Many states used to have a diploma privilege, but over the years all of the other states have adopted a bar exam requirement, leaving Wisconsin as the only state still with a diploma privilege.

As I have written before, I am not a fan of the diploma privilege. Its effect was to encourage/pressure Marquette students to stay in Wisconsin rather than exploring other labor markets which required a bar exam that required months of painful and joyless studying without a salary to prepare for. This distortion in out-migration meant that Marquette’s reputation was heavily regional because the geographic footprint of its alumni was comparatively limited.

As a professor, the diploma privilege was stressful. Posner writes that Marquette and UW Madison might have “less incentive to spend time drilling them on Wisconsin law than the faculty of most law schools in other states would have” because there is no pressure to prepare students for the bar exam. In fact, the opposite was true. My Marquette colleagues and I were acutely aware of our responsibilities to Wisconsin citizens. We knew that our students could hit the streets the day after graduation and set up a shingle without any bar exam “filter” or even the doctrinal review that most students get from their bar exam preparation course. Knowing that I was the “last stop” in evaluating my students’ mastery of legal doctrines, I felt significant pressure to ensure my students had really mastered the law—perhaps more pressure than I feel today knowing that my current students will have to survive one more major examination of their doctrinal knowledge before they get unleashed onto the public.

In this ruling, the Seventh Circuit revives the legal challenge to the Wisconsin diploma privilege and remanded the case to the district court for more fact-finding. Much of the opinion implicitly espouses a skepticism that UW Madison and Marquette do anything special to teach students Wisconsin law.

I understand this skepticism, but I think it’s unwarranted. From my perspective, Marquette emphasized Wisconsin law plenty. To reinforce this message, Dean Kearney’s ridiculously oppressive Faculty Activity Report form always asked us to identify how we incorporated Wisconsin law into our courses. Given that this report was tied to our compensation, I certainly got the message. I included Wisconsin-specific legal doctrines in all of my courses—even my Cyberlaw course, which is not so easy given the borderless nature of the subject material!

To be clear, I didn’t emphasize Wisconsin law to the exclusion of national legal principles. After all, some of my students were leaving Wisconsin, and I needed to prepare those students as well. As a result, it’s not clear to me if Marquette emphasizes Wisconsin law more than other schools emphasize their local state’s laws. My guess is Marquette’s balance between state and national law is fairly similar to many other schools’ balance. But we definitely taught Wisconsin law!

Others have already provided some analysis of the opinion. Some worth checking out include:

* Dean Kearney. Among other things, Joe says “I expect that on remand (and any subsequent appeal) the diploma privilege will pass constitutional muster.”

* my former colleague Christine Hurt

* State Bar of Wisconsin report

Today’s opinion was exciting for another (and wholly unexpected) reason. The opinion provides a lengthy shout-out to a 2006 post from this blog about the Wisconsin diploma privilege. It is always satisfying to be cited by a judge, and it does not happen every day for me. My works have been cited in less than a half-dozen judicial opinions, and I believe this is the first time I’ve been cited in a federal appellate opinion. And being cited by Judge Posner, one of the most esteemed jurists of our time, is especially gratifying.

Ironically, the blog post in question is hardly one of my most brilliant contributions to the dialogue. It’s a simple 3 paragraph post (partially recapping and responding to a video from a local Wisconsin station) that probably took me less than 30 minutes to research and write, compared to some of my thoroughly researched multi-thousand word entries that take over a dozen hours to write. I’ve experienced this before in the sense that my most heavily trafficked blog post of all time (and thus, one of my most widely read works ever) was a single paragraph blog post I pounded out in less than 60 minutes making a snarky point about a New York state law banning domain name sales to terrorists. It’s a fine post for what it is, but I never expected that it would get the attention it got.

These are vivid reminders that we as bloggers need to stand behind every post we make. We never know who is going to read a post (however lightweight it is) and cite it in a federal appellate opinion.

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Wisconsin is the only state that still allows graduates of in-state law schools to become lawyers without taking a bar exam (called the diploma privilege). This creates some interesting dynamics–UW and Marquette graduates have some extra incentives to stay in WI because it means they can avoid a bar exam, and out-of-state graduates/lawyers have to jump through some extra hoops just to get to the same place as in-state graduates.

This dichotomy creates controversy constantly, but it may boll over as the new state bar president has targeted the diploma privilege as part of his agenda. You can see a video on this issue here, focusing on the sad story of Arnie Moncada (name corrected per comment below), who went to Thomas Cooley Law School in Michigan, failed the Wisconsin bar 4 times, and now can’t be a lawyer in WI forever…while if he had just graduated from Marquette or UW, he’d be a lawyer now.

Personally, I always thought the diploma privilege did Marquette graduates a disservice–it encouraged students to focus on Wisconsin job opportunities in preference of other great options elsewhere. On the other hand, the diploma privilege helps UW and Marquette in the US News rankings every year (it’s hard to beat 100% “passage”).

(Thanks to Garet Galster for sending this link).

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To kick off the new category, some observations about my first two weeks as a repatriated Caliifornian:

* California is more “all-American” than Wisconsin. Let me provide 2 data points in support:

– We expected that Wisconsin would epitomize the stereotype of friendly people who welcome new neighbors with tuna casseroles or baked goods. Instead, when we relocated to Wisconsin, most of our neighbors ignored us. This isn’t a criticism, but it surprised us a little. In contrast, in our new home in Mountain View, we’ve had 3 different neighbors ply us with baked treats, and at least a half-dozen neighbors have dropped by our home unannounced just to welcome us to the neighborhood.

– On Independence Day, we went to my sister/brother-in-law’s neighborhood in Palo Alto. There, the neighborhood organized a “parade” of sorts. The parade’s theme was “Fun with Food,” so everyone in the neighborhood came out with various costumes festooned with food items (like the person wearing a box of Cheerios on her head). A fire truck (with lights flashing) led the parade and was followed by a marching band made up of neighborhood volunteers, which was followed by a volunteer flag team. Then, there were homemade floats, kids on bikes/skateboards/scooters, pets in costumes and people just marching. There were people on stilts, people walking while juggling, kids being pulled in wagons, and lots of red, white and blue. Very few people actually watched the parade from the sidewalks; just about everyone (including us) marched along. The parade then ended in the local park, where the BBQs were smoking and serving up a lunch of burgers, chips and watermelon. Then, it was time for the games–sack race, three-legged race, water balloon toss, etc. What could be more all-American than this? But, in the heart of the Silicon Valley!

(Speaking of which, my son ate like an all-American yesterday. He plowed through popcorn, potato chips, 2 big slices of watermelon (with juice dribbling down his chin onto his shirt), and 2 juicy plums (ditto). Then, he complained of a tummyache. You would think he would have known better because he’s read the Very Hungry Caterpillar many times!)

* On the subject of neighborhoods, I think of Silicon Valley as filled with lots of people in transition who are constantly moving in and out. So imagine my surprise when I learned that at least 3 of my immediate neighbors are the original owners of their homes (42 years!), another neighbor inherited the home from his parents, and we bought the home from the estate of a person who was an original owner. And the neighbors across the street have been there 25 years. So instead of being a revolving-door community, we’ve moved into a community that is way more stable than I could have ever imagined (and with even less turnover than our neighborhood in Wisconsin).

* In California, the newspaper headline reads: Technologists figure out how to bypass China’s Internet firewall. In Wisconsin, the typical Internet-related headline was: more predators found online! (there were at least a half-dozen front-page articles on that topic in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel during my 4 years there).

* Google/Earthlink are building the infrastructure to offer free wireless service throughout Mountain View. In practice, this means that every 4th or 5th street light has a little box with 2 antennae on it. Unfortunately, the network isn’t live yet, but I can’t wait to get some free wireless Internet access! (yes, I am aware of the privacy concerns, but hey–AT&T is providing our DSL service. Need I say more?)

* Our local park has beautiful trees–Palm trees, Oak trees and (my favorite) Redwoods. The amazing thing is–all of these trees are right next to each other. It’s like having 3 ecosystems, ranging from desert to chaparral to rain forest, within the span of 50 feet.

* In the past two weeks, we’ve eaten at a vegan Chinese restaurant (Garden Fresh, about 2 miles from our house), an all-vegetarian Indian restaurant (Udupi Palace, which is absolutely terrific), and an Ethiopian restaurant (Zeni in San Jose). Interestingly, the latter 2 restaurants cater to strong ethnic communities; my wife and I were conspicuous minorities when we went.

* Not a single Calfornian has yet commented on my standard attire of Tevas with white socks.

The post Initial Observations about California Living appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

In response, I got an email from Lisa Malmarowski, Director of Brand and Store Development of the Outpost Natural Foods Cooperative. With her permission, I’m quoting her response:

____________

“I really wanted to communicate with you personally about your question regarding how Outpost will compete with the national chain Whole Foods moving into our market.

It’s no secret that Whole Foods has been looking for a site in the Milwaukee area for more than 10 years. During that time, we haven’t been content to rest on our cooperative, community owned laurels. We’ve been actively improving our operations, opening new locations and striving to lower prices without compromising quality.

Outpost currently employes more than 350 people, we’re a UFCW union workplace too (unlike Whole Foods), we expect to net more than 22 million in sales from our three locations, magazine operations and catering division this year and we’re co-owned by nearly 13,000 area residents. We’re not going anywhere! We’re in a stable position, ready to compete – not just with the nationals, but also with places like Pick N’ Save, Sendik’s and other strong regional players.

We are also connected with other food cooperatives across the nation via the National Cooperative Grocers Association. Co-ops nationally are second only to Whole Foods in their buying power and are still viable, vibrant businesses. For example, the Riverwest Co-op is one of many new co-ops that have opened across the country.

We plan to compete by offering a unique shopping experience, a fast in an out trip and excellent customer service. The Milwaukee grocery market has become increasingly competitive in the last 5 years with new grocery stores opening (Sendik’s expansion), the Public Market, Pick N’ Save’s new locations and others. Yet we have still grown.

In other markets with strong cooperative groceries where Whole Foods has opened, these stores have survived and thrived, sometimes seeing an initial nominal drop in sales, but then a sales increase. Whole Foods positions themselves to compete w/ big stores, especially those that feature gourmet, fresh selections. They also do a great job of increasing awareness for natural foods and savvy retailers can draft off this awareness.

Hopefully you’ve stuck with me through my marketing discussion. What you said struck a cord in me and reminded me of that famous quote by Mark Twain, “The rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.” We’ll do okay, and even Beans & Barley will do okay, because the main part of their business is the service restaurant. Sure, folks will check out the new places, but I imagine that many Milwaukeeans will want to continue to patronize the places that make and keep Milwaukee unique – that’s a position that Whole Foods can’t own since they’re a national chain.”

_______

I think it would be great if Whole Foods has a tentpole effect of stimulating demand for natural foods across-the-board. At the same time, while Milwaukee isn’t California, there’s a lot more options for the natural foods consumer than we imagined there would be. Not only are there venerable institutions like the Outpost and Beans & Barley, but as Lisa says, there has been an expansion in the market, such as the new Riverwest Co-Op, the new Public Market (which is terrific, BTW) and the expansion of Sendik’s. The market has gotten noticeably richer in the past 4 years, even without the arrival of Whole Foods. In any case, Milwaukee is lucky to have the Outpost, and I hope it continues to thrive.

Thanks for your detailed and thoughtful response, Lisa. And good luck to you and the Outpost!

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So an annual “rite of Spring” among law schools is to conduct post-mortems following each new US News & World Reports ranking. Each April, Deans around the country spend a lot of time answering for their latest rankings. The resulting news stories follow a predictable plot:

* law school drops in the rankings

* angry alumni and students demand to know why

* the Dean explains that the rankings are important but methodologically flawed

You could almost recycle the same story at every law school that isn’t blessed by the USNWR gods.

The stories are flowing in at Marquette, where the school dropped from last year’s three-way tie for 100 (at the very bottom of the second tier) to the third tier. This drop looks precipitous, but in fact the USNWR’s data jockey says the school should have been ranked at 101. So, according to the USNWR methodology, the school dropped a single place from 100 to 101. This doesn’t stop the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel from saying the school is “rattled” by the “tumble” in the rankings. See the Marquette Tribune’s similar story.

(Note that because there was a three-way tie for 100 in last year’s rankings, there were 102 schools ranked in the top 100. So, arguably, Marquette rose from 102 to 101 this year. Whatever.).

I won’t recount the many, many reasons why the USNWR rankings are flawed. I will, however, offer an interpretive guide to the USNWR rankings that should be obvious but apparently isn’t. Just like consumer surveys and political polls describe their margin of error (i.e., this poll is accurate within X% +/-), one should read each year’s installation of the rankings as having a margin of error as well. (We could debate the size of that margin; personally, I think it’s very large). So if a school changes from 100 to 101, does that reflect any real change? In my book, no. It is entirely consistent with the metric’s margin of error.

Because of the metric’s imprecision, USNWR rankings have some natural volatility from year to year. This means schools like Marquette will float up and down without any real intrinsic change. Because these changes are inevitable and not tied to reality, I can confidently make the following predictions:

1) Marquette Law will be back in the second tier in next year’s rankings (or, at the latest, in 2008)

2) In the 5 years after that, Marquette Law will be back in the third tier at least once

3) Neither of those developments will accurately reflect any real changes at the school

Anyone planning to rely on this year’s USNWR rankings should be advised accordingly.

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The 3rd Annual Peep Show

Sunday, April 9th at 4pm

Lulu cafe and bar

2261 S. Howell Ave.

Bayview

A fun and fluffy exhibition of artworks made from or inspired by marshmallow Peeps.

NO ENTRY FEE, NO JURY

This event is free and open to the public. All are encouraged to participate, artists and artistically challenged alike. Participants are to bring their original works of art to Lulu’s on the evening of the event. Artists will be responsible for the removal of their creations by the end of the event. Artists may choose to price their work for sale during the event and no commission will be taken.

Peep photography, Peep paintings, Peep dioramas, Peep jewelry, Peep costumes and Peep treats are all to be expected. Lulu’s bar will be serving special Peep-tinis for the event.

“Peeps” are a registered trademark of the Just Born Company.

[Eric’s note: I’m hoping to make it this year! See my blog post on last year’s show and the cult of Peeps]

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