Since 1983, U.S. News has published rankings of the nation’s law schools. For almost as long, there have been complaints about the way the rankings are done and what value they offer.

Last fall, Yale Law School Dean Heather Gerken announced that Yale — which consistently earned the top spot in the rankings — would no longer participate in the process because it is “undermining the core commitments of the legal profession.” Berkeley Law quickly followed, as did more than 60 law schools.

In this episode of the More Just podcast, Dean Chemerinsky talks to a blockbuster panel to discuss how we got here, what the revolt means, and what the future may hold: Dean Gerken, now in her second term leading Yale Law School; Colorado College President L. Song Richardson, who pulled her school out of the college rankings; and Colin Diver, a former dean at Penn Law and president of Reed College who’s been a longtime critic of the rankings.

https://www.law.berkeley.edu/podcast-episode/the-future-of-law-school-rankings/

#LawFedi #LawSchool #Rankings #USNews

Listen to the new episode of More Just: Tracking the Diversity of Federal Judicial Clerks

For recent law school graduates, clerking for a federal judge can be a key career stepping stone, and the hiring process is both highly opaque and famously nerve-wracking. Even as law school cohorts have become more diverse, the clerkship ranks have remained heavily skewed toward white men, particularly from a handful of top-ranked law schools.

Leaders from Berkeley Law’s Berkeley Judicial Institute wanted to know why. So they asked 50 federal judges how and why they hire particular clerks in the first qualitative study of the issue. These conversations yielded a number of insights for law students, law schools, and other judges, from how much an aspiring clerk’s cover letter matters to the fact that “diversity” doesn’t mean the same thing to every judge.

https://www.law.berkeley.edu/podcast-episode/tracking-the-diversity-of-federal-judicial-clerks/

#LawFedi #LawSchool #LawProfs #Judiciary #Clerkships #Diversity

Something wicked this way comes! UC Shakespeare Trial 2023 at Freight & Salvage, next Sunday, 4/30.

The Macbeth Files: A Witches’ Brew
https://www.law.berkeley.edu/news/shakespeare-macbeth-files-witches-brew/

#shakespeare #lawfedi #sundayvibes

The Macbeth Files: A Witches' Brew

Ticket sales are now open at Freight & Salvage for the UC Shakespeare Trial 2023!

The audience is the jury in this interactive trial based on Shakespeare's classic tragedy, featuring Dean Erwin Chemerinsky (Berkeley Law) and Prof. Bernadette Meyler (@stanfordlaw). Facts will be brought to life by actors from UC Irvine’s New Swan Shakespeare Festival.

https://secure.thefreight.org/12488/shakespeare-trial-2023

#LawProfs #LawFedi #Shakespeare #Macbeth #Trial

Photo by Amina Ali, Berkeley Law LLM '23

#PhotoMonday #LawSchool #Berkeley

It’s an impossible task to document all the newsworthy happenings at Berkeley Law, but one we relish just the same. Here’s a look at a dozen stories from the law school homepage — out of 100 over the past year — that showcase the school’s excellence, community, and public mission.

https://www.law.berkeley.edu/article/what-a-year-the-stories-that-made-2022-memorable-for-berkeley-law/

#LawSchool #LawProfs #LawStudents #PublicInterest #PublicService #ProBono #2022

Savala Nolan – author, alumna, and Executive Director of the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice – reviews "three *terrific* memoirs, all written by gifted, insightful, brave Black women."

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/13/books/review/misty-copeland-the-wind-at-my-back-evette-dionne-weightless-mary-alice-daniel-a-coastline-is-an-immeasurable-thing.html

#Books #FatPhobia #Diaspora #Race #NewYorkTimes

Professor Kathryn Abrams chronicles the activism of Arizona’s undocumented immigrants in her new book published by the University of California Press this fall: "Open Hand, Closed Fist: Practices of Undocumented Organizing in a Hostile State"

https://www.law.berkeley.edu/article/kathryn-abrams-open-hand-closed-fist-arizona-immigration-law

#LawFedi #LawProf #LawSchool #Undocumented #Organizing #Immigration

A new report from the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment analyzes funding and financing strategies to generate sufficient revenue for San Francisco’s Climate Action Plan while advancing equity and ensuring smart implementation.

Getting to #NetZero & #decarbonization will take billions in strategic investment.

More from Legal Planet: https://legal-planet.org/2022/11/15/funding-financing-san-franciscos-ambitious-climate-action-plan/

#climatechange #energy #sustainability #climatecrisis #lawfedi #environmentallaw