Emory University’s law school says it is looking into allegations that law professor and Rabbi Michael Broyde used a fake identity to comment on online publications and blogs, promote his own work and join a rival rabbinical group’s listserv.

The English-language version of Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper has more on the allegations here. According to Haaretz.com, he made up the name “Rabbi Hershel Goldwasser” to “laud work he had written under his own name.”

Emory’s prepared statement read: “The allegations regarding the conduct of Professor Michael Broyde are concerning to the Law School. We are currently reviewing the matter and plan to issue a statement once our inquiry is complete.”

Broyde responded to the Daily Report today via email, “I am sorry, but I am in the no comment mode now. Maybe in a week something different.”

According to Emory’s website, Broyde teaches classes in legal methods, family law and Jewish law. He earned his law degree from New York University and was ordained by Yeshiva University.

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U.S. News & World Report’s law school rankings are out and the legal blogosphere is abuzz.

The magazine is using a new rankings system, in which graduates’ job placement rates now make up 20 percent of a school’s ranking. The top 20 spots showed little movement–Yale Law School is still number one and Harvard (No. 2) and Stanford (No. 3) switched spots—but this has shaken up the rankings of law schools further down the list.

That said, not much changed for Emory, the University of Georgia and Georgia State’s law schools, which are ranked in the top 100. Emory rose one spot to 23; UGA Law rose a spot to 33; and GSU Law jumped 4 spots to 54.

The National Law Journal gets into the details of the rankings.

Above the Law takes a different tack, delving instead into the drop in LSAT scores and grades that a number of law schools reported from applicants. Is the applicant pool to law schools dumbing down because people with great grades and great LSAT scores have better things to do?, asks Elie Mystal, drawing on Constitutional Daily’s crunching of the year’s statistics.

Emmet Bondurant of Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore told students and attorneys at the University of Georgia Law School Saturday that they should do pro bono work because they care, not because their firms require it or provide them with a pro bono partner to facilitate the effort.

“You ought to be seeking out those opportunities for yourself. You don’t need a pro bono partner to say you have to do it,” Bondurant told an auditorium full of students and lawyers at the 8th annual Working in the Public Interest conference at UGA law school.

Bondurant spoke during a program titled “A higher calling: the importance of pro bono efforts in the legal profession.” Sitting beside Bondurant on the panel was Mary Benton, Alston & Bird’s pro bono partner. Also on the panel: Cynthia Adcock, constitutional law professor at the Charlotte School of Law; Lonnie Brown, UGA legal ethics professor; Andrew Vail, partner with Jenner & Block in Chicago.

“If it’s something you care about, do it,” Bondurant said. He noted his own firm is smaller and doesn’t have a pro bono department. “When young lawyers come into a firm there ought to be a presumption that they’re adults. They shouldn’t be handed something on a platter for their own interests,” he said. But he told the group young lawyers can “do well by doing good.”

Bondurant talked about his own pro bono work, starting in the early 1960s – soon after his 1959 graduation from UGA law – when he took on the loyalty oaths being required by the state in the anti-Communist paranoia of the times. And he mentioned a recent cause, representing Guantanamo detainees being held indefinitely without charges filed.

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The University of Georgia School of Law managed to do what UGA’s football team came heartbreakingly close to doing– win a national championship.

The law school brought  home the trophy from the 23rd Annual National First Amendment Moot Court Competition  at Vanderbilt Law School in February. Third-year law students Katie A. Croghan, from Dumfries, Va., and Mary Beth Martinez, from Milledgeville, lead the team to victory, competing against a field of more than 30 teams from across the country, according to a news release from the law school.

“Katie and Mary Beth really shined during all seven rounds of the competition,” Georgia Law Advocacy Director Kellie Casey said in the news release. “I am so proud of them for their outstanding performance.”

The competitors argued a hypothetical case over whether the act of tattooing is protected under the free speech clause of the First Amendment. They also argued the constitutionality of a city ordinance requiring tattoo artists to have a medical license.

Attorneys, professors and students will gather at the University of Georgia Law School March 2 for the Eighth Annual Working in the Public Interest Law Conference.

An announcement on the UGA website says the event will address gun control, homelessness, affirmative action and alternative courts.

The daylong event starts at 9 a.m. in the law school’s Harold Hirsch Hall. It will highlight “dynamic, creative ways to combat social injustice through the vehicle of the law,” says conference organizer and third-year law student Cari Hipp, in a news release.

The conference concludes with a keynote address by Aimee Maxwell, executive director of the Georgia Innocence Project, 6 p.m. at the Melting Point in downtown Athens.

Registration is $10 for the public and free for university faculty, staff and students. CLE credit is available.

Register at http://ugawipi.wordpress.com before Feb. 28.

News release:
http://law.uga.edu/wipi/

Schedule:
http://www.law.uga.edu/news/16358

Our colleagues at The Blog of the Legal Times, and another legal blog, Law And More, have taken note of a Craigslist ad by a Stratford, Conn., law firm that will allow newly minted lawyers, including those who have not yet passed their state bar exams, to shadow their attorneys – for a fee.

Baby lawyers would pay a monthly fee to the firm for the privilege of  “watching the day to day practice of law” and observing legal proceedings.

Noted the Legal Times blog: “it is like ‘Take Your Child to Work Day,’ but if your child paid you.  Actually, it is more like ‘Take Someone Else’s Child to Work Day,’ and the child’s parents pay you since the child/lawyer is unemployed.”

Not to mention that there is no admission fee for court hearings.

The University of Georgia reports that its law school has beaten the University of Florida in an annual moot court competition between the two schools.

The event traditionally is held in late October on the eve of the Georgia-Florida football game. At this year’s contest in Jacksonville, third-year law students John Eunice from Valdosta and Jocelyn Maner from Augusta represented UGA.

UGA leads the law student series with a record of 20-8-2.  Its football team also had a good weekend, beating then-No. 3
Florida by a score of 17-9.

Trial lawyer Bobby Lee Cook delivered the 2012 commencement address for Georgia State University College of Law, telling them they have “been privileged to attend a law school that within a mere 30 years has achieved a national reputation of preeminence and a unique reputation for producing lawyers who are equipped in the art of advocacy.”

Cook advised the graduates to maintain their optimism and their honor. And he told them that as lawyers, they will have a “special responsibility in American society.” Said Cook, “I think of you as guardians of our freedom.”

Cook, who has practiced law in Georgia for 53 years and himself is a graduate of Vanderbilt University Law School, has been a “longtime college of law supporter,” according to a news item on the GSU website. Read here for more.

Robert Schapiro has been appointed Emory University School of Law’s new dean, the school announced Thursday. Schapiro, who teaches constitutional law, became the interim dean a year ago after the resignation of David Partlett.

Partlett, who’d been appointed Emory Law’s dean in 2006, continues to teach courses in torts, judicial remedies and professional liability at the law school.

Schapiro has also served as Emory University’s associate vice provost for academic affairs and as co-director of the law school’s Center on Federalism and Intersystemic Governance. He teaches courses in constitutional law, federal courts and civil procedure.

In his year as interim dean, Schapiro led an alumni retreat focusing on the major transformations in the legal profession and has overseen the launch of the law school’s new Center for Professional Development and Career Strategy, according to the announcement. The school has also unveiled a year-long juris master’s degree program for non-lawyer professionals wanting an orientation in the law.

“Emory has never had a law school dean who is as credentialed in so many different ways, whether it’s his academic performance, clerking at the U.S Supreme Court, or the quality of his scholarship,” said Ben Johnson, the chair of Emory’s board of trustees, in the announcement.

Schapiro received his B.A. from Yale University in 1984 and then his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1990, after earning a master’s degree in history from Stanford in the interim. He clerked for Judge Pierre Leval of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and then Justice John Paul Stevens of the U.S. Supreme Court. He worked as a litigation associate at Sidley & Austin in Washington before joining the Emory Law faculty in 1995.

Atlanta lawyer Michael H. Trotter gave a sobering view of the legal profession today in an interview with the New York Times. He told the Times that the future offers less work for more lawyers, lower compensation and longer hours.

Not surprisingly, Trotter’s new book is called “Declining Prospects.” The self-published book, available on Amazon, makes the case that the legal profession is reeling from a painful reshaping brought about by changing market forces. Trotter, a corporate lawyer at Taylor English Duma who has had a front-row seat on the Atlanta legal scene since graduating from Harvard Law in 1962, has long been a student of law firm economics. An earlier book, “Profit and the Practice of Law,” chronicled the rise of Big Law and its transformation from a profession to a business.

Asked about Dewy & LeBoeuf’s demise, Trotter sees “quite a few more” big firms going under in the next few years. The problem, he tells the Times, is that “there are now far more capable lawyers and law firms than there is work for them to do.” This trend is exacerbated, he says, by corporations’ realization that they can bring a considerable amount of work in house at a 35 to 50 percent savings.

The bottom line: Would you encourage your children to go to law school, the Times asks Trotter.

“I would not,” he offers.

See the full story here.