I thought I would say a bit about faculty – the people who teach all those classes in the curriculum. Every law school will tell you that its faculty is excellent, and with justification. Law teaching jobs are sufficiently desirable that law schools generally have many, many qualified applicants for openings. Law [...]

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Law schools compete for students by touting the strength of their curriculum, and with every school claiming that it is strong in a particular area, it’s sometimes hard to get a handle on whether a particular school really would be better than another for a student interested in, for example, corporate law or environmental law. [...]

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Legal writing programs get staffed in 3 meaningfully different ways. One model relies primarily on part-time instructors (generally adjunct teachers or graduate student fellows) supervised by a director of the program who is sometimes, but not always, a full-time specialist in legal writing. A second model uses a director (sometimes, but not always, [...]

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Let me use this post to suggest one way in which prospective students can begin comparing academic programs. All law schools require their first year students to take a heavily prescribed curriculum. Few, if any electives exist, and indeed the required courses are practically the same at most schools. By contrast, second [...]

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The coming of spring means that thousands of aspiring lawyers will soon have to choose the law school they will attend. Over the last decade or so, rankings like U.S. News and World Report’s have become increasingly important in making those decisions. How heavily should a would-be lawyer rely on these rankings in [...]

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I was introduced today to Google’s Election and Issue Advocacy Team, a service designed to maximize the effectiveness of political advertising campaigns. Scott Brown’s successful Senate campaign made use of this service and paid Google’s AdWords program to ensure that Brown’s web page was the first sponsored link for any search on “Martha Coakley.”
According [...]

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Today’s Charlotte Observer reports the story of Clair Watkins, a senior basketball player who got one of those coveted “early commitments” from basketball powerhouse Duke. According to the story, Duke offered Ms. Watkins a promise of admission to Duke and a full basketball scholarship, a scholarship that Duke planned to honor for 4 years. [...]

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This morning’s Politico.com features a story entitled “Who Gets Whacked?” – a guide to Sarah Palin’s recent “Going Rogue” memoir summarizing how Palin treats various Washington players. The story features fairly extensive quotation from the book, which the authors of the story got in advance of today’s release.
Reading the story made me think Harper [...]

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In a story entitled “Recorded Sex Comments Cost Calif. Lawmaker His Job,” the Associated Press reports that California Assemblyman Mike Duvall resigned after his boasts about extramarital affairs were recorded by an open mike. The story mentioned that the tape had been posted to YouTube, and – like all dedicated academics with inquiring minds [...]

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I never thought this would happen, but today I heard my first radio ad directed specifically towards copyright. The ad, airing here in Boston, criticized attempts in Congress to add a performance right for recording artists, and it encouraged listeners to fight the “tax” on radio stations.
Now, if only all of copyright becomes perceived [...]

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The University of Connecticut men’s basketball team will not be playing in the championship game tonight, but recent turmoil surrounding the program raises important questions about the direction and credibility of college sports. One need not be a cynic to wonder, indeed suspect, that serious cheating has become the norm in big-money college sports. Accordingly, [...]

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Today’s Wall Street Journal online reports that the RIAA will no longer sue individuals it suspects of sharing copyrighted music files online. Instead, the RIAA will notify ISPs on the assumption that ISPs will try to stop their users’ behavior. Apparently, the RIAA has agreements with some ISPs. The Journal reports that ISPs [...]

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Today, it has been reported that guitarist Joe Satriani has sued Coldplay, alleging that portions of Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida” incorporate material from Satriani’s “If I Could Fly.” For those (like me) who didn’t instantly know what the suit is about, Youtube has some interesting videos comparing the relevant portions of the songs – [...]

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In a recently issued opinion, Judge Davis has granted Jammie Thomas a new trial, overturning an earlier verdict holding her liable in the amount of $222,000 for file sharing music over a peer-to-peer network. The specific legal ground for the ruling was an erroneous jury instruction that merely offering a work on a peer-to-peer [...]

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Yesterday’s law.com has a story about a case brought by Stephanie Lenz v. Universal Music. Lenz has sued Universal for misrepresenting its copyright rights under the DMCA when Universal sent Youtube a DMCA takedown notice. At issue is a home video, posted to Youtube, of Lenz’s toddler pushing a walker and jumping up and [...]

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Ann’s post about having faculty members write only in their home school’s law reviews is an interesting one, although it still leaves open the question of where non-law faculty would publish (presumably anywhere?). This might continue the “placement as a proxy for the quality” of non-law faculty articles.
If we really want to eliminate the importance [...]

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Thanks to Deven for getting this excellent discussion started.
I agree with the proposition that experiential learning is very valuable and should probably occupy a more significant place in the legal education than it presently does, particularly on the transactional side. However, experiential learning is often extremely expensive. By necessity, student-faculty ratios must be low in [...]

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Arstechnica has a story suggesting that Apple is negotiating to offer unlimited downloads to iPod owners who pay a set fee. The scheme essentially means raising the price of iPods, and “giving away” the music.
I speculate that this makes sense as the next development in how consumers spend their entertainment dollars. Each person [...]

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Well, I admit to a looonnnggg period away from blogging, but I have an explanation (if not an excuse). My co-author Joe Liu and I have finished a new casebook on copyright that will be published by West in time for fall adoption. One thing I have learned for sure – the last [...]

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George Mitchell’s recent report on performance enhancing drugs in baseball identified many players as users of various substances, including steroids and human growth hormone. Of those identified, Yankee ace Andy Pettitte is perhaps the most prominent to confirm his use of such substances and give his side of the story. In a nutshell, [...]

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