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“We have chosen a way that works in most courts on most days” GGU litigation center director Wes Porter said, referring to the trial strategy taught to future courtroom attorneys.

It’s a bit like poker, the business of trial law.

For better or worse, players are rarely dealt the same cards. Nor do courtroom attorneys, whether in civil or criminal practice, encounter the same exact variables in their cases: witnesses, evidence, opposing counsel, judges and juries.

Since none of the participants can count on having the best hand, what separates the winners from the losers are the skills they bring to the contest. And those skills can be taught.

That’s where Wes Porter comes in. Teaching future lawyers a strategy that they can adapt to a variety of cases is his mission as director of the Golden Gate University School of Law’s litigation center. Although the San Francisco law school has emphasized litigation for decades, the center that began when Porter started six years ago brings under one umbrella a coordinated panorama of programs. They range from doctrinal courses to extracurricular opportunities such as mock trial competitions and real-world training to prepare future trial lawyers for the courtroom as soon as they start work. Continue reading

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CRRJ: Justice Restored: A Community Effort in Mayflower, Texas |It seems fitting that a lawyer who litigated for the future of civil rights in the U.S. should now be working to remedy civil rights injustices of the past.

“I love law – its complexity, its importance in human life and experience,” said Margaret A. Burnham, a professor at Northeastern University School of Law. “I believe that law students need to develop that sense or else change professions.”

Burnham is the founder and director of the law school’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, which engages students in investigating every racial killing in the Jim Crow South from 1930 through 1970. The goal is to work with victims’ families and communities to bring these cases to a just close. “We want to draw current meaning from this legacy of racial violence, which often involved local officials and the police,” Burnham said in e-mails and a telephone interview. Continue reading

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Mark-GordonMark Gordon remembers Mario Cuomo not just as a three-term governor of New York and a former employer, but as the man who convinced him to change careers.

Not by talking Gordon into it, at least not in the sense that phrase usually implies. Rather, the governor routinely used the argumentation skills honed in law school to talk through public-policy issues with Gordon and other aides. The debates, which Cuomo invariably won, helped him evaluate different sides of public policy-issues and determine his own position.

Although Gordon had just completed a master’s degree in international affairs at Columbia University in 1982, watching Cuomo, he said, convinced him to enroll in law school. It was a decision that led, ultimately, to his selection in January as president and dean of the William Mitchell College of Law. Continue reading

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Gillian Lester - COLUMBIAThe first-year students hadn’t completed their first month at Columbia Law when Gillian Lester, a California transplant and the school’s incoming dean, gave them a challenge and a promise.

“If we succeed here together, you will not only be trained to be the best lawyers in the nation,” she told the students at a September dinner. “You will be the leaders of the next generation.” Continue reading

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Steep declines in U.S. law school enrollment showed signs of slowing this year amid improving U.S. economic growth and increasing retirement by baby-boomers.

Altogether, 37,924 students began working toward juris doctorate degrees at the 204 institutions accredited by the American Bar Association’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, the government-designated regulator for law schools. That marked a 4.4 percent drop from the previous year — the smallest since numbers began falling — and a 28 percent slide since the historic high of 52,488 in 2010, according to an ABA statement and archived data.

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BAR EXAM CHART imageA record drop in scores on the standardized bar exam used in almost every state — forcing thousands of prospective lawyers to retake the test — is drawing scrutiny from law school deans nationwide.

Among their questions are whether the biggest slide in almost 40 years indicates technical flaws in the test or the scoring as well as whether the exam is keeping pace with a rapidly changing curriculum.
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Concordia University School of Law

Concordia University School of Law

Concordia University School of Law’s request for provisional accreditation, which would allow degree-holders to take the bar exam anywhere in the U.S., will be considered at an American Bar Association meeting almost a month after scheduled commencement ceremonies for the school’s first graduating class.

What the timing means is not yet clear. Concordia had been vying for accreditation before the end of the academic year so graduates would be eligible to take the bar as soon as possible and spokeswoman Madeline Turnock said the university may be able to adjust its calendar so that degrees are conferred after a decision by the Council and the Accreditation Committee of the ABA’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, the government-designated national accrediting agency for law schools. Continue reading

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Tradition called for naming the virus that Dr. Peter Piot identified in 1976 after the Zairian village where it first appeared, but the Belgian doctor feared that would stigmatize both the small community and its inhabitants.

Instead, he named the virus – which causes hemorrhaging and fever – after a river: Ebola. His concern proved prescient. Four decades later, the largest outbreak of Ebola to date has stigmatized entire African countries, with some U.S. politicians advocating travel bans and seeking to quarantine American aid workers who have treated the virus’s victims. Continue reading

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The former general counsel of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, retired Col. Will Gunn, posed two questions to students, academics and others at the Golden Gate University School of Law‘s Second Annual Veterans Law Conference: “Is there anything interesting and meaningful left to do in veteran’s law and policy? Haven’t we solved these issues?”

To many of the veterans in the audience, as well as students who counsel them through Golden Gate’s Veteran’s Legal Advocacy Clinic,  the answer to the second question is clearly no. And yes, answering the first question, there is much meaningful work to be done to help the nation’s 19.6 million veterans, many of whom suffer emotional or physical trauma, have experienced joblessness or homelessness and struggle to rejoin civilian communities. Continue reading

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The difference between affording law school and not for U.S. military veterans may be the breadth of “Yellow Ribbon.” That’s the GI Education Enhancement Program designed to pick up on tuition and fees where the post- 9/11 GI Bill leaves off.

“It’s a great program as long as you understand its limitations,” said Susan Hattan, a member of the governmental relations staff at the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Washington, D.C. “For example, not every U.S. school participates in Yellow Ribbon. Those that do may limit the number of students they’ll assist. They may limit their contribution, too. And for all participating institutions, Yellow Ribbon assistance is on a first-come, first-served basis regardless of financial need.” Continue reading

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