The Red Velvet Lawyer

Time with my Students is Coming to an End We have long semesters at Qatar University College of Law.  It means that we are all very exhausted by the last week of the semester.  This year, the Ramadan fast adds another dimension to the challenges of teaching this last week. I am trying to make it a little easier for students to complete all the sections of the Memorandum of Law that I have taught them to write this semester. They have analyzed the use of the same name, Azul Marine Supply , and a similar trademark in connection with two marine supply shops.  They have used two Qatari trademark cases and several sections of the Qatari code to complete their analysis.  They have listened to and summarized a meeting with the partner, a client interview, and an interview of a confused consumer.  They have learned to brief cases.   They have also learned to conduct legal research in two databases, including Westlaw Gulf.   I have...

Pushing the Form I have now lived in Qatar for three fall seasons.  I teach at Qatar University College of Law, so I am perfectly positioned to see youthful fashion expressed in the abaya.   Many Westerners, when they see a photo of a group of Arab women wearing abayas, probably assume that the abayas they wear are the same in style, fabric, and embellishment.  Not true.  As the outward statement for these young women, you see many expressions of their personality and fashion sense in the abayas they choose to wear.  Some students, who view the abaya as a utilitarian piece of clothing, may wear the same abaya all semester.  Other women, more fashion conscious, may have four or five abayas that they rotate throughout the semester.   As a seamstress, I am fascinated at the thousands of interpretations of this basic form.  In Qatar, most abayas are cloaks with long sleeves that a woman wraps in front of her and holds with ...

Committed to  High-Quality Legal Education So, I am re-posting these teaching tips here for easy retrieval as I need them.  Two law professors that I admire for their commitment to high quality legal education offer them for our use. Students? What do you think of these suggestions?

ASL Not the only Law School Adjusting to the New Normal  This month, LSAC reports : “As of 5/09/14, there are 337,978 Fall 2014 applications submitted by 49,907 applicants. Applicants are down 8.3% and applications are down 8.9% from 2013.”  One blogger charted , in late 2013, the national downturn in applicants based on LSAC data: It is a very powerful illustration of the change in the number over the last several years. The National Jurist explained in a Dec. 2013 article about the drop of enrolled students: According to figures released by the American Bar Association, law schools enrolled 39,675 new students this fall—an 11 percent decrease from the 44,481 students who enrolled last fall. The last time law schools saw such low 1L enrollment was 1975, when there were 163 ABA-accredited law schools. There are 202 such schools today . . . . University of St. Thomas School of law professor Jerome Organ in June wrote a blog post predicting 38,300 to ...

The Red Velvet Lawyer  Gets Some Notice In an article  predicting when law-related jobs will exceed the number of law school graduates, the National Jurist discussed my blog posting on the same topic, found here . I want to clarify that my posting attempted to support the prediction made by Prof. Organ at the MAPLA conference in October 2013.  And, as noted in updates to my posting, I am happy that other folks are further examining the data and making a more precise prediction. I fully support the informed decision-making of any person applying to law school right now.  I also strongly recommend that prospective students work closely with pre-law advisors.  As I have posted elsewhere , they are a highly professional and committed group of people who strive to serve the best interests of the students they advise. I also noted that 70 percent of prospective law students fail to take advantage of this important resource.

" Toxic" Press Environment  for Law Schools? At the October 2013 conference of the Midwest Association of Prelaw Advisors, Washington University School of Law Dean, Kent Syverud, gave a speech on the Future of Legal Education .  I have discussed different aspects of the speech in several postings . At one point, he identified the current press environment surrounding law schools as "toxic."  I recently had my own experience with this press environment. Yesterday, Brian Leiter discussed this toxic environment in his own blog , which I highly recommend. A Complex Set of Factors This week-end, I finished reading Brian Tamanaha's 2012 book,  Failing Law Schools . I found his discussion of the ABA regulatory environment of law schools especially interesting.  While it created high quality law schools, it also drove up the price of a legal education by requiring additional "inputs," including higher salaries for faculty members; more tim...

The Tide Turns Again? New Jobs Exceed the Number of Law Graduates in 2016? At the conference of the Midwest Association of Prelaw Advisors held at the end of October 2013, Professor Jerry Organ predicted that jobs would exceed the number of law school graduates in 2016 (as I recall). He suggested that the market would turn because applicants to law school would continue to decline while the trend in new law jobs would hold at least steady. So, here is my attempt at supporting this prediction.  I am using data provided by LSAC at the MAPLA conference, which I have discussed in earlier postings.  I am also relying on data provided by NALP . I make the following assumptions: Enrollment of first-year law students will decline by 8.0% from the previous year through the 2015 entering class. Each entering class experiences an attrition rate of 12 percent. So, only 88 percent of each first-year class graduates three years later. New full-time jobs in three categori...

Branding:  The Event Branding, as in a consistent brand identity. It is all about the perception you create about yourself in others. I have spent the last three days in a lovely hotel in Del Mar outside San Diego getting an intense exposure to the rules, concepts, and goals of branding.   The event sponsor,  Re Perez , brings years of expertise to his business of helping entrepreneurs become more successful.   The program has helped me identify my core values and clearly define my purpose.  I'm excited about the potential. He has also partnered with other entrepreneurs who have taught sessions on Facebook marketing and a "touch" management system called Infusionsof t. I wish our students and alumni could get this training and this service.  The results of these systems and approaches are nothing short of impressive. Today, I plan to win a $20,000 consulting package for the law school in a raffle. Please send your w...

Graduate School Bubbles Bursting Across all Professions? One of my colleagues forwarded this story  appearing in The New England Journal of Medicine .  The story provides an answer to the following question: "Are we in a medical education bubble market?" The authors answer that question in the last paragraph of the story and suggest a difficult future for other professional schools. Although it seems unlikely that we're in a bubble market for medical education, we may already be in one for veterinary medicine. That bubble will burst when potential students recognize that the costs of training aren't matched by later returns. Then the optometry bubble may burst, followed by the pharmacy and dentistry bubbles. At the extreme, we will march down the debt-to-income-ratio ladder, through psychiatrists to cardiologists to orthopedists . . . until no one is left but the MBAs. It explains: In medicine, students buy their education from medical schools an...

Conference of the  Midwest Association of Pre-Law Advisors This week, I've been attending the conference of the Midwest Association of Pre-law Advisors (MAPLA) held this year in my home town of St. Louis, Missouri.  I have continued to blog on this conference so check my postings in November. Three things have really impressed me. First, the pre-law advisors clearly express a strong desire to help their students make the best career choices possible.  I appreciate their professionalism, knowledge, and commitment to serve students. Employment Trends Update Second, the conference planners have offered top-notch conference programming. One speaker, the Executive Director of NALP , spoke about the legal employment market here and here . I've tracked the trends myself  here ,  here ,  here ,  here ,  here ,  here , and  here . I'll provide an update on that topic, based on this presentation, when I get back to Grundy. One s...

Student Organizations at the  Appalachian School of Law So here it is -- after more than a month of research -- the list of student organizations operating at the Appalachian School of Law.  I am proud of the programming and service our students provide our law school and the regional community.  These organizations enhance our well-being in so many ways.   Pro Bono Legal Service Providers: Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA)  VITA Tax Services (VITA)  Great Eastern Trail Project (GET)  Law Journals: Appalachian Journal of Law (AJoL) Appalachian Natural Resources Law Journal (ANRLJ) Student Government: Student Bar Association (SBA) Honor Court Legal Fraternities: Blackwell Inn Phi Delta Phi (PDP)  Phi Alpha Delta Law Fraternity, International (PAD)  Focus on Substantive Law: ADR Society  Criminal Law Society (CLS)  Education Law Society (ELS)  Energy and Mineral Law Society (EMLS)...

Funding Student Organization Activities   at the Appalachian School of Law   Rather than paraphrase the rules governing SBA appropriations for student organizations, I am simply reproducing the relevant provisions of the Bylaws of the ASL SBA. § 3. Allocation of Student Activity Fees  I. Preliminary Organization Budget A. Any student organization or student group seeking funding from the Senate shall submit a proposed itemized budget to the SBA Fiscal Policy Committee (Committee). The proposed budget request shall be submitted to the Committee no later than April 1st of the academic year preceding the academic year in which the funds are to be requested. Full funding is not guaranteed nor should be expected. These proposals do not bind the SBA, nor the organization.  1. The Committee shall only accept proposals signed by the Organization President, Treasurer, and Advisor, or their equivalents.  2. All budgets shall remain proposals until...

Standing Committees of the Student Bar Association (SBA) of the Appalachian School of Law  The Student Bar Association -- which I have described in a series of postings here ,  here ,  here , and  here  -- has established a number of standing committees.  They are: American Bar Association Representative Student Activity Council New Organization Review Committee Fiscal Policy Committee Charitable Endeavors Committee President's Council Career Services Advisory Committee Legacy Committee Mental Health Committee, and Property Management Committee Section 5 of the Bylaws of the Appalachian School of Law Student Bar Association describes each of these committees: American Bar Association Representative In the Spring semester, the newly elected SBA President shall appoint an American Bar Association (ABA) Representative. The ABA Representative shall be a rising 3L whose primary responsibility will be to represent th...

The Legislative Branch (Senate) of the Student Bar Association of the Appalachian School of Law The Student Bar Council (SBC) of the Student Bar Association (SBA) consists of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches. I discussed the Honor Court - the Judicial branch --  here .  I discussed the Executive branch here . Representatives of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches must be in good standing as defined by the law school, including the ASL Academic Standards and the Honor Code. Failure to meet this standard results in immediate removal from office and replacement according to the SBA Constitution. Voting and non-voting members of the SBC must attend all meetings, except for good cause. Absences in excess of four meetings per semester or two consecutive regularly scheduled meetings, without good cause, allows a majority vote of the Senate to remove the member. The Senate The Legislative branch of the SBC is known as the “Sena...