May 9, 2008

Litigation slush funds, cont'd: $8 million windfall for W.V. law school

Charleston Gazette: "West Virginia University's College of Law received the biggest gift in its history on Friday, $8 million of unclaimed money from a settlement of a nationwide class-action lawsuit against H&R Block Inc." It was all very cozy and convenient since the judge presiding over the case had suggested the law school as a beneficiary, and the money seemed to be, you know, just sitting there.

Ted has a very fine article in the new issue of the Federalist Society's Class Action Watch on the dangers of cy pres disposition of unclaimed class action funds, and how they can magnify the unaccountable power of the lawyers and other participants in such cases. Our earlier coverage -- including a case where Vanderbilt's law school got $2.9 million -- is here.

More: Reader Skip Oliva writes, "Does anyone actually track or keep a master list of slush funds? I've followed a couple of antitrust-related ones, but I've never had the resources to compile a general list."

April 15, 2008

Law school pork-barreling in Albany, cont'd

It's actually worse than we thought in our report the other day about earmarks in the state budget to establish new law schools at SUNY Stony Brook and at St. John Fisher College near Rochester. "State politicians have guaranteed $3 million to fund initial design and planning stages of a proposed Binghamton University [SUNY Binghamton] law school, Sen. Tom Libous announced Wednesday," according to the student newspaper at the state-run school, which reported the legislative sponsors' fairly shameless rationale: "the proposal would benefit BU's reputation and offer economic development. ...[quoting Libous:] 'It will provide a very significant long-term economic benefit to the Southern Tier.'"

April 12, 2008

Albany: legislative earmark for Stony Brook, Rochester law schools

Because we all know if there's anything New York needs to subsidize, it's the creation of more lawyers: In the bloated new state budget, Sen. Ken LaValle (R-Port Jefferson) managed to insert $45 million for the purchase or construction of a new law school at SUNY Stony Brook. Touro Law School, a private school, had been in talks (now discontinued) over a possible affiliation with Stony Brook; the new budgetary move "could put pressure on Touro because a Stony Brook-created law school could undercut Touro, which charges much more in tuition than a state school would, and take away its student base." (Long Island Business News). And Sen. Joseph Robach (R-Greece) got $2.25 million in state funds to support a proposed new law school at St. John Fisher College in Fairport, which would be the first law school in the Rochester area. The future lawyers of New York thank you, taxpayers! (Rochester Daily Record/RedOrbit, Democrat and Chronicle). More Apr. 15: SUNY Binghamton, too, which will get $3 million.

April 10, 2008

Law schools and the morality of corporate law

Temple lawprof Dave Hoffman (via Bainbridge):

The big idea to agree with here is that it is a terrible fact that law deans, and law professors, continually push out the message that corporate lawyering is a less moral & desirable career path than "public interest" lawyering. The reason isn't that it makes students feel guilty (though it does) but that those students, when in practice, are probably less likely to be ethical because they've been told they've "sold out."

I noticed this last semester in my corporations class. When asked whether they would draft ethically troublesome documents, most students professed to say that they would. Why? Because by going into big firm practice in the first instance, they'd have already decided to be ethically gray. When deans (and well-meaning liberal professors) reinforce the idea that corporate practice is "corrupting and essentially random and beyond your control, and there's not a whole lot you can do about it", students are more likely to let the situation corrupt them. If instead academics were to celebrate the pro-social, professional, aspects of corporate practice, perhaps we'd have less situationally-motivated fraud.

March 27, 2008

Students! Help Santa Clara County scout out new ways to sue American business!

State of legal academia dept.: a law student reader sends along the following email distributed at the University of California, Davis:

From: <...@ucdavis.edu>
Date: Jan 7, 2008 1:42 PM
Subject: Externship Opportunity with Santa Clara County Counsel's Office
[forwarded by a professor]

Externship Opportunities with the County Counsel of Santa Clara County

County Counsel of Santa Clara County is seeking externs to assist in the development of and implementation of affirmative litigation cases involving public interest issues. Although students may need to travel to San Jose occasionally, the bulk of the work can be done in Davis. Regular public interest externship credits will be available (1 unit for every 4 hours of work per week for the semester; minimum 2 units). Please contact [...] if you are interested.

Description

This externship is designed to provide students with the opportunity to work directly with Santa Clara County public lawyers to promote the public interest through litigation and legislation. Students will assist the County Counsel's Affirmative Litigation Task Force in promoting the goals of the County and pursuing affirmative litigation and legislation designed to protect the County's residents and environment.

Students will have an integral role in identifying issues that impact the community, investigating potential sources of litigation and legislation, evaluating and discussing with experienced lawyers potential claims and remedies, conducting legal research, and preparing legal documents ( e.g., pleadings, motions, discovery, proposed legislation, etc.). Students will learn about the organization of County government and the role of the Office of the County Counsel in advising the Board of Supervisors and County agencies and departments on a wide variety of legal issues. Students will also learn how taking action at the local government level can impact decisions made at the state and federal government levels.

The externship objective is to provide students with real-world experience in pursuing social and environmental justice by taking affirmative steps through local and state governments and the courts.

Two examples of the affirmative litigation ideas the office has considered in the past at are:

Continue reading   Students! Help Santa Clara County scout out new ways to sue American business!

March 26, 2008

Cardozo conference on class actions

This Friday, in New York City, Cardozo Law is hosting a conference entitled "Justice and the Role of Class Actions" with an announced focus on "the historic value of class actions, their contemporary application, as well as the threats and opportunities facing the class action system today and in the future." Its sponsors are the liberal American Constitution Society and Public Justice (formerly Trial Lawyers for Public Justice), but the program commendably includes a variety of points of view, including John Beisner, Richard Nagareda, Deborah Hensler, Elizabeth Cabraser, Victor Schwartz, and Geoffrey Miller, among many others.

March 18, 2008

"The Anti-Innovation Bias of Tort Law"

Paper on SSRN from Gideon Parchomovsky (Penn) and Alex Stein (Cardozo):

This Essay identifies an anti-innovation bias in the law of torts. Tort law's reliance on custom in ascribing liability for negligence, medical malpractice and defective products taxes innovators and subsidizes replicators of conventional technologies. The Essay analyzes the causes and consequences of this bias and proposes two alternative ways to remedy it.

March 12, 2008

C'mon, lawyers, blog

David Rossmiller says it might free you from the writing style found in legal briefs and memoranda, a style "seemingly designed to intimidate, harass, mystify and anger the reader at every possible turn".

March 3, 2008

Are humans less interesting?

Over at my other site, I've had occasion to note the boom in courses in animal law in legal academia, fueled by generous grants from a foundation established by TV game show host Bob Barker. Doug Berman at Sentencing Law and Policy notes a website's tally that the number of law schools offering a course on animal law now tops 100, which he says far exceeds the number offering a course on general sentencing, even though the latter is a core concern of the legal system which profoundly affects millions of people caught up in it. His perhaps slightly bitter conclusion:

I suppose it is a sad and telling commentary that many law schools have devoted more resources toward having students question the legal treatment of animals than the legal treatment of criminal offenders. Perhaps advocates for sentencing and corrections reform need to find some incarcerated people with sad puppy-dog eyes so that humans locked in cages will evoke as much sympathy in elite law schools as animals locked in cages.

P.S. Yes, I'm aware that most of the humans under discussion have been found to have done something legally wrong, while most of the animals haven't. And no, I'm not comfortable with the idea that law schools should establish courses or clinics out of a desire to provide advocacy for either group, as distinct from a desire to impart skills and understanding to the students. But I think Berman has quite a good point about how the attraction of "frontier" and faddish areas of the law can distract attention from the way the legal system performs its core functions, especially in areas like sentencing where there is reason to doubt that it is currently performing those functions very well.

February 26, 2008

Why do students go to law school? Money and power, not justice.

A recent Kaplan survey asked 2,000 potential law school applicants why they want to be lawyers. The conclusion: financial gain and political ambition.

Here's a summary and a link to the Kaplan study, on Paul Caron's TaxProf site.