SBM Blog

Royster Named Michigan Supreme Court Clerk, Chief Of Staff

Larry Royster, chief clerk and research director for the Court of Appeals, will assume the duties of Clerk of the Michigan Supreme Court on May 28, and will also serve as the Supreme Court’s Chief of Staff.

Announcing Royster's appointment, Chief Justice Robert P. Young, Jr. praised the man who has held the position for the last 30 years, Corbin R. Davis. "Corbin is well known throughout the legal community for his dedication, integrity, work ethics, and good judgment. It says a great deal about Larry that the Court found him to be a worthy successor to Corbin."  The Chief Justice called Royster a "clear choice," based on his experience, legal expertise, and proven leadership skills.

Royster is a graduate of  Michigan State University and Thomas M. Cooley Law School.  He joined the Court of Appeals Prehearing Division in 1985,  then served as a law clerk to Court of Appeals Judge Richard Maher. From 1989 to 1998, Royster served as supervisor of the Court of Appeals’ new Senior Research Division. In 1999, he was named Court of Appeals Deputy Research Director, becoming Research Director two years later. He has been Court of Appeals chief clerk and research director since January 2011.

Suing Legal Malpractice Lawyers For Legal Malpractice

National Law Journal's story "Suit Alleges Law Firm Botched Legal Malpractice Action," describes an  interesting Massachusetts case.  From the complaint (PDF):

This case arises out of claims for legal malpractice and other wrongdoing by a prominent Boston law firm and two of its attorneys. These attorneys did not act alone, however, and instead were part of a substantial conspiracy designed to manage and contain the clients (the two Plaintiffs in this suit) who simply wanted a trusted legal advisor to look further into claims of legal malpractice committed by other attorneys. Ultimately, and in furtherance of that conspiracy, these attorneys (the Defendants in this suit) performed a sham investigation of its clients [sic] putative malpractice claims and finally fell on their sword in an act of “damage control” by misleading the clients, delaying the filing of certain claims until the running of the statute of limitations, and ultimately refusing to file claims for those clients on the eve of the expiration of the statutes of limitations on those claims. In short, the Defendants left their clients to fend for themselves and to lose claims they would still have had the Defendants timely filed.

 

Tremors: Is the Legal Market Working?

From Kyle McEntee at Law School Cafe:

The largest law school class ever enrolled just graduated and it will be replaced by the smallest class in 40 or so years. To enroll the upcoming class, schools will also likely offer larger discounts than ever before—a number that has been growing very quickly. My projections suggest that law students will borrow $480 million less during 2013-14 than in 2011-12 from the federal government. That’s a loss of almost a half billion dollars caused by lower enrollment and heavily discounted tuition. Information can do wonders, even in a dysfunctional market.

Tremors: Your Technological Incompetence May Soon Cost You Corporate Clients

Law Technology News reports that the general counsel of KIA, D. Casey Flaherty, has a "tech audit" test for firms competing for KIA's corporate work. The firms are invited to send a top associate of their choice to take it. Nine BigLaw firms have taken the test; all have flunked. The audit tests proficiency in using basic, generic business tech tools such as Microsoft Word and Excel for simple tasks. Casey reasons that if a lawyer takes 50 minutes to accomplish a task that someone skilled in Excel can do in 5 minutes, that's 45 minutes of billed time that KIA shouldn't have to pay. At this point he's settling for taking 5% percent off every bill a firm submits until it passes the test. But he's clearly on a mission beyond that -- in a keynote address at a West Coast tech conference Casey told his audience that he has just partnered with a training firm to automate his audit and make it available for free to general counsel.

HT: ABA Journal

So Noted: A Pronounced Difference Between An Acronym And An Abbreviation

This footnote in a Scalia opinion (City of Arlington v. FCC) released this week has created a flurry of blog criticism:

This is not a typographical error. CTIA—The Wireless Association was the name of the petitioner. CTIA is presumably an (unpronounceable) acronym, but even the organization’s website does not say what it stands for. That secret, known only to wireless-service-provider insiders, we will not disclose here.

David Post at Volokh Conspiracy called it "a really embarrassing bit of nonsense — smarmy and snarky and extraordinarily stupid," prompting 182 comments, many amusing.

SBM Blog has no opinion on the merits of the footnote but credits it with elucidating the meaning of acronym. Thanks to the footnote's notoriety, we now know that CTIA is not an acronym but an "initialism."  From a 2007 letter to the Wall Street Journal:

The front-page article about professional acronym watcher Mike Molloy ("BTW, If You Need Info About C4ISR Read This ASAP," Jan. 13) raises the question of whether an acronym must be pronounceable as a word. Yes, it must. A term exists for abbreviations, such as F.B.I., that are pronounced
letter by letter: initialism.

So noted.

Hypomania: The Official Word

Readers following Wayne County Circuit Judge Wade McCree's Judicial Tenure Commission hearing might be wondering about hypomania, the condition that Judge McCree's lawyer reportedly offered as an explanation for some of the conduct at issue in the hearing. The British Journal of Psychiatry is skeptical that it can be defined, as explained in Hypomania: what's in a Name?:

‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, ‘It means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ (Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass and what Alice found there, 1871)

The use of the term hypomania in this and other countries impressively follows the Humpty Dumpty principle. Indeed, in the UK many, perhaps a majority of, inpatients are diagnosed to be ‘hypomanic’, perhaps partly out of a sense of politeness. The term manic does, after all, have a pejorative flavour to some ears (paceJamison, 1996). The original Greek sense of the word is that hypomania is hierarchically below or beneath mania. It fills a gap between the full syndrome and more everyday states of elation. The issue is simply where to draw the line with mania, on the one hand, and with normality, on the other. If we actually use them, operationalised diagnostic criteria should permit us to do this reliably.

The 10th revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-10), the World Health Organization medical classification list, says:

The terms "mania" and "severe depression" are used in this classification to denote the opposite ends of the affective spectrum; "hypomania" is used to denote an intermediate state without delusions, hallucinations, or complete disruption of normal activities, which is often (but not exclusively) seen as patients develop or recover from mania. ... here is a persistent mild elevation of mood (for at least several days on end), increased energy and activity, and usually marked feelings of well-being and both physical and mental efficiency. Increased sociability, talkativeness, overfamiliarity, increased sexual energy, and a decreased need for sleep are often present but not to the extent that they lead to severe disruption of work or result in social rejection. Irritability, conceit, and boorish behaviour may take the place of the more usual euphoric sociability. 

The controversial new DSM-5 officially coronated this week apparently doesn't offer much more assistance. It basically sticks to the script of DSM-4, except that it refines and adds more emphasis to symptoms of heightened activity or energy. DSM-4 defined a hypomanic episode as:

Just Because: Brave (And Miraculous) New World. Go Blue

C.S. Mott Children's Hospital Doctors Save Ohio Boy By Printing An Airway Tube.

DSM-5 And The Law

The lead up to today's formal approval by the Board of Trustees of the American Psychiatric Association of the new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders, DSM-5 for short, has been long and loud.  Two books by critics, Saving Normal and The Book of Woe, beat it to publication and have been widely flogged. The National Institutes of Mental Health has said it won't use DSM-5 to make funding decisions. And a scholarly legal paper published in March, Could the American Psychiatric Association Cause You Headaches? The Dangerous Interaction between the DSM-5 and Employment Law, warned that "the legal community’s relationship with the DSM may be forced to change, given the implications that changes in the DSM-5 may have for claims under laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) (regarding claims of “disability” and requests for reasonable accommodations), Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) (regarding definitions of a “serious illness”), Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), and even state statutes and workers compensation laws (regarding whether an illness is work related)."

The Economist blog explains why it matters so much:

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is a 947-page guide to ailments of the mind. Published on May 22nd by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), it lists specific symptoms to be attributed to this disorder or that. The DSM is hugely influential. Its categories guide research and treatment for millions of patients in America and elsewhere. Crucially, it also propels the psychiatry industry—if a disorder is included in the DSM, insurers are more likely to pay for it.

Tremors: Using YouTube As An Instrument Of Justice

After achieving positive results for two clients by putting video clips of pre-trial questioning online, Colorado lawyer John Pineau believes that YouTube is about to revolutionize justice.  He told the Denver Post, "This is an incredible new hammer of justice. It's really not understating it to say this will change justice around the world."

Pineau credits videos of a client's ex-husband saying it is okay to lie to the government for helping to win a civil judgment for her. In another case, a corporation sued his client and won. Pineau then uploaded portions of depositions from the case, after which the company offered a cash settlement  in exchange for removing the videos.

The Denver Post story notes that ethics experts are divided about how lawyers can use the Internet as a tool for their clients, but the story suggests consensus that using a pre-trial deposition before a trial ends raises red flags.  And if a revolution is indeed brewing, a predictable response will be a surge in motions to seal records and redact court files.

Photo: Baby carriage steps from Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, 1925.

"A Case Every Law Firm And Corporate General Counsel Should Be Watching"

ABA Journal reports on a Georgia case that addresses one of the most "perplexing" ethical issues involving the increasing use of in-house counsel to advise law firms about ethics duties and regulatory requirements: whether communications between a firm's lawyers and its in-house counsel are protected by attorney-client privilege and work product doctrine in disputes between the firm and a client.  In the case, a law firm contacted its in-house counsel immediately following a contentious conference call with  that led it to conclude that the client might be contemplating a malpractice suit against the firm. There is a dispute about whether the law firm advised the client at that point that it needed new counsel. The client did in fact sue the firm six months later, but denies that it was contemplating a lawsuit at the time the firm consulted its in-house counsel. The firm is seeking to protect its communications with the in-house counsel from discovery, including a 33-page memo describing the conference call that lawyers at the firm wrote the day after it occurred. 

The case is St. Simons Waterfront v. Hunter, Maclean, Exley & Dunn, now before the Georgia Supreme Court.

The ABA has not taken a position on the firm's arguments, but says in an amicus brief (PDF) that as a general matter it urges that lawyers’ communications when seeking legal advice from their in-house counsel should be broadly protected because of the benefits to their clients and the legal system, and to lawyers and their firms.

Randy Johnston, a malpractice lawyer, has a bright line approach. He told ABA Journal:

Law firms should have the right to internal defense and to work product, but the law firm must immediately inform the client when there is a conflict. Failure to tell the client eviscerates the privilege. Period.

The IRS: Can't Get Enough?

Paul Caron at Tax Prof Blog is doing an impressive daily compilation of stories on the IRS scandal. Below is his "Day 12" compilation, plus, in red, a few more we found:

• Above the Law: On the IRS Mess and What It Means to be a Lawyer
• American Spectator: Obama and the IRS: The Smoking Gun?
• Bloomberg: Obama’s Defense in IRS Case Is Pre-Election Ignorance
• CBS News: Evidence Emerges that Obama Administration Official Knew of IRS Targeting During 2012 Campaign
• Dorf on Law: Two Broader Lessons of the IRS/Tea Party "Scandal", by Mike Dorf (Cornell)
• The Hill: Poll: Majority Believe IRS Targeting of Tea Party Was Intentional
• Human Events: IRS and AP Scandals Cast a Big Chill on Free Speech, by Michael Barone
• Human Events: White House Defends IRS Chief-Turned-ObamaCare Enforcer, by John Hayward
• Rush Limbaugh: Goal of the IRS Scandal: Scare GOP Donors
• Legal Ethics Forum: IRS official to take the Fifth (and probably wishes she had chosen candor)
• National Review: Congress Audits its Own
• New Republic: The Low Key IRS Watchdog Explains the Limits of His Job
• New Yorker: The IRS, the White House 'Cover Up', and Things You Shouldn't Tell The President
• New York Times: IRS Scandal: Questions and Answers
• The Onion: Obama Fondly Recalls Frustration Of First Term
• Politico: The White House’s Shifting IRS Account
• Professor Bainbridge: If Obama was CEO of a public corporation and I was the company's general counsel, would I have told him about an audit of misbehaving employees?
• Reason: The IRS Targeted Conservatives Because It Could
• Slate: A Den of Liberals
• Tobin/OSU Mortiz College of Law: FAQs on 501(c)(4) Social Welfare Organizations(PDF)
• Wall Street Journal op-ed: The IRS and the Drive to Stop Free Speech, by David Rivkin & Lee Casey
• Washington Post op-ed: IRS Scandal Inspires a Kafka-esque Tale, by Richard Cohen
• Washington Post: A bushel of Pinocchios for IRS’s Lois Lerner
• Weekly Standard: IRS's Lerner Had History of Harassment, Inappropriate Religious Inquiries at FEC

Breaking: SOCC Recommends 3% Judicial Pay Increase, No Other Changes

Gongwer News is reporting that the State Officers Compensation Commission (SOCC) this morning voted unanimously to recommend a 3% increase in the compensation of Michigan Supreme Court justices. Current law ties the salaries of all state judges to Supreme Court salaries, so the recommendation is in effect a recommendation for a judicial branch increase.  The recommendation does not take effect without approval of both houses of the Michigan legislature. Judicial salaries in Michigan have been frozen since 2002.

Campaign Finance Disclosure, Corruption, State Capitols, And Geography

In a forum tonight at Cooley Law School a panel consisting of former Senate Majority Leader Ken Sikkema, Michigan Campaign Finance Network Executive Director Rich Robinson, and interim Wayne State Dean Jocelyn Benson addressed the topic of "Money in Politics."  Benson made a passionate plea for a state constitutional amendment to require immediate and full disclosure of the source of all campaign electioneering expenditures. Robinson described the outsized role that "dark money" has come to play in Michigan races, with special emphasis on judicial campaign funding. (Note: The State Bar of Michigan supports full disclosure of electioneering expenditures in judicial campaigns.) Ken Sikkema offered the practical and skeptical perspective of a veteran politician, especially lamenting the way in which third-party expenditures have weakened the role of candidate committees.

What all the panelists agreed upon was the need for full campaign finance disclosure.

There was no consensus about the extent to which money in Michigan politics has been corrupting. Ken Sikkema in particular defended Michigan legislative politics as relatively scandal-free, especially as compared with, say, New York. Coincidentally, today's Washington Post Wonkblog says that studies show a correlation between a state's corruption and how remote its state capitol is, specifically “isolated capital cities are robustly associated with greater levels of corruption.”

Photograph: Dave Parker (2006), interior of Michigan Capitol Building

U.S. Supreme Court Sides With Michigan Supreme Court in Another Habeas Case

The issue in Metrish v. Lancaster was whether a diminished capacity defense ever existed in Michigan, and if so why and for how long; an underlying issue was who makes criminal law.  Lancaster had pled diminished capacity in his 1993 murder trial, but was convicted. That conviction was overturned for jury selection errors. The Michigan Supreme Court in 2001 said that the legislature had effectively abolished the diminished capacity defense if it ever even existed in Michigan, and denied the use of the defense to Lancaster in his 2005 retrial, and the federal district court agreed. The 6th Circuit, however, held that Lancaster was entitled to use the defense in his retrial. Today, the U.S. Supreme Court in a 9-0 decision by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg released just 27 days after oral argument, agreed with the Michigan Supreme Court. Lyle Deniston at SCOTUSBlog says "generously" interpreted the power of a state supreme court to cast aside a string of lower state court rulings allowing a legal defense, but did not appear to make much new law on retroactivity doctrine.

Governor Appoints Kathy HoogstraTo Muskegon Circuit Court

Governor Snyder has appointed Kathy Hoogstra, Muskegon Probate Register/Court Administrator since 2007, to the vacancy created by the retirement of Judge John C. Ruck. She is a 1989 graduate of IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law.

Thinking About Affirmative Action

While we wait to see where affirmative action in U.S. public education is headed next with the soon-to-be released opinion in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, for some perspective you might find two recent New York Times stories on race and education elsewhere interesting. "In Its Efforts to Integrate Roma, Slovakia Recalls U.S. Struggles," describes how a small town in Slovakia is struggling to break down centuries of segregation of the Roma (Gypsies):

The most powerful lever working for desegregation in Slovakia has been the court system, which has been reinforced by antidiscrimination statutes adopted in the past decade to bring the code into conformity with European Union standards.

Inspired by the landmark 1954 United States Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which declared segregated schooling unconstitutional, Vanda Durbakova, a Slovak civil rights lawyer, filed a suit in 2010 against the Sarisske Michalany elementary school. 

Last week, Race to the Top described recent affirmative action efforts in Brazil:

In April of last year, Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of the University of Brasília, which introduced racial quotas in its admissions process in 2004. This validated the action of 70 of Brazil’s 98 state and federal universities, which had independently adopted some form of preferential admission based on race, income or a combination of the two. When the Law of Quotas, which derived from these principles a single model for all federal universities, came up for a Senate vote, it was approved 80-1.

The piece says that early reports suggest that students admitted through Brazil's quota system perform no worse than their peers.

What Does It Mean When Bar Exam Scores Are "Scaled"?

The dramatic drop in the passage rate for the July 2012 Michigan bar exam has been attributed, at least in part, to the decision by the Michigan Board of Law Examiners to stop scaling the raw essay scores of the test, which has precipitated considerable discussion about the meaning and point of scaling in testing. The best explanation I've read about bar exam scaling is this, from The Faculty Lounge:

• Scaling helps ensure that differences in scores from component to component, or from administration to administration, are due to differences in performance, rather than to differences in the relative difficulty of questions, or of the graders. The NCBE uses questions from prior exams to scale the raw scores on the MBE. Forty-six states use the distribution of the final MBE scores in their states to scale raw scores on the state components of their Bar exams.

• Forty-five of the scaling states combine the scaled scores on each of the components, and then compare the combined score to the state's minimum passing score.

The post, which focuses on the Illinois decision to ratchet up the passing score of that state's bar exam between now and 2015, points out that the widespread adoption of both scaling and combined-score grading means that the primary determinant of the relative difficulty of a particular state's bar exam is the state's minimum passing score, or cut score. Michigan's deviation from that practice makes it more difficult to determine the relative difficulty of the Michigan bar exam.

Study: U.S. Legal System 50% More Expensive Than Europe's

Sure, no surprise that the U.S. legal system is the world's most expensive. But, one and half times more than the Eurozone average? Wow. Corporate Counsel reports that was the conclusion of a study commissioned by the Institute for Legal Reform (ILR) that compared liability costs as a percentage of a country’s gross domestic product.

The 13 countries included in the study have similar levels of regulation and legal protection, leading analysts to conclude that higher costs could be attributed to more frequent and/or costly claims. The U.S. costs were about 1.7 percent of GDP. Countries on the low end of the range—the Netherlands, Belgium, and Portugal—had costs around 0.4 percent. Legal liability costs in the U.S. were found to be about 50 percent more than costs in the U.K.

The ILR, which holds a dim view of the U.S. legal system generally, says that excessive litigation is putting U.S. companies at a competitive disadvantage globally. Presumably that means that if the U.S. had the Eurozone's legal system the our economy would be outperforming Europe's even more than it already is doing now.

Annals Of Lawyers With Time On Their Hands, First Installment

Gordon Hay, a partner in the Edinburgh office of CMS Cameron McKenna who heads the firm's banking and finance team in Scotland, whose bio lists as his only language "English," has completed a six-year project translating the New Testament into his native Scots dialect, Doric.

A sample:

The Acks o the Apostles, Chaptir 14, verse 8

**Noo, at Lystra, there was a cripple mannie vrang amo e feet fae e day he wis born, nivver haein waalkit. He wis hearknin tae Paul as he spak, an Paul, leukin him straicht in e ee an seein he hid e faith tae be made aa better, says till him wi a lood vice: "Stan straicht up on yer feet!" He jumpit up an set oot waalkin. An fan e crood saa fit Paul hid deen, they roart oot o them in their ain tongue, "E gods hiv come dooon till hiz in e form o a mannie."

Personally, I'm looking forward to the podcast version.

HT: Language Hat

In Memoriam: Robert B. Webster, 55th President of the State Bar of Michigan

The Hon. Robert B. Webster, of Royal Oak, died May 15 at the age of 81. In addition to distinguished service as a lawyer and judge, Mr. Webster served as a major in the Michigan Air National Guard.

After graduating from the University of Michigan Law School in 1957 he clerked for Judge Ralph M. Freeman, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Michigan. In private practice, he specialized in civil litigation, family law and alternative dispute resolution, including arbitration and mediation, and brought his practical expertise to bear in his work as  chair of the State Bar Committee on Civil Procedure, and as the chairperson of the Committee to Revise and Consolidate the Michigan Court Rules. He was a co-author of Michigan Court Rules Practice, Martin, Dean and Webster, West Publishing Company.

He was appointed an Oakland County circuit judge be Governor Milliken in 1973 and served until 1982, including service as chief judge.  He was elected President of the State Bar in 1989. From his contributions to the seminal work of the Commission on the Courts in the 21st Century to his long years of leadership on the Judicial Qualifications Committee, he contributed immeasurably and tirelessly to his profession and to the improvement of the administration of justice in Michigan.  In 1993, the State Bar awarded him the Roberts P. Hudson Award for outstanding and unique service to and on behalf of the State Bar of Michigan, the legal profession, and public. The Hudson Award is considered the highest award conferred by the State Bar. 

Judge Webster is survived by his children Anne E. Webster Jacobs and husband, Chris Jacobs; Allison D. Webster Giddings and husband, Gavin Giddings; Peter H. Webster and wife Penny; James B. Webster; by their mother, Marilyn Hey Webster; and by his grandchildren: Colin Jacobs, Samuel Giddings, Ethan Webster, Kyle Jacobs, Glennie Webster, Alexander Jacobs and Sydney Giddings.

Visitation will be held at Sullivan Funeral Home in Royal Oak, Michigan, on Tuesday, May 21, from 4 to 8 p.m.  A Memorial Service will be held Friday, May 31, at Birmingham Community House, 380 S. Bates, Birmingham. Memorials to Boys and Girls Club of Oakland and Macomb Counties or the Crystal Lake and Watershed Association are suggested.

A Master Of Laws, Without The J.D.

It's the J.D. that gets you the right to run the gauntlet of character and fitness and the bar exam and to claim the prize of a law license, but for those who just want to learn about the law or to burnish their professional resumes some law schools are now offering another option -- a Master's in law. National Law Journal's "Law for Laymen" says that nearly 30 law schools have or soon will offer a master's degree for nonlawyers, up from just a handful two years ago. What the degree is called differs from school to school --  MSL; Juris Master (J.M.); Master of Jurisprudence (M.J.); and Master of Science in Legal Studies (M.S.) are a few of the names. The programs usually are marketed to working professionals such as human resource professionals, business people, and accountants. The trend is in line with two common predictions about the emerging future of the practice of law -- a shrinking base of lawyers and a wider base of non-lawyers collaborating with lawyers in the provision of law-related services.

Breaking: February Bar Examination Passage Statistics

From the Board of Law Examiners, here's a PDF of the statistics, summarized below:

Passage Rate

• All Takers: 58% (last year's February passage rate was 59%)

• First-time Takers: 65%

• Retakers: 48%

By Law School

Thomas M. Cooley

• All Takers: 55%

• First-time Takers: 61%

• Retakers: 42%

Michigan State University

• All Takers: 60%

• First-time Takers: 71%

• Retakers: 55%

University of Detroit Mercy

• All Takers: 49%

• First-time Takers: 59%

• Retakers: 45%

University of Michigan

• All Takers: 82%

• First-time Takers: 87%

• Retakers: 71%

Wayne State University

• All Takers: 63%

• First-time Takers: 90%

• Retakers: 50%

University of Toledo

• All Takers: 69%

• First-time Takers: 67%

• Retakers: 75%

Other Law Schools

• All Takers: 68%

• First-time Takers: 76%

• Retakers: 58%

Thinking Outside The LSAT At Michigan

ABA Journal flags a Careerist interview with Michigan Law dean of admissions Sarah Zearfoss:

Zearfoss tells the Careerist that applicant numbers are “dramatically down”
on a national level, and down by about 3 percent at the University of Michigan
Law School. “I'm very conscious that there are fewer great people in the pool,”
she says.

Zearfoss concedes “there's been an arms race with LSATs and GPAs” among top
law schools seeking the best students. “I think the shrunken pool has forced
admissions officers to think about what we really need in our class, and it's
not just the LSAT,” Zearfoss says. “I think we are choosing substance over
LSATs.”

The Careerist suggests that “substance over LSAT” is a radical concept. “I
don't thinking focusing on scores is the way to go,” Zearfoss responds. “It's
not fair to the individual. It's not fair to the institution.”

The comments to the ABA Journal story are entertaining. Personal favorite: "Instead of dropping the LSAT, they should come up with a SHADOW SCORE for the LSAT.  That means they would give partial credit for the SECOND BEST answer so as to better determine that the person wasn’t a total idiot."

Give Me That Old-Time To Do List

"To Do" lists must be an important part of the human condition (1. Hunt 2. Gather 3. Eat 4. Sleep), which surely explains even the earliest office management software included an automated To Do list.

But it turns out that some of us can't handle automated To Do lists (my own automated list still has items from 2008).  We have, perhaps shamefully, gone back to paper lists. Is there hope for us?

Now comes an app that allows you to automate your paper To Do list. Legal Technology News writes about  Retro List:

If you feel absolutely compelled to use dye suspended in solvent and fabricated treeware to make lists, you go for it. Once you've written your list the old-fashioned way, whip out your iPhone, open Retro List and take a picture of your opus. Click "manage" to view your digitized list. Then swipe your finger on the screen to cross out completed items. Problem solved!

Image: Actual list from Johnny Cash, courtesy of Julien's Auctions.

Image Hat Tip: Lists of Note

How Not To Respond To A Letter From Your Law School Suggesting You Might Be Litigious

Sue. Here's the apparent trigger language from a letter from Wake Forest Law School Executive Associate Dean for Academic Affairs to law student Dan Skinner:

From my experience with you on this issue, if people disagree with you, you appear to assume that those persons are acting in bad faith and you accuse them of fraud and deceit.

HT: Above The Law