The ABA’s Special Committee on the U.S. News and World Report Rankings issued its findings last month. The committee, which included University of Maryland School of Law Dean Phoebe Haddon, stated the following:

We believe that, for better or worse, U.S. News rankings will continue for the foreseeable future to dominate public perceptions of how law schools compare, and that there is relatively little that leaders in legal education can do to change that in the short term.

A 2009 law school graduate named “Ethan Haines” (more on the quotation marks in a bit) disagrees. Haines is the founder of unemployedjd.com and says he represents fellow graduates and law school students “who have been disillusioned by law school employment statistics, commercial school rankings, and antiquated career counseling programs.”

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re in for another hot one this week. Here are some law blog links to keep you from overheating.

• The Baltimore Injury Lawyer Blog congratulates U.S. District Judge Peggy Leen for her terse, but tasteful, rebuke of some lawyers for their bad discovery behavior. The Nevada judge said if she were an elementary school teacher, she would make the lawyers write this (and more) on the blackboard 500 times:

I will not make speaking, coaching, suggestive objections which violate Rule 30(c)(2). I am an experienced lawyer and know that objections must be concise, non- argumentative and non-suggestive. I understand that the purpose of a deposition is to find out what the witness
thinks, saw, heard or did. I know that lawyers are not supposed to coach or change the witness’s own words to form a legally convenient record. I know I am prohibited from frustrating or impeding the fair examination of a deponent during the deposition …

• The Baltimore County Circuit Court has everything under control following the floods that kept it closed last week.
• The former spokesman for the former Baltimore City Mayor Sheila Dixon wants the media to embrace the idea that “crime is down.”
• A member of the University of Maryland law faculty plans to use the Shirley Sherrod controversy as a teaching moment.
• Looking to make a lateral move? What’s your book?
• New York officers get a sweet pension deal.