Mediocrity

Grades came back. I have two above where I think the median is and two below. Once I get my exams back I'll know what I need to work on.

I need to find an internship in San Diego.

Exciting News: California Western and UCSD Panel

I am delighted to share this email the students received today regarding a possible merger between California Western and UCSD.

For many years, California Western has explored ways to expand our decades-long partnership with UC San Diego while strengthening our mission to educate and serve. Today we announce a significant development in this endeavor and I want you, our students, to be among the first to know.

Late Tuesday we announced that representatives of California Western and UC San Diego have formed a joint committee to consider an affiliation that would lead to the creation of a public law school in San Diego. Click here for the news release we distributed.

The proposed affiliation holds many potential benefits for our law school. Joining with UC San Diego creates new opportunities for research and collaboration while honoring our mission and values. It enhances the reputation and visibility of our faculty, alumni, and students. The proposed affiliation offers each of us the opportunity to be a part of something larger than ourselves, the chance to provide a living legacy to our region that will make a lasting difference for years to come.

I anticipate some media coverage of this development. As the news becomes public, you may hear or read about it in the workplace, online, or in social situations. I encourage you to share your questions and comments with Assistant Dean Kathleen Seibel or myself.

I also invite you to attend a students-only town hall meeting to learn more about our conversations with UC San Diego and what they might mean for you and the rest of the California Western family.

Tuesday, February 2
12:15 – 1:05 p.m.
California Western Auditorium

As we move forward in these conversations, our first commitment remains you, the California Western family. You make us who we are and we could not do this without the support of the faculty, staff, alumni, and students whose commitment and accomplishments allow us to consider this exciting proposal. I will continue to bring you updates as events unfold in this process.

Sincerely,
Dean Steven R. Smith

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I plan to attend the meeting and I'll report back with any details.

Here is where the link leads:

Media Contacts:

Judy Piercey, UC San Diego – (858) 534-6128 or jpiercey@ucsd.edu

Pam Hardy, California Western School of Law – (619) 515-1545 or phardy@cwsl.edu

Local Educational Institutions Form Joint Committee to Consider

Establishment of UC San Diego School of Law

January 26, 2010 – The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego) and California

Western School of Law (California Western) this month formed a joint committee made

up of faculty and administrators from both institutions to consider an affiliation that

may lead to the establishment of a UC San Diego School of Law. It is envisioned that the

law school would be self-supporting and no state or UC San Diego campus funds would

be needed to make the new law school viable.

Formation of this committee follows initial consideration of a proposal from California

Western to UC San Diego, according to Paul Drake, UC San Diego’s Senior Vice

Chancellor for Academic Affairs.

“We believe the proposal has sufficient merit to explore the possibilities together,”

Drake said. “A UC San Diego School of Law would enhance the research, teaching and

public service mission of the university.

California Western Dean Steven R. Smith added, “The increasingly robust ties between

our two institutions, built over the past three and a half decades of dual and joint

degree programs, co-sponsored symposia and cross-institutional teaching, led us to look

at the possibility of a combination as the next logical step in our relationship. This could

create a public law school for San Diego with no start-up costs – and without creating a

new (de novo) law school, or generating more law school graduates.”

The joint committee will explore ways in which a UC San Diego School of Law might

build on existing strengths, enhance other academic disciplines and create unique

broad-based areas of exploration in law, science and technology.

In addition, the joint committee will consider the following issues with regard to the

proposed affiliation:

• Faculty – integrating and respecting existing California Western faculty and

planning for new hires;

• Students – attracting students with strong credentials;

• Finance – ensuring that the law school continues to be self-supporting as a public

institution;

• Governance – maintaining consistency with University of California, American Bar

Association, and Association of American Law Schools standards; and

• Transition – charting a smooth transformation into a UC San Diego School of Law.

“At a challenging time in the university’s history,” Drake said, “this proposed affiliation

would present an opportunity to advance the long-term vision of the University of

California system and this campus.”

Noted Smith, “The San Diego region could benefit from having a law school that helps

advance and support its most important science and technology industries, today and

tomorrow.”

If the Joint Committee determines that the proposal should advance, a planning

document will be submitted to the UC San Diego Faculty Senate and administration, and

to the California Western faculty and Board of Trustees. If these bodies endorse the

committee’s recommendation, it will then be sent to the UC Office of the President for a

final evaluation and decision. There is no firm timeline for making a determination.

###

About UC San Diego

Founded in 1960, the University of California, San Diego is ranked the best value public

university in California by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine and the 7th best public

university in the nation by U.S. News and World Report. Named the “hottest” institution to

study science by Newsweek, UC San Diego is one of the nation’s most accomplished research

universities, widely acknowledged for its local impact, national influence and global reach. For

more information, please visit www.ucsd.edu.

About California Western School of Law

California Western School of Law is the independent, ABA/AALS-accredited San Diego law school

that advances multi-dimensional lawyering by educating lawyers-to-be as creative problem

solvers and principled advocates who frame the practice of law as a helping, collaborative

profession. Please visit www.cwsl.edu for more information.

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I kind of laughed at "This could create a public law school for San Diego with no start-up costs – and without creating a new (de novo) law school, or generating more law school graduates.” I guess the market is saturated.

Its an exciting time to be at California Western. I kind of found it odd no public law school exists in the second largest city in California.

Well, time for homework. Tomorrow is another day.

Licking my wounds and my thoughts on transferring.

I got called on in Civil Procedure and it didn't go well. The professor asked me about a procedural step. I had it in my brief but I felt like I might have written it down wrong so I stumbled and didn't really regain any kind of momentum. Anyway, I got chewed out in front of the class. It seems a little gratuitous but whatever, I'm not going to dwell on it.

Grades come out Friday. I've overheard more than a few over-confident conversations about transferring. To transfer you need to be in the top 5-10%. That means you have to do better than 90-95% of the class. I don't know why people are counting their chickens before they're hatched. From what I've read, no one should count on transferring. There are a variety of reasons for people with high lsat scores to pick a t3 or t4 school: close to home, scholarship, etc... In order to transfer a person has to beat out these students and the rest of their class. Because the exams are graded on a curve, you have rock the exams harder than everyone else. In short: you have to be the Ted Nugent of law school to transfer.

It is important to be happy with your choice of law school and assume you're going to remain in your school and in the job markets it feeds into. In this case I'm happy with California Western (maybe grades will change my mind... but today I feel good. heh) and I'd be thrilled to have the opportunity practice law in San Diego. I love this place and I don't want to leave.

Grades, The Curve and UCSD

Grades come out next week so I feel like I should make a post about the curve without knowing what my grades are.

I do not like the curve at California Western.

The curve forces about a quarter of the class to fail out. This happens even if all the students perform well. The negative effect on students is two fold. First, those in the bottom quarter are left in an enormous amount of debt. Second, it reflects poorly on the school if they are admitting such a large volume of students that are doomed to fail.

I've heard the argument that California Western drops these students to improve their bar passage rate. After all, there is no point in going through 3 years of law school piling on debt if a student is incapable of passing the bar. The school could still maintain a high bar passage rate by simply raising the standards (gpa/lsat) of admission. This would cause the rank of the school to rise and maintain the bar passage rate.

Some posit an argument along the lines that some students are poor test takers on the lsat or slept through undergrad and still deserve a shot at becoming a lawyer. I would be O.K. with this if the school did a better job of informing the incoming class of the exact nature of a law school curve. I really think there is a 'failure to warn' on the part of the school. This could be ameliorated by publishing the curve and where each student's lsat score from the previous years lined up with where they landed on the curve. This information does not exist (as far as I know, feel free to correct me with a link).

This leaves me wondering why the school admits so many students it will simply fail out or ask to leave. The only rationale for this behavior that I can think of is to collect tuition.

Curves exist at law schools around the country and I'm rather opposed to systems that force good students completely out of the school or limit the number of As that can be given. I would suggest moving to an undergraduate grading system where displaying knowledge of the law and lawyer-like thinking gives you an A regardless of some irrelevant detail the professor is forced to use to differentiate between an A and a B.

My own grades:

I'm not really sure how I did. I studied hard and hopefully that pays off. I'll probably post my grades here so incoming students can see what I did and how well I did. My only concern is that I've revealed enough about myself that someone from my section will find it, realize who I am, and take the information the wrong way.

My impression of the tests is they're pretty standard law school exams. You spend much of the semester studying how to do well on a law school exam and the students to figure that out first will likely get the As.

I have a feeling I probably didn't do as well as I wanted which means I will have to change some things after talking to professors/ tutors. So far I've kept on track this semester. I started outlining this weekend and so far things look good. I'll adjust when grades are released on Friday.

UCSD Rumors:

A few faculty members at UCSD talk about a merger between the schools as if it is already a done deal. The rumor buzzing around the school is the next edition of the school news paper will be released when the committee to discuss a possible merger/ buyout/ whatever comes to a decision. A few of my professors keep having to cancel their office hours to serve on the committee. These are all rumors, so who knows. Hopefully we become UCSD. That would make me happy.

Google, China and International Law

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100113-714153.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines

Google announced today that it may pull out of China. This announcement came in response to China hacking the gmail accounts of human rights activists. Google has made several concessions in order to operate in China and this seems to be the straw that broke the camel's back. Google de-censored just about everything they agreed to censor to operate in China. www.google.cn actually returned search results this morning for Tienanmen Square massacre.

This presents an interesting intersection between business and international law. Yahoo! already has some experience as to whether U.S. first amendment rights extend to other countries. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LICRA_v._Yahoo!

I wish I had something more insightful to say but I really don't. Hopefully the internet remains as free here as it always has. If whether U.S. rights follow U.S. organizations to foreign markets comes up again hopefully the courts decide to ensure the rights of U.S. businesses.

And while I'm talking about Google, I now have Google Analytics installed. I've got visitors from Germany, Stanford University and California Western. Hello world!

The call to greatness... again.

I have the professor that earlier in the year caused me to admit that serial rape might not be so bad (Professor Lynch). The first day he began socratic teaching he called on me first. He asked me about intentional torts. I did alright aside from equating 'risk' with 'high probability' and how those terms relate to 'certainty' regarding intentional torts. It was a minor slip-up, but its always important to have the right vocabulary and use it appropriately.

I haven't gotten my grades back yet. California Western is one of the last schools in the country to release their grades. The more I think about my exams the more I'm certain I probably didn't do as well as I wanted to.

The winter break is only two weeks long. I could have used an extra week but I'm not complaining too much, I crammed a lot of fun into the two weeks that I had. I turned 25 and skied off the top of Mammoth! Woo!

The professors have hit the ground running through their curriculums. This means that I have also hit the ground running. Hopefully this semester's exams go better than the last.

Cheers.