It was a good week for …
Aspiring law professors, after Yale Law School announced a new Ph.D. in law program – the first such program in the country – designed to prepare students who have earned a law degree in the United States to become law professors.
Given the hefty scholarship expectations for entry-level law professors, the program offers a new avenue for aspiring professors currently confined to Ph.D.’s in related disciplines such as economics, history, philosophy or political science. Yale says its program will focus on the questions and practices of the law itself.
About 10 percent of law professors teaching in the U.S., as well as deans of eight of the top ten law schools, are graduates of Yale law school, the university said. Now, graduates of other law schools can gain some of Yale’s credibility on their resumes. Applications are being accepted this fall.
Deciphering legal claims in rap lyrics, after a law professor provided a line-by-line legal analysis for Jay Z’s 2004 hit ‘99 Problems.’ Caleb Mason, an associate professor of law at Southwestern University, concluded that most of Jay Z’s lyrics were legally accurate.
Jay-Z: “And I Heard ‘Son do you know what I’m stopping you for?’/Cause I’m young and I’m black and my hat’s real low?/Do I look like a mind reader sir, I don’t know/Am I under arrest or should I guess some mo?”
Mason: “A great question, and an important one for any future suppression claim. As new lawyers learn (to their dismay), there is no constitutional problem with arresting someone for a traffic violation, no matter how minor…”
Mason’s full analysis can be read in the Saint Louis University Law Journal. For more, see http://gawker.com/5925168/is-jay+zs-99-problems-legally-accurate-a-law-p….
It was a bad week for …
Ignoring the realities of student debt, after the dean of the University of Louisville’s Louis D. Brandeis School of Law Dean analyzed the amount of debt that a law student can afford after graduating from law school.
In Jim Chen’s report, “A Degree of Practical Wisdom: The Ratio of Educational Debt to Income as a Basic Measurement of Law School Graduate’s Economic Viability,” Chen concluded that “law graduates need to earn three times their law school tuition annually” to achieve “adequate” financial viability.
For example, graduates of more affordable schools with tuition around $17,000 per year would need to earn more than $50,000 per year, while graduates of more expensive programs at $34,000 each year would need to earn more than $100,000 annually. The highest echelon of programs would require students to earn around $150,000 per year.
