JD Journal » education

Morning Roundup

joshua — Wed, 12 May 2010 13:52:48 +0000

Good morning! Today is Wednesday, May 12th. Here’s a quick look back at yesterday’s stories.

Opportunity For Firms To Re-learn and Re-market Real-Estate Practice…

Legal Heavyweights Speak About Arizona Immigration Legislation…

Clifford Chance To Deepen Bankruptcy Practice Group…

Firms Hire MDs to Combat Government Suits Over Medicare Billing…

Lucado Law Firm Opposes BP’s Motion To Have All Lawsuits Involving Gulf Oil Spill to Houston…

Nevada School District Hires Littler Mendelson…

Nevada School District Hires Littler Mendelson

joshua — Tue, 11 May 2010 14:35:03 +0000

According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the San Francisco based firm Littler Mendelson has been hired by the Clark County, Nevada School District over a contract dispute with several of the School District’s executives. Littler Mendelson is the nation’s largest employment and labor law firm with extensive experience in the representation of management in labor disputes.

The dispute here arose when the Clark County Association of School Administrators and Professional-technical Employees filed a complaint against the District with Nevada’s Local Government Employee-Management Relations Board. The complaint alleges that contracts with several of the District’s executives contained benefits that were excessive in the current economic climate. Littler has been hired to defend those contracts and put into question the legitimacy of the Association’s claims.

Despite the District’s own economic woes due to state budget cuts, it retained Littler, who is charging the District $250 per hour, due to a conflict of interest. The District’s general counsel, who would generally handle such disputes, is one of the five employee’s whose contract is currently in dispute.

Laptops Good for Law Students

Erik Even — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 21:56:29 +0000

From the 2008 Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE) [PDF], published by the Center for Postsecondary Research at Indiana University at Bloomington: while many law schools (and other post-secondary schools) are banning laptops from the classroom, this might be a mistake.

Laptop computer use and its educational implications have sometimes generated heated debate among legal educators. LSSSE findings show that student use of laptops for keeping and reviewing notes and calling up previously briefed cases goes together with high levels of engagement in courses. So when used effectively, laptops may well enhance learning, rather than being a substitute for other kinds of course engagement or simply a distraction.

Also from the report: More than 90% of 1L students regularly come to class prepared, but only 75% of 3Ls do so. And 18% of students feel that their law school contributes very little to developing a personal code of values and ethics.

BTW, did anyone else notice that the LSSSE authors forgot to pay for their images? Oops.

Via The Chronicle of Higher Education via The UW Law Library.

Blagojevich Admits to Being “No Legal Scholar”

Erik Even — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 19:20:35 +0000

Apparently, indicted Illinois Governor MIlorad “Rod” Blagojevich is a lawyer, but not a very good one.

From US News & World Report’s “10 Things You Didn’t Know About Rod Blagojevich”:

Blagojevich went to law school at California’s Pepperdine University, from which he graduated in 1983. Years later, he joked that he was no legal scholar; he reportedly told an audience that he “barely knew where that law library was.”

It seems he was never a good student:

Addressing a group of high school students in 2006, Blagojevich called the D he received in high school algebra “a classic case of grade inflation.”

Also, apparently, the University of Tampa wasn’t enough of a party school:

“The University of Tampa was an odd college choice for a kid ‘from the neighborhood,’ as Blagojevich puts it, but his brother had gone there two years before to play baseball,” the article says. “With a lackluster grade point average and an 18 or 19 on his ACT, Blagojevich admits, ‘schools like Northwestern, I couldn’t get into.’ After two years, Rod got into Northwestern as a transfer student and majored in history.”

We wouldn’t make fun of Blagojevich this way, except maybe if he had done better in school, he would have learned it’s not a good idea to telegraph your client’s (in this case his own) ethical lapses in loud, profane tirades. You know, just in case the Feds are wiretapping your office.

Or, alternately, he could have skipped college and just watched The Sopranos.