- Renowned professor of constitutional law Laurence H. Tribe will return to the faculty at Harvard Law School in January and recommence teaching in the 2011-2012 academic year. Due to a benign brain tumor, Tribe has cut short the two-year leave he had taken from HLS to serve as the first Senior Counselor for Access to Justice in the Justice Department. Tribe was appointed University Professor in 2004, which is the highest academic honor a faculty member can receive at Harvard, “reserved for just a handful of professors throughout the university,” according to the HLS web site.
- The American Bar Association has delayed its decision about accrediting foreign law schools. The council decided it needs more time to complete the study. Meanwhile, this issue has sparked much controversy, with many opposing the concept. While the ABA did note that foreign law students should be spending actual time in the U.S. to “learn U.S. values and ethics,” another determining factor is the “potential negative effect on U.S. lawyers.” We do not need more lawyers flooding the legal job market at the moment, and allowing foreign attorneys to sit for and pass the bar would just create more competition for a dearth of jobs.
- Interested in law school and choosing a major? A recent study examined which majors tend to yield higher LSAT scores, and the results are somewhat surprising. Of the 29 majors listed, Pre-law and Criminal Justice ranked lowest, with LSAT scores of 148 and 146, respectively. The highest-scoring major was Physics/Math, with an average score of 160, followed by Economics and Philosophy/Theology, which tied with 157. For the complete results, check out Most Strongly Supported.
- New Hampshire’s chief justice John Broderick Jr. will be the new dean of the University of New Hampshire School of Law, formerly Franklin Pierce Law Center, New York Lawyer reports. Broderick aims to produce more “practice-ready graduates” by “ensuring that students have a basic grasp on business principles and a general understanding of how to run a law practice.” He also hopes to enhance the school’s excellent reputation in intellectual property, and to look into adding more joint-degree programs, due to the school’s recent affiliation with the University of New Hampshire.
- For those of you aspiring for a Supreme Court clerkship who don’t know how realistic it is, check out Brian Leiter’s Law School Rankings, which has recently ranked schools according to Supreme Court clerkship placement in the last decade. The schools are ranked by total number of clerks, although the total number of clerks divided by recent class size is listed as well. Harvard takes the top spot, followed by Yale, University of Chicago, Stanford, and Columbia and University of Virginia tied for fifth.
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