ABA Journal:  Law schools would have to publish on their websites the percentage of students whose scholarships are renewed under a proposal being considered by the ABA section overseeing accreditation.

The ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar disclosed it is considering the idea in a second response to U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who has posed two sets of questions to the ABA about its oversight of law schools, according to an ABA press release.

ABA President Wm. T. (Bill) Robinson III introduces the response  with a letter assuring Grassley that the association remains committed to helping law grads find rewarding legal careers.

The Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar operates independently of the ABA in accrediting law schools for the U.S. Department of Education. Its response says the section does not have any requirements for the renewal of law school scholarships, but it is moving to collect additional data through changes in annual law school questionnaires. The section is also considering a proposal to require schools to publish on their websites specific data about scholarship retention rates.

ABA Journal:  A new initiative called Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers is encouraging law schools to experiment with interactive classes with the goal of producing more “practice-ready lawyers.”

Launched last week, Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers promotes innovative teaching with a new website to help educators learn from each other. The project is also planning conferences where law professors can share ideas.

Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers is managed by the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System at Denver University, a national independent research center dedicated to improving the civil justice system, according to a press release and a brochure. Sixteen law schools are partners in the initiative, including the University of Denver Sturm College of Law and Stanford Law School.

Dan Drayer is director of marketing and communications for the IAALS. He worked with the group’s executive director, former Colorado Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Love Kourlis, to respond to our questions about the program by email. Here is the Q&A, edited for length.

ABA Journal: What is Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers? An initiative, a website, or both? What are the goals?

ABA Journal: Evidence is the most useful elective law school course, according to an email survey of George Washington University law school alumni.

The school asked about 13,500 alumni to list their most useful elective courses and the courses they wish they had taken, report the Volokh Conspiracy and the Wall Street Journal Law Blog. There were 576 responses to the January survey (PDF), according to a summary (PDF).

The top five most useful electives identified by alumni were:

1) Evidence (156 votes)

2) Administrative law (120 votes)

3) Corporations (105 votes)

4) Trial advocacy (71 votes)

5) Federal income tax (47 votes)

The top courses alumni wish they had taken were…

Law.com:  The alarming decline in recent law school graduate placement has received much attention lately, including an instructive July 11 article in The Wall Street Journal, “Law Schools Get Practical,” noting that more than twice as many people passed the bar exam in 2010 (54,000) as there were legal job openings in the United States. Perversely, at the same time, law schools are prospering financially on the backs of their students by substantially increasing both tuition and enrollment, as The New York Times found in a July 17 article, “Law School Economics: Ka-Ching!“

The current recession is, of course, a prime reason for the diminution in available jobs. But The Wall Street Journal article also correctly focuses on another major issue — the disconnect betweencontemporary law school education and the skills needed to be an effective, and therefore employable, lawyer. Unlike other professional schools, such as medicine and business, law schools continue to teach primarily based on a 19th century theoretical model that is good at developing critical legal thinking but severely lacking in teaching practical skills. That void is particularly acute in the business and corporate area.

ABA Journal: The law professor who accused his colleagues throughout legal education of scamming law students has revealed his identity: He’s Paul Campos of the University of Colorado Law School.

When Campos began blogging this month at Inside the Law School Scam, he identified himself as an anonymous tenured law professor “located within a good regional university with some nationally recognized departments.” Since then, he has ruffled some feathers with his assertions that many professors have only superficial knowledge of their subjects and spend little time preparing for class. “When people say ‘law school is a scam,’ what that really means, at the level of actual moralresponsibility, is that law professors are scamming their students,” Campos wrote as the anonymous author.

Campos confirmed he is the author in an email to the ABA Journal. His corroboration comes after TaxProf Blog noted Campos had identified himself in a roundabout way—through a reference to his work on a post at a different blog. A link goes to the post, which lists Campos as the author.