http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/index.jsp Selected Law Schools articles from the NLJ en-us 07/04/2009 Copyright 2009. Incisive Media US Properties, LLC. All rights reserved. http://www.law.com/service/terms_conditions.shtml http://www.law.com/img/newswire/nlj_rss.gif http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/index.jsp The unstable economy created a tricky situation for law school admissions offices this year. The University of Miami School of Law underestimated the percentage of accepted students who enroll — and is offering incentives for students to sit out a year. Those who opt to delay until the fall of 2010 will receive a $5,000 scholarship when they complete 120 hours of public service and will have a better chance at receiving a $75,000 scholarship, among other incentives. http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202431937055&rss=nlj Should on-campus recruiting at law schools be delayed until the spring? That question was a major topic of discussion during a June 24 roundtable on the future of legal hiring that brought together 19 law firm leaders, law school officials and general counsel in Washington. Many of participants agreed that it would make more sense to recruit in the spring rather than in the traditional late summer or early fall. http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202431897078&rss=nlj An online law school graduate who sued the high court of Massachusetts for the opportunity to take that state's bar examination is now a newly minted Massachusetts lawyer. Last November, Ross Mitchell won his case against the state's Board of Bar Examiners, which denied his bid to bypass a requirement that U.S.-trained applicants be graduates of an American Bar Association-accredited law school. The court allowed Mitchell to sit for the bar because the ABA is mulling changes to its accreditation standards. http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202431735337&rss=nlj DePaul University College of Law has named a new interim dean, Illinois Appellate Court Judge Warren Wolfson, and rejected calls from the faculty and students that former Dean Glen Weissenberger, who was ousted from the post last week, be reinstated. http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202431666288&rss=nlj A new federal program intended to help borrowers manage their student debt goes into effect on July 1. The College Cost Reduction & Access Act will cap monthly loan payments according to income and forgive student debt balances after designated periods of time. For attorneys, the main beneficiaries will be those who go on to have long-term public interest careers. But the program will also make loan payments more affordable for all attorneys with high debt loads and relatively low incomes. http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202431601871&rss=nlj The University of California, Irvine School of Law has brought aboard seven new faculty members to help launch the school's inaugural class in the fall. The hires, who bring to 22 the total number of tenure-track faculty, include well-known copyright scholar R. Anthony Reese of the University of Texas School of Law. http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202431628380&rss=nlj A group of Detroit law school students is touring the country in a Winnebago-turned-law-office, helping low-income veterans obtain disability and pension benefits. The University of Detroit Mercy School of Law students are traveling in what is believed to be the first mobile law office on wheels — a 31-foot converted recreational vehicle that was donated last year by General Motors Corp. http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202431493405&rss=nlj DePaul University College of Law on July 31 is hosting a two-day symposium in Chicago exclusively for law school deans called "Vanishing Act: Legal Education in a World Without Trials." DePaul College of Law Dean Glen Weissenberger has invited 185 of his fellow deans and received financial support to host them, all-expenses-paid, at the five-star Peninsula Hotel thanks to DePaul alumnus and personal injury attorney Robert Clifford, the founder of Chicago's Clifford Law Offices. http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202431332776&rss=nlj At many of New Jersey's largest law firms, summer is starting later and ending earlier, reflecting efforts to control spending in recessionary times. Programs at 10 of the 20 bellwether firms tracked by the New Jersey Law Journal were cut by an average of two weeks, resulting in an average cost savings of $15,300 per firm. Although some firms attribute the shortened summer to logistical factors, such as an earlier start to fall recruiting activities, it gibes with a national trend. http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202431251327&rss=nlj Leaders and friends of the George Washington University Law School gathered Tuesday night at the Newseum in D.C. to celebrate the arrival of public interest pioneer Alan Morrison as the school's Lerner Family Associate Dean for Public Interest/Public Service. Morrison laid out his goals to bolster GW's pro bono and public service programs, as well as running a project himself on election law reform, and teaching civil procedure. http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202431185450&rss=nlj New law schools are the latest victims of the recession. A slowdown in contributions, coupled with state budget cuts, has clipped the wings of fledging institutions nationwide. Nearly a dozen new law schools have been in the works during the past year, but for many the future is not bright. http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202431075010&rss=nlj Sending incoming associates into temporary public-interest jobs — with a healthy stipend to cover their costs of living — is intended to be a fiscally smart and compassionate way for law firms to handle an overabundance of young attorneys in this dismal economy. But some recent law school graduates who have spent years preparing for public-interest careers worry that law firms are hurting their job prospects by flooding the already competitive public-interest job market. http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202431092878&rss=nlj Law schools rely on honor codes to keep students from cheating, but changes in technology and exam formats have rendered some of the codes outdated and ineffective, say law students and faculty. A 2006 survey of 54 colleges found that 45% of law school students had engaged in some form of cheating at least once in the previous year. http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202430936451&rss=nlj Dallas litigation boutique Bickel & Brewer, which has been advocating for the low-income clients and the Latino community for more than two decades, founded the Bickel & Brewer Latino Institute for Human Rights in 2005. The institute pays the tuition for two law students at NYU each year, provided they do public interest work in the Latino community for two years after graduating. Thomas Fritzsche and classmate Melissa Navarro are the first to complete the program. http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202430896158&rss=nlj Rutgers Law School applies the same conflict-of-interest rules to adjunct professors as full-time law professors, as an adjunct at Rutgers Law School-Newark discovered to her dismay. The school forced Sheryl Mintz Goski to choose between teaching her course and representing a company in a commercial dispute with Rutgers Business School. Goski chose the client, but believes Rutgers' rule is too broad. "As an adjunct, I don't feel I represent Rutgers when I teach, I feel I teach at Rutgers," she says. http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202430878088&rss=nlj Is New York Law School's Annette Gordon-Reed, the Pulitzer Prize-winning law professor/historian, on President Obama's Supreme Court "short list"? Or, Alabama lawyer Bryan Stevenson, a MacArthur Foundation "genius" award recipient and tireless advocate on behalf of indigent defendants and prisoners? How about veteran consumer rights champion Alan Morrison and University of Notre Dame Law School Dean Patricia O'Hara? Probably not. But they appear on the short lists of more than a dozen constitutional law and Supreme Court scholars we asked to step into Obama's shoes to pick a nominee to succeed retiring Justice David Souter. http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202430756479&rss=nlj