Class rankings

Per Mindi:

Updated class rank information is now available. Please keep in mind the following academic 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.

Remember that disclosure of this information for any other purpose would be a violation of the Honor Code.

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Feel free to discuss class ranks, grades, and clerkships in this open thread, being mindful of the Honor Code.

Someone Needs a Lesson in Professional Responsibility

Not to detract from the worthwhile discussion of grades/clerkships, but if anyone wants to see John Yoo getting his ass handed to him on a platter by the House Judiciary Subcommittee, check it out here and here. The latter clip is particularly amusing, as Yoo is unable to formulate a coherent response to the question of what privilege he's asserting. They seem to really have it out for him. I almost feel bad for the guy. Almost.

Grades and rankings discussion welcome here

If anyone wishes to discuss grades or rankings, feel free to do so on this open thread. While I think it's great that Boalt (ahem... Berkeley Law) has a (relatively) non-competitive atmosphere and am extremely grateful that students here tend not to be overly grade obsessed, curiosity sometimes gets the better of us. Additionally, some folks might find it helpful (or at least stress/anxiety-reducing) to complain about their lack of grades or discuss GPA/class rank for clerkship purposes. Feel free to do so here (in a civil manner, of course).

I wonder if the delay in grades (and Dean O's absence) will affect the timing of class rank disclosure. It's important for 3Ls applying to clerkships (as well as recent grads) to get their class rank relatively soon, especially since more and more judges are not adhering to the hiring plan (many 10th Circuit judges and some 9th Circuit judges in particular), so there may be an advantage to sending out early applications (be careful, though -- while some judges don't follow the plan, others adhere to it very strictly for current students, and an early application will not be viewed favorably). Check out the Clerkship Notification Blog for news on judge hiring, and also So You Want to Be a Law Clerk for info on early-hiring judges, as well as good general clerkship information.

Let the Bar/Bri fun begin!

What's everyone's impression of their Bar Review courses so far? At Boalt, we've got three classes offered: two California Bar/Bri classes (one in the morning and one in the evening) and one NY Bar/Bri class (in the evening). The morning CA Bar/Bri class is in the freezing cold and overcrowded Booth Auditorium. Granted it's only day two (our first day of substantive material), but it seems to be moving at a fairly slow and manageable pace.

I'd like to open this thread up to a discussion. What are everyone's general impressions? Do any alums have tips for bar studying? How should we be studying in our free time? Is it advisable to summarize notes from the day's lectures? Saving an entire half-row of seats for friends who don't arrive until a minute before class starts: acceptable?

Movers & Shakers: Update

Professor Sklansky is returning to Boalt, at least for Fall '08.

3L Town Hall Meeting Report

The 3L Town Hall meeting had a very low turnout; maybe a dozen students (at most). Dean Edley, Professor Bundy, the LRAP guy, K. V.Heuvel, Dean Ortiz, and P. Patterson were present to answer questions.

Here's a partial non-literal transcript of some of the questions and answers:

Question: How do we retain faculty?
Edley: If faculty has an offer from a peer institution, campus will let us match salary -- but it's the other parts of compensation (e.g. tuition for kids, mortgage deal for primary AND vacation homes) that we can't match. There are also professional issues (e.g. wall-street connection in NYC for business profs). Then there's the prestige advantage that Yale, Harvard, and Stanford have. Bottom line is that faculty stay because they love the students, people love the Bay Area.

Edley: Faculty loves our students! Right?
Bundy: [silence]
[Edley gives Bundy a look]
Bundy: Right! we love the students!

Bundy: The extra dimension of compensation matters, and prestige matters to some extent.

Question: Do we have a poaching program of our own?
Edley: Yes - for example, Ken Gergen (sp?) from Texas. We poached 2 last year for the JSP faculty.

Question from 2L: How can students have better communication with the administration and vice versa?
Edley: Main route is Dean O's office; Mindi & Dean O are the main channels.
3L #1: There seems to be a disconnect between students and administration. Some students have the chutzpah to walk into the Dean's office, but not all students do. It would be nice to get more emails from the Dean. [Edley response: That's a great idea.]
3L #2: Best way to communicate with students and get feedback is with a weblog.
Edley: So would emails be better than more meetings?
3Ls: Yes.

At some point, discussion shifted to the Registrar's Office. A couple students (and Dean O) defended the Registrar's Office (they're overworked, students come to the registrar's office with unreasonable demands), while others argued the folks in the Registrar's Office were inefficient and unnecessarily rude. Nothing was resolved, but Dean O admonished students for "looking down" on and acting rudely to staff.

Question: How will we choose a replacement for Dean O?
Edley: Berring is heading up a search committee, which will include 2 students and one recent grad.

At the meeting, Edley passed out a memorandum (which will be emailed to all students) discussing last-year's low bar passage rate. The memo doesn't explain reasons for the low-passage rate but instead offers observations and assurances that the School is still looking into the problem. One of the interesting insights it offers is that class rank appears to be correlated with success on the bar. Specifically, on the July 2007 test, 100% of Boalt test takers in the top 1/3 of the class passed, 94% in the middle of the class passed, and 51% from the bottom 1/3 of the class passed. So really, only 1/3 or 2/5 of the class needs to start freaking out.

Movers & Shakers Part II: Departures

Who will be leaving Boalt next year, either temporarily or permanently? So far we know:

Rumor has it that Jan Vetter is retiring.

Ian Haney-Lopez, who apparently likes to plan ahead, will be at NYU in Fall '09 and HLS in Spring '10, per his CV.

Gillian Lester and Eric Talley will be visiting at HLS all next year.
Lester will be teaching Employment Law at Harvard in Spring '09. Talley will be teaching: Corporate Finance in Fall '08, and Corporate Law and Finance Seminar and Corporations in Spring '09.

Professor Howard Shelanski will be teaching Telecommunications Law at Georgetown in Fall '08, and teaching Antitrust in High-Tech Industries and Antitrust Law at NYU in Spring '09.

Sklansky is presumably outta here (no official word on whether he'll be at Harvard, but we suspect that's the case).

No word on what's up with Professor Linda Krieger, who visited at Harvard last year is currently listed as a member of the Univ. of Hawaii faculty.

And of course, Dean Ortiz will be leaving us for UC-Irvine.

Also of note:
Professor Aaron Edlin taught Antitrust Law at Harvard for the Winter Term '08, and Jesse Fried taught Law and Finance of Corporate Reorganizations at Harvard for the Winter Term '08 (though both are teaching at Boalt in Fall '08).

Who else do you know of who's leaving Boalt next year?

EDIT: [updates in bold]

New Blog for reviewing Boalt Profs

There's a new Blog for offering comments and feedback on Boalt profs at http://boaltprofs.blogspot.com/. Thanks to Abony from The Shark for putting this together!

If I may add my two cents, I think this is a great idea. It would be nice if we could get something password protected so that the reviews aren't made public, but this is certainly filling a much needed void at Boalt.

Fall 2008 (Secret) Course List Up

1. Go to the Spring 2008 Course Listings.
2. Select a category.
3. In the URL, where it says "B&termYear=2008" change the "B" to "D"
4. Voila! You have the Fall 2008 Course Listings.

UPDATE: Full Course List (not by category) available here. Thanks to Matt for pointing this out.

UPDATE #2: The "Official" List is now up.

Breaking News: Dean Ortiz to leaveBoalt

Dean O. has announced that she's leaving Boalt in May to become Assistant Dean of Students Services and Director of Admissions at the new UC-Irvine School of Law.

Reactions? Will Dean O's departure impact the school at all? I say: Let's just hope the next person is as willing as Dean O to sign off on extra units for various projects (though I've heard conflicting accounts on this point.)

Now, Back to Yoo...

Is John Yoo closer to being indicted for war crimes in the wake of the Pentagon's recent release of a torture memo he authored in 2003? Libertarian-conservative journalist Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic thinks so. On this morning's Chris Matthew's show he said that the "latest revelations on the torture front show the memo from John Yoo...means that Don Rumsfeld, David Addington and John Yoo should not leave the United States any time soon. They will be, at some point, indicted for war crimes."

I bet an indictment would make this guy really happy. Then he could stop writing letters and forwarding op-eds to Dean Ortiz, Louise Epstein, Dean Edley, Professor Jonathan Simon, and a number of other Boalt faculty and admins as part of his to campaign to "drive John Yoo from the Faculty at Boalt Hall." He writes:

...I would embarrassed to be in the same company as Mr. Yoo, and would work to encourage him to leave Boalt Hall faculty voluntarily. I believe his continued presence on campus and as a member of the faculty is a stain on the University’s reputation, and suggests that students who take his classes will be ill-prepared to meet their duties as lawyers.

Do you think John Yoo will be indicted for war crimes? Do you think he should be kicked off the faculty if he is? Do you think he should be kicked off the faculty anyway?

Library etiquette

What's the proper etiquette on asking someone to watch your belongings, or being asked to watch someone else's belongings in the library? I'm specifically talking about the length of time people leave you to guard over their prized laptop. I've been asked numerous times to watch someone's laptop while they step out. I have no problem with this, however, sometimes they leave for 10, 15, 20 minutes. At what point am I no longer obliged to stay and make sure their laptop isn't whisked away?

Also, how many dirty looks must you give someone talking on their phone in the library before whisking it out of their hand and hurling it into the Donor Lobby?

Stimulating debate

The Volokh Conspiracy posted an interesting poll on how common prescription psychostimulant (e.g. Adderall, Ritalin) use is in law school. The consensus seems to be that use of these drugs is relatively uncommon, though not unheard of.

It would be interesting to see this broken down by school. I don't think there's a whole lot of psychostimulant use at Boalt, though maybe I'm just out of the loop.

BHSA Responds

BHSA has promptly responded to the anonymous fliers, via an email sent earlier today. Kudos to BHSA for taking the time to respond, and for discussing some of their initiatives with the student body. (Though as they candidly admitted, they really should have been better about communicating these developments to us throughout the semester.)

However, a few statements in their email are worth addressing:

On March 19 [sic], someone placed anonymous flyers in student lockers asking BHSA for transparency in elections. The email reproduced in the flyer was not sent by a BHSA board member. The meeting alluded to was not sanctioned by BHSA, was not attended by anyone who works on BHSA elections, and was not supported with BHSA funds.

The email was, however, sent by a former BHSA board member. And I find it curious that the BHSA president (who's house the event took place at) does not "work[] on BHSA elections."

Moreover, the BHSA email oddly blasts the anonymous flier-er for "publish[ing] the personal address of one of our board members," and alludes to his interest in privacy. A simple search of WhitePages.com reveals that the BHSA president's address is not, in fact, such a secret after all.

Finally, I would like to dispel any rumors that Berkeley Law Blog is in any way responsible for the fliers left in people's lockers. We folks here at BLB prefer to rabble-rouse from the privacy and comfort of our secret underwater command post.

Something other than a PMBR ad in your locker!

Earlier this week (or maybe today; I really don’t check my locker that often), flyers were left in student lockers containing the text of an email sent to a select group of students. The email, sent by a Boalt student, appears to be directed at helping “students of color” get positions in the Boalt Hall Students Association. The email, as found in my locker (with identifying information redacted):


On the other side of the flyer was the following diatribe:

For those of us familiar with rumors about similar secret CLR information sessions and admitted student events geared exclusively toward minority groups (and specifically, racial minority groups), this should come as no surprise. Nonetheless, at the very least it’s troubling that students are holding these meetings without publicizing them to the entire student body.

And of course, I think it’s great that someone has taken action to publicize an issue they feel strongly about, regardless of the message.

Barrister's Ball Review

What did people think of this year's Barrister's Ball? 1Ls: did it live up to your expectations? 2 & 3Ls: how did it compare with previous years' dances? Any drama like in previous years?

My thoughts: Props to BHWA for putting on Barrister's Ball this year. However, the Gaia Center was a bit dingy. It looked like the conference space from a 3rd rate budget hotel. The drink situation was poor (two glasses of wine or beer for $30?!) but expected. The dance floor was fun, though. Also, was there not a raffle or was I just too drunk to remember?

Considering the fact that we've been banned from pretty much every other venue, however, I don't think we can really complain.

Notes from Faculty Hiring Town Hall

At the Town Hall on Faculty Hiring held at lunch today, Dean Shelanski and Gillian Lester explaining the hiring process, current hiring needs, and fielded questions. A lot of the questions were directed at our perceived low retention rate, which Shelanski attributed our lack of resources. (Though he disputes the notion that we have problems attracting and keeping faculty, arguing that we do "pretty darn well" in those areas). For example, we're constrained (by UC, presumably) in what salary we can offer faculty. Also, in order to get a pay raise, the faculty member has to show that they have an open offer at a higher salary. We simply can't compete in terms of resources or salary with private universities or the top public law schools, such as UMich and UVA, which are "effectively private universities."

One curious thing (or perhaps not so curious given that we're at Boalt) is the affirmative action used in hiring. Professor Lester, who heads the Faculty Hiring Committee, said that she went through and gave every "diverse" applicant (diverse in terms of race, religion, and gender -- but not political ideology, apparently) a separate look, on top of the culling done by the Faculty Hiring Committee. She picked out 14 additional prospective minority hires, in addition to the 50 prospective hires chosen by the rest of the Faculty Members.

Per Shelanski, two current areas we desperately need faculty in: Tax and Business Law

Movers & Shakers:
- Talley & Lester will be visiting at Harvard next year
- Jesse Fried is sitting on a very attractive offer from Columbia
- Harvard has invited Goodwin Liu to visit next year
- Harvard's Hiring Committee is voting on whether to extend a permanent offer to Professor Sklansky (Shelanski: they will), and we'll have to wait and see if he accepts (Shelanski: he will)
- Boalt has offers open to Wisconsin's Alta Charo (who visited Boalt in 2005-06) and Harvard Academic Fellow Glenn Cohen, who specialize in bioethics and health law

Final Exam Schedule Posted Early; Soliciting New Complaints.

The final exam schedule has been posted. Now that we don't have that to complain about, where should we turn our attention? Barrister's Ball tickets at $30 a pop only including 2 free drinks? I'm sure we'll have plenty to talk about after next week's Faculty Hiring Town Hall and JD Student Forum with Dean Edley.

Another Curious CLR Policy

Dave Hoffman at Concurring Opinions recently blogged about the California Law Review's manuscript submission policies, expressing concern over its limitations on images and graphs. CLR's rules state:

4) CLR does not allow the use of images or graphics in our published articles.

5) CLR will publish up to five author-created charts, graphs, and/or tables. All charts, graphs, and tables must be included in the manuscript by the end of the primary editing stage.

Hoffman argues that these rules "may get the in the way of coherent presentation of data" and says "I'm not sure what motivated the law review to promulgate them."

Does CLR have an answer to this? Why the prohibition on use of images and limits on graphs? Are these rules actually enforced? Have there been complaints from authors about them? (Even if there aren't a lot of complaints, another possibility is that authors are simply not submitting articles with graphics for publication in CLR because they're aware of this rule.)

Call for Final Exam Schedules

Student Services informs us that the final exam schedule is not ready yet because professors haven't been submitting information regarding their final exams/papers. However, if you ask Mindi M. in Student Services nicely, she will tell you when a particular exam is scheduled for (assuming the professor has submitted the information). I'm curious (1) why professors don't know the format of the final exam (or paper) already, considering they had to include that information on the course description, and (2) why Student Services can't post information that they do have.

Anyway, feel free to post information you have regarding final exams.

**Please note, Student Services has emphasized that these dates are tentative. So don't go buying your ticket to the Bahamas just yet...

Current List (as of 3.7.08 at 8:15 AM)

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Antitrust (Shelanksi) - May 9 at 8:30AM
Civ Pro II (Amann) - May 8 at 1:30PM
Contracts (Talley) - May 12th at 8:30 am
Corps (Gevertz) - May 5th at 1:30 PM
Crim Pro - May 13th at 8:30AM
Evidence (Swift) - May 5th at 11:30AM
Info Privacy - May 12 at 1:30 p.m.
Legislation - May 8 at 1:30 p.m.
Property (Biber): May 5th at 8:30 am