Legal Profession

ABA SOGI Commission

In my career as a lawyer in Davis, I had a surprising and painful but beneficial discovery of the truth of the common saying that you can't tell a book by its cover. It all started when a local bank in the community asked me to handle a case for two of its customers.

I've been contemplating a series on "Elitism in Education," but the posting of a new paper by Richard Sander and Jane Yakowitz  prompted me to change the title to "Elitism and Education."  That's because their new study, "The Secret of My Success:  How Status, Prestige and School Performance Shape Legal Careers," suggests that an elite law school education is not as important to a successful legal career as conventional wisdom suggests.  The draft

About a month ago, we wrote a column for www.FindLaw.com arguing that the influential U.S. News & World Reports law school rankings should consider the diversity of the student body in evaluating the quality of law schools. In essence, we contended that a diverse student body contributes to a better learning environment for students, and therefore should be used in measuring the quality of a law school.