3L at U of L

What I'm learning about in law school: reptiles, health care, and how to avoid a long stay in prison

2012-01-27T08:32:00.005-05:00

The Pinto -- like U.S. healthcare?

In my second year of law school, I wrote a blog post about the things I was learning in Con Law, Evidence, Professional Responsibility and other classes. This semester is turning out to be completely different from any other so far. Four of my five courses are taught by adjunct faculty, and none of them are part of the core curriculum. But even so -- or maybe because of this -- I'm learning a lot about the law and life in general. Here are a few tidbits.

Advanced Trial Practice: in a class of just seven people, it's hard to hide. But who would want to hide when your teachers are two grizzled trial lawyers who teach law by swapping war stories, and organizing role playing activities in class. This is probably my favorite course of the semester so far. One of the techniques we're learning is David Ball's "reptile" method of trying cases, in which you convince the jury to make decisions that protecting themselves and the community, and avoid danger.
Medical Malpractice: doctors, social workers, nurses and other medical providers have a duty to warn certain people who are not their patients if they diagnose someone with a condition that could be dangerous to others. We're also reading about the finer points of informed consent, physician liability, and the laws that govern hospital emergency rooms.
Health Law Seminar: this is a two-credit class that focuses on the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. We're learning about how health insurance works (or doesn't) and how our country has somehow managed to have a healthcare system that costs as much as a Cadillac and runs like a Ford Pinto.
Negotiation: arguing with an insurance adjuster about a car wreck case is way more than starting high and settling somewhere in the middle. Our main textbook, Getting to Yes, shows how to negotiate like a pro, focusing on interests instead of positions, and inventing creative options for mutual gain. It might sound like hocum, but it works.
Public Defender: I wish I could say more about the criminal cases I'm working on this semester for the public defender, but, well, I can't. They involve real people facing looooong prison sentences for serious crimes, and the students in our externship program get to do actual work on their cases, including appearances in court, and in some cases arguing motions before judges.

Although my last semester of school is chock full of great experience, perhaps the biggest lesson I'm learning is patience. At this point, many 3Ls, myself included, are ready to kick off the training wheels and dive into real practice. But we can't. Yet. It's sort of like the time you bought your first house (or car), and you're waiting for closing day. It's going to happen, but the waiting is torture.

Louisville attorney flies blind, wins jury trial

2012-01-20T18:07:00.004-05:00

The trial bar is buzzing in Louisville this afternoon following a story that I'm going to share as an inspirational tale for law students. A local attorney, Randy Ratliff, took a case at the last minute this week after the plaintiff fired his Florida-based lawyers. Law students may remember that Mr. Ratliff spoke at the law school when he was director of the Kentucky Lawyer Assistance Program, a position he held from January 2008 to 2011. Full disclosure: he is Of Counsel in the law office where I will be an associate after graduation.
In the case in question, the general expectation was that the judge would grant a continuance so Mr. Ratliff could get to know the facts, prepare a plan, etc. After all, preparation is the key to a successful trial, right? Well, the judge decided the case would go to trial the same day Mr. Ratliff made his initial appearance. And according to the Kentucky Trial Court Review, which also maintains this Facebook page, the jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff this afternoon in the amount of $131,000. The last settlement offer had been for $30,000. Not a bad week of work. Congratulations to Mr. Ratliff and his client.

Job report: why OCI is so hard at Louisville Law, and why you shouldn't worry about it

2012-01-19T08:53:00.004-05:00

This weekend brings the annual mock interview program for 1Ls here at Louisville Law. This relatively recent tradition is an excellent opportunity to get your feet wet in the summer clerkship game, and it will be closely followed by the infamous On Campus Interview season, or OCI. I wrote about OCI last year in this post, and in my opinion most of those comments still hold up.

OCI is a big deal at some law schools, but here at Louisville the number of available jobs is quite small, and the chances of getting one are brutally long. Many will enter, few will win. In fact, in my graduating class, I am aware of only a small number of students (maybe ten) who have landed full-time permanent jobs at large law firms through OCI. The fact is, large law firms have been shrinking in recent years, and there aren't that many in Louisville to begin with. This is not to say, of course, that these jobs don't have merit, or that it is not worth pursuing a Big Law job, especially if your first-semester GPA was, say, 3.3 or better. The paucity of OCI positions also doesn't mean you won't find a job at all. There are scores of area jobs available through smaller firms, non-profit groups and fellowship programs, and the nice thing about some of these positions is that you are in control of the process because you choose where you put your networking energy, i.e., plaintiff work, family law, public service, etc.

Even if you don't participate in OCI, it's a good idea to start thinking about the summer if you are a 1L. You might call a few lawyers (even ones you don't know!) and ask for a job shadow, like this one or this one that I did during my first-year winter break. You might also think about knocking out some of those volunteer hours for graduation, which will put you in contact with practicing attorneys. You also should visit the fine folks in Career Services, study these job interview etiquette tips, and think about professors who could serve as references (tip: if you contact a professor for a reference, make sure to clearly identify yourself, send a copy of your resume, and give them plenty of time to respond; requesting a reference in person usually works best; do NOT ask them to fill out forms for you). The bottom line, as my tax professor might say, is that there are many options, and OCI is just one of them. The job market overall is tight, but there are lots of available options, and many of them are just a few miles from the law school. You also must learn to have nerves of steel when it comes to job interviews. My overall record with OCI in my first two years of law school was 1-16, as in sixteen interviews, and fifteen rejections. But that one offer resulted in a great clerkship, which eventually turned into a full-time job offer that I happily accepted. The end justifies the means. If you have a job question or comment, post it in the comments field below, or email me at acdavi07@louisville.edu.

High GPA = passing score on bar exam (maybe)

2012-01-12T13:49:00.001-05:00

Just walked out of an hour-long primer on the Kentucky bar exam, which most 3L students will take in July at this local hotel. Among the tidbits offered to aspiring exam takers were these stats on the correlation between law school grade-point average and success on the Big Bad Bar:

For students with at least a 3.0 GPA at U of L Law (usually the top one-third of the class), 100 percent passed the exam last July on their first attempt. The same students in previous years have passed the exam at a roughly 98 percent clip.
Students with a 2.6 GPA or lower had a 74 percent pass rate on the same exam.
Overall, the school had a roughly 90 percent pass rate last year, compared to an 86 percent statewide pass rate. The 90 percent rate was down a bit from the previous year, but in line with the last five years overall.

There are, of course, exceptions to the above rules. Bonnie Kittinger, general counsel and director of the Kentucky Office of Bar Admissions, told us it is not uncommon for otherwise high-achieving students to study lightly for the test and then assume they can hang loose for the rest of the summer. Some still pass. Others do not. We also discussed dozens of other details, including the grading process, filing deadlines, even the definition of a law school application. Perhaps the best advice came from Eric Ison, one of the state's seven bar examiners, who asked us to take the bar seriously, but also to remember to breathe. "Don't be consumed by the bar," he said. I will try to keep this in mind over the next seven months. I imagine it will be easier said than done.

Law school class photo day: time for a moustache?

2012-01-10T08:59:00.002-05:00

Today is class photo day for graduating law students here at U of L. It's an occasion that doesn't mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of things, but then again maybe it does. Large framed class photos line the hallways of the law school on its first and second floors, stretching back to the late 1800s. Gazing at the bygone fashions of eager young attorneys is a fascinating way to waste 15 minutes of your life when you really ought to be studying. The class portraits also become a source of attention when a lawyer does something particularly embarrassing, or especially impressive.

The magnificent (and short lived) moustache

For me, photos have always been yet another opportunity to do something eccentric. For example, I have a photo of myself in high school with my eyebrows shaved off. In another, taken in my mid-20s, I'm hanging upside down inside a ski gondola. Which is why, last week, I figured it would be a great idea to take my law school photo with a giant moustache. At home, our family is obsessed with the moustache. The kids wear fake ones, my wife decorates moustache mirrors, and we take notice of moustaches in public. I even went so far as growing a 'stache (see photo, above right) in honor of this under-appreciated form of facial hair. But after careful consideration, I've decided to sport a clean shave, a starched dress shirt and tie, and a dark suit coat for the class photo.
My decision reflects two things that I've learned in law school. First, I've learned to seek advice from those around me before making rash decisions. I am at least two or three times as likely to consult other people for advice today compared to before law school. In this case, everyone I talked to about the moustache class photo told me it was a terrible idea. Second, I've found a new level of appreciation for the art of discretion. It's taken almost three years to drill this concept into my head, but I now hold my tongue way more frequently than at any other time in my life. I still enjoy a good joke, and don't shy away from controversy, but I am keenly aware that reputation is everything in this industry, and if you're going to clown around, you'd better think about the implications carefully. So long moustache.

Welcome to 2012: Resolutions of an almost-finished law student at the University of Louisville

2012-01-03T09:30:00.005-05:00

The law school is dead quiet today, and I'm getting tons of work done. Here are a few snippets, resolutions, and random thoughts to start off the new year.

1. Since I now have a job lined up as a lawyer after graduation, I solemnly swear that I will not join the class-action mess involving more than a dozen law schools that allegedly fudge their employment statistics. I'm also grateful that Louisville is not a defendant, and hope it stays that way.

My bar exam application (just kidding)

2. Almost finished with my 25-page Kentucky bar exam application. Got my traffic history, my criminal record, my five character references, and even figured out the day I was married. Most intriguing question on the application so far: "have you ever been known by another name other than a nickname?

3. Really looking forward to my last semester of law school. Part of this is because, well, it's the last one, but it's also shaping up to be filled with great hands-on experiences. I'm working 12 hours a week at the Louisville Public Defender's office, taking a seminar on Obamacare, and doing my second trial practice class - where you practice mock cases and present opening and closing arguments, etc. I'm also looking forward to Negotiation, which will hopefully improve my skill at sending the kids to bed on time, and Criminal Law - Judicial Procedure, which I will hopefully never need for myself.

4. Entering law students at U of L are now looking at a schedule with fewer classroom commitments in their first semester under a new plan approved by the school. Looks like they're ditching Property for the fall, and starting Civ Pro a bit later. Details:

Fall Semester:

Basic Legal Skills

Legal Research

Torts I

Contracts I

Criminal Law

Civil Procedure (starting approximately September 24th)

Spring Semester:

Basic Legal Skills

Torts II

Contracts II

Property

Civil Procedure II

5. Getting back to resolutions, I am going to start 2012 with a cheesy pledge to be a nicer guy (Alex, you catch more flies with honey, an associate at work recently told me), to help someone else at least once a day, to not dwell on past mistakes (including that wretched Negotiable Instruments exam), and to stop eating four times as much food as I should at every meal. Good luck to everyone this semester. If you are applying to U of L Law this year and have questions or concerns about anything, email me at acdavi07@louisville.edu and you'll allow me to knock out one of my daily resolutions!

Fortune strikes: I have my first job as a lawyer

2011-12-16T19:22:00.005-05:00

Over the last two and a half years, I've used this blog to write about some of the more difficult aspects of law school. For example, I've written about the difficulty of first-year exams, the dreariness of the 2L funk, and the lousy job market for 3Ls. I could add to the negative streak by discussing the disappointment I felt upon seeing my fall semester grades, which fell below my expectations. But that's not going to happen. Not today. In fact, I'm going to break the traditional law student code of being self-effacing and modest among one's colleagues. The reason: I have a job. That's right, I'm going to be paid to be a lawyer when I graduate next year. I'm going to be a practicing attorney, with an office, business cards, actual clients, and terrifying and stressful court appearances. I couldn't be happier.
I'll be a rookie associate with Jones Ward PLC, the firm where I've been a law clerk for the last year. Even better, I believe deeply in the firm's mission. We sue big companies that hurt people, in mass tort cases that involve everything from defective medical devices and prescription drugs to the BP Oil Spill and the Toyota crash cases. We also represent people injured in everyday car crashes, slip and falls and other injuries. I'll be thrown into the fire in July right after the bar exam, and I'm so excited I want to scream about it from the rooftops, or at least in a blog post. The point, however, is this: law school can be an incredibly humbling and difficult experience, but the end result, at least for me, has been the best career decision of my life. To be sure, there have been struggles, and the journey is far from over. But with perseverance, lots of networking, and a small amount of good fortune, it seems to be paying off. I'm hoping to write more in the coming months about the employment prospects of our graduating class, which seems to be a topic of, well, great interest. If you have your own story to share (positive or otherwise), feel free to message me at acdavi07@louisville.edu. Have a great holiday.

Click, Click, Submit: How to Become a Legal Scholar in Less Than Ten Minutes

2011-12-06T09:45:00.003-05:00

As I get closer to graduation in May, it's becoming more and more obvious that ....

A. Even after two clerkships, an externship, and a volunteer job at a legal clinic, I still have very little experience in the law.

B. The importance of networking with lawyers and other members of the legal community cannot be underestimated.

C. With just five months to go before graduation, I need to find ways to leverage my forthcoming J.D. and make it look as impressive as possible.

D. All of the Above.

The answer, of course, is D. And if law school has taught me anything over the last three years (in addition to answering all questions with "it depends") it is to find creative solutions to problems, which brings me to my Discovery of the Day: how to become an instant legal scholar using SSRN, the Social Science Research Network. Most students go to law school to become lawyers, not scholars. Why not be both? You can create an account using SSRN and use it to publish that obscure 25-page tome that you cranked out for your writing requirement. Assuming you've already written the thing, the publishing process only takes about ten minutes (your submission has to meet certain requirements, which you can read about here).

I credit Dean Jim Chen with the SSRN idea. This morning, I posted an abstract for a law review note I finished a few weeks ago. One of the cool things about SSRN is that you can share writing that has not yet been published in hard copy. Chen, for example, just posted an early version of a forthcoming article titled "A Degree of Practical Wisdom: The Ratio of Educational Debt to Income as a Basic Measurement of Law School Graduates’ Economic Viability." You can read the abstract by clicking here, or check out the full version by clicking on the "download" link at the top of the page. As soon as my exams are over, I'm planning to post the 42-page monster of a law review note that I wrote last year about medical marijuana and the military. The Veterans Health Administration, a key source for the note, still has not responded to my year-old FOIA request, and last year's journal editors ultimately rejected the note for publication (less than half of all notes are actually accepted). Now, however, it's going to see the light of day, and I'll be a published (sort of) legal scholar two times over.

In the coming months, I'm going to write more about networking and job hunting. Got your own nifty idea? Post it in the comments field below, or email me at acdavi07@louisville.edu.

One year ago: Rambling in Con Law, Prepping for Finals, and Winter Break Diversions

2011-11-22T10:55:00.002-05:00

A year ago this month, I was spending my days doing many of the same things I'm doing this year: preparing outlines, writing study questions, and visiting with professors to answer a few final questions before exams. But that's not all. I also was posting a video of myself being subjected to the Socratic method in one of my classes, and posting a list of the Top 10 Things to Do in Louisville on Winter Break. I also wrote one of the most popular posts of the last three years on this blog: a 25-question quiz about Constitutional Law.
Two years ago, I was writing about the stress of final exams as a 1L, and bragging about how my then 7-year-old son might be a Torts genius.
Next year, who knows what I will be doing in the legal world. Hopefully, I'll be practicing law after passing the bar. A necessary (but unfortunately not sufficient) condition to doing both is finishing the current semester, which means I need to get crack-a-lackin' on three final exams on my horizon in the next two weeks. Consequently, blogging may be light. As one of my favorite professors often tells me when I miss class, "We will try to stumble through without you."

Proposed tuition hike creates stir at U of L Law

2011-11-18T08:19:00.002-05:00

The SBA's tuition poster

If you're thinking about going to law school, you probably already know about the dire employment situation for graduates, and the massive amount of debt you are going to rack up over the next three years. You also may know that here at Louisville, we rest our reputation on being a "value school" where you can get a solid J.D. without a six-figure tab. That doesn't mean students here are happy with the price they're paying for tuition, especially when it comes to the out-of-state rate. Over the last few days, there's been growing concern over plans to jack up tuition again -- by another six percent, plus a proposed fee of $206.

Our law school is typically not prone to controversy. In my time here, there have been no major protests like this one, and certainly no scandals like this one or this one. But there's good reason to be concerned about skyrocketing tuition, and I am glad the S.B.A. (Student Bar Association) is raising its eyebrows. In a recent letter to Dean Jim Chen and members of the administration, the group decried the proposed increases, and a related reduction in the law library's budget. The letter noted that students will be paying roughly $1,200 more next year with the latest increase, and that tuition across the university will have increased 83 percent since 2004. For even more startling figures, see the poster (image, above right) that the SBA is circulating to drum up awareness about the issue. The fine print is hard to read, but the smallest number represents tuition in 1992-93. The bottom two numbers show proposed rates next year for in-state and out-of-state students, respectively.
I'm no expert on this issue, but I do have a couple of (barely educated) opinions. For starters, the tuition problem is not isolated to Louisville, and in many ways it's a smaller issue here that it is in other places. For a glimpse of a truly horrifying law school tuition debacle, check out this excellent article about a private law school in New York City where the tuition is nearly $50,000 a year -- about the same as the typical starting salary for graduates. At Louisville, therefore, I don't think we need to use a sledgehammer to swat a fly. Still, a hike of more than 6 percent in an awful economy just doesn't make sense to me when one of our claims to fame is value. If the school absolutely must extract more money for its budget, here are the two areas where I would focus:

1. Tuition for in-state students. If students are going to bear the burden, let's keep costs down for out-of-staters. Protectionist tuition policies for Kentucky residents like myself are fine, but I don't mind shouldering a little more of the burden. Plus, by keeping tuition increases at a minimum for out-of-staters, we'll attract more quality out-of-state applicants, which in turn will preserve our precious spot in the Holy Grail.
2. Faculty scholarship. I may not make many friends on this one, but it's hard for me to understand why law school professors in general, and ones at U of L in particular, are expected to spend close to half of their time on scholarship. Sure, writing the occasional law review article is fine, and attending symposia is OK too. But seriously, close to half of their time? Clients at the law firm where I work often blanch at a one-third contingent fee. Reducing the scholarship quota to one quarter, or even one-third, would allow professors to teach more classes, which would either reduce class sizes, or allow us to offer more quality courses, or both. Of course, we also could save tons of money by employing fewer professors and keeping class sizes the same, but the Holy Grail is not going to let that happen.

These two ideas are a starting point in the conversation. I'm sure others have additional, and probably better, opinions. Got a thought of your own? Post it in the comments field below. Also, check out the survey on law school tuition at the upper right of this screen.

Portrait of a Law School Schedule

2011-11-11T08:32:00.001-05:00

Earlier this week I wrote about the best and worst classes of law school. This morning, I registered for what will be my last semester before graduation in May 2012. What does a class schedule look like? In this case, I'll be spending 32 hours a week working at various law offices (an externship with the Louisville public defender's office and my regular law clerk job doing mass tort work), in addition to four traditional classes. The "special topic" course at the bottom is a seminar on Obama's healthcare plan. It's going to be a hectic spring to the finish, but on the bright side I'll only have two final exams. Got a scheduling tip, or a question? Put it in the comments field at the end of this post, or email me at acdavi07@louisville.edu.

Alexander Davis

Spring 2012 > Law > University of Louisville

LAW 822 - CRIM PROC: JUDICIAL PROC

Status	Units	Grading	Grade
Enrolled	3.00	Graded

Class Nbr	Section	Component	Days & Times	Room	Instructor	Start/End Date
5958	05	Lecture	TuTh 9:00AM - 10:15AM	Law School 275	Leslie Abramson	01/04/2012 - 05/05/2012

LAW 826 - DOMESTIC RELATIONS

Status	Units	Grading	Grade
Enrolled	3.00	Graded

Class Nbr	Section	Component	Days & Times	Room	Instructor	Start/End Date
6899	03	Lecture	ThFr 10:25AM - 11:40AM	LAW SCHOOL 75	Barbara Lewis	01/04/2012 - 05/05/2012

LAW 893 - NEGOTIATIONS

Status	Units	Grading	Grade
Enrolled	3.00	Graded

Class Nbr	Section	Component	Days & Times	Room	Instructor	Start/End Date
8191	12	Lecture	Th 4:45PM - 7:15PM	Law School 171	Mary Gleason	01/04/2012 - 05/04/2012

LAW 937 - JOURNAL EDITORIAL

Status	Units	Grading	Grade
Enrolled	1.00	Pass/Fail

Class Nbr	Section	Component	Days & Times	Room	Instructor	Start/End Date
5919	08	Lecture		TBA	Luke Milligan	01/04/2012 - 05/05/2012

LAW 952 - CRIM JUS EXTERNSHIP II

Status	Units	Grading	Grade
Enrolled	3.00	Pass/Fail

Class Nbr	Section	Component	Days & Times	Room	Instructor	Start/End Date
5947	09	Lecture		OFF CAMPUS	Karen Jordan	01/04/2012 - 05/05/2012

LAW 997 - SPECIAL TOPIC

Status	Units	Grading	Grade
Enrolled	2.00	Graded

Class Nbr	Section	Component	Days & Times	Room	Instructor	Start/End Date
8269	10	Lecture	Tu 10:25AM - 12:05PM	Law School 171	Staff	01/04/2012 - 05/04/2012

Return to My Class Schedule

Ranking: Best (and Worst) Law Classes at U of L

2011-11-07T11:43:00.006-05:00

Registration for my final semester of law school is just a few days away. With that in mind, here is a completely unscientific ranking of classes I have taken at U of L Law over the last two and a half years. Just for fun, I am adopting the tiered approach of another arbitrary legal ranking system.

Tier 1
1. Torts
2. Civil Procedure
3. Trial Practice
4. Criminal Procedure - Constitutional Issues
5. Professional Responsibility

Tier 2
6. Law Review

Warning: potential tort case!

7. Property
8. Constitutional Law
9. Contracts
10. Decedents' Estates

Tier 3
11. Selected Problems in Civil Procedure
12. Criminal Law (first-year)
13. Evidence
14. Negotiable Instruments
15. Legal Research

Tier 4 (in alphabetical order)
Bar Review
Basic Income Tax

Basic Legal Skills

Business Organizations
Secured Transactions

In creating this list, I was tempted to give high marks to classes taught by terrific professors, or classes where I earned the best grades. I tried to avoid doing so, but in some cases this was unavoidable. Example: first-year Torts and first-year Civil Procedure, taught by David Leibson and Leslie Abramson respectively, were both incredible experiences. Then again, the material in Secured Transactions has been so awful that even Richard Nowka, a fantastic professor, could not rescue it from Tier 4. My preferences for classes are mostly based on how interesting the material is to me, and how much I grew as a person. Many students groan about Professional Responsibility, but I loved reading about all of the ways in which attorneys can get themselves disbarred. I also think everyone should take Trial Practice. I loved learning how to argue in court, and battle butterflies in a mock setting. If you are thinking about law school, or preparing to sign up for another semester of punishment at your existing school, it's also worth mentioning that many of these classes must be taken whether you like them or not, either as graduation requirements, for bar prep, or both (and yes, Bar Review is not technically a class, but I am predicting it will be a Tier 4 experience). Another thing that struck me in ranking law school classes is that many of the top courses are designed for 1L students. This may be because...

1) excitement about law school peaks in the first year, followed by a steady decline for the next two years, at which point you are happy to be finished and don't want think about any classes ever again.
2) all of the best classes and best professors are loaded into the first year, after which most of your poker chips are in the game and you can't back out.
3) first-year classes were actually just as awful as Tier 4 classes, but after the passage of two years of time they seem better.

My last semester of law school may shuffle the rankings. I'm taking Domestic Relations, Negotiation, Criminal Procedure - Judicial Process, maybe Bankruptcy, and hopefully an externship at the Jefferson County Public Defender's Office, which I predict will be in Tier 2, and possibly Tier 1. How can that be? Hey, I said the list was arbitrary. Just trying to be like the big boys.

Exclusive Interview with Jim Chen, Dynamic Dean of the University of Louisville School of Law

2011-11-03T10:56:00.003-04:00

Jim Chen, the dean of our law school, also happens to be one of Louisville’s most engaging and dynamic figures. A former Fulbright scholar, he speaks multiple languages, is a prodigious blogger, served as a clerk for Clarence Thomas on the U.S. Supreme Court, and worked alongside Barack Obama on the Harvard Law Review. He also cuts some pretty smooth moves on a dance floor, is known to frequent some of the city’s hippest consignment stores for his formal attire, and only needs thirty seconds to turn a conversation about law school into a chat about tsunamis in southeast Asia. We recently sat down in his office, on opposite sides of a desk crammed with stacks of paper, coffee mugs, books, a stapler shaped like an alligator, and a sign that says “… And this would be good for students because…?”). Here is a shortened transcript of our conversation. The focus of our talk was law reviews, so the below questions are a little heavy on scholarship. Any typos or non-sequiturs should be attributed solely to me.

Dean Chen

3L at U of L: You wrote recently in the Louisville Bar Briefs publication about the rising cost of legal education. Are too many people going to law school?

Dean Chen: I don’t think too many people are going to law school. I want to make sure that they are going for the right reasons. If you are thinking about making a ton of money, you shouldn’t go to law school. If you have nothing better or more compelling to do you shouldn’t go to law school. You should not undertake law school unless you have a plan to manage your debt.

3L: Why go to U of L?

Chen: We offer very good preparation for the practice of law. We are the dominant creator of professional connections, and the premier door opener in this market and I our broader region. We do this at an extremely cost effective basis.

3L: How important is it for Louisville to remain in the top 100 law schools in US News & World Report?

Chen: You don’t build a school in order to achieve a particular ranking. You build a school in order to achieve a particular mission. If the rankings -- which are imperfect and in some cases downright perverse -- happen to approve by giving you a certain number, that’s well and good. We are aware that people take these things into account. It’s not as if we consciously ignore the rankings. But if you think that giving more opportunities for experience-based learning and specific grounding in skills is good, then you pursue that, whether or not those efforts are reflected in the rankings.

3L: You’re nearing your fifth anniversary as dean. How have you put your stamp on the law school?

Chen: Focusing on the law school’s mission, on the 1,000 days of the student experience, and on the subsequent 2,000 weeks of lifetime work that our typical graduate does beyond law school. We have 1,000 days in which to put our mark on our students, to give them the best instruction, the best experiences that we can provide, and then to engage them over the course of their careers. So, I think of things like the clinic, I think of things like dramatically increasing philanthropy and outside engagement as my accomplishments as dean.

3L: What’s a typical day like for you?

Chen: I don’t think there is such a thing. There are a wide range of different tasks: a lot of decisions involving money, how to spend it, where to get it; a lot of agenda setting and policy making; a lot of correspondence, and a lot of email; I go to a lot of meetings at the university level; I go to a lot of events and represent the law school. I work one-on-one with quite a number of people from faculty to students. It bleeds into evenings and weekends.

3L: What do you remember from your time working for Clarence Thomas?

Chen: He’s been on the bench for 20 years, and I showed up during his second year. It’s pretty intense, working at the Supreme Court. There were certain patterns and rhythms. On a fairly regular basis you had to make sure that petitions for certiorari were reviewed and presented to the justices. There was conferring one on one with the Justice on specific cases that had been argued and assigned to him. I remember he was kind and very generous with his time. There were quite a few things that we did there that proved, by virtue of having the benefit of further thought… that not everything should be done in the heat of the moment. If you can avoid doing things in the heat of the moment, that is perhaps the luxury of an appellate court, and perhaps the luxury of an academic institution, unlike the private practice of law. In an academic setting, like the Supreme Court, the players last a lot longer. It’s a lifelong commitment and engagement, and as a result you have a lot of things that are decided not instantly, but certainly by people who expect to be there a long time. That forces a particular rhythm in life.

3L: Do faculty spend too much time on scholarship as opposed to teaching?

Chen: I don’t think that’s true. Obviously, everyone has a different individual allocation of time. It will vary based on where you are in your career, where you are in the rhythm of the year, whether you are teaching a subject that requires personal preparation on your part because you haven’t taught it before, or a subject you’ve taught for decades at a time. And this is the whole point of giving faculty time to write scholarship as part of your job. There is an expectation that you write and publish scholarship as a condition of getting tenure. I do think it’s entirely appropriate – in fact it’s a professional obligation – to connect your scholarly work with your teaching. The whole point of doing scholarship is making sure that you have something to profess. Isn’t that the root of the word professor? That you aren’t just saying something, you are stating it, you are professing it.

3L: You were on the Harvard Law Review when Barack Obama was its president. What was it like working for Obama?

Chen: (laughs, noting that he may be one of the only people in the legal profession who was worked for both Clarence Thomas and Barack Obama.) Obama was older than us, and he had a lot of social intelligence that the rest of us were still working to develop. Thinking back on my time in law review, law review gave me the opportunity to read very broadly in law, and on the academic side of law. If you are conscientiously reviewing articles for publication and conscientiously editing them at the level of substantive cite checking, technical compliance, etc., you can’t help but encounter a very broad range of serious legal scholarship, and you learn by immersion this strange language that passes for the patois of full-time teachers of law.

3L: How much energy are professors here expected to put into the prestige of the law reviews that they publish in?

Chen: When you speak to a junior faculty member whose professional credentialing is still on the line, their perspective will be different because they still have yet to pass through the tenure portion of their careers. For me, this was fifteen years in the past, so it’s different from my perspective. I am quite aware that those things don’t matter terribly much to someone like me who is not trying to get tenure. Someone who is looking for tenure, obviously their perspective is different. I think quite often we use the reputed prestige of a law review as a surrogate for what we believe to be editorial quality. Those are generalizations, and I think they are crass. In my own experience, I’ve gotten good editing from every layer without regard to the prestige of the school, and without regard to whether the journal is the flagship or a specialty.

My Daily Docket: Snippets of News at U of L Law

2011-10-26T10:50:00.003-04:00

A gigantic gelcap of generic DayQuil is the only thing keeping me vertical this morning, so I'm going to try a stream of consciousness blog post with a few items that are floating around in my congested 3L head.

Bar exam news: some of last year's graduates from U of L Law attended a swearing in ceremony on Friday, following their successful results from the July exam. According to unofficial sources, Louisville posted another year of excellent pass rates. Roughly 91 percent of first-time takers cleared the bar.
Student loans: Obama's proposed "pay as you earn" program for educational loans should be front-page news for any current or prospective law student. My debt from U of L will be around $60,000 even after a scholarship and a discount for in-state tuition. That's a lot of coin. But even without Obama's proposal, I am grateful I stayed here instead of going to Indiana or Washington & Lee, two other schools where I was accepted. Both would have meant student loans at least twice as large.
Howard Fineman: the well-known political writer for the Huffington Post is visiting campus this week, partly due to his status as a U of L Law grad. He worked several years as a reporter at The Courier-Journal, my former employer, and I'm mulling over questions that I might ask him when I pick him up at the airport this afternoon. The obvious one: with so many journalists fleeing newspapers to pursue law degrees, are you glad you went the other direction?
The annual Decedents' Ball (see promotional poster from previous year's event, above right) for law students is this Friday. Also, Lawlapalooza (featured in last week's post, below) is tomorrow.
I'm working at a will clinic for low-income residents on Thursday, hoping to finish out my required thirty hours of volunteer service before I graduate. Every single hour has been worth it.
There are only six class sessions remaining in the semester for most of my courses, and it's incredibly difficult to focus on them when 1) graduation is that much closer, 2) you are fixated on providing legal services to actual clients at an actual law firm with hundreds of thousands of actual dollars on the line, and 3) your head is still full of generic DayQuil. But focus I must. Until next time...

Latest law school video pitches Lawlapalooza

2011-10-19T10:50:00.001-04:00

Haven't heard of Lawlapalooza? It's the local legal community's annual battle of the bands, and a fundraiser for the Judge Ellen B. Ewing Foundation. I wrote about it last year at this link. Some students and faculty this year created a YouTube video promoting the Oct. 27 event, which made me feel good because at times I've felt a strange compulsion to create my own cheesy law school videos (or see my complete list of law school videos). It's good to have company.

A Day in the Life of a Law Student: Busy, Busy

2011-10-17T23:07:00.005-04:00

So you want to go to law school? Better get your calendar ready. Life is about to get busy. My day started at 6:25 a.m. and is almost over as the clock ticks past 11 p.m. Between those two goalposts, here is what I did:

6:25 a.m. -- Check email, take a quick look at Secured Transactions reading assignment, sip cup of tea, pay a few bills.
7:15 -- Shower, make breakfast for kids, pick out dress clothes for deposition later in day.
8:00 -- Arrive at law school after dropping kids off at Brown School downtown.
8 to 8:55 -- Study Secured Transactions like hell hath no fury. Hope I am not called on in class.
9 to 10:15 -- Pound notes into my keyboard during Secured Transactions, and give thanks that I am not called on in class.
10:15 to 10:25 -- Walk to post office (highlight of the morning) to ship a law school book to some guy who bought it from me on Amazon. Score $70!
10:30 to noon -- Put finishing touches on 6,400-word essay (excluding footnotes) for law review, and wonder why I agreed to go through the torture of writing two different law review notes.
Noon to 1 p.m. -- Study like mad for Negotiable Instruments; wolf down cold leftover mac and cheese from kids' dinner two nights ago. Hmmm.
1 p.m. to 2:15 p.m. -- Feeling pretty good in Negotiables, actually enjoying the material in a geek-out sort of way. Professor somehow makes topic interesting.
2:15 to 3:30 -- Put on tie, prepare for mock deposition exercise by frantically reviewing dozens of pages of documents and notes about a fictitious car wreck. Run into another student in the library and briefly talk about law school ping-pong tournament that we've both entered. Enter library, run into student who is opposing counsel. He asks me if I'm ready. I say yes, but only because there is no other choice.
3:30 to 4:30 -- Depose another student's wife in a second-floor classroom in front of a video camera, feeling bad for her the entire time but relishing the chance to dig up information in an adversarial setting. This is why I want to become a lawyer, damnit.
4:30 -- Check email from senior partner at law firm where I clerk. Find message about opposing counsel filing tons of discovery documents in mass tort case that I am managing. Ponder how that, and related deadlines and obligations, are going to dominate the rest of my week.
4:30 to 5:45 -- Realize that the format of my legal citations for the law review essay is absolutely inadequate, and spend lots of time trying to fix things.
6 p.m. -- Come home, hang out with kids and wife, watch them eat dinner, and later play Chutes and Ladders with my 5-year-old. I win.
7 p.m. -- Soccer game at Mockingbird with my men's indoor team. One of our key players has just returned from cancer treatment after being off for several months. He is an inspiration. I score two goals, and we win 5 to 3. Beer on me after the game.
9:10 -- Damn law review essay still isn't finished. Switch to red wine, think about reading for Criminal Procedure, and instead spend an hour fixing the last citations and polishing the main text of the essay. Send final draft to top editors. Major sigh of relief.
10:30 -- Draft a lease for a friend who owns rental property and asks me for help. Good networking opportunity. Losing steam. Try to stay focused.
11:15 -- Crap, the blog hasn't had a new post in a week. How does that happen?

Photo of the Week: Hiding Out at Ekstrom, Channeling the Wisdom of Frank Haddad, Jr.

2011-10-12T09:15:00.008-04:00

F rank E. Haddad, Jr.(1), perhaps Louisville's most legendary criminal defense lawyer, once said that successful trial attorneys need to be concerned about matters, but not worry about them.

"When you worry about matters, you don't last long; you either start drinking, or you get nervous or break down.You've got to develop a constitution not to worry."(2)

I am learning to follow Haddad's wisdom, and I think this is one of law school's greatest gifts so far. I've always been willing to carry a heavy load of responsibilities, but I've never been able to fully master the art of being calm in the storm. This semester, there is no choice. I have five classes, two of which are crashing down on me with assignments, plus a part-time job as a law clerk, rental property to manage, a volunteer coaching gig with my 5-year-old's soccer team, weekly Cub Scouts with my 9-year-old, the Don't Forget Your Awesome Wife thing, blog posts, pay the bills, leaves to rake, etc.
So, this morning, I'm hiding out at Ekstrom, U of L's mega library (and Photo of the Week, above) right next to the law school. I'm skipping class to work on a writing assignment, which makes perfect sense. I haven't missed a class all semester, and by my third year I have enough friends to get daily notes from any class I want with a simple Facebook message. It's a temporary fix, but it'll allow me to come a bit closer to meeting my obligations. I'm concerned, but not worried. Want to share your own strategy for coping with the madness? Post it in the comments field below.

1: To read a terrific magazine profile of Haddad, click here.

2: Burton Milward, Jr., Louisville's Legendary Lawyer: Frank E. Haddad Jr. 60, available here.

On this Date: Looking Back at 1L and 2L

2011-10-03T14:51:00.000-04:00

A year ago, I was writing about my second-year classes, and posting an interview with Kimberly Ballard, the law school's director of academic success. Two years ago, still a very green 1L, I was writing about my first brush with mid-term exams, and a successful but somewhat unlikely campaign to buy a golf hat from my Torts professor for $1,040. Today, as I sit in the law review offices writing this post, I am increasingly finding it hard to keep my focus on law school, and away from the bar exam and job prospects (latest guilty pleasure: looking at Facebook profiles of recent graduates to see who is working and where). In addition to classes, I am also working on an interview with Jim Chen, the dean of our law school for the last five years. I sat down with him for nearly two hours last week to discuss education, law reviews, and what it is like to be one of the only individuals in the world who have worked for both Clarence Thomas and Barack Obama. Did you know that he also used to live in Iceland?

Juxtaposed: exploring the similarities, and differences, between law school and kayaking

2011-09-29T10:38:00.006-04:00

Wild West: boating in Montana (before law school)

Wednesday is my push day in law school. Up at 6:30 to study, then it's Secured Transactions at 9, then more studying, then Negotiable Instruments at 1, followed directly by Selected Problems in Civil Procedure. So it was a welcome sign when a buddy called between classes yesterday and invited me on a quickie whitewater paddling trip that afternoon on Elkhorn Creek, just outside Frankfort. By 5:30, I was crashing through waves as I navigated the Elkhorn, surrounded by soaring sandstone cliffs and the occasional heron. Whitewater kayaking is sort of like law school, I realized later. The waves keep coming no matter what you do, and the only option is to keep paddling. In fact, surfing a nice river hydraulic is even more like law school: violent whitewater is rushing by your boat, surrounding you on all sides, and if you find just the right balance and steer upstream the right way, there is a beautiful feeling of serenity in the midst of the storm. But most of the time you're just trying to not drown.
The above comparisons notwithstanding, kayaking is actually nothing like law school. However, like many other forms of recreation, it does help to maintain sanity. It is absolutely critical that you take a break every once in awhile. I've written in previous posts about other short trips from Louisville, including the Falls of the Ohio and Red River Gorge. I also did a list of the Top Ten Things to Do on Winter Break, from bourbon tours to museums to local theater. It doesn't matter what you do, as long as you remember to breathe. This morning, I'm breathing deep, feeling good, and ready to conquer the law.

Law school videos: hip hop, indy rock & comic relief

2011-09-20T22:01:00.005-04:00

Anyone who reads this law school blog knows I am enthralled by amateur law school videos. Hey, it's a weak spot. The latest to cross my desktop is a hip-hop ode to graduating law students. So it hits home. And the production quality is surprisingly solid.

To see other law school videos, check out this one from GWU, or this from UC Berkeley. I also have my own humble offerings, including an in-class reggae interpretation of tax law, and a tour of Louisville with my Con Law book set to an indy rock soundtrack. Come to think of it, the lure of law school videos makes a lot of sense. Law school is already part theater, and the pressure and seriousness of the experience requires a little comic relief if you want to refrain from going crazy. Let the credits roll.

U of L Law by the numbers: a lesson in the past, the present, and maybe the future of legal education

2011-09-19T11:22:00.007-04:00

I've been doing some research this fall as part of an independent study project about our law school. The project is far from over, but I've learned a bunch of interesting things about U of L Law. Here's my attempt to distill them into a short list.

0 -- number of articles that new law professors were expected to publish annually as a condition of their employment when Lawrence Knowles started teaching here in 1959.
1/2 -- amount of their time that new professors currently spend researching and writing articles
5 -- number of women in a typical U of L Law class in the late 1960s, when students smoked cigarettes in the hallways and professors addressed classes as "boys" or "gentlemen"
7 -- number of law schools in the South in 1846, when classes here cost $20 each, payable in cash to the instructor
10 -- number of female editors, out of a total of 11, on the school's flagship law review in 1984, when men still accounted for 60 percent of most classes.
14 -- number of students for every faculty member at the law school.
50 -- average number of students in most of the classes I've taken at the law school.
66 -- percentage of students at the law school who are Kentucky residents.
100 -- U of L's current rank among the nation's law schools, according to US News & World Report.
126 -- rank of the University of Louisville Law Review, compared to 315 general interest law reviews worldwide.
156 -- median LSAT score for entering students
174 -- number of total students at the law school in 1962, of whom 88 were part of the school's part-time "night division"
400 -- approximate number of current students at the law school today, of whom none are in the night division because it no longer exists (a small number of students do attend part time)
1138 -- number of friends, including me, that our law school's dean has on Facebook, compared to 23 million people who "like" his former Harvard classmate, Barack Obama, on Facebook. OK, that's not really fair, but it is interesting.
1954 -- year that first African American student graduated from the law school.
1971 -- year that the law school hired its first African American staff member.
1997 -- year that law students gained widespread access to email and the Internet
2008 -- year that Prof. Knowles last taught a law school course at U of L
8,000 -- estimated number of living graduates of our law school
16,536 -- projected cost of one year of tuition for in-state students in 2011-2012.
72,340 -- total projected cost, including transportation, tuition, books, and health insurance, for a married law student at Yale for a single year.
75,000 -- typical debt after three years of law school at Louisville, including undergraduate debt.
320,000 -- number of minutes until I graduate from law school in May.

Staring at a "lousy" job market: 3Ls at Louisville Law looking at grim employment picture

2011-09-13T08:54:00.004-04:00

When I started law school in 2009, I figured my timing was perfect. By the time three years was over, the recession would be a distant memory and I would have my pick of places to begin a shining new career as a lawyer. Today, my prediction is not looking so hot. Popular legal blogs such as Above The Law continue to describe the job market for law graduates as lousy. Heck, even top law review editors at prestigious schools can't find jobs.
Here at U of L, I know of a handful of people with permanent jobs lined up. But there are far more of us who have been turned down by employers, or told that there just isn't room next year, despite the terrific job you did as a clerk. This is hardly surprising, considering how big law firms in town are trimming their ranks by laying off associates, hiring fewer graduates, and down-sizing their summer programs. It's not time to hit the panic button yet, of course. We're still just one month into our final year. In some respects, I think Louisville graduates are in a better position than their peers at higher-ranked schools, where student debt is often in the six figures. In this month's edition of Bar Briefs, for example, LBA president K. Gregory Haynes points out that law school tuition increased 317 percent from 1989 to 2009, making a law degree an increasingly "risky" investment. Haynes also makes good points about the manipulation of employment numbers by law schools, quoting a recent ABA resolution that discusses the "disconnect between law students' perception of their employment prospects upon completion of their law school education and the reality of what law students will realistically achieve."
Elsewhere in the same publication, our own law school's dean, Jim Chen, makes the case for Louisville Law as a value school where the debt numbers are far more favorable. At the same time, he points out that even at a value school like U of L, many students are leaving school with roughly $75,000 in debt, compared to average starting salaries in the private sector of $69,400. That last figure is not from Chen, but from the school's 2009 employment report, which also indicates that 77 percent of students received job offers before graduation and more than 95 percent were employed within nine months of graduation. Those stats seem overly rosy to me, although I don't believe the school is cooking the numbers. It's simply following the established system. Even so, it's not hard to find critics of law school employment stats. Depending on what you read, law schools "completely misrepresent" the numbers, or there are at least "ongoing questions" about the validity of jobs stats.
One excellent resource, Law School Transparency, puts the median private sector salary for Louisville at $55,000. I actually would be quite happy to find a job at that level, especially considering the low cost of living in Louisville. And while I do not have a job locked down yet, I know that no matter where I land, my long-term prospects will be considerably brighter than they were in my former profession. In journalism, just hanging on to the job you have is a victory.

Blog bonanza arrives at U of L Law

2011-09-07T11:48:00.002-04:00

When I started this blog a little more than two years ago at the request of the school's Office of Admissions, there wasn't too much company. In fact, there was no company. That's no longer the case. Sharon Wright, also a former journalist and now a 2L at Louisville Law, writes this terrific (and often very funny) blog about law school. More recently, a bunch of our new 1Ls have launched their own blogs with varying themes. I may be missing a few, but here are the ones I've tripped across recently.

Tim Chartrand, Eating My Way Through Law School
Morgan Brooke Hancock, Think Like a Lawyer
Megan Resch, Confessions of a 1L at UofL
Cassiopia Restrepo, Coffee and Casebooks
Colten Biro, Life & Law... & Surviving?

Be sure to check out these blogs if you're thinking about applying to U of L Law. They'll give you a good look at a slice of life here from differing perspectives -- funny, poignant, frustrating, even hungry! If I've left someone out in the above list, please share additional links in the comments field below. Happy blogging...

Hidden Attic at U of L Law Revealed

2011-08-29T15:08:00.001-04:00

A view of the law school library's mysterious attic

As I plow through my third year of law school here at U of L, there are plenty of days when I just want to be finished. Today is not one of them. I had two very good classes today, in which I learned some pretty useful things from excellent professors. For example, I've always thought that it is best to sign one's complete name in legible cursive on the back of checks. Not true. You can use a stamp, a squiggly mark, a circle, even a smiley face as long as that is your customary method of signing. You can even have someone else sign for you (agency law). I also recently learned that I enjoy no Fourth Amendment protections if a police officer comes to my house dressed as a gas meter reader and convinces me to allow him inside. These are good things to know.
But nothing can top the visit I made this afternoon to the law library's dusty attic. I knew we had a basement, and even a sub-basement, in our library. But if you ask the reference librarian at the front desk to see the attic, she'll gladly wave you in to a separate little elevator behind the desk, which will take you to a tiled-floor room filled with thousands of books that look older than dirt. Some of them even are older than dirt. In the attic, you can peruse thick tomes about aviation law from the 1960s, or Supreme Court decisions from World War I. You can even find cracked and faded compendiums of Kentucky statutes from the 1860s and earlier (intent of the drafters, anyone?). I realize that things of this nature may not be interesting to everyone. But if you agree with me that hidden attics are great and mysterious places, good for you. I also understand Professor Metzmeier has recently written a column about the same attic in the LBA's Bar Briefs publication. Check it out.

Photo of the Week: law school's new front lawn

2011-08-24T11:38:00.001-04:00

There's a new front lawn at U of L Law, apparently paid for with a federal grant. According to the university, the lawn is part of a bunch of improvements aimed at making the oval a "beautiful front door" for the school. Unfortunately, the lawn has not helped me answer any of the problems that I must finish before today's Negotiable Instruments class with Professor Leibson. If anyone knows of a federal grant for that, please advise.