News & Updates

A key feature of the Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers initiative is the Consortium of 23 law schools committed to innovation in the spirit of the Carnegie Report. What are these schools like compared to law schools as a whole? This post will take up this question, looking at three issues: 1. What are the ETL consortium schools like as to the types of institution they represent, their tier in school rankings, and where are they located? 2. What kinds of innovation are they engaged in, particularly in the area of curriculum? 3. How do they look on these measures when compared to other schools?

The California bar’s task force is set to issue recommendations in December 2013 regarding whether to impose a practical skills training requirement on lawyers applying for admission. Whether the country’s largest bar decides to adopt hands-on…

The University of California Hastings College announced that it will reduce enrollment by 20% over the next three years. "The critics of legal education are right," Dean Frank Wu said in a telephone interview on April 30. "There are too many law…

The governor asked a judicial nominating commission to submit the name of more than one candidate for a district court judgeship for which only four attorneys applied. All four applicants—two Republicans and two Democrats—are also running for the seat in November. The commission responded by soliciting additional applicants but did not promise to nominate more candidates.

The senate approved a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow the governor to appoint appellate judges with legislative confirmation. The proposal would give the general assembly sixty days to act on a nomination or it would automatically be confirmed. The house later approved the same measure. If approved by a two-thirds vote of the general assembly in 2013, the proposal will go before the voters in 2014.

Despite an earlier agreement to move forward with Senate confirmation of judicial nominees, Senator Al Franken and others report that the process remains acrimonious. Nearly one in 10 seats on the federal bench are currently empty.

A Republican legislator called for an investigation into whether three supreme court justices violated state election law in using court employees to help file their retention candidacy paperwork. The justices learned on the day of the deadline that their financial disclosure forms were incomplete and called a court recess to finalize their submissions.

The senate voted unanimously to replace the existing judicial disciplinary body—the court on the judiciary—with a new entity known as the board of judicial conduct. The state bar and the supreme court would no longer have a role in selecting members of the disciplinary body, and greater transparency in its work would be required.

A judicial selection task force made seven recommendations and offered draft legislation to improve the process for selecting supreme court justices. Recommendations including nominating candidates in open primaries rather than through party conventions, full disclosure of campaign spending, and the use of a vacancy nominating commission to fill judicial vacancies between elections.

The three supreme court justices standing for retention in November share major campaign contributors with Fair Districts Now, an organization that supported redistricting amendments considered by the court in February.

Numbers may prevent a disciplinary complaint against Justice David Prosser from going any further. Prosser formally requested that two justices recuse themselves from consideration of the complaint against him, and he asked personally that two other justices recuse themselves, on the grounds that these justices were witnesses to the incident that gave rise to the complaint.

Last week, we announced that we now recognize ETL Fellows for their contributions to legal education. Professor Benjamin Madison of Regent University School of Law is among our first six. This article by his school details his role in advancing legal education.

Republican Allen Loughry, who is running for the supreme court of appeals, is the only one of eight candidates to seek public campaign financing through the state’s pilot program. The public financing program provides $50,000 to uncontested primary candidates, minus what they raised to qualify, and $350,000 for the general election.

A state senator criticized Governor Christie for not taking action on longstanding superior court vacancies. A shortage of judges recently led to a four-month suspension of civil trials in the state’s busiest courthouse. Christie responded that he will address those vacancies after the senate has voted on pending nominations.

Professor Amy Landers discusses the upside of interactive casebooks. Now available as part of some paper-format textbooks, students can link to the subject matter of the cases, including clips of songs, images, and even play the video games that spawned lawsuits.

A district court judge may have violated the state’s code of judicial conduct by writing a letter soliciting campaign contributions for a fellow judge who is running for a state supreme court seat. If a complaint is filed and found to have merit, the judge could be subject to disciplinary action ranging from admonishment to removal from the bench.

By a 5-4 vote, the state judicial nominating commission voted to bar its members from contributing to or actively participating in any judicial race in the state, including the retention elections of three supreme court justices. Those who voted in favor of the policy want to avoid the appearance of impropriety, while those who voted against it believe that public disclosure of support for a candidate would be sufficient.

The supreme court adopted new rules that bar individual judges from taking budget requests and suggestions for revisions to the law directly to legislators without first getting appropriate approval. These rules are in response to judges’ role in lobbying lawmakers for a $50 million courthouse that has been labeled “Taj Majal.”

LawWeek Colorado recently featured a story on Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers, highlighting the twenty law schools around the country that have already joined our efforts. The article included interviews with three Colorado lawyers who spoke about the steep learning curve for graduates and the need to train practice-ready lawyers.

Washington & Lee law professor and Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers Fellow Jim Moliterno recently presented at Pepperdine Law Review Symposium on “The Lawyer of the Future.” Moliterno also discussed his school's innovative third year curricula, including tracks for both litigation and transactional immersion.