So, you say you’re a fan of Louis Brandeis, the HLS valedictorian of the class of 1877 who served on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1916-1939.

You’ve read Brandeis biographies by Baskerville, Todd, Gross, Strum, Paper, Urofsky, Gal, Noble, Mason, and De Haas, and you skimmed Teitelbaum’s bibliography.

You devoured Brandeis’ collections of essays edited by Pollack and by Lief.

You digested his letters to family and to Felix Frankfurter.

You thumbed through his writings on democracy, on banking, and on business.

You even perused the HLS library’s 119-box collection of Brandeis’ papers, admired his portrait hanging at north end of the Langdell Reading Room, and glanced at the catalog from our 1994 exhibit commemorating his life.

For you, there may only be this one stone unturned: for a mere $5,375,000, you can now own Justice Brandeis’ former home on Beacon Hill. Be the envy of all your friends as you ponder the legacy of Brandeis’ seminal 1890 “Right to Privacy” law review article while sitting in front of one of the home’s seven fireplaces that likely inspired some of the most significant legal reasoning in U.S. history.

You might be surprised to learn that David Mamet—the playwright and screenwriter best known for such decidedly non-G-rated fare as The Untouchables, Glengarry Glen Ross, and Hannibal—authored a children’s book in 1999. You might be further surprised to learn that the story takes place at Harvard Law School.

For those of you who’ve ever wondered whether the world’s largest academic law library is so foolish as to not have any books with pictures in them, I give you Henrietta, the touching story of “an ambitious pig [who] overcomes prejudice while following her dream of attending law school.”

Near the beginning of the tale, and with more than a hint of sarcasm, Mamet writes, “To Boston, Athens of the North, did our pig go—for Boston sets itself up as our Seat of Learning, and have not the Luminaries in all the fields issued from there these last three hundred years?”

Granted, Harvard is never mentioned by name in the book, but the references to it are both numerous and unsubtle, including Massachusetts-based Elizabeth Dahlie’s illustrations of the Charles Hotel, the Larz Anderson Bridge, and our very own Langdell Hall.

Of course, I can’t tell you how the story ends, but if you’re a fan of literature in which a pig winds up as a United States Supreme Court Justice, then this is the book for you.

Prospective students and others interested in doing their own comparisons of law schools can access this searchable online version of the 2008 ABA-LSAC Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools. 

In addition, as noted here by the Empirical Legal Studies Blog, the ABA has posted all of the 2008 “official guide” data on legal education in downloadable excel files. 

Harvard student notes are cited more frequently than notes by Yale or Stanford students by a considerable margin, according to Eugene Volokh at the Volokh Conspiracy.

In a citation study conducted by Volokh, using notes published from 2001 to present, Harvard comes out way ahead—even taking into account the smaller number of student notes published at Yale (78% of Harvard) and Stanford (40%).  Some commenters (from Stanford or Yale?) raise objections. 

It’s unclear from the initial post whether only law review notes are included, or notes from other journals at the three schools as well, but Volokh’s own comment implies that it was just the big three.  He promises additional data in the future.

According to this new article from the Associated Press, “one of the hottest niches in law [is] the lawyer-scientist who understands technology and can explain it to a jury.”

Among the reasons: U.S. patent applications are up nearly 30% from five years ago and have become a topic of particular consideration to courts and the legislature.

Stanford law professor Mark Lemley, who was involved in two recent Supreme Court patent cases, says more law students are studying intellectual property and coming to law school after getting science degrees.

Some law schools have begun offering joint degree programs in science and law.

Carolyn Shapiro, a new permanent editor at one of our favorite blogs, Empirical Legal Studies has this post on a forthcoming article on potential systemic unfairness in teaching evaluations. 

"In Bias, the Brain, and Student Evaluations of Teaching, an article that will appear in St. John’s Law Review in November, Deborah J. Merritt of Ohio State Moritz College of Law argues that students’ stereotypes and biases affect their evaluations of their professors, and in ways that may particularly disadvantage women and minorities.  The abstract explains that student assessments of teaching “respond overwhelmingly to a professor’s appearance and nonverbal behavior.” Merritt reports that “ratings based on just thirty seconds of silent videotape correlate strongly with end-of-semester evaluations.” The very interesting article includes an impressive and eye-opening survey of research and concludes with recommendations for creating a more meaningful system for evaluating teaching."

“Brian Leiter’s Law School Rankings” web site recently posted this table showing which law schools have been most heavily represented among U.S. Supreme Court clerks during the Court’s past eight terms.

HLS ranks first in total number of clerks and third in proportion to overall class size. Leiter’s table also compares the current results with 1991-2005 results.

The Accreditation Policy Task Force of the American Bar Association is considering removing tenure as a requirement for law school accreditation.