The 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
Ward Farnsworth, the dean of the University of Texas School of Law, is a man of distinctive passions and choice words. He devours old movies, barbecue and live music; loves baseball; is expert in and written books about rhetoric and chess, in addition to torts, civil procedure, contracts and admiralty law; and is the author of The Legal Analyst: A Toolkit for Thinking About the Law, whose tools he teaches students to use effectively across practice areas.
Farnsworth’s path into lawyering and legal academia is less that of a directed careerist and more of a polymath who, unable to decide among his many interests, discovered that he need not choose if he pursued law. “Law school is great for people who want to think about everything,” he said in an e-mail exchange. Continue reading
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.
Student: Kate Dewan
Law School: St. Mary’s University School of Law
Status: 3L
Undergraduate: B.A. in Marketing, Southern Methodist University
Other Degrees: Studied abroad at Curtin University in Perth, Australia. Concentration: International Marketing & Management. Studied abroad at University of Salamanca in Salamanca, Spain. Concentration: Intensive Spanish language training, incorporating conversation, grammar and culture.
Home City/State: Austin, Texas
Kate Dewan was all business – literally and figuratively – when it came to choosing law as a career and the law school that would launch it. The 3L at St. Mary’s University School of Law in Texas had geared herself over the years for the jobs in marketing she thought she would enjoy and at which she knew she’d do well.
And the jobs did come; the enjoyment did not. “I wasn’t using all my brainpower; I didn’t have to challenge myself,” Dewan said in a telephone interview. “I needed something more.” Continue reading
Matthew J. Wilson, dean of The University of Akron School of Law, says he’s “all about non-tradition.” Tracing Wilson’s path to and through legal academia suggests he may be more about following tradition in surprisingly unconventional ways.
Start with his decision to become a lawyer. He was 4 years old and a Sunday regular at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “Afterward, I would travel this route to some neighbors’ houses – including Donny and Marie Osmond’s grandparents and a widow named Alice – to talk,” Wilson said. “I loved to talk.”
STUDENT NAME:
Joseph Rosati
LAW SCHOOL: Albany Law School
STATUS: 3L
UNDERGRADUATE: B.A., Political Science; Minor in Business, State University of New York at Albany
HOME CITY/STATE: South Salem, New York
Joseph Rosati, a 3L at Albany Law School and executive editor of the Law Review’s New York Appeals issue, was both smart and lucky when it came to earning his JD. He was smart, he said, in understanding the kind of institution in which he would thrive as a student. That included the importance of size, location and cost of attendance. He was lucky, he added, in choosing a law school whose professors are both top-notch teachers and recognized statewide and nationwide as authorities in their fields, and whose classes include hefty doses of practical skills learning.
“I didn’t even consider the quality of the professors and classes when I was doing my research and deciding among several schools,” Rosati said in e-mails and a telephone interview. Continue reading
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