Yesenia Batista, Class of 2009, Awarded DRI Law Student Diversity Scholarship

BLS student Yesenia Batista of the Class of 2009 will be awarded the DRI Law Student Diversity Scholarship at the third annual DRI Diversity for Success seminar in Chicago on June 12 and 13. DRI is a national organization of defense trial lawyers and corporate counsel, and the scholarship is one of only two $10,000 awards granted to applicants.

Currently working as a summer law clerk in Thompson Hine LLP’s New York office, Yesenia has been active in law student affairs at BLS. She was involved with the Legal Association of Women (LAW) and the Brooklyn Journal of International Law. She also worked with the Second Look Program investigating claims of innocence by prisoners whose appellate remedies have run their course, and in the American Civil Liberties Union’s Women’s Rights Project, where she analyzed women’s rights issues including domestic violence, employment discrimination and equal access to justice. Yesenia served as an intern for Judge Ronald L. Ellis (SDNY).

Episode 028 - Conversation with Robert Taichman, Class of 2008

Episode 028 - Conversation with Robert Taichman, Class of 2008.mp3

In this conversation, graduating 3L Rob Taichman talks about his legal studies at BLS including an Advanced Legal Research course taught by the BLS librarians. To demonstrate the skills he learned in that course, Rob created a web page called Electronic Monitoring in the Workplace: a Research Guide to the Laws, Articles and Current Events Regarding the Monitoring of Employees' Email Correspondence and Internet Usage. In addition to discussing his web guide for the course, Rob tells of a recent law firm newsletter Social Networking Websites and the Workplace that could be useful to his fellow graduates as they enter the workforce.

Before coming to BLS, Rob was awarded his BA from NYU College of Arts and Science in New York. He expects to receive his JD at the BLS commencement ceremonies on June 4 at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center. Judge George Bundy Smith, partner of Chadbourne & Parke LLP and retired Associate Judge of the New York Court of Appeals will give the commencement address. Rob will be one of 470 BLS students receiving JD degrees. Of that number, 100 BLS students will graduate with honors. According to Suzanne Dennis, the Registrar at BLS, eleven students earned their JD in October 2007, fourteen in February 2008 and the remaining 445 completed studies in June 2008. Of the 470 total JD recipients, 243 or 52% are women, 51 or 11% are part-time students. One student is earning a foreign trained lawyer certificate.

Legal Counsel: Top 50 Law School Blogs

An article Legal Counsel: Top 50 Law School Blogs by Alisa Miller appeared in a new blog at CollegeDegrees.com , a new online directory for college degrees online and accredited online colleges. Interestingly, the article includes the BLS Library Blog in the list as one of the top 50 law school blogs. The list has several categories: Law Within and Beyond Academia; Specific Types of Law; Specific Law Schools; Blogs Featuring Blogs; and Blogs Especially For or By Students.
Thanks to Fiona King for the tip.

How Many Law Schools Does New York Need?

This past April, the New York State Legislature authorized nearly $50 million to help plan for three new law schools in Rochester, Binghamton and Long Island.. The money is for two feasibility studies: $3 million for the State University at Binghamton and $2.25 million for St. John Fisher College, a Catholic school near Rochester and $250,000 for the “planning” of a law school at SUNY Stony Brook. Finally, the Legislature earmarked $45 million for a Stony Brook law school building should one be required. With Brooklyn Law School, there already are 13 private and two public law schools in New York.

According to the American Bar Association, there are 198 law schools around the country approved by the American Bar Association, with nearly two dozen more accredited schools than 20 years ago. Law school enrollment, meanwhile, is up some 27,000 students from two decades ago, reaching an all-time high of 150,000 this past academic year. See the chart for enrollment statistics and degrees awarded for the academic years 1963 to 2007. In all, there are more than 1.1 million attorneys currently active across the United States, the largest number in New York, where more than 147,000 live and work.

A report in today’s New York Law Journal contains mixed reactions from the deans of law schools already existing in New York. For example, Dean Thomas F. Guernsey of Albany Law School said "It's pretty silly. The demand isn't there nationally, and clearly it's not in the state of New York." Dean William M. Treanor of Fordham School of Law said "What we've seen in recent years is that there is not a general need for new lawyers." Other law school deans did not comment on the possibility of increasing the number of law schools in New York to eighteen.

Law and Creativity

Given the heavy reliance on precedent in Anglo-American common law, creativity is not the first thought one has when thinking about the development of the law. But in Thinking about Law and Creativity: on the 100 Most Creative Moments In American Law, Prof. Robert F. Blomquist of Valparaiso University School of Law, does just that as he sets out a tentative list of the 100 most creative moments in American law. His criteria in compiling the list include five arguable aesthetic characteristics of artistic creativity that he parallels to legal creativity. They are originality, working within traditional forms, “objective perspective”, “the subjective view” and whether “consumers can have a role in co-creating the work”. Most of the top ten events on the list, according to Blomquist, are “associated with the articulation of basic governmental foundational principles for the new American nation during its first decades of emergence as a democratic-republic” and are:

1. The Constitution of the United States (1787) and the ratification debates (1787-1788)
2. The Declaration of Independence (1776)
3. The Bill of Rights (1791-1792)
4. The Articles of Confederation (1777)
5. The Ordinance of 1787: the Northwest Territorial Government
6. Marbury v. Madison (1803)
7. President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation (1863)
8. The Judiciary Act of 1789
9. President Lincoln’s suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus during the Civil War (1861-1865)
10. Brown v. Board of Education (Brown I & Brown II) (1954-55)

The only entry on the list dating from the 21st Century is No. 68. Al Gore, Earth in the Balance (1992) and An Inconvenient Truth (2006).

Source: BeSpacific, dated May 24, 2008

Wigs, Black Gowns and British Judges

A Bloomberg News report states that civil court judges in England and Wales will be trading in their traditional horsehair wigs, black gowns, winged white collars and neckbands for modern designer threads this October. The traditional garb of the British judiciary dates to the 1680s. The history of court dress in the UK is described in detail on the web site of the Judiciary of England and Wales.

The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, Lord Phillips, initiated the change as part of a reform to simplify judicial court working dress in England and Wales and to bring the judges into the 21st century. The change comes with concerns on a number of fronts. Some judges see the change as a break with tradition and see the traditional garb as protecting their anonymity. As a result, the change will not affect criminal courts judges who will continue to wear the traditional outfits. Barristers, unlike solicitors, will also continue to wear wigs as has been the tradition. Solicitors are worried they will be treated as second-class citizens when it comes to court dress. On a purely aesthetic level, critics, such as the fashion editor of the Guardian, have likened the new attire to costumes out of Star Trek.

Fortunately, BLS law school graduates can focus all their energies on passing the bar exam.

Memorial Day 2008

"Although no sculptured marble should rise to their memory, nor engraved stone bear record of their deeds, yet will their remembrance be as lasting as the land they honored."

-- Daniel Webster speech delivered at Plymouth, Mass. on December 22, 1890. The Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster, Vol. 1, p. 199 (National ed. Boston, 1903 )

available in the Making of Modern Law Legal Treatises (1800-1926) on the BLS Library

database page