The Hastings strategic plan

Larry Ribstein —  27 September 2011

The plan (HT Leiter) has got everything, down to thinking about a mascot and faculty op-eds.

But I don’t see any planning for the future of legal education in the new legal information industry Hasting’s students will have to confront. This would seem to be sufficiently “strategic” to deserve some consideration.

Here’s something they might look at.

Larry Ribstein

Posts

Professor of Law, University of Illinois College of Law

6 responses to The Hastings strategic plan

  1. 
    Gllian Hadfield 3 October 2011 at 8:17 am

    What about proposals for experiential learning throughout curriculum and using legal profession course for skills? Do people not think it’s going to add up to much?

    • 

      I don’t think this aspect of the plan is objectionable. The problem as I said in the post is the complete absence of attention to changes in the legal profession.

  2. 

    lots of words by the faculty to say “pay us more for less work”

    beyond that—how does a school that produces such a piece of !!!!!!!!!! intend to teach its students how to practice law

    for example: doe and joe want to open a breakfast and sandwich shop

    FoodTV has a better idea what a business plan requires

  3. 

    Pretty dismal signal-to-noise ratio. A quick dump from pdf to txt, shows about 2,200 words. When you look at the goals that could be measured, you get 36 words:

    First-year lawyering/legal profession course
    Increase the median undergraduate and presumptive deny GPA of applicants and reduce the presumptive deny LSAT score
    Reduce class size
    Reduce core operating expenses
    Reduce the size of the JD class

    The first is easier to measure: is there such a course or no? For the others, some numeric target would have been useful. See http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1999-02-25/

  4. 

    Hastings — come on folks — this is NOT even remotely serious.

    Just to build on Larry’s point — keep in mind – this is an institution that is just a few miles from the technology center of the entire world.

    No mention of the new legal information industry and how to “strategically position” their students for 21st Century Lawyering – just a bunch of platitudes and stale ideas.

    I hope they did not pay a mgmt consulting firm to do what this website would do for free:
    “Management Buzz Word Generator”
    http://www.stickings90.supanet.com/pages/buzzword.htm

    Here is some additional ideas they could consider:
    http://computationallegalstudies.com/2011/08/15/can-the-middle-class-be-saved-via-atlantic-monthly/

    http://truthonthemarket.com/2011/09/20/dan-katz-on-legal-informatics-corporate-law-firm-ownership-and-21st-century-legal-education/

    Best,
    Dan