clinicians with not enough to do

Two Jobs at Northern California ACLU

The ACLU of Northern California would like to post two announcements for positions it is currently hiring for, one for a staff attorney position and one for our Police Practices Policy Director position.   

 

Attached are PDF copies of both postings.  Please contact me if you have any questions.

 

Download 2009_job announcement_Police Practices Director_FINAL 

Download Staff Attorney Job Announcement - FINAL

 

Sincerely,

Nigar Shaikh

Litigation Assistant

ACLU-NC

Call for Papers: Law and Society 2010

from Poverty Law by Ezra Rosser

From the Law and Society Association Website:

Call for Participation Due Date: December 8, 2009

CLICK HERE TO SUBMIT PAPERS

The 2010 Annual Meeting of Law and Society Association Thursday, May 27 through Sunday, May 30, at the Renaissance Chicago Hotel.

Theme: AFTER CRITIQUE: What is Left of the Law and Society Paradigm?

Born out of disillusionment with the failures of liberal legalism to deliver social justice or equality, law and society scholarship at the time aimed to expose those failures and challenge liberal legalism’s legitimating premises. Twenty years after the founding of LSA, during the decade of the 1980s, the critical impulse of law and society scholarship was itself put under the microscope by some who turned critique inward, calling out law and society scholars for embracing empty empiricism or for their complicity with legal and political elites. In this period, meta-debates raged over theoretical, methodological, and political questions.

More recently events in the academy and the world seem to have squelched our appetite for critique either of the legal order itself or of the premises and purposes of our own scholarship. In an era when the rule of law has come under sustained attach, can we go beyond celebrating it and allying ourselves with its projects? At a time when there are no dominant theoretical or methodological perspectives in the academy should we turn away from epistemological questions and just get on with our work?

The theme of the 2010 LSA Meeting–After Critique–invites us to consider the law and society enterprise today and to think about its future direction. We want to reflect on the various ways that law and society scholarship has been and should be engaged with the threat of terrorism and governmental responses to it, national and global attacks on the rule of law, questions of sovereignty and sovereign prerogative, the contemporary situation of identity politics, and the collapse of the global economy and the crisis of neo-liberalism.

We also want to think about whether there is anything meaningful and coherent in the phrase “law and society scholarship” as well as how we should position ourselves in relationship to other interdisciplinary enterprises, e.g. critical race theory, empirical legal studies, law, culture, and the humanities, etc. Is it time to revive our critical heritage as well as our traditions of theoretical and methodological self-scrutiny? What would this entail?

Google Introduces Case Law Search

from Law School Headlines by admin

As you know, Google’s ultimate goal is to organize the world’s information. With this in mind, it should be no surprise that Google is organizing full-text legal opinions from United States federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts. The company is using its Google Scholar service to do so.

“As many of us recall from our civics lessons in school, the United States is a common law country,” says Google Distinguished Engineer Anurag Acharya. “That means when judges issue opinions in legal cases, they often establish precedents that will guide the rulings of other judges in similar cases and jurisdictions. Over time, these legal opinions build, refine and clarify the laws that govern our land. For average citizens, however, it can be difficult to find or even read these landmark opinions. We think that’s a problem: Laws that you don’t know about, you can’t follow — or make effective arguments to change.”

You can now search Google Scholar to find opinions by searching specific cases (like Plessy v. Ferguson) or topics (like desegregation). You can type a phrase like “separate but equal” and get results for cases in which such a phrase is in included.

[WebPro Search]

JOBS: Hastings Human Rights Fellowship

Center for Gender & Refugee Studies

University of California, Hastings College of the Law

 

Teaching Fellowship in the Refugee and Human Rights Law Clinic at U.C. Hastings, with Joint Placement at the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies

 

The Center for Gender and Refugee Studies (CGRS) is seeking applications for the Teaching Fellowship in Refugee and Human Rights Law, a two-year position beginning on June 1, 2010. The Fellowship is designed for lawyers with at least three years of practice experience who are interested in preparing for a career in law school clinical teaching, as well as being engaged in the cutting edge legal work of CGRS.

 

The 2010-2012 Fellow will co-teach the Refugee and Human Rights Clinic at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. The Clinic exposes students to the related fields of refugee and international human rights, and to the varied strategies undertaken in these substantive areas. In the refugee area, students represent clients in individual proceedings, and may also engage in litigation or policy work. In the international human rights area, students engage in fact-finding, draft human rights reports, or participate in advocacy at regional human rights bodies, such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, or at inter-governmental bodies, such as the United Nations. The Fellow will work closely with clinic faculty, sharing responsibility for designing and teaching clinic classes, selecting and supervising law students, and other related matters.

Faculty as Smoking Police?

Karen Sloan from the National Law Journal reports:

Faculty members at Widener University School of Law will have a new role to play next academic year: smoking police.

They won't have matching uniforms or extensive training. They will be armed with small cards that detail the school's impending ban on smoking or using tobacco products anywhere on campus, indoors and outdoors. If that's not enough to keep people from lighting up on campus, repeat offenders might be fined, said Linda L. Ammons, the law school's dean.

Widener is one of a growing number of law schools that are getting tough on smoking by students, faculty, staff and visitors. Most law schools already prohibit smoking inside and near buildings, but at least three are preparing to become completely smoke-free campuses next summer. At least five already are. According to the American Lung Association, 176 colleges and universities in the United States are now fully smoke-free.

In addition to Widener, which has campuses in Wilmington, Del., and Harrisburg, Pa., Washington University School of Law in St. Louis and the University of Florida Levin College of Law in Gainesville, Fla., are preparing to ban all smoking effective in July. The University of Iowa College of Law, the University of Arkansas School of Law, the Oklahoma City University School of Law, the Indiana University Maurer School of Law-Bloomington and Indiana University School of Law-Indianapolis each went totally smoke-free last year. Some of these bans are the result of new university-wide policies, while others were spurred by state law.

For more, go to:  http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202434975473&src=EMC-Email&et=editorial&bu=National%20Law%20Journal&pt=NLJ.com-%20Daily%20Headlines&cn=20091028NLJ&kw=Law%20faculties%20recruited%20to%20anti-smoking%20squads&slreturn=1&hbxlogin=1

Teachers Manual for Lawyers and Clients

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Visit Us Online     |     Contact Account Manager     |     Law School Exchange     |     TWEN

Teacher's Manual to Lawyers and Clients: Critical Issues in Interviewing and Counseling Stephen Ellmann, New York Law School Robert D. Dinerstein, American Isabelle R. Gunning, Southwestern Katherine R. Kruse, UNLV Ann C. Shalleck, American ISBN 978-0-31423-532-9 West Academic Publishing is pleased to announce that the Teacher's Manual to Lawyers and Clients: Critical Issues in Interviewing and Counseling is now available for download on Law School Exchange. Join Law School Exchange today to download a complimentary digital copy of this teacher's manual and to take advantage of the site's many other features. Law School Exchange allows law school faculty to share, digitally publish, and find scholarship and teaching materials in collaboration with an online community of peers.

Review Copy: Professors who would like to review a print copy of this teacher's manual can request a complimentary copy by emailing their account manager at [email protected]. Please refer to ISBN 978-0-31423-532-9.

For current Westlaw® information, visit: MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "updateweb.thomson-west.com" claiming to be lawschool.westlaw.com

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Death of "Big Law School'?

From the Conglomerate

Death of "Big Law School'? Posted by Erik Gerding

Larry Ribstein has been writing and blogging up a storm about the "Death of Big Law." Larry makes a convincing case that the current economic crisis is not just a blip for law firms with everything returning to normal soon. Assuming that large law frims cannot deal with the structural problems Larry outlines and that the decline of big law is long term, what would that mean for legal education?

It would likely mean the end of the law school boom - with its expanding law faculties and the bumper crop of new law schools. Like it or not, the business model (I hate applying that term to legal education, but can't think of another one) of many law schools is heavily dependent on students getting high paying law firm jobs to pay off high law school tuition. Law firms are also prime benefactors of law school endowments. Without corporate law consuming law school graduates by the dozens, law school will face massive economic pressure.

On the one hand, these pressures will push law schools to improve the training of law graduates so that they are ready on "day one." Helping students in a tougher economic market supports the Carnegie/ABA best practices reforms that have been discussed so much.

But the changing economics of legal education will also cut the other way. The Best Practices model is expensive, and with tighter budgets law schools will also face pressures to move in the direction of the traditional "stack-em and pack-em" model of large classes. (Creative law professors may find ways to balance these pressures - for example many trial advocacy classes involve both a law professor and a roster of practitioner adjucts. Therese Maynard and Dana Warren have adapted this model to teaching transactional law to classes of 60+ at Loyola-LA.)

read the rest here

How to Promote Yourself

PrawfsBlawg

Self-Promotion #5: Hodge Podge of Ideas

In this last post on self-promotion, I just want to throw out some more ideas about how you can obtain a better platform for you and your scholarly work.  If others have ideas that have worked in their own careers, it would be great if you would add them to the comments of this post.

So, in no particular order, some further ideas on how to promote yourself within the larger legal academy:

1. Involvement in Law & Society or other organization with a subject matter focus (other organizations revolve around empirical studies and law & economics.  The best thing about these conferences is that many of them are inter-disciplinary which means that you also will find outlets to collaborate with social scientists outside of the law.  Law & Society for one has a great collaborative research network which permits one to navigate this rather larger conference by subject area.

2. Similarly, you can get to know more people in your field by becoming involved in your relevant AALS section. Different AALS Sections work differently, but some are certainly open to younger scholars playing a leading role in setting up programs and publishing newsletters.

3. Starting a listserv or discussion list in your area of expertise might also give you the ability to get to know people you otherwise don't know. Although there are many listservs out there on broad topics like constitutional law, law and religion, and legal writing, consider setting up a list (with the help of your IT department) in a sub-area within your main field. I did this a number of years ago in the employment discrimination context with the empdiscr listserv, even though there was already in existent a more general labor and employment law listserv (worklaw).

4. Consider talking to your law review about hosting a symposium on a topic that you and four of your most fun and famous friends from your field would like to talk about and submit papers on.   The advantage of proposing a law review symposium is that you can really get to know those in the academy who have overlaps with your interests in meal setting or more informal get-togethers during the symposium.

5. Communities outside of the law might also bring you into contact with different law professors. Involvement in a political campaign or with a national civic organization might provide an idea venue for you to get to know scholars in fields outside of your normal reach.

6.  Think of putting together a law debate for the Federalist Society, ACS, or ACLU.  Students are very open to the idea of you participating in debates either with colleagues within the school or with colleagues at other schools. I know that the Federalists and the ACS provide a list of national speakers to consider and even provide funding in some circumstances to fly speakers in.

7.  Take advantage of posting your work on SSRN, bepress or similar legal paper database. It is still surprising to me how many come to know the work of other scholars through downloads on these services.  Law professors who have similar interests will get in touch with you once they see the scope of your own scholarship or you can get in touch with others to talk about their scholarship.

In any event, I hope this post and the previous four have given individuals some ideas about how to become better known in the large law professor world. As I told people over the years, especially when one starts out their law career at mid-level school in an out-of-the-way part of the country, it is sometimes necessary to "shout" to tell people you exist.  Assuming that once you get people's attention that you can also keep their focus on you with your research and scholarship, slowly but surely more invitations to symposiums, conference, and yes, even guest blogging stints, will come your way.

Paul Secunda

Posted by laborprof lpb on November 16, 2009 at 07:05 PM in Life of Law Schools | Permalink

New Public Law School in Mass.

Plan for Public Law School Advances in Mass.

from Legal Blog Watch by Robert J. Ambrogi

An effort to create the first public law school in Massachusetts got a boost Friday when University of Massachusetts President Jack M. Wilson gave it his endorsement. Wilson said he is convinced that the law school proposal is fiscally sound and would create a program with high academic standards. As noted here last month, the plan calls for the UMass-Dartmouth campus to take over the private, unaccredited Southern New England School of Law in North Dartmouth. The law school's board of trustees voted last month o donate to UMass its campus and assets, valued at $22.6 million. Massachusetts is one of just six states without a public law school. The plan quickly drew opposition from critics who say the state already has a surplus of law schools and of lawyers and that it would cost the state tens of millions of dollars to bring the school to a level that would allow it to earn ABA accreditation. But Wilson said the school would not consume state or university dollars and instead would create revenue. He cited figures from UMass Dartmouth Chancellor Jean F. MacCormack projecting that the law school's cumulative cash balance would grow from $1.8 million in 2011 to...

click on the title for the rest

An effort to create the first public law school in Massachusetts got a boost Friday when University of Massachusetts President Jack M. Wilson gave it his endorsement. Wilson said he is convinced that the law school proposal is fiscally sound and would create a program with high academic standards. As noted here last month, the plan calls for the UMass-Dartmouth campus to take over the private, unaccredited Southern New England School of Law in North Dartmouth. The law school's board of trustees voted last month o donate to UMass its campus and assets, valued at $22.6 million. Massachusetts is one of just six states without a public law school. The plan quickly drew opposition from critics who say the state already has a surplus of law schools and of lawyers and that it would cost the state tens of millions of dollars to bring the school to a level that would allow it to earn ABA accreditation. But Wilson said the school would not consume state or university dollars and instead would create revenue. He cited figures from UMass Dartmouth Chancellor Jean F. MacCormack projecting that the law school's cumulative cash balance would grow from $1.8 million in 2011 to...

click on the title for the rest

If BigLaw is Changed, What About Law School?

from Law School Headlines by admin

To the degree we’ve talked about the effect of the recession’s impact on law schools, the discussion has focused mostly on the fact that applications at many schools are up. To many, even if the legal industry is suffering alongside many others, the let’s-go-back-to-school strategy represents a risk worth taking: Three years down the line — who knows? — maybe everything will look the way it did in 2007.

But until now, we haven’t read a piece that takes a harder look at what might become of the legal academy if BigLaw undergoes dramatic and permanent changes, as many suspect it might. Earlier this week, however, over at the Conglomerate blog, University of New Mexico law professor Erik Gerding offered up a little “what if?” piece, in which he hypothesized about potential changes to the law-school world if and when law-firm hiring practices prove inexorably changed.

[Wall Street Journal]

How's this for cheap legal labor?

Recent CUNY Law Grads to Represent City Residents in Housing Courts

from Law School Headlines by admin

New York state court officials have announced a new program that will have recent graduates of the City University of New York Law School representing city residents in housing courts.

New York City’s Deputy Chief Administrative Judge Fern Fisher says 11 lawyers trained in housing law will represent low to moderate income residents on selected housing court cases starting next week.

Fisher says the six-month LaunchPad for Justice pilot program is the first time the state court system has partnered with a law school.

State Assemblymen Adriano Espaillat, of Manhattan, and Hakeem Jeffries, of Brooklyn, obtained legislative funds to pay the lawyers a $200 weekly stipend for a 20-hour week.

It’s estimated each lawyer will handle about 44 cases a week.

Apprenticeships - a best practice?

Apprenticeships – a best practice?

from Best Practices for Legal Education by karenalash

I recently returned from Serbia and Macedonia on a Public Interest Law Institute trip to help assess which Balkan law schools should join PILI’s expanding legal education reform project. Some professors were surprised that US law schools are also wringing their collective hands about how to give ideally all law students more meaningful experiential learning opportunities. But what really surprised our counterparts is that US law graduates can sit for the bar and get a license whether or not they’ve had any practice experience. Indeed, according to The Equal Justice Works Guide to Law Schools, most schools don’t collect information about whether their students had any hands-on experience before getting a diploma.

Like in some central and eastern European countries, Serbian and Macedonian law graduates cannot become licensed until completing a 2-year apprenticeship in the office of the Prosecutor or Parliament, a judge, or a private firm or an NGO, and a licensed attorney certifies the fact.

As we in the US also wring our hands about the miserable job market, I wonder if we might be witnessing a move towards the Balkan model, with a focus on training and hands-on (usually public interest related) experience to launch new lawyers’ careers.

* We’re seeing legions of “deferred” associates spend a year at reduced (law firm) pay with government, advocacy or legal aid offices. According to an ABA Journal story, initial anecdotal feedback on the deferred associate strategy is very positive, from associates and host nonprofit organizations alike.

* Some law schools and bar associations – for example, Ohio State Bar Public Service Program, Houston Law Center, Cardozo, Pennsylvania, Georgetown, Michigan, Harvard, Stanford and Columbia — have recently created short-term paid post-graduate public interest employment opportunities. Recent graduates work “off campus” in nonprofits, and sometimes “on campus” in law school clinics and faculty research centers. According to recent news stories, Denver is fundraising to create a post-graduate state clerkship program and Miami is providing $10,000 foreclosure defense fellowships for eight graduates to help legal aid groups tackle backlogs of cases.

* More than 40 law schools (with some overlap of the above) have long supported at least one post-graduate fellowship either with small stipends or fully-funded public interest fellowship positions. And a growing number of schools have a pro bono or some other clinical, hands-on graduation requirement, including Washington & Lee’s recent transformation of its third year into a practice year. (For lists of school-supported fellowships, and graduation and clinic requirements, check out the Equal Justice Works Guide.)

* National Fellowship programs, providing 2-years of funding (largely from law firms), including the largest of its kind at Equal Justice Works and Skadden’s program, enable new lawyers to get the hard-to-get entry level opportunities needed to launch public interest careers.

* Law firms are also getting in the first-year training game. For example, Howrey & Simon launched its “”lawyer training and initiation program specifically designed to accelerate the development of associate competencies.” First year lawyers spend only one-third of their year doing billable work, devoting the rest to pro bono representation, and participation in trainings including work with Howrey’s in-house writing instructor and assignment to trial teams. Drinker Biddle opted to start associates with a six month training program at a reduced salary rather than defer them. A recent ABA Journal article describes Nixon Peabody’s serious consideration of an apprenticeship program via a “Center of Excellence” where first-year associates “would train until they can graduate to a larger market.”

* At forums like the one held on October 30th at Columbia Law School, the profession and academy discussed the future of pro bono in a changing profession, including recent phenomenon of Big Firms sending new lawyers to public sector hosts for a year, and wondering if although launched in response to a market “crisis”, the model might continue in a more formal way.

This all makes me think we should consider a study tour to the Balkans, to learn more about their post-graduate apprenticeship program. Indeed, we would do well to remember that such luminaries as Oliver Wendell Holmes started his career as an apprentice. Though he did attend classes at Harvard Law School for a year, he balanced this with an apprenticeship at a Boston law firm before taking the bar.

Best Practices in Legal Education? Maybe.

New Online Journal re: Teaching and Curricular Innovations

A Renaissance is occurring within legal education.  Building on the findings and recommendations of the Carnegie Report (2007), MacCrate Report (1992), Cramton Report (1979), Reed Report (1921), and other extensive research, law schools and faculty are developing creative innovative curriculum and teaching methods to better prepare students for the practice of law. 

 

The Renaissance Report™ http://renaissancereport.wordpress.com/ is an online journal hosted by William Mitchell College of Law. The journal provides a broad based, up-to-date resource of curriculum and teaching innovations for legal educators.

 

It is with great hope for the future of the legal profession and the legal education system that we invite you to join the discussion. Together we can create a legal education renaissance.

 

Join us! http://renaissancereport.wordpress.com/

 

Professor John Sonsteng, Editor

Renaissance Report Editorial Team

William Mitchell College of Law