Scam on the Beach: The 2014 SEALS extravaganza at the Omni Plantation Resort on Amelia Island.

Every year around this time, 750 or so law professors from all over the country assemble at a tropical seaside resort for the SEALS (Southeastern Association of Law Schools) Convention to enjoy a week of schmoozing, boozing, banquets, and watersports. Last year’s bash was held at the Breakers in Palm Beach, Florida, and was profiled here. This year's bash is currently in progress at the Omni Plantation Resort on Amelia Island.

But this event only seems like a callous and disgraceful indulgence, ultimately paid for by heavily indebted law students. In reality, society benefits from the many workshops and colloquia held amidst the pampering. It is face-to-face encounters that stimulate great minds, and legal education would suffer if law professors were forced to share their non-peer reviewed brilliance solely through impersonal means such as publication in journals or on ssrn, or by giving talks at their own and nearby law schools, which may not even feature oceanfront accommodations, full-service spas, or three championship golf courses. Only tanned, rested, and alcoholically lubricated law professors, fresh from a free luxury vacation, can provide the necessary optimism and energy to address the crisis in legal education going forward. 

Indeed, this year's program seems to have a particular focus on law school pedagogy itself. So it is appropriate that one of the largest out-of-state delegations to Amelia Island comes from Washington and Lee Univ. School of Law (W&L), with 16 faculty members in attendance. For the last couple of years, W&L has garnered lots of favorable publicity with its third-year "practicum" requirement, and therefore has much guidance to offer faculty from other law schools-- especially if you ignore W&L's dismal job placement record and its recent 17-place drop in the US News rankings. 

Here are a smattering of highlights from the SEALS program, with my comments in parenthesis and italics: 

Workshop on Teaching: 
Incorporating Simulations into Law School Courses: "While at one time, clinics and externships were the only option for students desiring such training, an increasing number of law schools are now offering new options, such as simulation-based practicum."

(This thing is led, of course, by a W&L law professor. Given its miserable placement record, perhaps W&L can innovate in the area of simulated legal jobs for its graduates, maybe within a virtual society like Second Life or an online role-playing game. Call it World of Lawcraft, and enable users to create their own avatar-lawyers who fight exciting courtroom battles in a heroic quest to make a living. The only drawback I can see is that you can’t pay your real-life rent in Linden dollars or honor points).

Discussion Group: Clinical Legal Education and Race: "The participants will draw upon life and practice experiences, and explain the ways in which those experiences impact their teaching. They will discuss the standard articles that have been used as teaching tools on issues of race and identify gaps that need to be addressed in future scholarship."  

(My question here: Why are they talking about "standard articles," "future scholarship," and professorial life experiences in the context of clinical legal education? How about discussing strategies for civil rights litigation instead of contemplating their navels and yapping about the alleged need for more scholarshit?)

Discussion Group: Strategies for Balancing Our Love for Work and Our Love for Life Beyond the Academy:
 "We [law professors] also have people, goals and interests outside of work that we love and that remain important priorities for us whether they are aging parents, spouses, significant others, children, sports or hobbies. At a time of decreasing enrollments and tight budgets, supporting work-life balance for professors can become a low priority. Yet, if this remains an important goal for professors, we must find ways to balance our competing priorities." 

(You know, law professors, your unfortunate students will graduate and get some kind of paying employment, and then face precisely the same issue of balancing work-life priorities. But in balancing those priorities, few will be able to draw on the big salaries, light workloads, autonomy, contemplative ease, and perks galore that you take as your due. And your dolce vita is made possible by their misplaced trust and massive debts).

Teen Pizza Party: (Does SEALS throw a family-friendly legal scholarship confab, or what? Or maybe law schools have begun recruiting teenagers to be law professors, which is an innovation I could support. The adolescents would surely work for less money than their moms and dads, and probably have better attitudes).



Discussion Group: Teaching Cross-Cultural Lawyering: "Cultural competency is critical for students who will practice in a range of substantive areas and encounter clients who differ from them in race, nationality, gender, age, education level, religion, and economic status. Teaching cross-cultural lawyering skills can be particularly fraught with challenges, and the lessons imparted often hinge on the cultural, racial, and gender identity descriptors of the teachers and students. Our discussion group will focus on strategies for teaching cross-cultural lawyering skills in a variety of clinical and non-clinical contexts. Discussants will share exercises, materials, and perspectives related to teaching effective cross-cultural skills, focusing in particular on applying lessons to a range of practice settings and enhancing student reception to these concepts."

(Ain’t that a mouthful? I can help conceptualize the practice of “cross-cultural lawyering” for all these oh-so-progressive discussants. Regardless of race, gender, or creed, what every client wants from her or his lawyer is a favorable resolution to her or his legal problem. Yes, a client wants that even more than she or he wants to be represented by a lawyer who weeps tears of empathy for the historical or ongoing oppression of the client's identity group, or its rich contributions to civilization). 

Discussion Group: Teaching Methods to Help Students Develop A Professional Identity: "Law faculty members have begun to focus on the development of professional identity in law students. . . .Panelists will propose specific methods that can be employed by any professor (regardless of the level of experience) in either doctrinal or clinical courses."

(The snark mostly writes itself here, but I would also point out that one of the professional identity discussants is Dean Luke Bierman of Elon Law School. Elon has one of the worst job placement rates among the country's law schools as measured by full-time, long-term bar-required jobs, with a mere 32% of Elon grads landing such positions within 9 months of graduation. So perhaps Dean Bierman is well-suited to broaden the discussion to include professional identity formation for waiters, baristas, and ESL teachers abroad, the likely fate of many Elon JDs). 

Summer Study Abroad Programs: Advantages & Perils:
 "Many law schools offer summer study abroad programs in places ranging from Korea to Paris. In this panel, faculty who have been involved in setting-up or coordinating summer study abroad programs discuss the promises, perils and pitfalls of such programs."

(I can save the discussants 90 minutes. The "advantage" of law school study abroad programs is that they provide a nice income stream for the school and yet another free working vacation for the lucky faculty advisors. The "peril" is that either the participants or interested observers will realize that it is all a dirty scam). 

Prospective Law Professors Workshop: Maximizing Your VAP/Fellowship/LLM: (Prof. Marcia McCormick (SLU) is one of the speakers, a person so high-minded that she once defended five-figure summer research stipends for law professors solely in terms of public good, commenting that "I think there is great value in legal scholarship. The public benefits by getting legal and government structures that make real people's lives better. Students benefit from the scholar's ability to turn chaos into order and communicate both the chaos and the order to someone who hasn't done the same work." So when Prof. McCormick uses the term "maximizing," she doesn't mean that in some vulgar careerist sense, she means maximizing order out of chaos so as to produce legal and government structures that make real people's lives better).

Finally, anyone who writes about the law school scam feels a special glow at the mere sight of the words "Indiana Tech." So I was pleased to notice that the SEALS convention will be graced by the presence of recently resigned Dean of Indiana Tech Peter Alexander as well as by hip-hop and sports law specialist andre douglas pond cummings, the interim Dean. Alexander will be a speaker on a panel entitled "The Role of Advocacy in the Modern Law School," which "will address the question of whether advocacy continues to be relevant to legal education and to the practice of law." andre douglas pond cummings, will be a discussant on a panel entitled "What is the Role of Trust in the Marketplace?"

I am not an academic or a discussant, but I would venture to say that trust has a very, very important role in the marketplace. No scam would be possible without it.