The National Law Journal's L.A. Legal Pad

No more losing control in the curve for students

A recent article in The New York Times says law schools are making their grading systems more lenient.  In California, Loyola is retroactively tacking on 0.333 to every grade recorded in the last few years. UCLA, USC, and UC Hastings having all increased their grading curves. Stanford and UC Berkeley are using a modified pass/fail system, dispensing with traditional grading altogether.

The object is, according to the article, twofold: for schools to "rescue their students from the tough economic climate," and to protect the schools' reputations. Stuart Rojstaczer, a former geophysics professor at Duke who now studies grade inflation, is quoted as saying, "If somebody’s paying $150,000 for a law school degree, you don’t want to call them a loser at the end ... So you artificially call every student a success."

Full story here.

Rachel Moran will be UCLA Law's new dean

Officials have announced that Rachel Moran will be replacing Mike Schill as the dean of UCLA School of Law.

Moran has spent the past year on the faculty of the fledgling University of California, Irvine School of Law, and taught at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law since 1983.  She will be the first Latina dean of a top law school. 

Moran will join the UCLA faculty as a visiting professor next month, and is slated to take the post over from Schill on October 15.

She spoke to The National Law Journal about her appointment and the challenges of an uncertain state budget.  Click here for the full interview.

Manatt partner George Kieffer confirmed as UC Regent

Last week the California Senate confirmed the appointment of George Kieffer to the University of California Board of Regents.  Kieffer is a partner in the Los Angeles office of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips LLP.

He has also served served as President of the Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges for two years, and co-founded the California Community College Foundation. Over the years, Kieffer has been called upon to undertake various significant civic and public assignments, including successfully chairing the commission charged with rewriting the Los Angeles City Charter. The new City Charter, the first full revision in 75 years, was adopted in 1999. Following the events of 9/11, he was asked by Mayor James Hahn to chair the Los Angeles Economic Impact Task Force, which was charged with examining the impact of 9/11 on the Los Angeles economy and made recommendations to combat that impact and stimulate economy of Los Angeles. He served as Chair of the Board of Directors of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce from 2003 to 2005, during a period when the organization saw both expanded membership and reach.

Kieffer is a graduate of the University of California Santa Barbara, where he served as Chair of the Board of the Alumni Association, Alumni Regent and Chair of the University’s Foundation board. He is a graduate of University of California Los Angeles School of Law.

The Board of Regents provides oversight and sets policy for the University of California’s ten campuses and more than 220,000 students, three U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories, and five medical centers that support the clinical teaching programs of the University's medical and health sciences schools and handle more than three million patient visits each year.

Southwestern Law School's Max Goodman passes away

Professor Max A. Goodman, one of the leading family law experts in California who served on the Southwestern Law School faculty for over four decades, passed away on December 31, 2009 at the age of 85.

Professor Goodman was a graduate of Loyola Law School and a Certified Family Law Specialist, and maintained a successful law practice in Los Angeles for over two decades. In 1966, he joined the Southwestern faculty where he quickly earned a reputation as one of the most highly regarded family law professors in the country. During recent years, he continued to teach as Professor Emeritus in Residence and had just formally retired in Fall 2009.

The recipient of numerous awards from the legal profession, Professor Goodman was honored by Southwestern for his service to the community, teaching excellence and commitment to the advancement of the law school as the Irwin R. Buchalter Professor of Law in 1988 and the Irving D. and Florence Rosenberg Professor of Law in 1994 and received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree in 2000. That year he also was named "Outstanding Friend" by the Southwestern Alumni Association, and in 1986, his former students established a major scholarship fund in his name.

Services were held on Monday, January 4 at Mt. Sinai Memorial Park. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to the Professor Max A. Goodman Scholarship Endowment Fund at Southwestern (donations may be made online at www.swlaw.edu/giving).

Click here for the full story.

USC lands interdisciplinary scholar to head new Ph.D. program

USC has recruited Mathew D. McCubbins to join the faculty in January as a Provost Professor. He will share appointments at the USC Marshall School of Business, the USC Gould School of Law and USC College. He has been a Visiting Professor of Law at USC since 2006 and is co-director of the USC-Caltech Center for the Study of Law and Politics.

McCubbins earned a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology and is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and a former fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the behavioral sciences. He is the co-author of six books, editor or co-editor of eight additional books and the author or co-author of nearly 100 scholarly articles. He has published under the nom de plume of McNollgast with co-authors Roger Noll and Barry Weingast.

Full story here.

Chemerinsky slams judge for ridiculing pro bono work as anti-social

UC-Irvine School of Law dean Erwin Chemerinsky wrote in this week's NLJ that 2d U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals chief judge Dennis Jacobs "should be ashamed of himself."

In a speech earlier this month, Jacobs said "that much of what we call legal work for the public interest is essentially selfserving: Lawyers use public interest litigation to promote their own agendas, social and political--and (on a wider plane) to promote the power and the role of the legal profession itself.

Chemerinsky writes in his opinion article that he fears "[Jacobs'] remarks will provide the excuse for law firms to be less supportive of their attorneys doing volunteer legal work and the rationalization for lawyers doing less to help others."

Read Chemerinsky's full NLJ article here

UC Irvine's law school gets new name, offers full tuition scholarships to first class

The new law school at the University of California, Irvine has dropped its original name, the Donald Bren School of Law, and plans to offer full tuition scholarships to students who enroll in the school's first semester in fall 2009.

Donald Bren, the billionaire chairman of the Irvine Co., a real estate firm, gave $20 million to the law school last year. Bren is a major donor to the University of California, Irvine, having supported the university's endowment; the school of information and computer sciences, which is named after him; and the school of the arts, which is named after his late stepmother.

Read the full NLJ story here

Loyola latest to offer dual degree, with a twist: J.D. and tax LL.M.

Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, will provide a joint J.D. and tax LL.M. program next year, the first of its kind in the nation, according to the law school.

The joint program, anticipated to start during the fall of 2009, allows students to earn a J.D. and tax LL.M. master's degree in three years — the amount of time it normally takes to complete a J.D. program. In contrast, most tax LL.M. master's degrees require that students complete another year of law school.

The program involves a tax session during the summer after a student's first academic year and 12 additional advanced tax units during his or her second and third year. Among Loyola's courses are a tax law practicum and an honors tax policy colloquium.

Loyola claims its program integrates tax and JD courses more than other Tax LLM/JD degrees do. Northwestern University School of Law, for instance, offers a three-year JD/Tax LLM program in which students take traditional law courses for the first year, followed by a mix of courses necessary to complete the joint degree.

Programs with dual degrees have become more common in recent years at law schools. Last month, the University of Pennsylvania Law School and the Wharton School launched a joint J.D./M.B.A. degree that takes three years, rather than the standard four years, to complete. Others offering similar joint J.D./M.B.A. degrees include Northwestern University and the University of Indiana—Bloomington.

This year, New York University School of Law and the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law launched a bachelor of laws and J.D. dual degree program.

-- Amanda Bronstad

UCLA law school gets $4 million for international justice clinic

UCLA School of law got a $4 million endowment to create the first endowed program on international justice and human rights at a law school on the West coast, according to a press release.

Sanela Diana Jenkins, a survivor of the war in Bosnia, donated the money to form the Sanela Diana Jenkins Clinic on International Justice.

She does sex work, pornos and goes to a SoCal law school

Working and going to school is no easy task.

Traci Bryant, 38, is working on her first year at the University of West Los Angeles Law School while doing a girl-on-girl film and editing a documentary entitled, Porn Star Goes to Law School, according to a recent post on the blog Bitter Lawyer.

Bryant is also a licensed sex worker in Nevada, a sword-swallower and starred in 130 adult films over the past 14 years, including Nurse Orgy 5 and Titty Titty Bang Bang.

She got into law largely to continue her fight to ensure that there are health, safety and other legal protections for actresses and actors in pornos, according to the blog posting.

Latham & Watkins associate Maria de Cesare, the author of the Bitter Lawyer column, met Bryant at a 2006 think tank held at UCLA for legislators, health officials and porn industry insiders.

Bryant was there to advocate for fellow porn stars to fight for condom-only productions, aiming to curb the epidemic-level STD infection rate in that population.

"Porn Star 1L," Bitter Lawyer, August 20, 2008

UPDATE: The ABA Journal found a Sun Dial article about Bryant's life as an undergraduate at California State University.

Thanks to Legal Blog Watch for the heads up.