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 delving further into the matter of law school naming rights and all the sticky issues that go along with them—spurred by recent drama at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. How do you determine the right donation amount to trigger a rebrand? How will students and alumni react? And what happens when donors get mad? Next up is a look at the newly published law text "The Mueller Investigation and Beyond," which uses the special counsel investigation and report as a law school capstone, pulling together an array of legal issues and showing students how they work in the real world.

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

The Ins and Outs of Law School Naming Rights

Last week was all about donations and naming rights. I covered the ongoing pushback against the decision by the University of Pennsylvania Carey School of Law to adopt the "Carey Law" shorthand after accepting $125 million from the W.P. Carey Foundation. (Some students and alumni want to revert back to the "Penn Law" nickname. They sort of got their wish Monday when the school announced a compromise under which it will temporarily return to "Penn Law" before moving to "Penn Carey Law" in 2022.) Then I took a deeper dive into the world of academic naming rights and where law schools come in on this trend. The Cliffs Notes version: Law schools have caught on that there is big money in naming rights, and we're going to see more law school rebrand to honor donors. You can also find a cool timeline of all law school naming donations here. I'm not going to rehash all the ground I covered in those stories, but believe it or not, I think there's still more to say on this topic, which I personally find intriguing. So I'll use this week's briefing to highlight a few of the key points that emerged from my reporting and last week's events, plus add a little more context that never made it into print.

➤➤ There are consultants who specialize in figuring out how much naming rights are worth for academic programs. I guess this makes sense, given you can hire a consultant for just about anything these days. But it still surprised me to learn this is an actual specialization. I had an illuminating conversation with Terry Burton, who has a consulting firm called Dig In Research, who has done this type of consultation for 50 or 60 academic entities, including a half dozen law schools. I came away from that interview with a better sense of how complex settling on that naming rights figure can be. It's based on a lot more than just a school's position in the legal education pecking order. Not only that, but a naming rights projection isn't a static figure. Burton told me he gives clients a fairly narrow value range once he has conducted his analysis, but that range is only recommended for a period of 12 to 18 months, he said. After that, circumstances may have changed enough that his estimate is no longer accurate.

➤➤ Those big ticket donations generally aren't coming from attorneys practicing in the traditional legal space. Again, this one makes sense. Traditional lawyers generally aren't making the kind of money that gives them the ability to bestow a donation at naming-level amounts. Of course, there have been some recent naming gifts that came from donors who made their fortunes in legal practice. But, increasingly, those gifts are coming from sources who generated wealth elsewhere: real estate; finance; media.

➤➤ Big money, big problems. I included four examples in my longer naming rights piece of what can go wrong when a law schools renames for a donor. I'm not going to repeat those here. But I had to chuckle when, as I was putting the finishing touches on that piece, I saw this story about a dustup between a Canadian law school and its name donor. Lawyer and alum Peter Allard gave a total of $40 million to his alma mater between 2011 and 2014, and the school was renamed the University of British Columbia Peter A. Allard School of Law. Now, Allard has sued because the law school's diplomas don't include the Allard name, as he claims was agreed to in 2014. I share that example because it illustrates the importance of being thorough when negotiating agreements with donors. One thing I heard over and over from deans—and from Burton, the consultant—is that the devil is in the details and each party needs to be clear about their expectations and terms before signing off on any agreement. My thoughts: All of this leads me back to the still-festering dispute at Penn. I think the law school was in a difficult position in terms of satisfying both a major donor and the law school community. You can see it from the school's perspective: $125 million is tough to turn down, and it's going to come with some strings. I can understand why the W.P. Carey Foundation wanted its name attached—even as a nickname—after making that level of investment in the school. On the other hand, administrators had to know that students and alumni are very partial to "Penn Law" and don't want to walk around in "Carey Law" sweatshirts. My read is that they did expect some pushback on Carey Law, but perhaps not to this extent. "Penn Carey Law" is inelegant, but I think the students and alumni deserve to have "Penn" back in the mix.

SPONSORED BY ALM

Thought Leader in Emergent Technologies Added to Legalweek Keynote Lineup

With a gift of clearly explaining complex—and confusing—technologies, Blockchain researcher Bettina Warburg (Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Warburg Serres Investments and Animal Ventures) joins the keynote line up at Legalweek New York. READ MORE

The Muller Investigation: The Text Book

With impeachment hearings captivating the nation, it's a fitting time to check back in on the Mueller Investigation. The resulting 448-page report might seem like yesterday's news, but a new law school textbook makes the case that there are timeless legal lessons to be learned from the nearly two-year inquiry. Six law professors from five campuses—plus one law firm partner—pulled together over six months to author the text, titled, "The Muller Investigation and Beyond," which came out last month. Leading the effort was Stetson University College of Law professor Ellen Podgor, who used the new volume to teach a one-credit course over three days in October.

The idea behind both the course and the book is that the Mueller investigation offers a good capstone for students—that is, a scenario that pulls together many different aspects of the law that they have studied and demonstrates how the law works in the real world. The eight chapters cover a variety of different topics, spanning from constitutional appointments and legal ethics to election law and obstruction of justice.

"Besides its high-profile nature, the Muller investigation was an interesting opportunity to create a capstone because of its unique combination of criminal issues, constitutional issues and ethics issues," said Stetson law professor Louis Virelli, who contributed a chapter on constitutional appointments. "It's an opportunity to get students to engage on a current event that's on everybody's mind in a way that draws upon their education up to that point." The book will remain relevant even as the Mueller investigation fades in the nation's collective memory, said both Virelli and Pogdor, in part because it uses the framework of that inquiry to discuss earlier legal cases touching on the similar issues. "I think it meets a need we talk a lot about in legal education—the opportunity to create coherence around a bunch of legal topics toward the end of a student's legal career, to test their understanding and see how things fit together," Virelli said. "It's a great platform for that, independent of the high-profile political nature of it right now. I think it will stand the test of time."

Extra Credit Reading

Remember the California bar exam debacle, when the state bar inadvertently disclosed the essay topics before the July test? A new report breaks down what went wrong.

Speaking of the California bar exam, the pass rate from July increased 9% to break the 50% mark.

Ensuring students understand the "rules of the game" for law school admission is one key to diversifying the legal education and the legal profession, writes Rachel Patterson, director of diversity programs at AccessLex Institute.

A student at Quinnipiac University Law School sued Facebook last week, alleging that the social media giant violated his First Amendment rights when it removed several of his posts including the name of the alleged Ukraine whistleblower.

Thanks for reading Ahead of the Curve. Sign up for the newsletter and check out past issues here. 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]