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January 14, 2010
More on law schools providing value some day and hopefully before we all die.
Or, "You Got Anyone On That Campus Who Can Chew Gum, Cite-Check, And Look You In The Eye At The Same Time?". We note that practical skills are being mentioned more in writings about law school education. Bravo. Show us. We're tired of wasting our money.* Last month we wrote about American law schools--and this time only a few people complained. More recently we noticed these: "Problems in the law school 'business plan'" at From Burke to Kirk and Beyond, which shares a few things in common, mostly good, with this blog, and "The changing face of the early stages of law practice" at Libertas et Memoria, which comments on the recent ABA story about a possible new premium placed on practical skills that got us so excited we forgot to fire people last Friday.
Finally, an interesting excerpt from FBTK:
Law schools will be the last to abandon speculative debt as the means of financing themselves through their willing applicants, because a very large number of applicants are smarty-pants who couldn't make it as scientists, engineers, bankers, financiers, etc. The applicant doesn't realize how speculative his investment is until he is one to four years in.
*WAC? could care less about student debt. Your problem, Teacups. Don't any of you have family money? Enrique, would you be good enough to decant the Port? Kindly leave the bottle as well.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:44 PM | Comments (2)
January 13, 2010
More Plural Life
Whether you're a Baptist, Neo-Platonist, property law professor, or average philanderer struggling to get by, forget about HBO's "Big Love" and learn something. Brooke Adams, a Salt Lake Tribune reporter, tells us almost daily about The Plural Life. Start with her piece yesterday on "Young’s Plan":
Sally Denton, in her book “Faith and Betrayal,” observes that Brigham Young “launched the most ambitious communal socialist society” in America’s history.
She could have been describing the community in Short Creek, now known as Hildale and Colorado City, and the United Effort Plan Trust when she writes about Brigham Young’s plan. This is how the UEP Trust, at least in its inception, was designed to function — and also sheds light on why the states’ efforts to reform and reorganize it have alienated FLDS residents. From Denton:
“Young decreed that there would be no private ownership of land, since it belonged to God. The harvest would be placed in communal storage for distribution according to individual needs.” And:
“. . . There would be no private ownership of property in what one of [Brigham] Young’s clerks described as this ‘place where the land is acknolwedged to belong to the Lord.’ and each man would be assigned two plots, one for a home and one for a farm. . . ."
Posted by JD Hull at 03:00 PM | Comments (0)
January 12, 2010
"France as a model?"
As an economy? No, not yet. But we'd love it here at WAC? if the French would get back to work. Sixty-five years is a long holiday, even in Europe. President Sarkozy, a reformer who continues to impress working Yanks, wants that to happen. He's just never been sure how to get there. But the man can sell. See at Richard Lewis's Cross-Culture this week something by Jacques Méon. Excerpts:
Indeed, the French Economy has been more resilient than many other developed countries and President Nicolas Sarkozy has been quick to state that France has been one of the countries that best resisted the crisis.
The situation is in fact not that rosy and 2010 and beyond will hold many challenges for the French Economy. The pick up from the crisis is actually quite slow and quarterly GDP growth projections for 2010 are between 0.3 and 0.4%.
France is living beyond its means and President Sarkozy has again recently insisted on getting them through. One of these reforms will be the delicate one on retirement age and pension benefits, but at a time of slow economic growth, implementing all the planned reforms will not be easy.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:33 PM | Comments (0)