HLS 3L José Klein has created the Learned Handmade Plates, a series of dishes commemorating significant U.S. Supreme Court decisions and current Justices of the Court.
The Learned Handmade Plates web site shows images of each of the 31 plates and includes detailed information about each case and judge that is depicted.
According to the HLS student newspaper, Klein’s work satisfied his 3L writing requirement.
The plates are available for purchase. Looks like there are also some magnets for sale.
If you’re considering a career in the legal academy, TaxProfBlog has posted an updated list of fellowships for aspiring law professors.
HLS has the largest number of different programs listed, with seven. (Woo hoo, one more than Yale or NYU!!) The post, by Univ. of Cincinnati Associate Dean Paul Caron, also includes a number of links to useful information about becoming a law professor.
Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, the conspirators offer this advice to would-be federal judicial clerks.
Some law schools may worry that their students can’t see the forest for the trees.
Not so at Vermont Law School, where they’ve designed a nice interactive map of various species of trees on the campus.
Red Oak (Quercus rubra) at VLS
The architecture column in today’s Boston Globe is all about the buildings at HLS, particularly the new Northwest Corner building.
The author’s description of “a pompous pile known as Langdell” is what caught my eye.
Send me your own alliterative characterization of our fair edifice, and I’ll post the best ones that I receive.
This article from the National Jurist shows what graduating law students will earn on average. Harvard grads are listed at $110,000/year.
TaxProf Blog has a list of the most overrated law schools among the top 14 in the latest U.S. News & World Report ranking. Harvard is #7. Below that is the latest SSRN ratings where Harvard is still #1.
Paul Caron of TaxProf Blog shows that the number one downloaded paper from SSRN is from HLS Professor Louis Kaplow.
This data was compiled by The Federal Appellate Clerks Blog, see the blog for the complete reports.
Top 10 law schools by total number of graduates securing circuit court clerkships:
1. Harvard University (55)
2. Yale University (50)
3. Stanford University (26)
4. University of Chicago (25)
5. Columbia University (22)
6. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (20)
7. University of Texas, Austin (19)
8. Georgetown University (18)
8. New York University (18)
8. University of California, Los Angeles (18)
Top 10 law schools by the percentage of clerks for 2008-09 based on the total 2008 graduating class:
1. Yale University (26.5%)
2. Stanford University (15.2%)
3. University of Chicago (13.0%)
4. Harvard University (9.9%)
5. Northwestern University (6.9%)
6. Duke University (5.9%)
7. Columbia University (5.7%)
8. University of California, Los Angeles (5.4%)
8. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (5.4%)
10. University of Pennsylvania (4.8%)
Michelle Weyenberg looks at the U.S. News & World Report law school rankings and asks if they take into consideration what law school students care about. Her finding is no. Read the article here.
Read about the changes in curricula and Dean Kagan’s take on legal education from this article.
Skadden: D. Choate, Hall: C+. Ropes & Gray: B-. Looking at a law firm? Check its report card first.
Building a Better Legal Profession, a grassroots movement begun by law students at Stanford, wants law students, law schools, and law firm clients to exercise their market power by engaging only those firms demonstrating a commitment to demographic diversity, pro bono participation and billable hour reforms. BBLP has created diversity rankings and diversity report cards to draw attention to differences between law firms. BBLP produces statistics on law firms employing more than 100 attorneys in six major markets: New York City, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Boston, Northern California and Southern California-LA. The BBLP Diversity Rankings cover five groups underrepresented in the legal profession: women, African-Americans, Hispanics, Asian-Americans and openly lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered individuals (LGBT). BBLP obtained its data from the National Association for Legal Career Professionals directory of law firm employment statistics. See the New York Times for recent news coverage (registration required).
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.
