It was a good week for …
Law school clinic privacy, after New Jersey’s Supreme Court ruled that case records created by Rutgers University law school clinics are not subject to disclosure under the state’s Open Public Records Act.
At issue were records created by the Rutgers Environmental Litigation Clinic that a developer said would show that the clinic was receiving help from a company that was preventing him from attracting potential mall tenants.
The court’s ruling upheld a trial court’s finding for the clinic, and overturned an appellate panel that compelled disclosure because it held the clinic to be a public agency because it’s part of a state law school.
Poker-playing law students, after a 27 year-old Yale Law graduate won a second career World Series of Poker bracelet and the first gold bracelet by a woman in an open event since she won in 2008.
While most recent graduates are studying for the bar, looking for a job, or pounding out billable hours, Vanessa Selbst added $244,259 to her lifetime career tournament winnings, now at $5.3 million. She is second on the all-time money list for women players.
After the tournament, Selbst plans to volunteer at a Los Angeles law firm and will take the bar exam next year.
It was a bad week for …
Law schools that report bloated admissions data, after Robert Morse, Director of Data Research at U.S. News & World Report, said that U.S. News will reflect recent graduate employment data more accurately in future law school rankings.
The current U.S. News ranking formula counts recent graduates employed in any job, legal or non-legal, full-time or part-time. With recent reports by the ABA showing full-time employment for the class of 2011 stood at 55 percent, Morse said that “this new data will enable the rankings to more accurately reflect the employment success — or lack thereof — of each law school’s new graduates.”
The change would spell trouble for schools that have relied on misleading employment rates to boost their ranking.
