More in the "Who Cares" Department

Following up on my last post: Dan Markel at PrawfsBlawg asks "Who cares what law professors think?"

Apparently Brian Leiter, at least with respect to the race for the Dems.

But more importantly, it may seem that not many others care...

In the last few days, there's been tons of coverage on the American Economic Association's annual meeting. But when you plug in AALS to Google News or Association of American Law Schools, you get nada or far fewer hits. Should we be concerned? Should AALS have better press releases? I seem to have arrived at a puzzle similar to the one on Steve Dubner's mind.

AALS and Academic Street Cred

Betsy has already posted (here and here) about the discussions held at AALS last week toward the formation of a new organization of academic law library directors. The discussions--both online and at the AALS conference--highlighted some questions about the purposes of the two organizations to which most academic law library directors already belong, AALL and AALS. Both organizations impose clear restrictions on the ability of subgroups to take public positions independent of the larger organization on issues within the subgroups' expertise.

The importance placed upon this discussion is shown by the fact that so many directors made the trip from the conference hotel to Fordham Law School for a brief meeting, and then made it back to the New York Hilton for the Section on Law Libraries program.

Some directors were concerned about the impact of the offsite meeting on the attendance at the Section on Law Libraries program. One law library director posted this message to the Law Library Directors listserv a couple of weeks ago, in response to the plans for a meeting at Fordham:

I cannot imagine that law library directors want to opt out of playing a role in the AALS. This is a group where we have to maintain a high profile, and an important way we do this is with the programs that the Section on Libraries and the Libraries and Technology Committee offer. These are our showcase programs at AALS for cutting edge scholarship. I fear that the Fordham meeting means that attendance of law library directors at the AALS program will be sparse, and I cannot imagine that this is going to enhance our reputation with AALS, which tracks attendance at all of the panels. If we don't support ourselves by supporting the programs that library folks are doing at AALS then how can we expect AALS to support us?

My question: do law librarians really gain any "street cred" with other law professors from their participation in the AALS meeting? Why do academic law library directors attend AALS? In other words: who cares about AALS?

Few law professors, in my experience, view the AALS conference as a significant scholarly meeting or one that is worth much of their time. This view was expressed in typically provocative fashion by Brian Leiter in 2004:

Complaints about the AALS are legion among law professors: the organization's relentless political correctness (without regard to the diversity of views among its members), its inability to stage real scholarly conferences, and its intrusive, and again largely politically motivated (when not cartel-motivated!), regulation of law schools. On one important issue where the AALS might have made a difference--namely, the growing influence of the U.S. News law school rankings--the organization's response was to put its head in the sand and tell prospective students, incredibly, that they shouldn't look at law school rankings. (The AALS is endlessly ridiculed by prospective law students for this posture, as it should be: students understand full well that prestige and reputation are important factors to consider in choosing law schools. It's a shame US News does such a shabby job in measuring it.)...

Panels in which speakers haven't prepared papers, and in which they appear to have only thought about the topic ten minutes earlier, are all too common....

See also Orin Kerr at The Volokh Conspiracy:

Over at Brian Leiter's Law School Reports, Brian comments on the upcoming Association of American Law Schools January meeting for law professors: "[M]y sense is that specialist meetings of scholars have completely displaced the AALS as the destination of choice for those looking for conferences with intellectual content. Am I wrong?" Brian is quite right. This year's panels look unusually good, but in past years I've been significantly underwhelmed.

Of course, that doesn't mean the AALS January meeting has no purpose at all. As I see it, it serves at least five critical purposes, in descending order of importance: (1) It provides law professors with an all-expenses paid trip to the city where the conference is being held (this year, New York); (2) It provides professors an opportunity to sample the culinary delights of that city (figures Solove would be way ahead of me there); (3) For conservatives and libertarians, it provides a trip to the Federalist Society's shadow conference, always held near the AALS meeting and generally rich in intellectual content (and always with lots of co-conspirators); (4) For blog readers, it puts you in town for the annual CoOp/Prawfs happy hour; and (5) It provides a chance to roll your eyes at the bland and meaningless theme the conference organizers come up with, this year being "Reassessing Our Roles as Scholars and Educators in Light of Change." Uh huh.

That said, Robert Ahdieh posts a modest dissent:

In posts preceding the recently concluded Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Annual Meeting, Brian Leiter and Orin Kerr respectively questioned the intellectual content, and suggested the underwhelming quality, of AALS conference programming - or at least that part of the "programming" that occurs in the hotel's ballrooms, as opposed to its lobby and various hallways, and at an array of nearby restaurants and bars. This critique is hardly unique to them, moreover. Rather, it seems to constitute the conventional wisdom....

Of course, there is the standard defense of the AALS annual meeting as an occasion for systematic schmoozing - a species of speed dating for law professors. (On this count, I might note that this year's venue - the Hilton New York - had some real strengths. One could basically set oneself on an infinite loop up and down the escalators at either end of the second and third floor (see the 3-D tour) - where most of the schmoozing took place - for the entire weekend.) But a defense of schmoozing would be too easy: What's not to like about it? Instead, I want to suggest that AALS may have merit of the intellectual variety, notwithstanding Brian and Orin's critique.

In essence, this possibility turns on the distinct nature of the intellectual payoff that one might get from AALS, versus the specialist meetings of scholars (e.g., the American Law & Economics Association (ALEA); Law & Society) that Brian highlights as alternative, more intellectually stimulating venues for legal academics to meet. I emphatically agree that the latter offer far better occasions to engage with cutting-edge scholarship - and, in light of the critique of AALS as a schmooze-fest, with cutting-edge scholars - in one's field. I have long described ALEA as one of my favorite conferences, given a combination of its content and format, and also enjoy the annual meetings of the American Society of International Law and the American Society of Comparative Law....

Perhaps, it occured to me, I was doing something different at AALS than I do at ALEA, ASIL, and other more focused scholarly gatherings. Perhaps I was feeding a different intellectual need. Perhaps, more specifically, the AALS annual meeting was an occasion to explore areas of general interest, lying beyond my areas of scholarly emphasis.

The AALS annual meeting, in this perspective, might be seen as a way to preserve some part of our generalist capacities as legal academics. Even as specialization - quite appropriately, in many respects - increasingly becomes the norm among legal academics, it might be that AALS offers us an opportunity to get a taste of other areas of research and study, be they one degree or many removed from our particular areas of research.

If so, it might help to justify the relatively more limited intellectual stimulation we get from AALS panels in our own field. As I heard it said repeatedly over the weekend - to one well-versed in the relevant subject, the content of most panels felt like a reporting of recent, yet familiar, research; like a review of old ground, etc., etc. To the relative outsider, however, the same panel may have offered a useful window of insight, into issues under discussion in the field.

If the need for generalist orientation to fields outside of one's narrow specialty is real--as I suspect it is--staying at a conference hotel in NYC is an expensive way to scratch that itch. Perhaps the time--not to mention the money--would be better spent reading the occasional SSRN article outside of one's field, or even listening to the odd podcast?

Don Dunn Memorial

To any OOTJ readers who might have missed the news, Don Dunn, a great librarian and legal educator, and mentor died Saturday. Read this newswire obituary. The following statement has been issued by his last law school, announcing a memorial service and a guestbook:

To all Don's friends:

The following information has been released regarding services for Don:

A memorial service for family and friends will be held 11:00 a.m., Saturday, Jan. 12, at St John's Episcopal Church, Rancho Santa Margarita, California.

The university will hold a memorial service at the College of Law in Ontario, California, on Saturday, March 8, at 2:00 p.m.

An online guestbook has been set up at donaldjdunn.legacy.com.

More details are in the message below.

It has been so gratifying to read the tributes from his friends on this list. Don was an incredible human being. I can't begin to put my feelings into words. Even during this last year, when he underwent several rounds of chemotherapy and radiation, he was constantly positive and upbeat. He fully intended to beat the cancer and return to work. Above all, he genuinely liked and cared for people -- his colleagues, the students, everyone he came in contact with. We will find a new dean, but we will never replace Don.

--ken

Kenneth Rudolf
Professor of Law and Director of the Law Library
University of La Verne College of Law
320 East D Street | Ontario, CA 91764

I can say, as somebody who first met Don when he came as an ABA inspector to my first law school, that Prof. Rudolf is not exaggerating or being overly nice in his statements. Don Dunn was a genuinely kind and honest person, and he was a wonderful mentor. I am sure he was also a great boss, teacher and dean as well. In the past 12 months, law librarianship has lost Sarah Robbins, Bob Oakley and now Don Dunn. I am so sad.

Maternal Profiling: Workplace Discrimination

Click on the title to this post to read in full a short Chronicle of Higher Education article and comments about studies showing that mothers are passed over for jobs, and are hired at $11,000 less, on average, than non-mothers (while fathers make $6,000 more, on average, than non-fathers!). You will need a Chronice password to read full text online. Sadly, I don't think it ran in the print issue for January 11. But, it does feature a link to www.momsrising.org. MomsRising has lots more stats and is an activist group combating workplace discrimination against mothers:

Although seldom discussed until fairly recently, maternal profiling is a significant and shared problem which negatively impacts vast numbers of women, particularly since a full 82% of American women become mothers by the time they are 44 years old.

The workplace impacts of maternal profiling are jaw dropping, especially given that three-quarters of American mothers are now in the workforce. In fact, the American Journal of Sociology recently reported a study which found that mothers are 79% less likely to be hired than non-mothers with equal resumes and job experiences.

Mothers also face steep wage hits and unequal wages for equal work. One study found that women without children make 90 cents to a man’s dollar, but women with children make only 73 cents to a man’s dollar. And single mothers make about 60 cents to a man’s dollar.

Even in well-paid positions, mothers face discrimination. A Cornell University study found that mothers were offered $11,000 less in starting pay than non-mothers with the same resumes and job experience, while fathers were offered $6,000 more in starting pay.

That same study also found that mothers were held to harsher work standards than non-mothers and were taken off the management track for reasons that were not justifiable when compared to the behavior of other workers.

The dirty little secret of the American workplace is that maternal profiling is alive and well and has been for a very long time. We just didn’t have words to label this form of discrimination.

MomsRising goes on to discuss how having a child can push a woman or family into poverty levels, either when the mother has to drop her outside job to take care of a newborn, or when the cost of child care when she returns to work hits: Up to $17,500 a 50 week year to care for newborns to 18 months babies. See this earlier post on child care as a work benefit at OOTJ. It's not easy being pink.

AALL Trade organization or Professional organization?

Mary Ann Archer, acting director at William Mitchell, sends a helpful analysis. Evidently, it makes a difference in anti-trust analysis whether you characterize AALL as a professional organization or a trade group. And for an association to be a professional organization, there must be qualifications on membership: education or professional qualifications. AALL with its broad membership that covers law librarians and those interested in law libraries, members in many work settings, with and without MLS and/or JD, cannot reasonably set up such qualifications. The conversations librarians have about do you need both degrees does not even reach the breadth that AALL must offer – we have members who are in firm libraries, and courts, law schools, publishers and vendors, and independent contractors and consultants. This is a remarkably broad organization, and I would not want to try to shove anybody “off the island.”

But it really made a difference to my understanding of the antitrust issue to hear that the definition of AALL as a trade group is probably why the lawyer is giving such very conservative advice about antitrust matters. I know very little about antitrust, but I will bet those of us who have researched the question, or asked faculty opinions have not correctly characterized AALL – I would certainly never have called it a trade group!

This afternoon, we will discuss the formation of a separate group, defined simply as directors of law school libraries. It might be important for us to ascertain if this would be adequate to class the new organization as a professional organization.

Us vs. Us

A colleague... No, a friend said to me the other day, “What problem is Betsy causing now?” Which greeting (thank heavens!) was followed by, “But you have a good heart” This friend has been in the AALL leadership, and I had no doubt about the “problem” referred to: My blog postings and comments on the law-lib-dir-l listserve about AALL and vendor relations.

When we end up calling each other trouble-maker, I think AALL has a problem. I was talking with another librarian the other day about the difference we see in customer service between IT and libraries. One of the comments was that the IT people seem to get so focused on managing software and hardware that they don’t look at managing the peopleware. And this leads to an us vs. them attitude, a feeling that the users are the enemy, and everything would run smoothly if they could just get rid of the people.

Wait a minute! The people, the users are the reason for the software and hardware, and for their work. The same is true of AALL. It is a member organization, and the entire purpose is to support and serve the law library community. When we – the leadership at AALL or the membership at AALL end up viewing the other half of ourselves as THE PROBLEM, our organization is doomed.

I include myself in this wake-up call. Let’s be careful here. This is not an argument about us vs. them. This discussion should be carefully kept on a level where we say, “We have a problem, let's solve it together” not “You are the problem.”

CALI Rocks Legal Ed!

OOTJ attended the CALI (Computer Assisted Legal Instruction consortium of law schools) business meeting this morning at AALS. Sally Wise presented a strong slate for the board, which was elected by acclaim, and then John Mayer made his report. 2007 was the 25th anniversary of CALI, and the organization is still growing and bustling. Having gotten memberships from nearly all the US law schools, CALI is working to build relations with overseas law schools, such as those in Taiwan. Having reached a high-water mark in lesson downloaded this year, CALI shipped CDs for law students, which boosted the number of registrations by another 25%. And by the next business meeting, John expects to have 750 lessons available.

E-Langdell (or Virtual Langdell)is available now on the CALI website (though not very high-profile yet), in a pre-beta version. By February, John hopes that E-Langdell will be in beta. In addition, CALI is making Media Notes available, free to faculty and staff, and at a small charge to students. Media Notes allows a commentator to add tags and notes to a video performance, like a moot court argument or a client counseling or negotiation session. So a professor who could not attend the event could give detailed feedback to the student in a very meaningful way. Cool product. Though John did not mention it, the podcast service and other distance ed aids are very impressive.

Having accomplished all this, CALI is now setting its sights on revolutionizing law school publishing and curricula. John gave an exciting presentation on how he sees CALI assisting in unbundling publishing of casebooks, as an example. A consortium of law profs writing pieces, chapters, lessons, and essays creates a central repository of material. Professors can then pick and choose components, organize them to suit, or even modify the existing materials to tailor them to a particular class. Using the open access case law resources developed at Legal Information Institute ( link ) and AltLaw (link) a professor could pull together a tailor-made course pack or casebook, and offer it electronically or print-on-demand at a much lower price than course books currently command. With annotations from the developers of each component, the user could also have a teacher’s manual.

There are barriers, of course. There are the cultural roots of the “lone wolf” law professor, which make collaboration a less obvious course of action. Technology can do some things to make collaboration easier, but ultimately, cooperative projects depend on building social networks.

But the largest and most problematic barrier may be the reputation and rewards system as it currently works in academia. If 29 different professors contribute to a text used in my class, whose name comes first? Who should count as a casebook author? Would creation of such materials count towards tenure or promotion? Legal education is very slow to change. And it is embedded in a larger academic community that also resists change. We will watch with great interest these developments! Programs today at AALS address some aspects of these questions, Two of the concurrent plenary programs seem relevant: Maybe the time is ripe to make rue, systemic changes to legal education!
* Taking Account of and Shaping the future of E-Expertise: Support, Assessment (featuring Professor and blogger Jack Balkin and Judge Robert Katzman.)

* Rethinking Legal Education for the 21st Century (with Prof. Vicki Jackson, attorney Robert MacCrate of the MacCrate Report, Prof. Martha Minow, Dean Suellyn Scarnecchia, scholar William Sullivan and professor and past dean Judith Wegner.

Out of the Jungle Reports from AALS in New York

Dear Readers,
OOTJ is visiting NYC for the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools. Besides the regular meetings and programs, there will be an interesting meeting to decide whether or not to establish a new association, American Academic Law Librarians' Society. A group of law school library directors from Texas got together and founded a statewide group along similar lines. The idea is to focus on current issues of interest specifically to academic law libraries, and try to avoid the reliance on vendors' support that has been hamstringing other relevant organizations. From Gail Daly:

1.) this issue of AALL's relationships with vendors (and the issue of vendor oligopoly and price gouging),
2.) the trend at Brooklyn and other schools to deny faculty tenure to directors and to plan for a day when they won't have a library (gulp!), and
3.) the issue of ABA statistics and what we should be counting as our print collections shrink and are replaced by electronic resources.

We will meet on January 4, and report back to our readers on what happens.

Happy New Year!

Only a little bit late, OOTJ wishes all our readers a Happy New Year!

Here http://dir.yahoo.com/, is a link to the Yahoo Directory on New Years’ observances. You’ll reach a collection of links about how various cultures celebrate New Year (and when they recognize the end and start of a year). Whether you celebrate New Year’s on January 1 (how arbitrary! – Why?), or in the spring sometime, or at a solstice, or your birthday, OOTJ wishes you prosperity and health and joy! You may eat black-eyed peas, round pastries, pickled herring (like my mother in law), pork, or cabbage, or you may drink in the New Year’s, or attend First Night celebrations. Or, maybe, you just spent time watching football, talking with friends and family, or going to bed early... However, whenever you celebrate (or not), may you have a wonderful new year!

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and days of auld lang syne?
For auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we'll take a cup of kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

The image of fireworks (often involved in New Year's celebrations) is from Wikipedia's article on photographing fireworks, and noted as New Years' 2002 at Seaport village in San Diego, California.

Norway's Government Requires Open Document Format

The government of Norway has announced that all government websites must use three standards to make information equally accessible to all users, whether or they purchase Microsoft or other proprietary software. Click on the link to this title to read an English translation of the Norwegian government announcement that ODF (open document format for word processing forms that users can fill out), PDF (permanent document format for materials that should stay the same) and HTML (for creating the website formatting:

[from] IT-minister Heidi Grande Røys.

"This is the decision of the government:

"* HTML should be the primary format for publication of public information on the Internet.

"* PDF (1.4 or newer, or PDF/A - ISO 19005-1) is compulsory when you wish to preserve the original layout of a document.

"* ODF (ISO/IEC 26300) must be used when publishing documents that are meant to be changed after downloading, eg. forms that are to be filled in by the user.

The site in the link and from which the English quote comes, The Inquirer, at http://www.theinquirer.net/gb dated 12/20/2007