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Law Students, Comedians, And Mental Health
November 23, 2019
Last night, Pepperdine Caruso School of Law hosted the first public screening of Laughing Matters, a documentary about comedians and mental health by Soul Pancake, the production company of actor/comedian Rainn Wilson (Dwight Schrute on NBC's The Office). In light of the shocking statistics on the mental health of college students (pages 13-16) and graduate and professional students (pages 13-16), Pepperdine President Jim Gash has made student mental health and well-being one of his three...
November 23, 2019
Last night, Pepperdine Caruso School of Law hosted the first public screening of Laughing Matters, a documentary about comedians and mental health by Soul Pancake, the production company of actor/comedian Rainn Wilson (Dwight Schrute on NBC's The Office). In light of the shocking statistics on the mental health of college students (pages 13-16) and graduate and professional students (pages 13-16), Pepperdine President Jim Gash has made student mental health and well-being one of his three...
The Great Enrollment Crash
September 22, 2019
Chronicle of Higher Education, The Great Enrollment Crash: Students aren’t showing up. And it’s only going to get worse. ... Higher education has fully entered a new structural reality. You’d be naïve to believe that most colleges will be able to ride out this unexpected wave as we have previous swells. Those who saw modest high-school graduation dips by 2020 as surmountable must now absorb the statistical reality: Things are only going to get worse. As Nathan Grawe has shown,...
September 22, 2019
Chronicle of Higher Education, The Great Enrollment Crash: Students aren’t showing up. And it’s only going to get worse. ... Higher education has fully entered a new structural reality. You’d be naïve to believe that most colleges will be able to ride out this unexpected wave as we have previous swells. Those who saw modest high-school graduation dips by 2020 as surmountable must now absorb the statistical reality: Things are only going to get worse. As Nathan Grawe has shown,...
NY Times: More Private Colleges Cut Tuition As Discount Rate Hits All-Time High Of 52%
September 1, 2019
Following up on my previous post, Private College Tuition Discount Rate Hits All-Time High Of 52%: New York Times, More Private Colleges Are Cutting Tuition, but Don’t Expect to Pay Less: [A] small but rising number of mostly private liberal arts colleges ... are cutting their tuition prices. But what they’re actually doing is reducing their advertised rates, which only the wealthiest students usually pay. At the same time, the colleges are also reducing the heavy discounts...
September 1, 2019
Following up on my previous post, Private College Tuition Discount Rate Hits All-Time High Of 52%: New York Times, More Private Colleges Are Cutting Tuition, but Don’t Expect to Pay Less: [A] small but rising number of mostly private liberal arts colleges ... are cutting their tuition prices. But what they’re actually doing is reducing their advertised rates, which only the wealthiest students usually pay. At the same time, the colleges are also reducing the heavy discounts...
Don’t Call Me a Lawyer—I am a “Legal Engineer”
August 3, 2019
“Traditionally, lawyers write memos and make oral arguments,” Burt says. “As legal engineers, our job is not to write...
August 3, 2019
“Traditionally, lawyers write memos and make oral arguments,” Burt says. “As legal engineers, our job is not to write...
Automatically Extracting Meaning From Legal Texts: Opportunities and Challenges
August 2, 2019
This paper surveys three basic legal-text analytic techniques—ML, network diagrams, and question answering (QA)—and...
August 2, 2019
This paper surveys three basic legal-text analytic techniques—ML, network diagrams, and question answering (QA)—and...
Inter-School Negotiation Exercise
July 28, 2019
FFOI Debra Berman offers to organize a fabulous practical DR Skills exercise that goes beyond the classroom and normal competitions. She writes: In recent times of declining class sizes, shrinking budgets, and extra focus on the bar exam, practical ADR skills training may not receive the attention it deserves. Students may leave law school without ever practicing a single negotiation or engaging in some form of legal communication with another law student or lawyer. ...
July 28, 2019
FFOI Debra Berman offers to organize a fabulous practical DR Skills exercise that goes beyond the classroom and normal competitions. She writes: In recent times of declining class sizes, shrinking budgets, and extra focus on the bar exam, practical ADR skills training may not receive the attention it deserves. Students may leave law school without ever practicing a single negotiation or engaging in some form of legal communication with another law student or lawyer. ...
An Open Letter To Kim Kardashian on Legal Education
July 21, 2019
Last week, Kim Kardashian and Van Jones talked about Kim's aspirations to be a lawyer on Keeping Up with the Kardashians. During that discussion, the following exchange took place: Real talk, 'Kim confided in him before the event. 'This law school s***? There is so much reading to do. I am like, dying here.''Law school is more of a socialization process than an educational process anyway,' Jones said. 'It's more learning to think like a lawyer than all the actual stuff.' He praised...
July 21, 2019
Last week, Kim Kardashian and Van Jones talked about Kim's aspirations to be a lawyer on Keeping Up with the Kardashians. During that discussion, the following exchange took place: Real talk, 'Kim confided in him before the event. 'This law school s***? There is so much reading to do. I am like, dying here.''Law school is more of a socialization process than an educational process anyway,' Jones said. 'It's more learning to think like a lawyer than all the actual stuff.' He praised...
Dysfunctional Justice: What’s Wrong with the U.S. Legal System
July 20, 2019
Novelist Raymond Chandler once said, “The law isn’t justice. It’s a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer.” A new book by Bruce Cannon Gibney, a litigator turned venture capitalist, gives credence to that idea. The Nonsense Factory: The Making and Breaking of the American Legal System looks at how jurisprudence has decayed over the last 70 years as laws have become needlessly complex, clouded by politics...
July 20, 2019
Novelist Raymond Chandler once said, “The law isn’t justice. It’s a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer.” A new book by Bruce Cannon Gibney, a litigator turned venture capitalist, gives credence to that idea. The Nonsense Factory: The Making and Breaking of the American Legal System looks at how jurisprudence has decayed over the last 70 years as laws have become needlessly complex, clouded by politics...
What Did Wimbledon Teach Us About Genius?
July 17, 2019
Sunday’s tennis championship at Wimbledon between Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer lasted nearly five hours, a record. It finished with a 12-12 tie in the final set, triggering a first-to-seven tie breaker. For tennis fans, it was an epic struggle between legends, in a storybook setting. The weather was perfect and the hats were divine. For readers of David Epstein’s new book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, however, it was an academic nail biter, a test case in a simmering...
July 17, 2019
Sunday’s tennis championship at Wimbledon between Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer lasted nearly five hours, a record. It finished with a 12-12 tie in the final set, triggering a first-to-seven tie breaker. For tennis fans, it was an epic struggle between legends, in a storybook setting. The weather was perfect and the hats were divine. For readers of David Epstein’s new book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, however, it was an academic nail biter, a test case in a simmering...
Where do we go from Here? Transformation and Acceleration of Legal Analytics in Practice
July 15, 2019
The advantages of evidence-based decision-making in the practice and theory of law should be obvious: Don’t make arguments to judges that seldom persuade; Jurisprudential analysis ought to align with sound social science; Attorneys should pitch legal work to clients that demonstrably need it. Despite the appearance of simplicity, there are practical and attitudinal barriers to finding and incorporating data into the practice of law. This article evaluates the current technologies and systems...
July 15, 2019
The advantages of evidence-based decision-making in the practice and theory of law should be obvious: Don’t make arguments to judges that seldom persuade; Jurisprudential analysis ought to align with sound social science; Attorneys should pitch legal work to clients that demonstrably need it. Despite the appearance of simplicity, there are practical and attitudinal barriers to finding and incorporating data into the practice of law. This article evaluates the current technologies and systems...
