Digital Directions

"The New Realities of the Legal Academy"

The title of this post is the title of this intriguing new paper by Larry Solum available via SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

This short paper is the Foreword to Brannon P. Denning, Marcia L. McCormick, and Jeffrey M. Lipshaw, Becoming a Law Professor: A Candidate's Guide, American Bar Association, Forthcoming.

One of the great virtues of Denning, McCormick and Lipshaw’s guide is that it reflects the changing nature and new realities of the legal academy.  Not so many years ago, entry into the elite legal academy was mostly a function of two things -- credentials and connections. The ideal candidate graduated near the top of the class at a top-five law school, held an important editorial position on law review, clerked for a Supreme Court Justice, and practiced for a few years at an elite firm or government agency in New York or Washington.  Credentials like these almost guaranteed a job at a very respectable law school, but the very best jobs went to those with connections -- the few who were held in high esteem by the elite network of very successful legal academics and their friends in the bar and on the bench. The not-so-elite legal academy operated by a similar set of rules.  Regional law schools were populated by a mix of graduates from elite schools and the top graduates of local schools, clerks of respected local judges, and alumni of elite law firms in the neighborhood.  In what we now call the "bad old days," it was very difficult indeed for someone to become a law professor without glowing credentials and the right connections.

via lsi.typepad.com

Typepad Re-Blog

This is my first attempt at a 're-blog' post, and I was expecting something a bit more exciting!  There is a link (above) to the Law School Innovation blog where I read this post, but the re-blog function doesn't make this original ownership particularly obvious!

Review

The paper makes some interesting points regarding elitism, "the bad old days" and the changing landscape of how American law professors are hired.

The table of contents for the full book - Becoming a Law Professor: A Candidate’s Guide - is also available on SSRN (http://ssrn.com/abstract=1650713) and will be published by the American Bar Association.

The book covers a range of issues in eight, occasionally witty-named, chapters:

Chapter 1. What Do Law Professors Do All Day?
Chapter 2. Where Do Law Professors Come From?
Chapter 3. Pleased to Meat You, Hope You Guess My Name: Preparing For (and
Surviving) the AALS Faculty Recruitment Conference
Chapter 4. The On-Campus Interview
Chapter 5. Which One of These Is Not Like the Others? Advice for
Nontraditional Faculty Candidates
Chapter 6. Offer and Acceptance: Handling Job Offers
Chapter 7. Now What? Things to Do Before You Teach Your First Class
Chapter 8. Converting an Unsuccessful Job Search into Future Opportunities

I don't seem able to find the title on the ABA's bookstore, but I did see a new title Social Media for Lawyers: The Next Frontier that looked interesting and a forthcoming Little Book of Coffee Law!

BILETA 2010: A History of Legal Informatics

Following welcome addresses from both the Law and Computer Science faculties, the conference chair (Erich Schweighofer) officially opened the conference and a panel of speakers gave a plenary address.

 Abdul Paliwala spoke of, and paid homage to, the pioneers of the past (Martin, Susskind, de Mulder & Leith) and looked to the future with possible new jurisprudence, a reversal of emphasison IT law to Legal Informatics, and a new culture with web2.0, creative commons and open access legal inforation such as WorldLII.

Abdul alsopresented the 9th volume of the LEFIS Series, which celebrates the 25th anniversary of BILETA as a organisation and conference organiser.  Conference delegates received a copy of the book, BILETA institutional members will also receive a copy and so will a number of academic departments developing countries.

The chapters within the book are also available in the first edition of the newly re-named European Journal of Law and Technology (EJLT), previously known at JILT, but still within the group of Electronic Law Journals.  The first such edition of EJLT (vol 1, no 1) was released by Abdul at the conference and can now be viewed online at: http://ejlt.org//issue/current.

The End of Lawyers?

Apologies for being late on this one (I blame Christmas and end-of-semester essays), but it does rather help to make the point..!

The other week, Andrew Marr's Start the Week programme on Radio 4 featured Richard Susskind. The podcast could be downloaded for one week following the broadcast as per the BBC's policy on archiving. I'd already copied the file to my hard drive to listen to later, but this doesn't help blog readers who've already missed the boat, so to speak.

It is available on the list of previous STW programmes (for about 6 months it would seem) so it can still be downloaded as I write this post, but it depends on when you read this.  I also requested one of our library services (The Spoken Word is a JISC funded project) to archive a copy in their respository should anyone wish to use or relect on it in the future.  In sum, the programme considers:

"in this period of financial difficulty, can we afford lawyers? RICHARD SUSSKIND thinks that the legal services have not previously had enough pressure on them to keep up with technology and have become worryingly inefficient. He argues that by harnessing Web 2.0 technologies lawyers will become cheaper, thereby enabling justice to be available to more people. The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services is published by Oxford University Press and Richard Susskind will be giving a lecture on 2 December at 4.00pm, Gulbenkian Lecture Theatre, Faculty of Law, University of Oxford."

The remainder of the programme features Chris Bishop and John Dupre who comment on DNA in particular.  Returning to Susskind, Nick Holmes gives a useful overview of his latest book - in particular how lawyers conduct their business and how improved access to justice can be achieved.  If it's on your christmas reading list, please comment here!

I've also been subscribed to Radio 4's Law in Action series (although the programme is currently taking a winter break until January 2009) and the podcasts pose a similar life-span issue if you don't download them immediately, or automatically... and then they are only for personal use. I've found several to be useful for teaching with topics such as paternity, witness memory and forensics covered in the recent past, but there is no archive that I can see with the actual audio content.  Another job for the Spoken Word services then!