Blawg Roundup #3

This week's spin around a few blawgs is full of great critiques of law, law school, and law professors, plus a note about two upcoming public interest conferences. Blawg reading time is very limited these days, but this is the best of the little bit I've been able to read in the past week. First up, Buffalo Wings & Vodka's attempt to find a sponsor for his blog via eBay has ended. Since the reserve for the auction was not met, you can still sponsor BW&V through private negotiation. Next, Bad Glacier is dishing out the good stuff early over at his new home, so get on over and check out the strippergrams he got from the University of Michigan Law School admissions office (sorry, no pictures, just a mention). A little more seriously, he has an interesting little taxonomy of how different top-tier schools approach the admissions process, from Michigan's “we love you!” to Yale's “screw you” (I'm paraphrasing), it's a bit of insight into the workings of the upper echelon for those of us lower down the food chain. Dave! of Preaching to the Perverted, guest--posts on Notes from the (Legal) Underground, offering 6 tips for law professors. It's a great post, as are Dave!'s responses in the comments. Sticking with the critical theme, Musclehead emerges from hibernation with two excellent critiques of law school and the legal profession. In What's Wrong With Law School, Musclehead writes:

in general, law school does a very good job at putting blinders on its students, getting them to focus on micro issues of black letter law to the detriment of dialogue about whether a particular law is just or efficient or equitable.

And in What's Wrong With the Law?, Musclehead's thesis is that the legal profession has gone too far in placing the wishes of its clients above all other values:

I would argue that our problem is with our priorities. We place far too much emphasis on the primacy of clients to the detriment of our obligation to our profession, our society and ourselves. No other profession requires such allegiance to a client- doctors can refuse to perform a procedure they feel unnecessary to the patient, accountants can end their work for a client they believe is bending the rules of GAAP, teachers can teach evolution even if a parent demands creationism, etc.

Good stuff, Musclehead! Finally, two public interest law conferences for law students are coming up very soon: Reblaw 11, February 18-20 at Yale, and the Robert M. Cover Retreat, March 4-6 on Long Island. The Reblaw registration fee is a slim $30, and the conference will feature GW's very own Paul Butler as keynote speaker. The Cover Retreat I know less about, mostly because it costs $125 and what public interest law student has that kind of freaking money?

Posted January 29, 2005 08:37 AM | law school