A Day in the Life

The Journal Writing Competition

It’s getting awfully quiet around here. The upper-class students are taking their exams, and the 1Ls are finishing up their classes and getting ready to start their first forays into the legal working world. But for many of our 1Ls, there’s one last thing to do before leaving the Law School behind for the summer: the journal writing competition.

The Law School has three student-edited journals: The Law Review, The Legal Forum, and the Chicago Journal of International Law. The Law Review is published four times a year and publishes on any legal subject. The Legal Forum is a “symposium journal,” meaning that it hosts a symposium on a single topic each year, then published the articles from that symposium along with student work on the same topic a year later. CJIL publishes twice a year on international law topics, and publishes standard articles, symposium pieces, and shorter essays that might not find a home in more traditional journals.

These journals are all entirely student-managed and student-edited. A board of third-year students manages each, and the journal is staffed by second-years. These 2Ls are chosen by a writing competition that takes place immediately after exams at the end of 1L year. Students choosing to participate in the competition write a "Topic Analysis," a 10-page paper detailing the merits of a particular topic as the basis of a Comment. All three journals use the same writing competition, and students may enter for any of the journals. The topic is selected by the Boards of the various journals, and all relevant materials are provided in a packet; no outside research is permitted. For the Law Review, participating students must also complete an edit of a short sample of legal writing. Students are given about two weeks to complete the competition, and entering transfer students can enter the competition along with the other rising 2Ls.

For CJIL and Legal Forum, the writing competition is the only way staff members are selected during this summer. (All upper-class students have the opportunity to become staff members on the journals by writing a publishable article, known as a “comment,” during their 2L or 3L years.) For Law Review, 10 of the 29 students offered membership over the summer will be chosen completely based on the writing competition. The other 19 students will be offered membership based on their 1L grades and the submission of a "good faith" entry in the writing competition (described below). Because all members are required to enter the writing competition, neither members nor the Board know whether an individual student has "written-on" or "graded-on."

The writing competition isn’t easy, to be sure – students are tired from exams, and are generally starting new (and often daunting) jobs while trying to complete the Topic Analysis. But journal membership can be very rewarding and interesting, and the experience of writing and editing legal scholarship serves many of our students well in their careers. We encourage you to visit the websites of our journals and see what they have to offer.

Epstein vs. Epstein: Drug Price Subsidies

If you've spent any time at our Law School, you've probably run into Professor Richard Epstein. There aren't many people in the world like him - brilliant, energetic, unusual, totally dedicated to his students and his scholarship. We had our annual Reunion Weekend recently, and couldn't figure out who could do him justice in a debate on the pharmaceutical industry. So we had him debate himself. Intrigued? Listen here. 

Spring Quarter coming to an End!

Last night was the Graduating Students Dinner for the Class of 2007 - the first of many events to end another academic year.  The Dinner was held in the Green Lounge at the Law School with many of the members of the Class of 2007 present as well as faculty and staff.  During the dinner there were a number of awards given.  The Class Award goes to a faculty or staff member who has made a significant contribution to the Law School community and this year it went to Professor Douglas Baird.  The Class of 2007 presented the Teaching Award to Professor Adam Samaha.  This was particularly special because when the Class of 2007 started it was also Professor Samaha's first year at the Law School.  Also, the faculty members voted to be faculty hooders were Douglas Baird, Emily Buss, Lior Strahilevitz and David Strauss.  These faculty members will be "hooding" each graduate with their academic hoods.  After dinner everyone went to the auditorium to watch a slide show put together by the student graduation committee which I think had a picture of every member of the class!  The Dinner is a nice way to end the year and to kick off the graduation festivities.  The Convocation and Hooding Ceremony are on Friday, June 8.  We are sad to see the Class of 2007 leave and we will miss them but we wish them the best of luck! 

Malani CBI: Valuing Laws as Local Amenities

On Wednesday, April 25, 2007, Professor Anup Malani delivered a Chicago's Best Ideas talk on "Valuing Laws as Local Amenities." Professor Malani thinks we go wrong in trying to determine the value of a law only by its direct effects - he argues that by looking at the effect that any given law has on wages and property values, we can determine the relative value of all laws. This allows us to treat laws just like any other community amenities, such as the fixing of potholes or the building of a swimming pool. Listen to the talk here, and read the full blurb below:

"The conventional approach to evaluating a law is to examine its effect on proximate behavior.  To evaluate a criminal law, for example, this approach would look to its effects on the crime rate.  In this lecture, Professor Malani argues that laws should instead be judged by the extent to which they raise housing prices and lower wages.  The logic is that the value of a law, much like the value of a lake or a public school, is capitalized into local housing and labor markets.  Desirable laws increase housing prices and decrease wages because more people want to live in the relevant jurisdiction; undesirable laws have the opposite effects.  Evaluating laws in this manner has several advantages.  It employs a more direct proxy for what economists call “utility.”  Moreover, it accounts for all the effects of a law, including hard-to-measure outcomes, unintended consequences, and enforcement costs."

Photogenic Students

People ask me (as the Director of Communications for the Law School) where we get the photographs for the many publications we publish. Often, people assume that all of the photography that schools put in viewbooks and alumni magazines is staged in elaborate photo shoots to make the building look beautiful, the students look friendly, the faculty look kindly, and the weather look sunny every day of the year. I won't kid you - we do some photo shoots with lights and backdrops. But mostly, those are to get the fancy headshots of students and faculty that grace our web profiles or are included in the Viewbook. Most of our photos come from a photographer attending events at the Law School and are true slices of life from what goes on here every day, albeit snapped by a professional.

Some days, however, serendipity takes over. I got an email the other day from one of our students saying, "If you have the Law School camera, come out to the front lawn where a bunch of photogenic 3Ls are playing bocce." Indeed, there were five of our third year students, enjoying a beautiful day on the lawn. I was lucky enough to catch them in action, completely unstaged (except for the fact that they probably used better bocce form when the camera was around!).

Where will these photos end up? Who knows. Maybe in our Viewbook, to show prospective students one of the ways our students have fun. Maybe in the Glass Menagerie (our student facebook), to remind our current students and faculty of a nice day in the Spring of 2007. Maybe on our website for the whole world to see. But to me they will always be a reminder not only of how much fun our students can be, but how nice it is that they think of the Law School's photography needs when they see something great going on!

Thurgood Marshall as Solicitor General

The Black Law Students Association has been presenting a series of talks in honor of the 40th anniversary of Thurgood Marshall's appointment to the Supreme Court. The speaker's list has been impressive, and the third entry into the series is no exception. Drew Days III, former U.S. Solicitor General (under President Clinton) and Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights (under President Carter), delivered the third address in the series on April 5, 2007. Professor Days spoke about Justice Marshall's career as a Solicitor General of the United States. Listen to the talk here.

Decision Day

So May 1 has come and gone, and by now hopefully you have figured out where you are going  next year! I thought you might be interested in hearing what decision day is like from our perspective. 

The week before the deadline is a relatively quiet one, as most of our file reading and recruiting is finished, and admits have mostly finished their campus visits, questions, and research. We spent some of the week trying to predict how many responses we will receive, running reports, calling friends at other schools and comparing this year to previous years. If the data looks similar to last year, we worry about the similarity, and if it is different, we speculate about the difference (for example, our admit weekend was two weeks earlier last year and overlapped with Northwestern...did that affect anything?) The week is also spent readying our waitlist for any openings after the deadline. This is always exciting, because everyone on the committee has favorites they are pulling for, and it invariably leads to passionate and sometimes heated discussion.

Because of the uncertainty, excitement, and massive effort involved in recruiting, this time always reminds me of the time right after exams: you've tried your hardest, but you regret the things you could have done better; the blog posts you didn't write, the new programs you didn't publicize, or the admits that you wanted to talk to. There is never enough time to get everything done!

One unique aspect of our deadline is that we do not require a money deposit. This is a long tradition, as we are uncomfortable taking $500 from our cash-strapped admits to hold their spots in next year's class. Our response form has three options that students can select:

• Option 1 states that they will definitely attend, and can see no reasons that would prevent them from attending;
• Option 2 states that they will probably attend, but have conditions that may prevent them from attending (the condition is often a waitlist at another school, a family uncertainty, or a financial concern;) and
• Option 3 states that they will not attend the University of Chicago Law School next year and would like to be withdrawn from our process. 

We have found this system very good at helping us determine our class, and allows us to know who may drop out over the summer. $500, while useful in other ways, doesn't do that!

You will be happy to know that we also eagerly await every day's mail, as this time of year can bring up to 20 response forms a day. We also receive many forms by email and fax, so we are constantly checking for updates as the days go on. Amazingly, we never get any response from a small number of admits, I hope that those future lawyers learn the importance of deadlines and responsiveness before appearing in court!

Olympics in Chicago?

Many of us at the Law School were excited to hear Chicago was chosen to be the official bid city of the United States for the 2016 Summer Olympic games. The International Olympic Committee announced its decision a little over a week ago; the final decision for will be held in 2009 when Chicago will vie to be the host city with cities such as Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, and Madrid competing. The repercussions of such a decision will be enormous for Hyde Park and the Law School, as the Olympic stadium would be built nearby Washington Park. Over the next few years, Mayor Daley and the city will undergo serious efforts at further beautifying Hyde Park, making it a truly marketable location for the Summer Olympics' most important venue. We are looking forward to these improvements as well as waiting to see if, as many expect, Chicago will be selected. If so, plans are already being made for 2016 reunions in Hyde Park! The fact that Chicago is being considered further attests to the exciting nature of the city and makes everyone here feel a little more proud of our home.