Month: November 2015

Robert J. Condlin

I feel sorry for Professor Yackee. He started a conversation about legal employment and ended up in a debate about clinical education. That’s a little like going to a Barry Manilow concert and having Gene Simmons walk on to the stage. In fairness, he opened the door to the larger issue on direct (perhaps inadvertently) when he acknowledged, ever so briefly, that one could “imagine . . . positive consequences of skills training,” and once the door was opened Professor Findley walked through it on cross, to give the conversation a wholly new character. As I see it, there now are three questions on the table: 1) does clinical practice experience improve a law student’s chances of getting a legal job, 2) if not, would it if employers were given better information about student practice experience, and 3) if not, are there other reasons to justify a law school’s decision to fund a clinical program. The answer to question number 1, at least for many private law firms (and all of Biglaw), is almost certainly no, but there is considerable room for disagreement on questions 2 and 3, and I will express my views on them shortly. First, however, a few words about the ostensible disconnect between clinical practice experience and private law firm employment.

Brian Christopher Jones

Another turbulent Supreme Court term has left liberals pleased and conservatives disenchanted; exactly the opposite of last year’s conclusion, when liberals were gloomy and conservatives elated. And while the Court is certainly no stranger to controversy, at this point in the Roberts Era, something is different. The difference appears not through the divisiveness of the Court’s docket, which has remained consistent throughout the years, but in the way the American public, including journalists and others, now thinks and speaks about the institution. As its political nature becomes more easily discerned—both because of the issues it is deciding and the language used in the Court’s decisions—reverence to the institution, its Justices, and more importantly, its decisions, appears to be increasingly scarce.