It's a long, long way from Bay Mills Community College, near the shores of frigid Lake Superior, to Detroit. But distance, time and demographics aside, the school and the city are united by Bay Mills' status as the nation's only tribally controlled college that authorizes quasi-public schools, known officially as public school academies. And it's…

They are not the topics found in a conventional law review: An Austin-based journal delved into the reproductive rights of Hispanic women entering into commercial surrogacy contracts. The next issue of a University of California, Berkeley-based journal will probe the Voting Rights Act--and how it affects Puerto Ricans. A Harvard-based review once…

Legal practitioners find the leap into academia difficult. A much bigger deterrent for lawyers interested in teaching is a laborious, oft-vexing application process that places little value on work experience and interests. They also chide law school hiring committees for a lack of outreach to Asian Pacific Islanders. Law educators emphasize that…

These are tough times for the law profession. Employment prospects are the weakest they have been in decades. Wages have stagnated. Many blue chip law firms have laid off lawyers or are hiring fewer lawyers. Lately, law schools have been accused of luring students with false promises of cushy, high-paying jobs. There have been accusations of law…

Hispanics and Blacks make up about 15.1 and 12.9 percent of the U.S. population, respectively, and 3.3 and 3.9 percent of the lawyer population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau and the Law School Admission Council. On the other hand, Whites represent about 69.1 percent of the general population and 89.2 percent of the lawyer population. These…

Howard University School of Law had a problem, and school officials knew it. Over a 20-year period, 40 percent of its graduates who took the Maryland bar exam failed it on their first try. During the next 24 months--the time frame required to determine its "eventual pass rate"--almost 90 percent of the students did pass. What they did…

College graduates who do not make it into any law school are given one more chance to prove themselves: an invitation to join the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law's Pipeline to Justice program. Pipeline to Justice is the brainchild of CUNY law school's Associate Dean and Professor Mary Lu Bilek and Dean Michelle Anderson. The…

As director of the Lawyering in the Digital Age Clinic at the Columbia University Law School, law professor Conrad Johnson knows that digital technology has the power to highlight and amplify social justice concerns and to enable people to take direct action. Under Johnson's leadership, the clinic has developed and maintained the Columbia-hosted…

Recent law school graduates face the tightest job market in years. Amid lingering industrywide uncertainties, officials at some law schools are scrambling to ensure that underrepresented minorities get jobs, especially law schools not customarily tapped by the country's largest law firms. In some of the more striking measures, a dean will troop…

Offered by the University of Tulsa College of Law, the Native American Law Certificate program, launched in 1990, reflects the school's mission of trying to better serve American Indians and Alaska Natives in Oklahoma who, according to the 2006 U.S. Census estimates, make up 6.8 percent of the state's population. This number is significantly…

In recent years, corporate executives and local bar association officials have increasingly questioned why so few of the nation's elite corporate law firms can claim significant racial and ethnic diversity among their partner or upper management ranks. Some organizations have even pledged to reward law firms that ensure high-level assignments for…

Advocates for a more inclusive legal profession are worried about the recent decline in enrollment of Black students in law school. According to the American Bar Association (ABA), Blacks were 7.4 percent of all law students in 1994. By 2005, that percentage had fallen to just 6.6. Several law journal articles have suggested that the schools…

Dr. Wallace Loh still remembers the sting of hearing his high school teachers in Peru call him "el chino"--Spanish for "Chinese boy." Why didn't they simply use his name? After all, they did so with his classmates. They typically did not single out students of other foreign nationalities, such as calling the German student…