profes­sors recommend.”

I was driving on Charles Street by our office this morning when I saw a woman walking across the street with the help of a cane and what I thought was a full cast on her left leg. Upon closer inspection, I thought the woman was Phoebe Haddon, dean of the University of Maryland School of Law.

Turns out I was half right. The woman was in fact Haddon, but she was wearing a brace, not a cast, according to Jamie Smith, a law school spokesman. Haddon has been rehabbing from a summer leg injury, he said, and part of the treatment is to wear the brace.

Haddon is on her way to her goal, incidentally, of a full recovery by Saturday, when she will deliver her first address since becoming dean in July. Ron Kirk, the U.S. Trade Representative, will give the keynote address at the program, titled “Justice & the Global Economy”  but designated on the school’s Web site as “an event celebrating [Haddon's] appointment.” Registration for the event had to be closed after 500 people signed up, Smith said.

Both of Maryland’s law schools are located on campuses that are among the most dangerous in the country, according to a new ranking.

Both the University of Baltimore and the University of Maryland-Baltimore made The Daily Beast’s list of the 25 most dangerous colleges. In fact, UMB is the third most dangerous school in the country, according to this list. The rankings are based in part on crime data the schools are required to report to the federal government and in part on crime stats for the surrounding neighborhoods.

Maryland has the dubious distinction of having more schools on the list than any other state except Massachusetts. The other dangerous colleges in the Free State are University of Maryland-Eastern Shore and Bowie State University. Notably, the Johns Hopkins University is not on there.

No Maryland schools made The Daily Beast’s list of the 25 safest colleges.

Students at the “dangerous” Maryland schools: do the rankings ring true? Do you feel unsafe on campus?

(An aside: I’m proud that my alma mater didn’t make the list. To my dad, who was worried about me going there because of safety concerns: I told you so.)

HT: TaxProf Blog via Above the Law.   

The University of Maryland School of Law gives students a lot for their money, according to new rankings.

According to a “best value” list by The National Jurist magazine, the school ranks 48th in bang-for-your-buck. The publication assessed institutions based on tuition, bar pass rate and percentage of employed graduates. The schools on the list are, unsurprisingly, state schools.

Maryland’s value ranking more or less matches its U.S. News & World Report ranking, 43. What’s interesting is how many of the high-ranking value schools, such as 1st place North Carolina Central, 3rd place Nebraska and 5th place Mississippi, are in U.S. News’ third or fourth tier.

By the way, Maryland also makes the magazine’s list of the top schools for students who want to do public-interest work, as does the University of Baltimore School of Law. Maryland is 7 and Baltimore is 14. Neither school places on the list of law schools with the most diverse faculty.

HT: TaxProf Blog via ABA Journal.

They go to law school!

Us Weekly’s Web site reported actor Jerry O’Connell is starting law school, much like the incoming students I wrote about in Monday’s paper. And if you thought that was a shameless promotion, check out O’Connell’s fantastic quote on why he is going back to school at age 35. O’Connell is married to model-actress Rebecca Romijn and has twin daughters:

I had always planned on continuing my education at some point and because my wife is working on Eastwick, which is on Wednesday nights at 10 p.m. this fall, and I’m home all day with the girls, I figured I would take a couple of classes at night. It was either that or play video games until 2 a.m.

Incidentally, O’Connell is enrolled at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles. I honestly had not heard of the school until today, but I recognized its main building, the 80-year-old art deco Bullocks Wilshire, one of L.A.’s most recognizeable landmarks. The building is now featured prominately in the backdrop of “The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien” set.

When Phoebe A. Haddon was a profesor at Temple University’s Beasley School of Law, early July was the time to work on scholarly projects or a planned book. It’s a practice she is trying to continue this summer, even as her main goal is to orient herself in her new position as dean of the University of Maryland School of Law.

Haddon is trying to write a second chapter for her book about Keyes v. School District No. 1, a 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that desegregated the public school system in Denver. The case is considered one of the first involving segregation in a “northern school.” 

For Haddon, the case also has a personal connection: her aunt was on the city school board as the case made its way to Washington, D.C., and afterward, when busing began, and saved many primary documents from the era.

Keyes was different from other desegregation cases in part because Denver’s school system included Latino and Asians students, Haddon said. The Latino advocates also were focused more on obtaining bilingual and cultural support, she said. They had no problem with de facto segregated schools as long as the students had bilingual education opportunities, she said.

“It’s a fascinating walk through history,” she said.

Haddon has given several lectures and PowerPoint presentations about the Keyes decision. She is still unsure if the book will be solely abouts about Keyes or look at the “commonalities of recent desegregation cases.”

An editor sent me this Wall Street Journal story from a couple of weeks ago, about how some law firms are sending employees to receive executive training. The idea is to either prepare them to step into management positions at the firm or help them better understand their business clients’ needs.

“‘When you have the kind of challenges we have right now, (you need) really well-trained, smart managers talking the same language,’ says Kevin Fitzgerald, a partner at Nixon Peabody LLP who was one of the first in his firm to attend an executive education program at Harvard University in 2007. The program is designed for employees of professional service firms, and includes training on how lawyer-managers can lead firms successfully.”

I was curious to see if any of the business schools here in Maryland offer such programs, but all of the schools I called said they don’t. Should they start? Is it worthwhile, especially in these hard times, to give more lawyers business training?

The legal blogosphere has been abuzz the last few days because of an annual right of spring: the U.S. News & World Report law school rankings. The 2010 report is scheduled for release Thursday, but leaked copies have been popping up on various blogs.

The University of Maryland remains in the Top 100 law schools, but falls one spot from a tie for 42nd last year to a tie for 43rd this year. The University of Baltimore keeps its spot on the third tier, according to Ron Miller’s Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog. UB Law moved up from the fourth tier last year.

Both schools scored highly in the magazine’s new rankings for part-time law schools, with UM placing sixth and UB sitting in a tie for 28th. (At least I think it’s 28th; the print is a bit difficult to read.) Maryland Law easily made the magazine’s list of the 100 most diverse schools, with a 2008-2009 student body that is 13 percent black.

One of the first things Phoebe A. Haddon saw when she visited the University of Maryland School of Law during its dean search was “Thurgood Marshall’s Early Career in Maryland: 1933-1937″ an exhibit in the library that bears the name of the late Supreme Court justice. 

“It’s so meaningful to be part of an institution that takes the commitment to diversity very seriously,” Haddon said Monday, when she was introduced as the new dean of Maryland law, effective July 1.

Haddon will become the ninth dean in the school’s 185-year history and the first African-American in the position, a fact not lost on her for several reasons. She is a fourth-generation lawyer, and her great-grandfather, A.W.E. Bassette, was both a lawyer and an educator. Bassette, in fact, founded the first school for freed slaves in Hampton, Va., according to Haddon. Bassette now has an elementary school named after him in Hampton, honoring his 39 years of teaching that began in 1876.

Larry S. Gibson, the longtime Maryland professor behind the Marshall exhibit, said the school traditionally is near the top of national rankings in producing black lawyers. Joining Maryland at the top? Temple University’s Beasley School of Law, he said, where Haddon is currently a professor and whose dean, JoAnne A. Epps, is also an African-American woman.

“It’s a further indication that the whole nation is removing race as a barrier to achievement,” Gibson said of Haddon’s appointment.

For those of you who missed it, the University of Baltimore School of Law was featured prominently today in a Wall Street Journal story about the U.S. News & World Report law school rankings. The magazine is thinking of revamping its ranking criteria to address the widespread practice of admitting inferior applicants as part-timers, since part-time students’ LSAT scores and undergraduate grades don’t count in the rankings.

Amir Efrati writes:

One of the top beneficiaries of the current U.S. News criteria is Phillip Closius, former dean of the University of Toledo’s law school. He led the school’s rise from the list’s fourth tier to its second tier within a few years. After he took the helm of the University of Baltimore law school last year, that school also quickly climbed the rankings, to 125 this year from 170 last year, he says. (Schools in the third and fourth tiers aren’t publicly ranked — instead they are grouped together — but deans can find out where they placed.)

Mr. Closius’s winning strategy in both places: Cut the number of full-time students accepted into the program to boost the median LSAT scores and GPAs, which together account for more than 20% of a school’s ranking. In their place, the schools add more part-time students, who can transfer to full-time the second year.

Closius says the strategy is good for weaker students because it lets them ease into law school. He also tied the improved rank to subsequent “multimillion-dollar grants and donations for a new building.”

The story also has a small chart showing how some schools’ ranks this year would have been different had part-timers been counted. According to that chart, the University of Maryland School of Law, which placed 42nd, would have been ranked a bit lower, in the mid- or high 40s.

Ron Miller over at the Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog posts about this story, too.

CARYN TAMBER, Legal Affairs Writer