Penn State Law School
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I didn't understand breaking them up to begin with. I thought having two campuses with the same accreditation was a unique differentiator and very attractive to some students. Continuing to 'tier' the status and reputation of education at Penn State (branch campuses) doesn't have much value IMO. Where are you on this?
Combine them, reduce the total class size and graduate half as many Lawyers. Now that would be positive progress towards a better society.
First, there was Dickinson, in Carlisle.
Then there were two campuses - Univ Park and Carlisle, as a single accredited unit
Then there were two campuses as separate accredited units
Now, if this goes according to the plan outlined by Dr Bendapudi, there will be, once again, just the single Penn State/Dickinson unit, with the primary campus in Carlisle.
I don't think there was ever a market for the two campus system - certainly the "market" did not support it, IMO. This goes back to the days well before I was on the Board, obviously, so I am speaking as an individual (an individual who spent some time in that "market") in that regard.
Why did it take a decade for the powers-that-be to "figure that out"? One can only ponder.
Not as good as shutting the whole thing down.
Unfortunately in the mind of the Administration “It exists, therefore it is and thus cannot be eliminated”. Actually I have no objection to PSU having a Law School, but where else does a university have two. Their proximity also intrigued me. If one was located in Philadelphia and the other in Pittsburgh I might have been able to wrap my brain around the concept.
Agreed shut it down. I wonder what the building on campus will be used for if this happens.
I'm very familiar with Dickinson (Carlisle) and the law school at main campus to a lesser degree. I have several friends who are alums and doing well in DC. I just found dual accreditation confusing; it's not an easy thing to 'stand up' a whole new law school and then have to 'brand' two differently tiered law schools bearing the same name. The building at Main Campus is beautiful though....
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This proposal by Bendapudi probably explains why there has been no progress toward enlisting a new dean for Penn State Law. Hari Osofsky announced in May 2021 that she was leaving for Northwestern's Pritzker School of Law.
James Houck has been holding down the fort in his second stint as interim dean for Penn State Law and Danielle Conway has served as dean of Dickinson Law since around 2019. I wonder if Conway will ascend to the deanship of the combined campus or if Penn State will restart a dean search now that the School's future structure has been decided.
James Houck has been holding down the fort in his second stint as interim dean for Penn State Law and Danielle Conway has served as dean of Dickinson Law since around 2019. I wonder if Conway will ascend to the deanship of the combined campus or if Penn State will restart a dean search now that the School's future structure has been decided.
Dickinson has been producing high-quality attorneys for 200 years - many of whom work in the Harrisburg area (it’s Harrisburg’s only law school that’s actually worth attending) or anywhere else in the state that isn’t Philadelphia or Pittsburgh, both of which have several well-developed law schools. Penn State’s law school in State College never had a natural market, and it’s not a surprise why it failed. Was a bad idea from the start - they should have put all of the resources into Dickinson from the beginning and never messed around with the State College campus.
Father, uncle, cousin, and both grandfathers were Dickinson Law alums. I think Dickinson gave/gives students excellent background to be lawyers in Pennsylvania. Many law schools teach you to be a Supreme Court justice or law professor. They don't teach you how to close a real estate transaction or handle a divorce. You have to learn that on the job.
One of my favorite stories involved a Ivy League Law grad who joined a prestigious law firm. His first assignment was to close a real estate transaction. He had no idea how to do it - he never learned that in law school.
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I’m sure it will become an annex for the Barron Grand Cathedral of the Arts (and such). How else will they be able to handle the huge crowds that will be coming?
If they ever want a truly competitive law school, they need to have it on the Main Campus. It was silly to buy a throwaway law school, itself also in the middle of nowhere, and far away from where all the other students are, to begin with.
Seriously, the profession should be more like medicine and restrict how many people get in yearly. As it is, anyone with a pulse can get into some law school and graduate, and the bar just isn’t very difficult (and you can take it endless times).
President accepts panel recommendation to reunite Penn State’s two law schools
“UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi has accepted the recommendations of the panel appointed to advise how to best reunite the university’s two separately accredited law schools, Penn State Dickinson Law and Penn State Law, into a singularly accredited law school.
The single law school will be called Penn State Dickinson Law and its primary location will be in Carlisle with a substantial presence at University Park. Each campus will have residential student cohorts, including J.D. students at all levels, LL.M. students, and S.J.D. students, with class size being optimized over time.
“The panel developed a thorough analysis of the academic, staffing and financial facets of a single law school with two-campuses and presented a compelling vision for a law school that will be innovative in the evolving field of legal education and a leader in training future attorneys,” said Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi. “I want to thank Deans Danielle Conway and Victor Romero as well as each member of the panel for working so diligently and efficiently in developing these recommendations. The work to reunite these schools is still just beginning, but I am excited about the future we are building for legal education at Penn State.””
Merging the two was the predetermined conclusion, meaning the panel was not tasked with considering the merits of closing one law school campus/facility.
We Are!…Big!
“UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi has accepted the recommendations of the panel appointed to advise how to best reunite the university’s two separately accredited law schools, Penn State Dickinson Law and Penn State Law, into a singularly accredited law school.
The single law school will be called Penn State Dickinson Law and its primary location will be in Carlisle with a substantial presence at University Park. Each campus will have residential student cohorts, including J.D. students at all levels, LL.M. students, and S.J.D. students, with class size being optimized over time.
“The panel developed a thorough analysis of the academic, staffing and financial facets of a single law school with two-campuses and presented a compelling vision for a law school that will be innovative in the evolving field of legal education and a leader in training future attorneys,” said Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi. “I want to thank Deans Danielle Conway and Victor Romero as well as each member of the panel for working so diligently and efficiently in developing these recommendations. The work to reunite these schools is still just beginning, but I am excited about the future we are building for legal education at Penn State.””
Merging the two was the predetermined conclusion, meaning the panel was not tasked with considering the merits of closing one law school campus/facility.
We Are!…Big!
They'll use it as offices for all the assistant athletic directors
Very true. I recently saw a guy that I used to coach with who, while understanding the game he got in trouble with the way that he talked to kids and with his own personal behavior. Very juvenile and unprofessional with always asking the kids about banging their girlfriends and such. I asked him how he’s been and what he’s up to and he said he’s now a lawyer.
Again, the JAG Corps is 80% Tier 3/4 law schools. There are a few exceptions (your try hards who went to West Point, Harvard, etc.). but otherwise it's the Drake's and John Marshall's and Widener's of the world....
Only top quality students with exceptional talent will be admitted to Penn State Law. Also:
“People will throw you out because of where you go,” Cardinal (graduate-law) said. “If where you go has bad PR because they can’t manage money, that’s bad PR.”
Riveting and insightful!!
“People will throw you out because of where you go,” Cardinal (graduate-law) said. “If where you go has bad PR because they can’t manage money, that’s bad PR.”
Riveting and insightful!!
Just limit the class sizes but keep the lower tiers… I think JAG Corps is a bit self-selecting of better people from those lower tiers too. The only JAG folks I know were good people and attorneys, even if not from top schools. It’s the bottom half of those tier 3/4s that’s an absolute joke. I graduated with people I wouldn’t trust to mow my lawn, and they’re out practicing, presumably with people’s lives and livelihoods in their hands.
In the immortal words of Donald Rumsfeld at the start of his second stint as Secretary of Defense, "Where did all these lawyers come from?"
I think a lot of colleges and universities started MBA programs and law schools for two main reasons: (1) to increase their US News rankings (good to have MBA schools, law schools, medical/dental schools on the campus) and (2) because they are cash cows. It used to be very expensive for law schools to start up because they had to invest a fortune in all kinds of law books. Now its all on line. So the biggest costs are the building and the professors. You don't have the huge expenses for labs, IT and materials that STEM programs have. So, cash cow.
Dickinson in Carlisle made some sense because it is reasonably close to the state capital in Harrisburg. (Actually, I think they should shut down the Carlisle campus and move it to PSU Harrisburg). Being close to the state capital gives law students exposure to the top courts, legislature, and even some corporations. None of that is available to students at Penn State Law University Park.
I went to UCONN law which wasn't at the main campus in Storrs - it was in Hartford. We always had federal and state judges teaching seminars, classes, etc. A lot of the lawyers from the big corporations around Hartford taught classes or held seminars (insurance companies, UTC, GE, Combustion Engineering, General Dynamics, Pfizer, etc.)
Back in the late 1990's and early 2000's, many colleges started looking at adding law schools or med schools. For example, a medical school (now part of Geisinger) was started up in Scranton. At the same time, plans for a law school in Wilkes-Barre began taking form. When the financial crisis hit in 2007/08, plans for the law school were scrapped.
Dickinson in Carlisle made some sense because it is reasonably close to the state capital in Harrisburg. (Actually, I think they should shut down the Carlisle campus and move it to PSU Harrisburg). Being close to the state capital gives law students exposure to the top courts, legislature, and even some corporations. None of that is available to students at Penn State Law University Park.
I went to UCONN law which wasn't at the main campus in Storrs - it was in Hartford. We always had federal and state judges teaching seminars, classes, etc. A lot of the lawyers from the big corporations around Hartford taught classes or held seminars (insurance companies, UTC, GE, Combustion Engineering, General Dynamics, Pfizer, etc.)
Back in the late 1990's and early 2000's, many colleges started looking at adding law schools or med schools. For example, a medical school (now part of Geisinger) was started up in Scranton. At the same time, plans for a law school in Wilkes-Barre began taking form. When the financial crisis hit in 2007/08, plans for the law school were scrapped.
Believe USNews ranks graduate business, law, and medical schools separately. Princeton, ranked number one, has none. Number two MIT has only a graduate business program and has an arrangement with Harvard Med.
They may be online, but academic/institutional licensing for ebooks still cost a fortune.
The more I think about it ol' Billy was right
Let's kill all the lawyers kill 'em tonight
Let's kill all the lawyers kill 'em tonight
historically I think it was very limited access - gpa and LSAT being key. Maybe 30-40% avg admission over US schools avg. Then once in, you lose 1/3 after L1 and another 10% after that. then there would be pass rate at BAR exam, and maybe you lose another 10-20% of JD's who never pass.
then we got capacity increase with declining demographic volumes. this combined with an education system that seemed to lose the ability to critically think put pressure on the system. we now have too much legal capacity and a high level of incompetence in the profession. They are going to be one of the professions to suffer from AI replacement.
About AI in the legal profession, here’s an interesting story.
The World’s First Robot Lawyer Isn’t A Lawyer, And I’m Not Sure It’s Even A Robot
Note: This post is an adaptation of what started initially as a Twitter thread. I’ve been going pretty hard on DoNotPay and its founder/CEO Joshua Browder for the past couple of days, and I&#…
www.techdirt.com
About AI in the legal profession, here’s an interesting story.
The World’s First Robot Lawyer Isn’t A Lawyer, And I’m Not Sure It’s Even A Robot
Note: This post is an adaptation of what started initially as a Twitter thread. I’ve been going pretty hard on DoNotPay and its founder/CEO Joshua Browder for the past couple of days, and I&#…
Well that sure isn’t the future of legal AI, that was legal mad libs.
I’m concerned about what AI will do to the profession as it improves. I’m not afraid for myself, I arrogantly believe that what I do at this point can’t be replaced by a computer. But I am afraid for young lawyers in the future, because I think it’s largely the grunt work they would do to learn the profession and a practice area is what will be replaced with AI. I’m talking about the letter campaigns, discovery requests, doc review, etc that fill much of a 1st-4th year’s time. If that’s taken away, how do they learn while still earning their salary…
Copywriter jobs are vanishing. It’s just so much cheaper to use AI. AI can’t (right now) come up to the level of human copywriters but this isn’t medicine or law, where your work has to be perfect.
I didn’t even read the article and I’ll tell why Ai won’t replace what we have today:About AI in the legal profession, here’s an interesting story.
The World’s First Robot Lawyer Isn’t A Lawyer, And I’m Not Sure It’s Even A Robot
Note: This post is an adaptation of what started initially as a Twitter thread. I’ve been going pretty hard on DoNotPay and its founder/CEO Joshua Browder for the past couple of days, and I&#…
1. They don’t eat so you can’t bill for meals, no self respecting firm is ever going to accept that loss of revenue and free food.
2. Is a partner Ai going to be able to offload its work to an associate Ai and still charge partners rates? These are real issues facing legal AI’s.
You must’ve had some bad experiences. I’ve never charged a client billed time during a meal, and I can count on one hand the number of actual meals I’ve charged to a client. Also, a partner farming work to an associate but billing the partner’s rate… I don’t even know how that would work. Is he writing off the associate’s time and billing it as his own? Just charging partner rate for the associate’s time? When I farm out work to an associate, the purpose is to save the client money on work that doesn’t require partner-level knowledge/skill. I also put the rates for each person’s time in the engagement letter, so I couldn’t fake a higher rate later if I wanted to. Maybe I don’t represent big enough clients.
I practiced Law for 45 years before I retired eight years ago. I’ve had a couple of hundred bad experiences
. Clients, judges, jurors, Government drones (the human kind), secretaries, partners, associates, opposing counsel you name it. I was just joking around with LionJim.The first time I heard of Ai in the profession was about three months ago. My original thought was “What the hell a robot follows you around the office”. I guess I’ve been gone too long.
