Novalawcity

Congratulations, FAMU! College of Law Wins ABA Accreditation

The ABA Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar granted full accreditation to the public university law school on July 30.  The law school, which opened to students in 2002 and gained provisional accreditation in August of 2004, thus joins only 189 law schools fully accredited by the ABA.  Under the leadership of Dean LeRoy Pernell, the law school was recognized as the most diverse in the nation by the powerful U.S. News and World Report and National Jurist magazine ranked it seventh nationally in providing students with clinical practice opportunities. 

McNamara Dead at 93

Learn Computational Mechanics of Materials in Your Spare Time

Emerging technologies librarian extraordinaire Meg Kribble, formerly of this address, has been Tweeting about MIT Open Courseware. The initiative at MIT to put all of their graduate and undergraduate course materials online has been in place since 2002. It sprang from a desire to help create an intellectual commons, fostering collaboration in education worldwide, and it's all free!  Currently, according to the website, there are 1800 classes available.  Most of these include homework problems and exams, some feature interactive online demonstrations.  As you might expect from one of the world's premiere academic institutions, the quality overall is very high and the variety staggering.  A certain for-profit purveyor of educational audio/visual materials which bills itself as presenting the experience of the best classrooms in the world had better look to its laurels. 

Dealing with depression in higher ed

Although it focuses on the undergrad experience, NPR has an interesting story about college students coping with depression with the added pressure of their studies.  The sidebar includes some tips and some advice for getting a feel for your school's mental health services.

Hat tip: Touro Law Center Office of Student Affairs

Music education: what's the impact on lawyers?

The ABA Journal's Question of the Week last week was an interesting one for this former orchestra nerd--we're the lesser known companion to the more common band nerd. Mentioning guitarist and actor Steven van Zandt's protest to cutting of arts education funding and a correlation between those with higher incomes and musical inclination, the Journal asked:

Did you take music lessons in school? And if so, how did participation in that garage band, glee club or orchestra influence your career and outlook on life?

The answers (scroll past "related stories" to read them) from lawyers with backgrounds ranging from amateur to professional musician are really great. Some talk about how music keeps them sane while dealing with the pressure of the billable hour, and others tell how the lessons they learned as musicians have been useful in the practice of law. One lawyer noted:

A music career gives one perspective for the practice of law: musicians spend hours of time practicing for auditions, competitions, etc.  We learn that sometimes you can do everything right and still lose.  Trial lawyers learn the same thing.

Are you a Shepard Broad Law Center musician? We'd love to hear about your musical experiences in the comments!