Welcome back to Ahead of the Curve. I'm Karen Sloan, legal education editor at Law.com, and I'll be your host for this weekly look at innovation and notable developments in legal education.

This week, I'm talking with UC Berkeley law Professor Orin Kerr about The Legal Academy, his new weekly YouTube series that looks behind the curtain of law schools and their faculties. Next up, AccessLex Institute is doling out $270,000 in scholarships to some lucky law students who completed the organization's financial literacy program. And last, I've got a few updates on the bar exam including Nevada rolling out the first open-book exam, and Mississippi requiring liability waivers from test takers. Read on and stay safe!

Please share your thoughts and feedback with me at [email protected] or on Twitter: @KarenSloanNLJ

 

The Inside Scoop on Law Professor Life

How do you land a gig as a law professor? What's the job like? How are law schools doing in promoting diversity among their faculties?

Those are a few of the avenues explored in The Legal Academy, a new YouTube series and podcast hosted by UC Berkeley Law Professor Orin Kerr that seeks to demystify the inner workings of law schools. Kerr each week spends about an hour talking with different academics (on Zoom of course!) and digging into different aspects of teaching, scholarship, and the hiring process.

The debut episode features Kerr in conversation with powerhouse Yale law professor Akhil Amar, which includes an interesting discussion about the ever-higher bar of credentials it requires to break into the world of law teaching. (If you don't believe that, new data from Northwestern law professor Sarah Lawsky shows that just shy of half of the 88 people hired into tenure-track faculty positions this year have Ph.D.'s; 83% did teaching fellowships at law schools; and 58% did clerkships. More than a third of newly hired law professors have all three lines on their resume!) Amar shared his concerns about the rise of Ph.D.'s in the academy—a nonexistent trend when he began his teaching career—saying that the increase of professors with interdisciplinary backgrounds threatens to pull the focus of law school scholarship away from core legal issues. That episode has been viewed more than 2,000 times in little more than a week.

The second episode (there are only two so far) centers on Columbia law professor Jamal Greene, an expert in constitutional law. Greene discusses how he establishes his research agenda, and the challenges of specializing in such a well-trod area of the law. "There are no new ideas, especially in constitutional law," Greene tells Kerr. "The criteria can't be, 'No one has ever thought of this thing.' It has to be, 'Am I communicating this in an interesting way? Or am I communicating it to a slightly different audience?'" Greene also shares a fun anecdote about writing the forward to the Harvard Law Review's 2018 Supreme Court Issue—a huge honor—and hitting a deadline that landed before several key court decisions from the term had been handed down. (Yikes!)

I caught up with Kerr last week to learn more about why he launched The Legal Academy. Unsurprisingly, COVID-19 was a major factor. Academic conferences have been canceled and campuses are closed, eliminating casual hallway conversations with colleagues. With everyone stuck at home, the series seemed like a good way to maintain some connections, Kerr told me. Plus, professors have much more availability in their schedules these days. Here's Kerr:

"I thought, why not interview other law professors and post the videos online? We can recreate the missing connections, or at least try, and share them with the whole community. The idea is to recreate the best conversations you might have in the faculty lounge. And instead of having a conversation just a handful of people have, we can share it with everyone. So everyone gets to be a part of the conversation, whether they are watching the video on YouTube at home or listen to the podcast version while out walking the dog. A lot of how the legal academic world works can be insider knowledge, and I thought it would be great to share that insider knowledge with everyone."

My thoughts: I like the idea behind the series, in part because it gives law professors the chance not to talk about their scholarship per se, but how they approach that work and their teaching. Which is something that I don't think gets discussed as often or as directly as it should. Kerr said he's pleased with the early reaction to the project. I wanted to know whether this is a summer side project, or if it has legs beyond that.

"My plan is to do it as long as it's still fun," Kerr said. "If it develops an audience, and I can find new and interesting people to interview, I'll keep doing it. There are lots of perspectives I want to cover, too: Teaching on Zoom, being a Dean, clinics, legal writing, being a law professor outside the U.S. So hopefully it will keep going for a while. But we'll see."

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Ka-Ching! Law Students Cash In

Here's some much needed good news: AccessLex Institute has awarded $270,000 in scholarship money to nine law students who completed its MAX by AccessLex program, which is a free in-person and online financial literacy course designed specifically for law students. (Students who complete the program are automatically entered into a scholarship drawing.) Three students have been awarded $40,000 scholarships, and five more have received $25,000 to help defray the cost of their legal education. AccessLex is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving access to legal education. Nearly 23,000 law students have completed the program since its debut several years ago, and 161 of the country's 200 law schools have used it.

"Due to COVID-19, I lost my employment for the summer," said Hannah Oates, a second-year student at the University of Kentucky College of Law and winner of a $25,000 scholarship. "Worried about the potential of taking out more loans, MAX by AccessLex provided tools and insight for both long and short-term financial obstacles and planning. Now, after winning the scholarship, I won't have to take out any loans for my last year of school and will graduate in an even better position than I was before losing my job."

If you want a nice little pick-me-up, you can watch videos of the three $40,000 scholarship winners learning about their windfalls via Zoom. The Cliffs Notes version is that they were pretty surprised and pleased. Go figure.

MAX by AccessLex provides in-person financial literacy workshops at law schools, as well as online programs and one-on-one financial coaching for participants from accredited financial counselors, all with the goal of helping students make sound financial decisions.

Extra Credit Reading

Those taking the July bar exam in Mississippi must sign waivers protecting the state from liability if they contract COVID-19 at the in-person test.

Nevada is planning the first-ever open book bar exam, which will be delivered online.

New York Law School and the University of Illinois at Chicago John Marshall Law School are offering summer courses designed to simulate the summer associate experience at law firms.

The on-campus experience this fall will be far different from what law students and professors are used to thanks to the coronavirus.

New grads from Loyola Law School, Los Angeles and Brooklyn Law School have gone viral for their creative and touching graduation celebrations.

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I'll be back next week with more news and updates on the future of legal education. Until then, keep in touch at [email protected]