It’s a small thing, but it’s been bothering me disproportionately, so I want to say a few words about one of my least favourite current phrases in the law: “the best and the brightest.” It’s normally used in a talent recruitment or institutional marketing capacity to describe the very small group of the very best… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Law School
The canary in our coal mine
My newest column has been posted at Slaw, winner of the Canadian Association of Law Librarians’ 2009 Hugh Lawford Award for Excellence in Legal Publishing. It’s the latest honour for Canada’s best legal website, and yet another reason to read this post there and take in the rest of the terrific content.
To the class of 2012
My newest column is up at Slaw. As always, I encourage, nay, beseech you to go read it there, so that you can sample the rest of the invaluable content produced by Simon Fodden and his stellar cast. And as always, I’ll also post it here:
Lawyers as a public good
Thanks to San Diego lawyer and blogger Joseph Dang, I belatedly caught up with an article in California Lawyer magazine about the University of California at Irvine’s intention to launch a new law school this fall. If you’re not familiar with this plan, UC Irvine ambiti0usly aims to debut in the Top 20 rank of… Read more »
The crossed purposes of legal education
One of the signs that change is underway in the legal profession is that elephants in the room are becoming easier to talk about. One such pachyderm is growing increasingly obvious in legal education: the disconnect between what prospective law students imagine about the profession and what they eventually find when entering the legal workforce…. Read more »
Watch for falling dominoes
I don’t think Detroit’s automakers scored a $17 billion care package from the White House because anyone seriously thinks the cash will staunch the gaping holes in their business models and turn them into American Toyotas. More likely, the US government feared a massive ripple effect throughout the faltering wider economy if even Chrysler went… Read more »
Re-engineering law schools
My newest column for Slaw is up and running at the must-read site and ABA Journal Blawg 100 finalist. Even though I’ll also reproduce the article here, I recommend you read it there, in order to get a close-up look at the tremendous content, links and insights available to its readers every day. As law… Read more »
The perils of squandering talent
Malcolm Gladwell has written a new book about the factors that most influence the likelihood that you’ll achieve (traditionally defined) career success. Outliers: The Story of Success posits that much of what affects our success is out of our control, and that arbitrary or even trivial factors play a disproportionate role in what we end up… Read more »
Can’t get no LSATisfaction
Here’s something interesting: the consultancy Kerma Partners recently conducted an in-depth study of more than 1,300 current and past “timekeepers” on behalf of an AmLaw 25 law firm. The study identified which personal qualities and attributes of lawyers correlated most strongly with firm success factors such as productivity and longevity. Lawyers possessing the best of… Read more »
Dispelling the myths of lawyer education
There’s an old story about a supposed experiment in which five apes are placed in a cage containing a stepladder. A banana is hanging from the roof of the cage, and a sprinkler with ice-cold water is positioned above it. Whenever an ape tries to climb the ladder to get the banana, the sprinkler comes… Read more »