What I Wish I Had Known When I Started Law School, Part I

Editors’ Note: As each new 1L class begins its legal education, our thoughts often turn back to our own first few weeks of law school.  This post begins a new series on “What I Wish I Had Known When I Started Law School.”

I went to law school for all the wrong reasons. When I started in Georgetown’s part-time, evening division, I had been doing real estate development for four or five years. I was a client before I was a law student. I became quite annoyed that my attorneys seemed to be patronizing me. They spoke a language that was foreign to me. I decided to go to law school to find out what the mystique was all about and, hopefully, to emerge as a better developer.

About six weeks into law school, I realized that I was “turned on” by my studies. I told myself that I knew that I had played a lot as an undergraduate at Penn, but I had never before been intellectually excited by school. I told myself to slow down and enjoy the journey. I did just that and it changed my life. After law school, I gave up my real estate business and clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, after which I joined the Georgetown Law faculty. I came to believe that the journey through law school was one of the best parts of my life.

Continue ReadingWhat I Wish I Had Known When I Started Law School, Part I

Law and Theology – Who Says It’s Not Practical ???

I was glad to see that Bruce linked to the fascinating debate on the nature of legal education prompted by Brent Newton’s article claiming that law professors “preach” what they don’t “practice.”  I’ll comment later, although my general view, as someone who has much more practice experience than the typical full time legal academic, I think its an issue that is often drawn too starkly and that requires a nuanced response.

But today I want to talk about Law & Theology (10 am on Friday mornings in 204 for anyone who wants to add a seminar) and Glen Beck. Newton argues that law schools overemphasize “theoretical, increasingly interdisciplinary scholarship” and courses. But Glen Beck has put law (0r at least politics) and theology smack into the middle of the public debate. In this fallen world, we may have to take that where we can find it.

Continue ReadingLaw and Theology – Who Says It’s Not Practical ???

Best of the Blogs

This week: Those who don’t do, can’t teach? Also, an unconstitutional village ordinance on real estate for-sale signs may serve as a symbol of racial integration; the surprising stem cell research injunction; and is there a “private action” requirement in the Constitution?

First, it’s recruiting season for new law professors, which means that this week it was time for the perennial debate over the composition of law faculties. This time it was kicked off by Georgetown adjunct professor Brent Newton with his article, posted on SSRN, entitled “Preaching What They Don’t Practice: Why Law Faculties’ Preoccupation with Impractical Scholarship and Devaluation of Practical Competencies Obstruct Reform in the Legal Academy.” That was followed by comments from Stephen Bainbridge, Joe Hodnicki, Jonathan Adler, Rick Garnett, Kristen Holmquist, and Paul Horwitz. (I myself have weighed in on previous iterations of this debate.) One thing that struck me as missing from all of this commentary, much of it thoughtful, was any mention of the notion of law school degrees as positional goods.

Sarah Waldeck posted the fourth and final installment in her fascinating series on a Chicago suburb that has persisted in retaining, and apparently enforcing, a clearly unconstitutional village ordinance banning real estate for-sale signs. A taste:

Continue ReadingBest of the Blogs