What does a law professor look like?  I have often asked this question of myself, especially when confronted with professed disbelief that I could be a legal academic.

“But you don’t look like a law professor!”

At times I too participate in the aesthetic deception, avoiding disclosure of my employment from others.  Discovery of my interest in family law and estates has triggered one too many unsolicited “story hours” about someone’s friend’s uncle’s girlfriend’s father in Terre Haute.  It is then when I am thankful that I look like I belong more in a band than on a panel. 

Is this a function of age?  (I am thirty-five.)  Of deportment? (I exercise regularly.)  Of hair? (I have locs, not a toupee.) Or is it a combination of these things, with the crowning influence of race?

I had a middle-aged woman at an airport flat out tell me that I was lying.  And yet another insisted that I was the “creative type.”  I suppose that writing and contemplation of legal problems counts as creativity. And numerous others have confessed that they never would have guess me to be a law professor. Frankly, I find it intensely annoying.

“Like a real professor? With tenure and all that?”

Track.  Tenure, that is.  This is where questioning gets sticky.  Even my own friends reserve the realm of law-professorship for people older (and presumably whiter) than myself.  People can believe that I could teach a class or two, attend a conference here and there, or even sit on a committee. Adjuncting is possible. But venturing into the realm of full-fledged academia is a stretch. 

Statistically, the population of black law professors is small. In 2006, 716 persons out of 8014 identified themselves as black to the American Association of Law Schools, an increase from 484 in 1992.  That’s an increase of approximately 16 people nationwide per year. These numbers indicate that diversification of law school faculties largely occurs from within the academy, rather than the recruitment of new professors from outside. 

But most, if not all professors of African descent have experienced racial profiling.  Eminent historian John Hope Franklin has been mistaken as a valet parking attendant.  A friend of mine was assumed to be a nanny for the fair-skinned child she was holding—her own.  And I myself have been assumed to be a mugger.

Of course, we can take these examples of misidentification with a grain of salt.  Perhaps Franklin stood by a podium at the front door of the hotel where people drop off their cars.  Or maybe I was walking down the street too close to the woman in front of me.  Or my friend was wearing a nanny’s smock.  These assumptions based on appearance could occur for a myriad of reasons when the seer possesses no acquaintance with the professor.  I would be amazed if the frightened woman on the street had turned around and said, “Oh, you scared me!  I thought you were going to mug me, but I feel safe now because you must be a Scholar!”  Probably not.

But for those situations where another person disbelieves the professions of the professor, the profiling takes on another color.  In this misappropriation of employment and identity, the disbelieved person faces a racial barrier that excludes her (and her kind) from a collective image of The Academy.  At the same time, it is a reminder of the minority scholar’s anomalous status.

These interactions are never confrontational.  They are most likely unintentional.  And most likely, the person “didn’t mean anything.”  Furthermore, they do not affect the scholar’s tenure or other types of job security.  Additionally, the interrogator might argue that they meant it as a compliment.  You don’t look like a law professor!

But why should a black law professor have to convince (however briefly) someone else of their gainful employment?  That fleeting moment of disbelief, however harmless, only demonstrates the persistent perception of the legal academy as the exclusive province of middle-aged white men.  For another person to incite a reaffirmation of my position requires me to adopt the Popeyesque psychology of “I am what I am.”  This is a rebuttable presumption black law professors, both men and women, should not have to face.

Posted by Kevin Maillard at 09:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last year I posted “Advice for New Law Students of Color.” 

I’m linking back to the post today because we’ve got a new class of entering 1Ls.  The post provided advice to new law students, and discussed six “myths,” including: 

Myth #1:  If I know the material I’ll get good grades.  

Myth #2:  I’ve got three years to do well.  

Myth #3:  I don’t want to be on law review or go to a big firm, but do public interest instead, and therefore I don’t need high grades.  

Myth #4:  Even though I did everything in college at the last minute and still did well, I’ve turned over a new leaf and I’m coming to class, doing all of the reading, briefing cases, and outlining for law school.  This means I’ll do well in law school.  

Myth #5:  I need to wait until I know all of the material to take a practice exam.     

Myth #6:  I’m a person of color and I can’t focus all of my time on law school because I need to help my community.      

I received offline comments from people I respect who think that discussing Sander's work under Myth #6 legitimizes it and puts too much pressure on entering students.  Upon reflection, I think my constructive critics are correct with regard to some students.  If you’re already focused on doing well in law school, take a look at Myths #1-5, and ignore #6.      

Posted by Spencer Overton at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)

[The following is a post by Professor Trina Jones of Duke Law School:]   

As many of you know, my colleague, Professor Erwin Chemerinsky, http://www.law.duke.edu/fac/chemerinsky/ , was recently offered the deanship at a soon-to-be-established law school at the University of California Irvine.  On Tuesday, less than a week after he signed a contract, UCI Chancellor Michael V. Drake flew to North Carolina and withdrew the offer apparently due to conservative opposition. See http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2007/09/12/the-oc-law-school-edition/ or http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-ucilaw13sep13,0,5893599.story?coll=la-homecenter  

A similar dynamic occurred last winter at Duke Law School, where Chemerinsky was one of three finalists for the deanship.  As was the case nine months ago, I find myself struggling with a number of observations and questions: 

First, have we kissed academic freedom goodbye? Is the ability of a professor to express ideas openly, to dissent from prevailing norms, no longer valued or desired?  Are public universities now in the business of policing viewpoints, of punishing those who engage in public debate? Surely history has taught us that this is dangerous to achievement of the free and democratic society to which presumably we still aspire.   

Second, how do liberal beliefs render irrelevant almost three decades of outstanding service as a gracious colleague, prolific scholar, committed advocate, generous mentor, and engaged public citizen?  Why is being progressive presumptively disqualifying (especially for those with stellar credentials) while being conservative is presumptively qualifying (especially for those with mediocre track records)?  

Third, where then is all the support for the ubiquitous claim that the academy is run by - and “ruined” by - left-wing radicals?  Could it be that conservatism rules in an atmosphere that insists the opposite is true?   

Fourth, what is the going price for a law school? a university?  Is the financial cost of critical thought too expensive for a law school devoted to the public interest? 

And, finally, how can any senior administrator lead a candidate, whose liberal views did not appear overnight, to the point of actually signing a contract only to “discover” that the candidate would be politically controversial, polarizing, and a lightening rod for conservatives?  Does anyone believe the Chancellor was not subject to outside influence?  Surely this kind of incompetence does not augur well for the future legal program at UCI.  In addition to academic freedom, there is a fundamental question of integrity at issue here.   

The law school at UCI was to be devoted to the public interest.  Yet, Chancellor Drake rejected a candidate with a lifetime of demonstrated commitment to serving the public.  It appears the Chancellor acted out of fear - a fear that the appointment of someone with Chemerinsky's record, someone with stated and expressed views, would stir up too much debate, stimulate too much dialogue, and incite too many people to action.  In other words, he seems to have feared that UCI law school, from its inception, would do precisely what academic institutions are supposed to do - encourage us to think critically and to engage in robust and spirited debate.   

Chemerinsky is Jewish and today is Rosh Hashanah, a time when Jews are called upon to reflect upon the recent past and to contemplate the new year.  I am not Jewish, but I have engaged in my share of reflection and introspection today.  And, I have come to agree with the conclusions of a fellow blogger (Neil), who wrote “UC Irvine’s position is indefensible and intellectually bankrupt. The school deserves condemnation from every person who respects academic freedom and respects the notion of free-flowing political discourse, whether they be conservative or liberal.”  I invite all persons who share these viewpoints to voice their concerns to Chancellor Drake and the UC Regents, and to boycott any future efforts to build a law school at UCI.   

--Professor Trina Jones, September 13, 2007  

Posted by Terry Smith at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

     Most of us are, by now, are quite familiar with the many narratives describing the increased sexual activity that takes place during college spring break trips.  The American Medical Association reported this past March that: “Sizable numbers [of college women] reported getting sick from drinking, and blacking out and engaging unprotected sex or sex with more than one partner . . . About 30 percent of women surveyed said spring break trips with sun and alcohol are an essential part of college life . .  . About 40 percent said they regretted passing out or not remembering what they did . . . 10 percent said they regretted engaging in public or group sexual activity” (http://articles.news.aol.com/news/_a/spring-break-endangers-womens-health/20060308012509990001).           

     These multi-party sexual encounters raise a number of questions that force us to re-evaluate the idea of consent in rape cases.  These types of activities, sometimes involve women who get raped in the same night that they consented to sexual intercourse with multi-partners.  For the most part, we think of the concept of rape as an “all or nothing” granting or not granting of consent.  How then should we legally make sense of situations involving women, who, engaged in multi-partner sexual activities, consent to touching by some partners but not by the others?  How should we measure consent in these contexts?  How do we prevent society’s biases and stereotypes from influencing the outcome of these types of cases?

     As we have seen in past rape cases, a jury’s application of the reasonable doubt standard in rape cases can be affected by its perception of the victim’s character as well as its assessment of the circumstances surrounding the occurrence of the rape.  This perception can be detrimental to rape victims who do not fit the profile of what a jury might consider as “careful” women or “traditional rape victims”.  In the absence of force or conclusive DNA evidence, the likelihood of these women’s rapists being convicted is currently not very high.  Consequently, our task for the future will be to construct a burden of proof which does not penalize the behavior of these non-traditional rape victims and, which, simultaneously, does not unduly prejudice potentially innocent defendants.           

Posted by Michele Alexandre at 07:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

The Harvard Law Review has elected its first Latino President—Andrew Manual Crespo. I can’t but wonder whether Crespo  thinks of this moment as an historical one—and, more particularly, in relation to Obama’s career trajectory and presidential candidacy. Recall that Obama was the first (and I think only?) black president of the law review.  Now he is a viable black candidate for the presidency. Of course, his presidency of the law review is not the reason for this. But his leadership of the law review is an important part of the overall story we tell about him (and helps to explain why some people perceive him as a racial exception). We will have to wait to see how Crespo’s law review presidency will figure in how we imagine him—assuming that, after this moment, we will be imagining him at all.

Posted by Devon Carbado at 04:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (79) | TrackBacks (1)

It’s the last day of April.  For most law schools, classes have come to an end.  Next year, the following law professors of color will be teaching their courses at new law schools.  Here is a list of lateral moves for law professors of color, as reported by Concurring Opinions and PrawfsBlawg.

Jim Chen, Minnesota to Louisville, Dean

John Valery White, LSU to UNLV, Dean

Michelle Adams, Seton Hall to Cardozo

Keith Aoki, Oregon to UC Davis

Laura Beny, Michigan to Minnesota

Montre Carodine, Washington & Lee from Alabama

Chip Carter, Case Western to Temple

Adrienne Davis, North Carolina to Washington University-St. Louis

Michele Goodwin, DePaul to Minnesota

Vivian Hamilton, West Virginia to William & Mary

Tanya Hernandez, Rutgers-Newark to George Washington

Darryl Jones, Pittsburgh to Stetson

Deseriee Kennedy, Tennessee to Touro

Tayyab Mahmud, John Marshall to Seattle

Joelle Moreno, New England to Florida International

Kali Murray, Mississippi to Marquette

Eboni Nelson, Texas Southern to South Carolina

Karl Okamoto, Rutgers-Camden to Drexel

Robert Rhee, Washburn to Maryland

Bernard Trujillo, Wisconsin to Valparaiso

Elizabeth Trujillo, Detroit-Mercy to Suffolk

Christopher Yoo, Vanderbilt to Pennsylvania

Peter Yu, Michigan State to Drake

Posted by Angela Onwuachi at 11:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBacks (0)

Stories abound in corporate America of blacks getting whiteboyed–slammed in often subtle ways by behavior whose effect, if not purpose, is racial subordination. From Ellis Cose’s The Rage of A Privileged Class to the more recent entry, Herman Malone’s Lynched By Corporate America, these tales have been propagated for mass public consumption and, at least ostensibly, for education. Predating and coinciding with Professor Richard Sander’s congenital obsession with proving black inferiority in the legal profession, similar narratives as well as supporting data have emerged about whiteboying in the practice of law. (See, for example, The Good Black. I do mean to be impious toward Professor Sander’s work, for it is curious when a white man devotes so such energy to demonstrating why an already under-represented group should be more under-represented instead of explaining the structural advantages that allow over-represented groups to remain over-represented.) And of course, the casual observer of politics witnesses whiteboying with a frequency that allows him to pull examples from the tips of his fingers. Black Republican Michael Steele, who once described President Bush as his "homeboy," was passed over by the President for the position of Republican National Committee Chairman in favor a white Cuban. Congressman Alcee Hastings, exonerated of criminal wrongdoing as a judge by a jury of his peers, was passed over as Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, purportedly because his impeachment while on the bench made him unfit to serve in such a sensitive post. The catch: the impeachment was based on the same conduct for which Hastings was found innocent, occurred nearly seven years after his acquittal, and its sanction did not, as was the Senate’s prerogative, forbid Hastings from holding "any Office of honor, Trust, or Profit under the United States."

A colleague of mine at a northeastern law school recently shared with me her own brush with whiteboying. A white male faculty member of no particular institutional stature had excluded her from a meeting for which her committee duties made it appropriate that she attend. This was not done inadvertently: the white male colleague explained that because he and his black colleague did not get along, he had excluded her to present the best face possible to a job candidate for whom the meeting was scheduled. It was a real-time example of the "personality defense" that has come to be raised to explain away circumstances that are equally susceptible to a reading of discrimination. The black professor’s only "clash" with her white colleague had been to disagree with him on occasion in faculty meetings.

Continue reading "Whiteboyism, American-Style" »

Posted by Terry Smith at 08:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (224) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Shavar Jeffries at 04:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (27) | TrackBacks (0)

 Just as Harvard University announced its decision to end its early admissions program, law schools are, apparently, moving in the other direction. So reports a recent article in The National Law Journal. (See Fiercer Competition Prompts Early Admissions Trend by Tresa Baldas).  Recall that one of Harvard’s articulated reasons for jettisoning its early admissions policy had to do with concerns about information and resource asymmetries that related to race and class: early admissions programs benefit rich white students, the argument goes. At least one of the law schools with an early admission program, the University of Michigan Law School, has suggested that the race and class asymmetry problem likely does not obtain with respect to law school because, among reasons, law applicants are more sophisticated than undergraduate applicants. Michigan Law School’s position on this issue is all the more interesting when one remembers the important role the school has played in defending affirmation action. (Recall that on June 23, 2003, the Supreme Court upheld the law school’s affirmative action program and struck down college’s.) My query is twofold:

1. Do we think this move on the part of at least some law schools (including, NYU, Virginia, Penn, Chicago-Kent, Missouri and Northwestern) is likely to become a trend—that is, the norm? (Yes, I think); and
2. Should those of us who are concerned about racial diversity in law school be concerned about this? (I am not sure).

More generally, is there something wrong with law schools moving in this direction?

Posted by Devon Carbado at 05:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

The Pocket Part, an online companion to the Yale Law Journal, is publishing a series of articles and essays this month on “The Future of Legal Scholarship.”  Contributors explore the impact of technology on conventional legal scholarship.  My contribution, entitled "A Blog Supreme?", relates the work of free and avant garde jazz artists to the work of online legal scholars.

Here’s a taste of the Essay:

A Blog Supreme?

Christopher Bracey

American writer and poet laureate Amiri Baraka once remarked that jazz music is “essentially the expression of an attitude, or a collection of attitudes, about the world, and only secondarily an attitude about the way music is made.” The same can be said of the burgeoning field of online scholarship. Many rearguard academics view online scholarship as a perversion or threat to conventional modes of scholarly production. By contrast, those in the academic vanguard appreciate online scholarship, first and foremost, as an organic contribution to the world of ideas, and perhaps secondarily, if at all, as a commentary or critique of prevailing modes of scholarship. Although online scholarship takes shape within and against prevailing modes of scholarly production, it has developed, like jazz, into a distinctive idiom of intellectual engagement with its own cultural aesthetic, norms, and the like. And like jazz, it retains a certain mystery and mystique that proves compelling to proponents and confounding to its critics.

In this Essay, I relate the work of free and avant-garde jazz artists to the work of online legal scholars. I employ this jazz metaphor to advance a deeper understanding of online scholarship and its relationship to conventional modes of scholarship and the scholarly enterprise in general. This is not to suggest that all online scholars should aspire to be the John Coltrane of their field, or to perform as impressively as Coltrane did in his 1964 masterwork, A Love Supreme. Nor do I argue that traditional legal scholars are presumptive “squares” and “moldy figs” in comparison to the “hip” online scholars. Rather, I want to suggest that viewing online scholarship through the prism of the jazz experience helps us appreciate the perspective of many online scholars, the nature of online contributions, and the impact that online scholars hope to achieve upon the world of ideas. The jazz metaphor also sheds light on the manner in which online scholarship will be received in traditional academic circles in the years to come. Indeed, the uneasy acceptance of jazz (particularly the free and avant-garde idiom) by music traditionalists and the general public suggests that online scholarship will at best be understood as a compelling alternative mode of scholarly engagement that accents rather than displaces conventional forms of scholarly expression.

The full essay can be found here.

Posted by Christopher Bracey at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

The New York Times reported yesterday the dearth of female Supreme Court clerks.  And of course the predictable response is that women simply didn’t meet the Justices' implicitly objective standards of merit.  As always, the decisions purportedly are made strictly on the basis of qualification; it just turns out, according to this narrative, that this year large numbers of women didn’t make the cut.

As is often the case with institutional questions concerning the shortage of women and minorities occupying positions of authority in this country, there is insufficient attention to the criteria defining prevailing conceptions of merit, and whether those criteria are best suited to identifying the best candidates.

In the world of Supreme Court clerkships, the role of the feeder judge is paramount.   Supreme Court justices disproportionately hire their clerks from a narrow slice of federal appellate judges.  I’ve not seen any suggestion (from the Justices themselves or others) that these judges are singularly qualified to select high-quality Supreme Court clerks; in any case, I’ve certainly not seen any evidence — empirical or anecdotal — showing these judges possess uniquely prescient predicative abilities concerning law-clerk quality.

Feeder judges, moreover, tend to identify their clerks by referrals from a narrow slice of feeder professors.  These feeder professors tend themselves to be former Supreme Court and appellate clerks, and teach primarily at a few Ivy and quasi-Ivy (e.g. Stanford; NYU; Duke) law schools.  These feeder profs, as former Supreme Court clerks, were of course fed to prior Justices by feeder judges, and fed to prior feeder judges by feeder lawprofs.  These professors leverage their personal relationships with feeder judges to advance the candidacies of favored students.  And they identify candidates largely by the peculiarities of how professors generally come to mentor students — a mélange of factors often turning on the degree of cultural, social, and political identity between teacher and student.

All of these factors exclude law students who attend a school in which a feeder prof teaches, but don’t take courses with the feeder prof or are otherwise unable to build a rapport with a feeder prof.  And of course students at laws schools devoid of feeder profs are left totally in the cold.  One could write further on the cleavages that define eligibility and acceptance at elite law schools.  Empirical work in the Grutter and Gratz cases, for example, revealed that the LSAT is a limited predictor of performance in law school.  The law schools where feeder profs teach largely require applicants to perform extraordinarily well on the LSAT; but because the LSAT itself has limited validity as a predictor of law-school success, it distorts the student pool from which feeder profs select.

In all of these ways, the Supreme Court clerk hiring process is all-too-familiar: it's characterized by an “old boys network” of backroom relationships and artificial criteria that seem better to serve the interests of the status quo than a meaningfully objective standard of merit.  Even more, the defenders of existing practices couch it all in meritocratic rhetoric, concealing the extent to which selection methodologies reflect myopic and ultimately counter-productive visions of qualification.

Posted by Shavar Jeffries at 03:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (18) | TrackBacks (0)

Welcome to law school, and I hope you do well.

Sometimes experienced heads don’t talk about the details of law school because they know that the process is stressful.  They don’t want to add to your anxiety.   

I have a different opinion.  I have found that when students don’t do well, it is often a result of a lack of mentoring, straight talk, polish, and maturity (not due to a lack of intellect).  Thus, I want to be frank, let you know the game, and dispel some common myths.  My hope is that such disclosure will help you get your bearings and feel more comfortable.      

Myth #1:  If I know the material I’ll get good grades. 

Wrong.  Almost all law schools use a curve, and so you need to do better than most of your classmates in order to get good grades.  You need to know the material, but that’s not enough.  Ask the administration (e.g., Dean of Students) for a copy of the curve that professors use to grade first year courses so that you understand what a bad, average, and good grade is.  At many law schools, a “B” is below average.      

Myth #2:  I’ve got three years to do well. 

You need to figure out the game the first two to three months.  Job opportunities, law review, and most everything else is based on first year.  Next fall you’ll be interviewing and looking for a job, and most interviewers are not going to care about undergrad, your community service, moot court, your potential to rebound, or anything else.  They are going to look at first-year law school grades (they are busy and are looking for a quick way to determine which students they should agree to interview), and whether or not you’ll fit in to their work environment. 

Unfortunately, the function of law school is not simply to teach law.  Another important function (and some would say the most important function) is to sort students for potential employers.  It is much easier to recognize this hard truth and put in the time now and do well than to spend the next 10 years trying to make up for bad first year grades.    

Myth #3:  I don’t want to be on law review or go to a big firm, but do public interest instead, and therefore I don’t need high grades. 

Frankly, you may not know enough about law review or firm life—and how you can help the community through both—to make that statement now (or realize how much more difficult it is to pay a school loan note of $1,400 a month when you’re bringing home after taxes $3,000 a month rather than $7000 a month).  Additionally, because there are so few good public interest jobs and a large number of people want them, they often require higher grades than firm jobs.  It is also patronizing to suggest that high-paying clients deserve a lawyer who has earned high grades, and that public interest clients do not.  Finally, many seasoned people look at the “public interest” excuse as a cop out from doing the hard work.    

Myth #4:  Even though I did everything in college at the last minute and still did well, I’ve turned over a new leaf and I’m coming to class, doing all of the reading, briefing cases, and outlining for law school.  This means I’ll do well in law school. 

Wrong.  I teach property, and I hear tales from so many people who “think” they should have done better because they worked hard and knew property better than their other subjects.   

Grades usually come down to a single 3-hour exam at the end of the semester.  Your whole existence for the next 10 months should revolve around how to pick up more points on that exam than most of your classmates.  You do this by getting copies of old exams and answers to the exam if they are available now (not in November or December), and starting to learn to dissect them now. 

Start with your professors’ old exams and dissect them, move on to others’ old exams, and then redo and revisit your professors’ old exams.  Take some exams slowly without being timed, and move on to timing yourself.  Practice, practice, practice.  Simulate the exam experience.  If you’re going to take the exam on your laptop (which I recommend if you can type, because you can cover more issues quickly and your work is easier to read), practice on a laptop. 

You should study for structure and substance.  You should ask yourself, "Why is X included on this model answer and Y is not?"  Does a good answer use headings?  IRAC?  Anything else?  

You should figure out what a scoring checklist would look like for a particular exam question, so that you can look at this from the perspective of a professor (a scoring checklist allows for more objectivity in grading (often, if the exam answer identifies and analyzes the issue the student gets points, and if the issue is not identified and analyzed the student doesn’t pick up the points, even if the student was brilliant on a different issue)).  You should figure out how many points you can pick up in 3 hours, and if not everything, you need to figure out what you should focus on to get the most points (remember, you don’t need 100%, just more than other classmates).    

Learn to pace yourself so that you don't run out of time.  Too many students invest all of their 3 hours into Question 1 and write very little on Question 2, thereby missing a lot of easy points that would have allowed them to move up the curve.   Many professors grade all of the student answers to Question 1 together and then all of the answers to Question 2 together, and later total the score without having any "sympathy" on those who wrote a brilliant Question 1 and next to nothing for Question 2.  As professors, we often like all students (we don't want to hurt anyone), we are often grading blind, and we know that "helping" one student hurts all others on a curve.  Thus, many of us aim for a seemingly objective, numerical, defensible system for grading that allows for consistency. 

There's a lot more, and you learn it by asking your professor questions, and by trial and error in taking practice exams.  You’ve got only three months to become an expert at taking law school exams. 

At a minimum, you should invest 15% of your time each week (6 hours in a 40-hour week) working on figuring out the exam process, and probably more if you want to do very well (especially as the semester moves into October and November). 

For me, exam taking is a race.  The question is which students can pick up the most points in a finite amount of time.  Because you’ve got only a finite amount of time, you don’t want to add anything unnecessary that is not going to help you with points, because doing so will prevent you from picking up some other points within the finite time period.   

Visit with each of your professors within the next three weeks during office hours.  Figure out how much of the grade is class participation, and how much of it is based on exam performance (for me I reserve the right to raise or lower a third of the grade based on class participation (e.g., from a B to a B+), which means that on the curve, the students who don’t participate are at a disadvantage relative to those who do participate). 

In terms of the exam, does the professor grade based on picking up issues (the student at the top of the class was most comprehensive in spotting all the issues)?  Or can you go deep on only a couple of issues and miss some other big issues and still get an “A”?  Does the professor give points for organization (even if he or she does not, organization is good because it keeps you straight as to what issues you’ve covered)?  Could your professor point you to three or four students from last year who got A’s or A+ grades that you might contact?  Is the exam open book or closed?  Is it all essay or will there be some multiple choice as well?  Are most of the questions “issue spotters”?  Are any of them “policy questions”?  Or does the professor ask that you use policy when a question of law is up in the air to figure out which body of law should be adopted in a jurisdiction? 

Ask nicely for all of this stuff (avoid even a hint of confrontational attitude), and don’t be surprised if the professor or the administration (when you ask for the curve) is a bit hesitant.  They know that you’re asking about the particular safe deposit box where they keep all of the money, and they’ll be weighing in their minds if giving you this information gives you an unfair advantage over other students. 

You want all of this information so that you can put together tools that will allow you to perform well on the exam.  A 100-page outline may be too cumbersome to use on the exam, and a 2-page checklist might be better.  If the exam is closed book, perhaps you memorize a 1-page checklist that you can jot out as soon as you get into the exam.  You aren’t going to know what tools will work for you to pick up the most points, however, unless you engage in the trial and error process now (rather than on the exam when it counts), and hone your tools.  

Exam taking is not rocket science.  Generally, the people who do well in law school are the people who master the game earlier (within the first two months before your first set of exams) rather than later (third year).         

Myth #5:  I need to wait until I know all of the material to take a practice exam.    

A lot of students use this excuse to procrastinate, and end up taking their first practice exam a week before the actual exam.  Don’t fall into this trap. 

Use your 6 hours a week during the first couple of weeks to collect and organize all of the old exams and answers (from your professor and from others who teach the same subject), and identify which issues are implicated in each exam question (from the model answers or by visiting with your professor).  Then, organize the exam questions along the lines of your syllabus, and dissect the question as you are covering a set of cases in the course, or immediately after you have finished the set of cases.   

 Imagine, for example, that your professor starts off property with adverse possession, and you spend two weeks on that subject. 

During that unit, or immediately after it (in September), you should do, dissect, and master all of the adverse possession questions that you have.  Figure out where all of the tricks are and what types of facts trigger those tricks (as professors, we have only a finite number of tricks).  After the second unit (let’s say future interests), you should master future interest problems, but you should occasionally (perhaps once every other week) do an adverse possession question to stay sharp on that subject and hone your skills. 

Learning to take an exam is like learning to drive a car or type on a computer.  You can read about it, but you’ve got to practice it in order to make it second nature.

Myth #6:  I’m a person of color and I can’t focus all of my time on law school because I need to help my community.   

Unless you are an influential public figure who speaks out about policy issues like Barack Obama, the best way to help your community is to try to do well your first year of law school.     

This link is the site of a UCLA law professor named Richard Sander (pictured right).  Sander has compiled data suggesting that the median black student earns first-year grades “comparable to a white student at the 7th or 8th percentile.” Sander claims that this performance of black students is attributable to affirmative action in the admissions process, and asserts that affirmative action should be scaled back substantially.  Sander’s work was originally published in the Stanford Law Review, and has been cited extensively as a reason to end affirmative action.   

If you believe that affirmative action is an important tool to break up “old boy” networks, provide opportunities for women and people of color, and integrate our nation, you need to prioritize grades and try your best to do well.  There are thousands of other people who would love to have the opportunity that you enjoy.  Take advantage of the opportunity—don’t take it for granted.     

By the way, I was a first year law student when Barack was a third year, and I looked up to him.  Barack did very well his first year of law school, became president of the Harvard Law Review, and graduated magna cum laude.  For him, excellence was an important part of commitment to community.  

Posted by Spencer Overton at 09:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (28) | TrackBacks (1)

The July 13 issue of "Diverse Issues in Higher Education" reports (summary of data here) that 4 of the top 5 schools awarding J.D. degrees to minorities are in Washington, D.C.  The schools are in rank order:

1. Howard University     180 J.D.s awarded in 2004-2005 

2. American University  154

3. Thomas Cooley        154 

4.  George Washington 153

5. Georgetown  Univ.     149 

The 2004-2005 Data for African American J.Ds alone are:

1. Howard                    167  J.D.s awarded

2. Thomas Cooley         103

3. Southern Univ.            79

4. Texas Southern           64

5. Harvard Univ.              59

6. Georgetown Univ          57

7. George Washington      49   

Posted by Emma Coleman Jordan at 07:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (1)

Note that there is only one discernible black person in the above image. 
Assume that the image represents partners at a major firm. Is affirmative action the cause of, or the cure for, this picture?

Some of you might recall that, last year, my colleague, Richard Sander, published an article that argues that affirmative action harms blacks. Part of the claim is that affirmative action mismatches blacks to elite institutions in which they cannot compete. Blacks under-perform at these institutions and some don't graduate.  And even when blacks graduate, they have difficult passing the bar.  Affirmative action causes all of this, and all of this actually decreases the number of practicing black lawyers. (See Sander’s Article) Now, some of these arguments are not new. What is new is the extent to which Rick Sander employs empiricism to support his claims. As you might imagine, several scholars have responded to his article (See Does Affirmative Action Reduce the Number of Black Lawyers? by Ian Ayres & Richard Brooks).  The North Carolina Law Review is about to publish what in effect amounts to Part II. Here, Sander applies his mismatch theory to law firms. The theory goes something like this: Black attrition at law firms is a function of white partners and senior associates not dishing out the most important work to black associates; as a result, black associates end up doing more grunt work.  Why would partners and senior associates behave in this way? Because they know that their firm practices affirmative action. From that they assume that black associates are going to be less qualified and not as capable as white associates. (See How Racial Preferences Backfire for a favorable reception of the Sander's article.) Sanders work is in tension with, among others, that of David Chamber's and Richard Lempert. Their 2000 study (See Michigan's Minority Graduates in Practice: The River Runs Through Law School) suggests that non-white students who graduated from Michigan law school between 1970 and 1996 were just as successful in their careers as their white peers. Of course, there is no way to give proper treatment to this issue in this forum; it's hard to have an empirical discussion on a blog.
 
But let's assume that part of the empirical evidence irrefutably demonstrates the following: 

1. With respect to entering credentials for law school, there is a racial gap between whites and blacks; as a group, blacks have lower GPAs and LSAT scores than whites;

2. With respect to law school performance, there is a racial gap between whites and blacks; as a group, blacks have lower GPAs in law school than whites;

3. With respect to par passage, there is a racial gap between whites and blacks; as a group, blacks have lower bar passage rates than whites;

4. With respect to tenure at law firms, there is a racial gap between whites and blacks; as a group, whites stay longer at law firms than blacks; and finally,

5. With respect to partnership at law firms, there is a racial gap between whites and blacks; as a group, whites make partnership at a higher rate than blacks.

The question is, assuming that the above is accurate, does it suggests that affirmative action harms blacks? Don't we have to look at where blacks are in society as a result of affirmative? Note that one does not have to be pro-affirmative action to suggest that affirmative action benefits blacks; indeed, many of the arguments against affirmative action is that it unfairly benefits blacks. The flip is also true: one does not have to oppose affirmative action to argue that it harms blacks. What I am trying to engender here is a conversation about this: if we bracket off for the purpose of this discussion the concern about reverse discrimination (and I know that, for at least some of you, this is bracketing off quite a bit; we can have that discussion another time)--if we focus on affirmative action's impact on blacks, what sort of questions should we be asking at the end of day to ascertain whether it harms blacks? Is data of the sort delineated above sufficient?

Posted by Devon Carbado at 04:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (45) | TrackBacks (0)

InsideHigherEd.com recently reported on a meeting held by the United States Civil Rights Commission to discuss the proposed revisions to the ABA Diversity Standard that will be presented to the ABA House of Delegates for approval this August.  The proposed revision is designed to provide law schools with greater guidance when pursuing diversity and equal opportunity in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2003 limited endorsement of the use of race as a factor in law school admissions.