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 examining Malcolm Gladwell's (podcast) take on the LSAT. Next, I'm checking in with Mississippi College law dean Patricia Bennett to dish on her year wearing two hats as the president of the Mississippi Bar. Finally, I'm mulling over whether USC Law is a hotbed of cool-kid law students. 

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

The LSAT Gets the Gladwell Treatment

I'm not a super close follower of Malcolm Gladwell, the rare author who has broken into pop culture with his abundant theses and crazy hair. I read and enjoyed his 2008 book Outliers: The Story of Success, which examines why certain people are successful. Call me an extremely casual fan, since I haven't read his four other very popular books.

Anyway, when a source involved in the LSAT prep world emailed me last week to tell me that a new episode of Gladwell's Revisionist History podcast is all about the law school entrance exam, I knew I had to listen. Disclaimer: Gladwell's LSAT podcast is a two-parter, and as of writing this the second half hasn't been released, so I don't have the full story yet. But here's the premise: Gladwell wants to understand why the LSAT is given under such extreme time constraints. Wouldn't it be better for aspiring attorneys to have time to be thoughtful in their answers rather than rushing through 100+ questions at break-neck speed?

A familiar voice popped up during the first installment of the LSAT series: Bill Henderson, professor at Indiana University Maurer School of Law-Bloomington who has spent years examining the business of legal education and the legal industry. Gladwell apparently was inspired to tackle the LSAT after repeatedly reading this paper of Henderson's which looks at the exact same question.

In the name of research—or more likely in the name of finding a fun hook for the podcast—Gladwell and his 20-something assistant both took the LSAT. There is plenty of trash talking about who will get the higher score. (Who scores higher? Gladwell makes us wait for the second installment to find out.) To back up his theory, Gladwell looks at the world of chess, where some excel at the rapid-fire style of the game known as blitz chess, while others are tops at the classical version, which is played at a much slower pace. There is pretty much no overlap between the world's top players in each style, which Gladwell dubs the hares and the tortoises. But classical, aka, slow chess is the gold standard of the game, while blitz is lower on the hierarchy. Moreover, the lesson of the classic fable is that it's better to be a slow and steady tortoise rather than a hare. So why is getting into law school predicated on being a hare on the LSAT?

Gladwell is clearly skeptical of the exam's premise, but the next installment promises to focus on response from the Law School Admission Council, which puts the LSAT together. My guess is that the test makers will say that the LSAT, under time constraints, is a good gauge of who can quickly synthesize large quantities of information—as law students must do reading reams of legal cases. (Not to mention the fact that most law school exams are both timed and high-stakes, like the LSAT.) That said, I'll just have to wait and tune in when the next episode drops.

Dean Double Duty

Let's say you are president-elect of your state's bar association, then you get named dean of the law school where you work. Do you: A) Bow out of the president gig to focus on running your law school, or B) Spend a year handling both demanding leadership roles?

If you're Patricia Bennett, you take Option B. Bennett has spent the past year as both dean of Mississippi College School of Law and president of The Mississippi Bar. She'll pass the gavel off to her bar association successor in a few weeks, so I thought it was a good time to check in with her to ask the foremost question on my mind: “What the heck were you thinking?”

As Bennett told me, she was already on tap to head the bar association in 2018 when she was promoted from interim dean to permanent dean, and she did fess up to harboring some concerns about how she would manage it all. But she never seriously thought about foregoing the opportunity to head up the bar, in part because she had been involved in the organization her entire career. There was another reason: She is the first African-American woman to serve as president of the Mississippi Bar and she felt it sent a positive message to the law school, the bar, and the state to break that ground. Bennett said she hasn't come across any other law deans who simultaneously served as bar presidents, so it's possible she is a first. (I haven't heard of any other deans doing both either.) I asked Bennett what the hardest part of filling both roles has been. Here's what she said:

“Having more travel has been hard, and being away from the law school a bit more has been challenging. I've attended national bar presidents meetings, other regional meetings, and traveled across the state. A good part about that is I've had the opportunity to visit with a lot of alums across the state as I have traveled across the state with the bar. The MC Law alums have been very supportive when I have been in the area.”

She's spent an average of 10 hours a day in the office with an additional two hours of work at home to fulfill the many demands on her over the past year, Bennett said. She tries to put in four hours of work each weekend day on top of that. But she concedes that she could not have successfully fulfilled both roles without the support of the faculty and staff at both the law school and the bar association. She leaned heavily on associate deans to take on tasks when she couldn't, and they stepped up, Bennett said.

Now that Bennett is an expert multitasker, I asked for her best advice on how to juggle multiple demands and responsibilities. 

“Do as much scheduling in advance as you can do. I tried to set most of my calendar for this year before taking on the role as president of the bar. Some things you have control over, and some you do not. I'd look at my calendar, get the things on there that have already been set such as graduation, bar swearing in, the professionalism day at both law schools. Once those were set I'd plug in all the other things that were flexible. Advanced scheduling was most important.”

My thoughts: OK, so it's clearly doable to pull double duty. Part of what made it possible was the knowledge that the bar presidency is just a year, Bennett told me. This kind of hustle probably isn't sustainable for much longer than that. And it was good to hear that there was an upside for the law school. Bennett may not have been on campus as much this past year, but she used that time away to strengthen ties with Mississippi College's law alumni. That may well pay off down the line.

Is USC Law Where All the Cool Kids Go?

I had fun last week catching up with Roosh Williams, a former Houston-based rapper who I interviewed in 2016 when he was in his first week at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. Well, Williams is now a law graduate and is killing it. He's studying for the bar and has landed a gig with a law firm in Los Angeles where he'll work in the entertainment law practice representing musicians. A day after I checked in with Williams, I saw a story from USC Law about incoming 3L Arye Abraham—an NBA insider who breaks pro basketball news on his popular Twitter account. Abraham grew up in Beverley Hills and would run into NBA players and chat them up as a kid. Over time, Abraham cultivated relationships with some players, agents, and team officials. So now he dispenses NBA scoops on his Twitter account, which has more than 28,000 followers.

This made me wonder if USC has some sort of market on cool-kid law students. In reality, I don't think that's true. I do think its location in Los Angeles probably makes it a draw for students interested in the whole entertainment and sports law area. And I think USC Law does a good job of spotlighting its students who have interesting sidelines or backgrounds. All of which is to say that I'm sure plenty of other schools have students who are former rappers, NBA insiders, circus clowns or what have you. So celebrate those folks! I'd love to know about them.

Extra Credit Reading

The 2020 Democratic primary is chock full of attorneys, so here's a primer on which law schools have alumni in the race. (It's a lot!)

The Pipeline Parity Project, founded by Harvard law students, has rebranded as the People's Parity Project and is looking to expand to other law campuses to take down mandatory arbitration at law firms and other employers.

Law school career services officials look back on the 2008 financial crisis and how their departments are different as a result.

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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]