Aspen Advisor Week in Review for August 9th, 2019
Check out this week’s collection of interesting articles related to distance learning, law professors, legal education and other recent legal news.
In this week's Aspen Advisor we feature a wide range of news in the field of legal education. Harvard Law has created an Animal policy and Law clinic to reflect the growing concern over animal rights and wildlife preservation. The rise in law school applicants in recent years due to the Trump presidency, often refered to as "the Trump bump" may be shaping up to be more than just a trend. The University of California, Davis has receied 1.5 million in funding to support immigrant children being held in border patrol facilities. For more information on any of these topics and plenty of additional articles on distance learning, recent losses in the field of legal education and publishing, and the Wolters Kluwer Leading Edge Conference, check out the list below.
Distance Learning
Law schools have launched online courses to cater to students who are unable to relocate or abandon steady work, but as more jobs become virtual those programs may become an unexpected training ground for the careers of the future.
Law Professors
Brooklyn Law School lost an icon this month when professor emeritus Joseph Crea died on Friday, Aug. 2 at the age of 104. Crea was well known in the Brooklyn legal community as a professor passionate about his students and an advocate for strong legal education.
Law School Students
From student-led wellness groups to lobbying efforts to remove mental health questions from admissions applications, law students are taking the lead in pushing for more robust mental health support
At one point in the process, Jeffrey Morgan discovered only about half of the payments he’d made since consolidating his loans qualified towards forgiveness
Legal Education
Harvard Law School today announced the launch of the new Animal Law & Policy Clinic. Animal protection is one of the fastest developing areas of public interest law. Reflecting this interest, the number of schools in the United States offering Animal Law courses has increased dramatically from only nine institutions in the year 2000 to 167 such law schools today.
The number of law school applicants nationwide increased 3% this year, but the percentage of those with highest LSAT scores slid 20%.
It's good news for law schools.
Our nation continues to suffer from vast unmet legal needs as well as an undersupply of the critical thinking skills that are legal education’s unique signature. The task for all of us in legal education is to find innovative ways to address these gaps. Those solutions must include leveraging technology to increase access to justice, innovating high quality but more affordable JD options for candidates who want to use their degree to help close the justice gap, and helping our graduates and employers understand and translate the value of a legal education for leadership roles in business, government, and other sectors that require critical thinking and creative problem solving.
Money will be used to aid migrant children in detention
A federal court has approved the acquisition of Western State College of Law by Westcliff University, a for-profit.
Other
Laurence Colletti from the Legal Talk Network, shares his experience at the 6th Annual Leading Edge Conference.
Barry Currier, managing director of accreditation and legal education for the ABA’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, will be stepping down next summer, he announced in Syllabus, the section’s quarterly e-newsletter.
Novelist, editor, poet and Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison died on Monday at the age of 88. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for her book Beloved, which was later turned into a movie, and Barack Obama gave her a Presidential Medal of Freedom for her life’s work — decades worth of novels and essays and stories that revealed some of the nuances of black life in America and the sometimes harsh truths of America itself.