Arrivaderci Academia

It occurred to me that there are no longer any current Boalties who were around when Dean Ortiz (she'll always be Dean O to me) was our Dean of Student Services.  I don't know the current Dean of Student Services, but I just simply cannot imagine anyone filling the big shoes that Dean O left behind when she became the inaugural Dean of Admissions at UCI.  I can write a very lengthy, gushing letter about all the greatness of Dean O (not to mention the institutional memory she brought to the law school), but this is not the place. 

This post is simply to congratulate her on her new venture, a law school application consultancy.  So three cheers to Dean O's new gig, and if there are any law school applicants out there, I can't think of any one better equipped to advise on the admissions process. 

The Dean O Bomb

Wow. Speechless.

Dean O has announced that this will be her last year at Boalt. Beginning next year she will be the new Assistant Dean of Students Services and Director of Admissions at the brand-new law school at UC Irvine.

Full email posted in the comments.

Better to know (when for the hell of it)?

Dean O has announced that class rankings (for the Class of 2009) are available per request. From her email:

Please remember that disclosure of your class rank is permitted
exclusively for applications for judicial clerkships for after
graduation. You may also disclose it if you are applying for a law
teaching job. Any other use of the ranking information is a violation
of the Academic Honor Code.

Boalt has been known to lag in the number of students who pursue a career in either of the two above exceptions. Yet, even Dean O "expect[s] to be innundated with requests" from students seeking their class rank. This indicates to me that there's a high number of requests from students that just want to know for the hell of it.

So I ask: is it better to know?

Quick Notes From Dean Edley 3L Town Hall

- Edley and Shelanski were unwilling to talk about the drop in bar passage rates, claiming it is due to "very unfortunate circumstances," and that they will tell the student body when they find out the reasons.

- Edley & Shelanski: Class registration times are NOT based on your student ID number despite anecdotal evidence to the opposite.

- Ortiz and BarBri have been passing the buck back and forth over morning BarBri classes at Boalt. Stay tuned.

- Shelanski: Professors have absolute discretion over whether or not they post their teaching evaluations. Take home message: if someone doesn't have his or her evals posted, assume that professor sucks and received terrible evaluations.

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Please add your observations and thoughts in the comments.

Continuing That Fine Berkeley Tradition

Many 1L's expressed frustration this fall that they were required to take (2) elective courses, regardless of the credit load. IP-ers could take intro to IP (which is now divided into two classes, totaling 5 credits) and satisfy the requirement. Con Law-ers, who will also be taking 5 credits, were required to take another elective, for a heavier credit burden.

I confess that I (a Con Law-er) wasn't particularly concerned with the issue. What do I care what other students are taking? I WANT to take classes. I think they are interesting and I like law school. But I could see their point. There is something unfair from a workload/study time/grade curve point of view -- if that's your bag, and all. Although I never saw the petition that was signed and sent to Dean O., I probably would have signed it. I'm in Berkeley, after all.

Long story short: "V" is for Victoria, "O" is for Ortiz, and apparently they letters may also stand for "occasional victory." Hat tip to the folks who put so much time into the petition while others of us were, err, blowing off studying. This email just came to 1L's from Dean O.:

Dear 1Ls:

Dean Shelanski and I have spent a good bit of time discussing the issues raised by the requirement that you each enroll in two electives regardless of the number of units that gives you for the semester. As many of you know by now, depending on your choices, some of you might end up with 17, 18, or even 19 units, a very heavy academic load.

Dean Shelanski and I are extremely sympathetic to the concerns of those students who are worried about such a heavy semester. At the same time, we are to some degree bound by the faculty decision that second-semester 1L students take two electives, regardless of unit total. Our concern in all of this is to balance academic requirements, professor preferences, and student needs. The issues many of you are facing in this regard have been increasing year to year, and therefore we are planning an in-depth review of the second 1L semester program by the Curriculum Committee, in order to determine what changes, if any, might be warranted.

In the meanwhile, as an interim matter, I will happily authorize those of you wishing to take one of the 5-unit electives to forgo enrollment in a second elective. However, I am asking that you each complete and leave for my signature (during the first week of the spring semester will do) a Petition for a Waiver of an Academic Rule, indicating your desire for me to approve the waiver of the two-elective rule.

Best of luck on your first law school finals!! Don't forget to come to the Goldberg Room (as early as 7 a.m. if you want) for breakfast on those days with morning finals scheduled.

Best,
Dean Ortiz

Boalties changed something substantive about their quality of life. "Mark it, Dude."

Secrecy for Secrecy's Sake

Ah, it's finally that time of year again. Dean O has written to at least the 3Ls asking if you'd like to know your class rank. And with this comes Boalt's own Cheney-like admonition:

Please remember that you may not disclose this information for any other purpose (except applying for a law teaching job) -- to do so would be a violation of the Honor Code.

Of course, here's the rule:

3.06 Disclosure of Class Rank Information for Limited Purposes
Information about students' class standing shall be made available solely for the purpose of aiding students applying for judicial clerkships and academic positions.
. . .
(D) Other Uses Impermissible. The Dean, Dean of Students, faculty, and students shall not disclose information about class standing provided by the Registrar under this section for any professional purpose other than obtaining a judicial clerkship or academic position. A student who reveals this information for any other professional purpose is in violation of the Honor Code.

What's never explained is why this secrecy is necessary. What good does it confer? Does it prevent law firm empoyers from screening on rank? I suppose that's the theory, but does anyone believe that works? One need only sit through the first two minutes of an interview with Irell (tip to 1Ls: they care about your grades) to know that the interviewer is determining your class rank. While no employer can know someone's rank for sure, seeing ten to twenty transcripts should let them figure things out pretty quick. By now, if they actually cared, the years and years of applications from Boalt students should allow them to have a comprehensive understanding of Boalt student grades. And if they don't care... well, what's the point?

The loser in all of this? The law firms that are not familiar with Boalt students, either because they are small or in a different part of the country. Why deny them access to information we must concede the larger law firms have? Why deny them information that every law faculty and judge can get?

I'd love to hear a coherent defense in the comments for this policy. I can't think of one that makes any sense. Instead, it seems like ornery secrecy for secrecy's sake alone. And for the same reason I don't like it in presidential administrations, I don't like it in academic administrations either.

From Each According to His Ability...

So, I’m looking at Dean Ortiz’s email to 3Ls that we can now request our class rankings for purposes of clerkship applications. This is a bit perplexing to me. I’m almost sure I recall applying for clerkships SIX MONTHS AGO. Why am I getting this lecture from her again, and at a time when the information she’s (grudgingly) making available can do me little good? Maybe there’s a good reason; I just can’t think of it.

As long as I’m taking a break from my writing requirement to vent on this general subject, I’d like to comment on this purported prohibition on telling anyone your class rank for any purpose other than an application for a clerkship or academic job. Putting aside questions of constitutionality (which I don’t pretend I’m qualified to answer), this prohibition is pretty strange. More than that, it is, like our P, H & HH grading system, somewhat clandestinely redistributive.

Forbidding high-rankers from disclosing to most employers deprives them of a benefit. Almost certainly, some of this benefit redounds to low-rankers, who can legitimately replace a piece of bad information with a piece of school-mandated uncertainty. So we have, in effect, a subsidy from high-grade-achievers to low-grade achievers. How you feel about this should depend on your views about the relative deserts of high- and low-grade-achievers. But it should also depend on the fact that our result is inferior to a full-disclosure regime in terms of the “employment welfare” of Boalties as a group. In the aggregate, employers wanting to know as much as possible about candidates will view the absence of ranking information about Boalties as a disadvantage. As others have pointed out, a similar analysis applies to our imprecise grading system (although I believe the subsidy in that case is "paid" mainly by middle-exam-raw-score achievers to low-exam-raw-score-achievers).

Super Ramble

Well, start trash talking. I hate the Bears...with the passion of a thousand hot white burning suns. I actually hate the bears because of their maniacal fans. Same reason why I hate the Phillies. (Speaking of which, did anyone else catch the story on the Penn Law kid shooting up his roommates? I wonder what pushed him over the edge, Yale, Army, or Penn Law?)

Fire and Brimstone

For any 3Ls who missed Dean Ortiz's bar talk on Tuesday, here's the grim recap:

- You should do both Barbri and PMBR.
- You should start practicing multiple choice tests 5 minutes ago. Start with five questions a day, every day (untimed at first). You can get copies of old MBE tests on the CalBar website. What are you waiting for? Get cracking!
- The bar exam is your life.
- Once you start studying after graduation, forget about ever doing things like laundry and dishes. (You all have butlers, right?)
- You can't possibly hold a job while you study.
- Forget things like dinners out and weekend trips.
- Classes are three hours a day. Studying is 8 additional hours a day. Do I hear 9 or 10?
- The bar exam is your life
- Self-study spells certain doom unless you have the discipline of a samurai.
- Wean yourself off caffeine now. You can't afford to be taking bathroom breaks during the test.
- If Barbri says "jump," you say "how high?"
- If Barbri says "Drop and give me twenty essays," you say "Thank you sir, may I have another?"
- The people who fail (and some of you WILL FAIL) are the people who take Barbri lightly.
- If you have kids, ship them off to summer camp. I am not making this up.
- Don't study with your friends. You will end up hating each other.
- The bar exam is your life.

My notes tapered off after that. I was too busy using my pen to slash unsuccessfully at my wrists.

Seriously, don't take my word for any of it. I recommend that everybody attend one of these talks, if you can handle the wake up call. The warm and fuzzy days of law school are soon to be a thing of the past. Time to start honing those survival skills.

I Can Drive Fifty-Five

Update: I've taken out the long math part at the bottom that explained the credit system at Boalt, and how the new schedule would function. I will post the important parts in the Comments section, if you'd like to take a look. I made a few other changes as well, and these are in italics.

Continuing the nerd parade...

A funny thing about Boalt: much like a hopped-up red-hot, Boalt is the first into the classroom, but the last to leave. What do I mean? Our start date is as early as any other law school that I’m aware of, yet our end date is as late as any school. True, many schools have the same schedule as us. And others may start a week later, but don’t have flyback. But having looked at the schedules of some other law schools, I think we can have our cake and eat it too. In other words, we can have an extra week of vacation without sacrificing flyback.

Put simply, we can make classes a few minutes longer. Right now the standard unit for a Boalt credit is 50 minutes per week. If we up that to 55 minutes per week, we can cut a week off school while still easily meeting all of the ABA’s requirements.

This would have major effects on scheduling, and I realize there are many reasons not to change the schedule. This will be a huge hassle for the Registrar. The booking system for rooms will be totally different. Professors will have to change their schedules. There could be financial implications from cutting a week of class time. With fewer classes, more would need to be accomplished per class (though this increase would be extremely marginal). And of course, it may be true that such a change simply isn’t possible, because of either Boalt or University rules.

But all of these problems likely have solutions. And on the whole, the benefits of an extra vacation week outweigh the costs. There would be an extra week to relax before the school year starts. We can work a week longer if we like and thus earn an extra week’s pay. We would be less likely to burn-out during the semester. Alternatively, instead of a full week of vacation, it could be only a few days, with a couple of days added onto the reading period at the end of the semester, something that all the procrastinators would greatly appreciate.

Other schools have already implemented this system. I checked the schedules of about 5 “peer” schools, and at least two, Stanford and Michigan, use a form of the 55 minute class. In both cases, their Fall semester starts about 15 days after ours (Sept. 5^th), but ends only a day or two later, despite both schools having flyback weeks (UM’s is only Sat-Tues).

I realize this isn't necessarily a huge issue. But many students end work on a Friday and start school the following Monday. Still others actually want to work longer, so as to save a few more dollars. Either way the extra week would really help, and it seems like the school could make it happen simply by extending classes by a few minutes.

May Day May Day

Ok so by now most of you have gotten the e-mail from Dean Ortiz that Boalt will reschedule your Monday exam if you plan on missing it to take part in the immigrant work-stoppage thingy on May 1. I think it's very kind of the school to accommodate those who choose to take part. I just hope no one (1) abuses it to get a few extra days of studying and (2) tries to get an exam extension for every single social justice cause that falls in early May. Personally, I stopped taking part in May Day events after leaving the Soviet Union. It's just not the same without the large Red Banners.

Lest anyone take my thoughts and construe them to be ultra-conservative rants, I also want to take a minute to say something about this whole immigration nonsense. I think the U.S. like any other country has a right to secure her borders. But I cannot take any talk of immigration reform seriously. Here's why. The history and current dialogue in this country (see, e.g., Lou Dobbs) is nothing more than masked xenophobia. Prime example are the idiotic letters and postcards sent to Antonio Villaraigosa and Cruz Bustamante. Two former speakers of the Assembly, and prominent elected officials WHO WERE BORN IN THE UNITED STATES. Those are the kinds of people that I associate with "immigration reform." This might be irrational on my part, but up until this point in history I have not seen one iota of evidence that immigration is causing our downfall. Quite the contrary, such dialogue has always been used to fuel innate dislike of those "ethnic types." That is all.

But Why Don't They Send Me the E-Mails

I ask because it's clear why Tom gets paid the big bucks. I just found out from some peeps what all this rankings hub hub is about. Well I didn't get any e-mail from Dean Ortiz or anyone else. I'm going to assume that if you're far enough below on said spreadsheet, they don't even send you the initial E-mail.

I have a feeling this has to do with the fact that I get e-mails directed at 1Ls. As I wrote before: "Am I the only 2L getting the mass e-mails to 1Ls. I mean the last one really pissed me off...it was from Petrine to the 1Ls telling them about the citation test, the one I took after downing beers with Fletcher." Well, how about getting some e-mails about 2L rankings huh? Who do I have to see to actually pass the First Grade?

UPDATE: I want to thank HP and the other staff here at Boalt for holding my hand and walking me out of kindergarten. Seriously, the CDO e-mails about 1L opportunities were getting annoying.

I have a few thoughts on the whole issue of wanting your rankings vs. competitiveness. A commenter wrote, "How does knowing your rank, which only takes into account how you did compared to other people in your classes, tell you about how you are doing from any other perspective than in comparison to your classmates? I have heard several Boalt professors complain that most of their students do very high level work (especially in the first year) but that the curve still requires them to hit many of these students who did good work with the P-stick."

I respectfully dissent. Any measure of performance is meaningless if it is not based on how well you do against your peers. If we were all HH students, then there wouldn't be any need for grades at all. That we are graded on a curve, that we are ranked against each other do not translate to a competitive mindset. I don't mean to be insulting but it almost sounds like this commenter is the type of person who will complain to a professor after getting a 92 on an exam but getting a B because of a curve. Again, the B is far more telling than the 92 and hence why it's not competitive per se to want a meaningful evaluation of one's performance. Will I be banging down Dean Ortiz's door any time soon and asking for my rankings? No.

Sound of Silence

Hmm, correct me if I'm wrong, but the e-mail from Dean Ortiz telling us to stfu around the Dean's Office gives me the impression that there are certain staffers who'd much rather work in a law school without students. (Read: I fail to distinguish conversations we have on cell phones versus talking to a scared-shitless 1L in person).

My Two Cents

De Novo co-blogger PG notes that Columia Law's dean has offered to take in a few students from Tulane law who are obviously not sitting in class and writing blog posts (which is a huge problem given the stringent ABA class time requirements).

I think we can do the same. Given Chancellor Birgenau's e-mail, I don't think Dean Edley will have any trouble convincing the higher brass to accept a handful of Tulane students for the semester and waiving tuition for them. I'm inclined to write to the Dean if there is support from the Boalt community. Hell I'd even pay for part of the airfare of getting them out here.

Update: Add UT to the list. (hat tip: Leiter)

Update II: This commenter on Drum's Blog expresses a thought I had today while watching the news:

"It seems clear to me that the buses shouldn't be going to Houston, but somewhere closer temporarily, where this is food and water. People should be taken to a staging area maybe an hour out of town, so that everyone can be removed in a matter of a day or so.

Then, move them to Houston without having them waiting for their ride in the midst of hell.

Can't someone in charge think of this shit?"

Update III: And there's the nutcase solution to the problems. I think for a split second, the conservatives can get off the property rights high horse and return to reality. I'm just glad co-conspirator Orin Kerr points out the obvious flaws in such a worldview, however, I join this commenter in suggesting that this should not even be a debate and add that Kopel should return to stroking his gun on a rocking chair. But more substantively, here's an idea that's sure to give the nutcases a heart attack. How about we suspend the 2nd Amendment in times of crises (the 14th seems to have gone by the way side) and just arrest and throw the book at any civilian caught with a weapon. What a marvelous idea.

Update IV: As a commenter points out below, Boalt has indeed stepped up to the plate. In pertinent part:

Boalt has joined a number of U.S. law schools in stepping forward to offer assistance by accepting into our community and our classes a limited number of students from Tulane and Loyola for the fall semester. "Our response to this emergency is only 24 hours old and there are a myriad of details to address but we hope to have these students arriving at Boalt by mid-September," said Boalt Hall Professor Andrew Guzman, who proposed and is assisting in organizing our offer to the displaced students. Boalt is also considering other ways our community may be able to assist the student visitors, such as with housing, books, etc.

An emergency website address has been set up for Tulane Law School: http://Tulane.law.emory.edu.

Tulane and Loyola students seeking further information on Boalt's offer of assistance may contact Boalt Hall Dean of Students Victoria Ortiz, 510-643-3057, vortiz@law.berkeley.edu.

I applaud Prof. Guzman and Dean Ortiz. Now we need to host these students and actually get them here. A flight to Oakland from Houston on Southwest is around $200 for Sept. 6. Any steamers who want to chip in, e-mail me ASAP so that I can tell Dean Ortiz that we have at least one student covered. I also suggest people do the same within their mods.