Welcome to the video-blog of Hamline University School of Law

Dean Donald Lewis

Available in both video and text format for your convenience

Hello again.  I know you all are working very hard in preparation for exams, but thanks for taking a moment to check out my blog post this week.  Let me start by extending some year-end congratulations to people who have worked very hard during the year in some of our student competitions and journals.

We just finished our final Honor Round for the Legal Research and Writing Program, and the Best Oralist in that final round was Nikola Datzov, so congratulations for that recognition and to all of the other finalists in the honor round, which included Matthew Thompson, Micah Ludeke, Kathryn Fodness, Irene Kao, Andrew Irlbeck, and Noelle Volin.  It's recognition well-deserved by your hard work.

We had two winners this year, two 3Ls, of the Larry Bakken Leadership Award: Amy Schwarz and Celeste Hollerud.  That's an award that's supported by a gift from Professor Larry Bakken that honors participation and leadership in the Journal of Public Law and Policy. Congratulations to Amy and Celeste.

Sara Bongers, a 3L, has been awarded the Outstanding Clinical Student Award by the Clinical Legal Education Association. That award recognizes outstanding participation in clinical programs at Hamline School of Law.  So that's a wonderful honor to receive.

Welcome to the video-blog of Hamline University School of Law

Dean Donald Lewis

Available in both video and text format for your convenience

Hello.  The job market and networking are on my mind today.  If you don't have a job already lined up this summer, consider volunteer opportunities that give you comparable legal training.  Let me announce one such opportunity today: the Dean's Fellowship Program. 

This summer, we're going to offer one-time fellowships for working judges' chambers.  We're going to do this first, to help students obtain summer placements and get some experience in this difficult job market, but also, secondly, to provide support to the already financially-strapped judiciary, which is currently under a hiring freeze and, therefore, in desperate need of additional volunteer assistance. 

We're going to provide ten $1,500 stipends from dedicated scholarship funds to defray some costs associated with volunteering--such as parking, commuting, lunch-- and otherwise make volunteering more feasible by providing some modest financial support.  Ten students will each receive one fellowship grant to volunteer for a judge between May 15th and August 15th of this year. 

During that time each student will volunteer for about 150 hours with a specific schedule, determined by that student and the judge.  Now the job duties might include things like observing court proceedings, note taking, researching, writing, or other duties that are determined by the judge. 

Welcome to the video-blog of Hamline University School of Law

Dean Donald Lewis

Available in both video and text format for your convenience

I have some tough news and some good news to share with you this morning; the US News rankings were released today.  The bad news is that Hamline, once again, is in the Fourth Tier, William Mitchell has moved up to the Third Tier, St. Thomas is there also, and the University of Minnesota has moved up a couple of notches to number 20 nation-wide.  We don't have access yet to all of the backroom data, including some of the financial information that factored into the formula, but I want to invite you to look closely at the published report and also look at some of the data that has been published online because in some important categories in the published data, Hamline has improved from last year and has scored better than our competitor schools.  Let me give you a couple of examples: in the Peer Assessment Scores (these are the judgments of deans around the country and judgments of selected faculty) Hamline scored a 2.0 compared to William Mitchell's 1.9 and St. Thomas's 1.9.  Similarly, in the judgment of selected judges and lawyers from around the country, Hamline's score was 2.4 compared to Mitchell's 2.3.  In the criteria of Selectivity of Admissions, Hamline scored 48% compared to Mitchell's 57% acceptance rate.  And in the all-important Student:Teacher Ratio category (number of students per single faculty member) Hamline was at 15.4 compared to Mitchell's 21.9 and St. Thomas's 17.6, again confirming our student-centered learning environment here at Hamline.