In a world where technology advances appear daily, deans and provosts often have questions about law libraries, their purposes, and whether technological innovations should lead to changes in library spaces, collections, and/or services. This book seeks to answer those questions, which came straight from deans, examining the factors involved in an analysis of what a community needs from their library, and demonstrating why the answer to these questions might vary from library to library. The commentaries by multiple directors will be useful to highlight different approaches in analysis as well as changing cultures in law libraries. This valuable title will be of help to newer and experienced law library directors, law school deans, and university provosts (where the university has a law school).--Publisher.
Key Directions in Legal Education identifies and explores key contemporary and emerging themes that are significant and heavily debated within legal education from both UK and international perspectives. It provides a rich comparative dialogue and insights into the current and future directions of legal education. The book discusses in detail topics including the pressures on law schools exerted by external stakeholders, the fostering of interdisciplinary approaches and collaboration within legal education and the evolution of discourses around teaching and learning legal skills. It elaborates on the continuing development of clinical legal education as a component of the law degree and the emergence and use of innovative technologies within law teaching. The approach of pairing UK and international authors to obtain comparative insights and analysis on a range of key themes is original and provides both a genuine comparative dialogue and a clear international focus. This book will be of great interest for researchers, academics and post-graduate students in the field of law and legal pedagogy.
This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will contunue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online.
Students and the public routinely consult various published college rankings to assess the quality of colleges and universities and easily compare different schools. However, many institutions have responded to the rankings in ways that benefit neither the schools nor their students. In Engines of Anxiety, sociologists Wendy Espeland and Michael Sauder delve deep into the mechanisms of law school rankings, which have become a top priority within legal education. Based on a wealth of observational data and over 200 in-depth interviews with law students, university deans, and other administrators, they show how the scramble for high rankings has affected the missions and practices of many law schools. Engines of Anxiety tracks how rankings, such as those published annually by the U.S. News & World Report, permeate every aspect of legal education, beginning with the admissions process. The authors find that prospective law students not only rely heavily on such rankings to evaluate school quality, but also internalize rankings as expressions of their own abilities and flaws. For example, they often view rejections from “first-tier” schools as a sign of personal failure. The rankings also affect the decisions of admissions officers, who try to balance admitting diverse classes with preserving the school’s ranking, which is dependent on factors such as the median LSAT score of the entering class. Espeland and Sauder find that law schools face pressure to admit applicants with high test scores over lower-scoring candidates who possess other favorable credentials. Engines of Anxiety also reveals how rankings have influenced law schools’ career service departments. Because graduates’ job placements play a major role in the rankings, many institutions have shifted their career-services resources toward tracking placements, and away from counseling and network-building. In turn, law firms regularly use school rankings to recruit and screen job candidates, perpetuating a cycle in which highly ranked schools enjoy increasing prestige. As a result, the rankings create and reinforce a rigid hierarchy that penalizes lower-tier schools that do not conform to the restrictive standards used in the rankings. The authors show that as law schools compete to improve their rankings, their programs become more homogenized and less accessible to non-traditional students. The ranking system is considered a valuable resource for learning about more than 200 law schools. Yet, Engines of Anxiety shows that the drive to increase a school’s rankings has negative consequences for students, educators, and administrators and has implications for all educational programs that are quantified in similar ways.
Law Librarianship in the 21st Century, a text for library and information science courses on law librarianship, introduces students to the rapidly evolving world of law librarianship. With no prior knowledge of the law required, students using this book will find practical answers to such questions as: What is law librarianship? How do you become a law librarian? How does law librarianship interrelate with the legal world? Individual chapters provide a concise treatment of such specialized topics as the history of law librarianship, international law, and government documents. Standard topics are dealt with as they apply to the law library, including collection development, public services, technical processing, administration, technology, and consortia. The textbook also includes an explanation of the common acronyms and special terminology needed to work in a law library. This new edition updates the text throughout and adds two new chapters.
“An essential title for anyone thinking of law school or concerned with America's dysfunctional legal system.” —Library Journal On the surface, law schools today are thriving. Enrollments are on the rise and law professors are among the highest paid. Yet behind the flourishing facade, law schools are failing abjectly. Recent front-page stories have detailed widespread dubious practices, including false reporting of LSAT and GPA scores, misleading placement reports, and the fundamental failure to prepare graduates to enter the profession. Addressing all these problems and more is renowned legal scholar Brian Z. Tamanaha. Piece by piece, Tamanaha lays out the how and why of the crisis and the likely consequences if the current trend continues. The out-of-pocket cost of obtaining a law degree at many schools now approaches $200,000. The average law school graduate’s debt is around $100,000—the highest it has ever been—while the legal job market is the worst in decades. Growing concern with the crisis in legal education has led to high-profile coverage in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, and many observers expect it soon will be the focus of congressional scrutiny. Bringing to the table his years of experience from within the legal academy, Tamanaha provides the perfect resource for assessing what’s wrong with law schools and figuring out how to fix them. “Failing Law Schools presents a comprehensive case for the negative side of the legal education debate and I am sure that many legal academics and every law school dean will be talking about it.” —Stanley Fish, Florida International University College of Law
Around the world, legal information managers, law librarians and other legal information specialists work in many settings: law schools, private law firms, courts, government, and public law libraries of various types. They are characterized by their expertise in working with legal information in its many forms, and by their work supporting legal professionals, scholars, or students training to become lawyers. In an ever-shrinking world and a time of unprecedented technological change, the work of legal information managers is challenging and exciting, calling on specialized knowledge and skills, regardless of where in the world they practice their profession. Their role within legal systems contributes substantially to the administration of justice and the rule of law. This International Handbook addresses the policy and strategic issues with which legal information managers and law librarians need to engage in the context of the diverse legal environments in which they work. It provides resources, analysis, and considered studies on an international basis for seasoned professionals, those about to enter the field, and anyone interested in the evolution of legal information in the twenty-first century.
About the Book: This textbook is designed to inspire debate and discussion about the past, present, and future of the music industry--blending insights from legal, business, and policy perspectives. Students are introduced to the history of music as property in commerce; key technological and business milestones affecting all aspects of the creative process; legal protections for those who create music, those who own it, and those who want to use it; the competing (and recurring) policy debates from the past century that have influenced the way creative participants interact with one another; and the challenges and opportunities presented by the digital age. About the Authors: Julie Ross has been a full-time faculty member at Georgetown Law since 1998, where she has taught courses focusing on legal practice and music law. Her scholarship focuses on music copyright and writing pedagogy. She is a graduate of Hamilton College and Harvard Law School and clerked for the Honorable H. Lee Sarokin in New Jersey. Before moving to academia, she practiced as a litigator in Los Angeles. Michael Huppe is President & CEO of SoundExchange, an organization at the center of many legal, policy and technology issues confronting the modern music industry. With over 20 years in the industry, he has fought on behalf of artists, songwriters, labels, publishers, and studio producers. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he was originally a commercial litigator and now focuses on the business issues affecting creators, especially those relating to music and technology.
This comprehensive, current examination of U.S. law as it relates to global climate change begins with a summary of the factual and scientific background of climate change based on governmental statistics and other official sources. Subsequent chapters address the international and national frameworks of climate change law, including the Kyoto Protocol, state programs affected in the absence of a mandatory federal program, issues of disclosure and corporate governance, and the insurance industry. Also covered are the legal aspects of other efforts, including voluntary programs, emissions trading programs, and carbon sequestration.
