National Jurist - November 2008 - (Page 4) FREESPEECH Letters to the Editor Ranking methodology questioned I was very pleased to see your magazine publish an article about practical training in legal education in the September issue. Your article fits very well with recent books on legal education, “Educating Lawyers” published by the Carnegie Foundation and “Best Practices in Legal Education,” published by the Clinical Legal Education Association. And, I should add of course that I was pleased to see the University of New Mexico rank number 14 in the ranking of clinical opportunities. We are very proud of our commitment to clinical legal education and its role in preparing students for the practice of law. However, I was puzzled by the methodology used to count clinical opportunities. At the University of New Mexico, a six credit clinical experience is a graduation requirement so that 100 percent of our students participate in clinics. We offer as a minimum as many clinical spots as there are students going through our program. In addition, students may choose to participate in an externship placement for up to six additional credits and students may be invited to take an advanced clinic offering for up to three credits. I do not believe that these additional clinical opportunities were reflected in the article, at least for the University of New Mexico. In addition, I found it interesting that the article said that the top school offers 90 percent of its student body the opportunity to participate in a clinical program. In schools like the University of New Mexico, CUNY, UCD and other schools that make clinic a graduation requirement, 100 percent of students participate. I thus found the ranking puzzling. This is not to suggest that the schools ranked do not offer excellent programs. Rather the quantitative data used to rank the schools fails to take into account the overall law school program design and commitment, and fails to recognize schools with required clinics. Certainly, schools with required clinics demonstrate a significant commitment to practical training. Again, please keep up the good work in publishing articles that recognize the importance of practical training. Ensuring that law school’s training is effective inures to the benefit of clients who will someday be served, and highly skilled and ethical lawyers are very important to the future of our justice system. Antoinette Sedillo Lopez Association Dean for Clinical Affars University of New Mexico School of Law tasks: writing memoranda on a pertinent legal issue. I seem to get a lot of mixed messages from many sources — professors in law school insist lawyers are allowed to comment academically about anything they want, while Mr. Velvel believes John Yoo possibly could face the gallows for his work. What’s more, the comparison to German and Japanese war criminals of the 1940s as quoted by Mr. Velvel should be offensive to all readers of The National Jurist, myself as a scholar of the Holocaust and American lawyers and historians everywhere as the unspeakable brutality of criminal acts in World War II cannot compare to today, even to the admitted atrocities in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere. World War II atrocities were the systematic and mechanistic elimination of entire peoples, which has not occurred in the Middle East on such a scale, perhaps since the Iran-Iraq War or even as far back as the Armenian genocide. I find it even more saddening that Mr. Velvel is not asked to identify the evil cohort’s “crimes” in this piece, it is just assumed they committed atrocities worth at least planning for prosecution of their actions. While I have no problem with “creative lawyering” or skillful brainstorming of ideas to get what one wants (after all, my contracts/remedies professor commented on one of her most brilliant mentors that he would brainstorm 20 wacky ideas for every issue, and only one of which was possibly feasible and a winning argument), I am still sad to see such positive coverage of a conference like this. Even if Mr. Velvel believes American society is too prone to warfare, this type of partisan conference will only create needless fervor. Mr. Velvel needs to start with defining the “crimes” of his parade of horribles to see if they are really as bad as those he compares them to, and The National Jurist needs to start asking him tougher questions of his motivations and strategy on putting on such a conference. Jonathan Medina American University, Washington College of Law, JD class of 2009 Disappointed in war crimes coverage As a consistent reader of The National Jurist since I started law school, I now as a third-year am disappointed to see coverage of a conference on prosecuting high level American war criminals, especially John Yoo. Mr. Yoo simply wrote a memo on the definition of torture, he is not a “war criminal” by any stretch of the phrase. Even if one wants to prosecute Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld, a much stronger case would be made to leave Mr. Yoo out of this. He was simply performing everyday legal Correction 15 Rules First Years Must Know & Best Law Schools in Practical Training We reported the wrong data for THE ULTIMATE GUIDE to two firms in the “Guide to the Legal Employers Top 100 Legal Employers” in the September issue of The National Jurist. Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP hired 135 entry-level attorneys firm-wide in 2007. Hogan & Hartson LLP hired 61 entry-level attorneys firm-wide in 2007. T H E M A G A Z I N E F O R L AW STUDENTS SEPTEMBER 2008 VOL. 1 8 , NO. 1 The most prestigious. The highest-rated. The best firms to work for. We have compiled all the info into one handy guide on the 100 largest legal employers. 4 THE NATIONAL JURIST November 2008 http://www.animalbillofrights.com http://www.animalbillofrights.com
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