Welcome back to Ahead of the Curve. I'm Karen Sloan, legal education editor at Law.com, and I'll be your host for this weekly look at innovation and notable developments in legal education.

This week I'm bringing you the Ahead of the Curve Lightning Round, with my quick takes on some legal education stories that cropped up in the past week. I'm checking in on the law student movement to get Kirkland & Ellis and other firms to drop mandatory arbitration agreements; Ontario's decision to nix a new law school; the fallout from the latest pathetic bar pass rates out of California; and more. Read on!

Please share your thoughts and feedback with me at [email protected] or on Twitter:@KarenSloanNLJ

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Law Students Win One

Hats off the plucky Harvard law students of the Pipeline Parity Project, who managed to get Kirkland & Ellis to ditch mandatory arbitration agreements for associates and summer associates with little more than determination and a Twitter hashtag. Project leaders have been focused on pressuring law firms to get rid of mandatory arbitration since the spring, but they didn't zero in on any single firm until Nov. 13, when they unleashed the #DumpKirkland campaign, which urged classmates to boycott the firm during the summer associate recruiting season. A mere week and a half later, the firm announced it would no longer required associates and summer associates to sign those agreements. Kirkland never acknowledged that the students were the reason for the change, but it's pretty obvious that the firm didn't want to fall behind in the competitive summer associate recruiting game.

So what's next? Organizers have said they are mulling their next move and aren't afraid to target other firms that use mandatory arbitration. And why not? They scored a fast win with Kirkland. It's hard for me to imagine that others wouldn't back down just as quickly. And really, the Pipeline Parity Project has put firms on notice that it's not afraid to name names. I'd be surprised if other firms didn't ditch mandatory arbitration just to avoid any negative attention. Then again, I also thought most firms would quietly move away from those agreements last spring when students first started agitating and that didn't happen. Will it be different this time around?

O Canada

I tend not to focus too much on the 21 law schools located in our neighbor to the north. Frankly, there's more than enough news coming out of U.S. schools to keep me busy. But a few Canadian law school developments caught my eye last week. First, the Ontario government nixed what was to be a new law school at Ryerson University, citing a dearth of articling positions (that's essentially a year-long apprenticeship for new Canadian lawyers), lack of jobs and modest wage growth, and little need for a eighth law school in the province. (Does any of this sound familiar?) Ryerson had hoped for public funds to help subsidize student costs, but the government said no. The plan could still move forward without public funding, though. We shall see.

And in other Canada news, the first indigenous dean of a Canadian law school has sued her employer, Lakehead University, claiming officials exploited her background to attracted indigenous law students while also undermining her leadership. Plaintiff Angelique EagleWoman resigned from the dean's post after two years in the job.

California Dreamin' (Of a Higher Bar Pass Rate)

Will the exceptionally dismal 41 percent pass rate for the July 2018 California bar exam finally prompt changes in how the state approaches the exam and its notoriously high cut score? It was the lowest pass rate since 1951, when Google tells me a gallon of gas cost 27 cents. Law deans, the State Bar of California, and the state's high court have been grappling with the tumbling pass rate for years, so it's worth contemplating whether this will be the year that we finally see significant changes.

My colleague at The Recorder, Cheryl Miller, reported last week that Mark Stone, the chairman of the state assembly's Judiciary Committee, is calling for a renewed examination of the test. He warned that the tough exam will drive away qualified would-be law students and in turn strike a further blow to access to justice. As a refresher, the California Supreme Court, which has the final say on all things bar exam related, declined to lower the pass rate from 144 to 141 this fall despite a study finding that such a move would not harm the exam's consumer protection function. We haven't seen the pass rates yet for individual California law schools, but it's a fair bet that we will see some deans point fingers at the cut score once those figures come out. I think the solution to getting the pass rate out of the gutter is two pronged: Yes, the cut score should come down a bit, but law schools also need to take a hard look at who they are enrolling and improve bar prep.

Legal Tech on Campus

People like to knock law schools for being super traditional and slow to embrace change. Which is a fair critique. But I like to give credit when credit is due. Which is why I enjoyed this slideshow from Law.com affiliate LegalTech News recounting eight innovative class or programs that law schools launched this semester.Some of them you will recognize from this very newsletter, but I think the slideshow captures the breadth of the experimentation that's going on right now regarding how to integrate technology into the curriculum. We've got one-off boot camps to give students an overview of legal tech, we've got classes where students are creating programs to solve legal problems, and we've got law school-based projects intended to give the public access to the law. There is a long way to go in terms of updating the law school curriculum and making sure students leave campus with the tech tools they'll need to be successful 21st century lawyers, but this gives me hope that some campuses are rising to the challenge.

A Very Crafty Law School

I love quirky law school stories, like this one about the University of Hawaii William Richardson School of Law receiving two large wooden sculptures dubbed “guardians” to display in the law library. (They're pretty cool: six and eight-foot-tall abstract, curved pieces.) They were fashioned by financier-turned-master wood worker Ron Kent, whose daughter attended and now lectures at the law school. It reminded me of this earlier story about associate dean Ronette Kawakami hand stitching a jabot (lace collar) for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg with rare kahelelani Ni'ihau shells from Hawaii. Ginsburg whips out the jabot during a scene in the recent documentary RBG, recalling that it was a gift from a visit to the school. I like that the law school really embraces its unique atmosphere outside the lower 48 and infuses some personality into the school.

Thanks for reading Ahead of the Curve.

I'll be back next week with more news and updates on the future of legal education. Until then, keep in touch at [email protected]