Now those of you who followed the blog in the past may expect me to say that my flight was dismal,

San Diego Marriot

dreadful, delayed, there was some malfunction with the plane, but I had an unusual stroke of good luck and was able to board my plane at XNA and make my connection in Dallas with no problems at all.  I had a very pleasant flight out to San Diego.  The conference hotel was the San Diego Marriott Hotel and Marina on Harbor Drive in San Diego, and there were several hotels very near by to house the large number of participants for the conference.

Just a little bit of background about this conference, for many years it was held only in three locations, New Orleans, San Francisco and Washington, DC.  So as you might imagine, it was a nice change to have the meeting held elsewhere.  I think the problem before had been the lack of hotel rooms.  The theme for the AALS meeting for this year was “Institutional Pluralism.” John Garvey notes in his welcome in the conference brochure:  “Institutional pluralism is a good thing for our students in the same way choices are good for consumers in other fields.  It may also contribute in an important way to a healthy intellectual life.  Progress in the life of the mind is a cultural achievement.  A community of scholars working on the same problem, or in the same idiom, may accomplish things a group of disconnected individuals could not.  (Think of the Manhattan Project, or fin de siècle Vienna.)  The Association should cherish the interests of its members in pursuing these ends.”  This was the second most well attended AALS annual meeting.

Edgewater grill

I arrived at the hotel in mid-afternoon and after unpacking and checking e-mail, I went down to register.  The line was very, very long so I decided that I didn’t really need to register that evening.  I found my friend, Mike Green, and he and I ran in to Dean Jim Chen from the University of Louisville.  He’s also been mentioned on the blog before.  He’s been out to visit the law school for our Day with a Dean program.  He is a good friend and a real football fanatic.  He’d traveled to the meeting with his Development Director, Robert Micou, and Matt Williams, his Assistant Development Director.  Now, if you know Jim Chen and since you do know me and you’ve read about Mike and my adventures before, you can imagine that going to dinner was, well, an adventure.  We started out with directions from the concierge and headed out of the hotel, but by the time we got to the door we had greeted and hugged and talked with so many people that we forgot the directions.  So, once we got downstairs to the door that we were supposed to leave out of, we asked one of the employees of the hotel and his instructions were completely undecipherable.  It was very funny.  Everybody was like, “Didn’t you get the directions?,” ” I thought you had the directions,” and  “I’m following you.”  Anyway, to make a long story short, we headed off towards an area where there were many, many restaurants right along the water and we walked and walked.  We did know the location of the restaurant recommended by the concierge, so we stopped a jogger and asked him where the restaurant was.  He said, “It’s way up there where you see the light.”  At that point, we decided it really wasn’t as important to go to that restaurant, so we turned around and went into Edgewater Grill.  When we got to the restaurant I said to the host, “You know, you

Edgewater Grill

probably want to seat us away from families and children.  This is a pretty rowdy crew.”  He took me quite literally and sat us in a private room by ourselves where we sort of lived up to that warning.  It was quite a hoot to be with Jim again and his staff.  It was a very funny, rollicking conversation and great food.  I’d put this on the plus list of the recommended restaurants and it was reasonably priced.  I had a New England Clam Chowder and a Seafood Fettuccini with shrimp, scallops and crab.  It was delicious.  Everyone enjoyed their meals and the portions were large enough that no one wanted dessert, so we just walked back to the hotel.  We said goodnight to Matthew and Bob who were staying at a different hotel and headed back to our hotel and called it an evening, or so I thought.

When I arrived in my room I had a phone call on my cell phone from my credit card company saying they had flagged a number of unusual transactions  – and they were unusual.  I did not know what those businesses were, so that credit card got canceled.  After working through all that, I called to make a hair appointment while I was there.  I got on the internet and Googled “black hair salon in San Diego” and got a number of numbers, many of which were out of order or no longer in service.  I did reach this young guy (at least seemingly young) and he said, “Hello, this is Jesse,” and I was like, “Are you a stylist?  Do you style black hair?” and he said, “No, I’m a financial planner.”  I told him that I got his name off this website and he was kind of tickled about it.  He offered to give me a free certificate for my Honda or some other kind of car to get serviced as thanks for giving him the tip about his name being on the website.  We ended up having a long conversation.  It was very strange.  Anyway, as you know I tend to accumulate adventures and the first night of San Diego was no different.  A shout out to Jesse who can be found on AM radio out in San Diego with his financial advising radio show.  I don’t remember the call letters, but I bet you can find him. Link

Monday was a day to catch up and go through correspondence.  There was a back log of correspondence that had come in over the holiday weekend.  Later I met with our development staff  to look at upcoming events and to make sure we were on top of those for this semester.

Chancellor David Gearhart

Later that afternoon I had a meeting in the student union.  Chancellor Dave Gearhart has formed a new group called the Chancellor’s Administrative Policy Committee in which he shares some of the challenges facing the University, initiatives we hope to undertake, and get feedback from a broad array of constituencies.  It’s really a marvelous group in the sense that it allows for input from all the various stakeholders in the University community.  It’s a good time to find out what’s going on around campus because each member of the group shares what’s happening in their unit.  I look forward to those meetings in terms of what’s going on.  I’ll just share with you a couple of initiatives.  One which has been highlighted in the press is the University’s support and scholarships for veterans who would be returning to school.  Also, the Chancellor is looking at creating more public art on campus.  I also think this group shows the Chancellor’s openness and willingness to share policy decisions and to be inclusive in terms of the decision making process.

Vice Chancellor Brazzell

It was also a sad occasion both for the University and for me personally because it was Vice Chancellor Brazzell’s last meeting with us.  She is leaving the University as of the end of January. I still remember meeting Johnetta when we were trying to recruit her here and very much wanted her to join us and become part of the   U of A community.  We will greatly miss her.

That evening I stayed late and tried to get through a lot of the accumulated correspondence and e-mail because the next day I was leaving for the The Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Annual Meeting.  The AALS meeting is the annual conference for law academicians and administrators.  Concurrently run with that is a conference for development and alumni professionals, so it’s the largest total gathering of those of us in legal education from around the country.  I always look forward to it every year because I often see friends that I only see that one time every year.  It was held in San Diego, and given the recent weather here in Arkansas in January that was also a plus.

The 2^nd was spent catching up with life.  I don’t know another way to explain it, but it included dealing with all the dry cleaning and paper that needed to be shredded and hauled out.  By the way, does anybody know where all that paper comes from?  I think that my mail mates on my counter and multiplies.  I’m not really sure, but there was just a ton of stuff that needed to be sorted and recycled or shredded and it seemed like a good way to start the New Year by tackling those projects.  I also went to the movies with my nephew, Kendall, and his wife, Kendra, and we saw “Seven Pounds” which was a real tear-jerker.  It left everyone in our row in the theater in tears.  I thought it was a pretty powerful movie.  I know that the critics have panned it, but I found it to be an interesting film.  We all liked it very much.

In addition to the things around the home, that whole sort of cleaning up and spiffing up and preparing for the New Year led into Saturday with a number of errands around town including trips to the dry cleaners, Petco, the book store, things that had been put off in all the busyness of the holiday season and the holiday travel.  It felt good to get those things done.  Saturday I also had to say goodbye to my nephew as he headed back to Fort Benning in Augusta, Georgia.  I will certainly miss him very much.

Sunday was church day and Mom and I had to get there a little bit early because I was running the information booth at church to give information to visitors who may be attending our church for the first time.  The Pastor’s sermon focused on the difference between knowledge and wisdom and how we should use that wisdom.  Having just preached my first sermon the previous week, I had a much greater appreciation of what it takes to put a sermon together.  I was probably a little more attentive than I may have been in the past.

Afterwards, we had breakfast with the breakfast bunch.  We went to a new place called The Sunrise Cafe.  It’s on Garland Street and it’s a 24 hour old school kind of diner.  We had a pretty good breakfast there.  The best thing out of all the menu items that were ordered by our group was corn beef hash because unlike the corn beef hash that comes out of the can, it was actual slices of corn beef and real potatoes.  It looked so good, unfortunately I didn’t order that but the next time I go there I will.  It was a lively environment, so if you want quiet on your Sunday morning I wouldn’t recommend it.  Everybody there was pretty friendly and it was a nice change.

Sunday afternoon was quiet, mainly focused on preparing for returning back to work on Monday morning, getting everything lined up and locating things that had been spread around the house over the holidays like keys and that kind of thing.

The blog is back!  Happy New Year 2009!  Looking forward to a very exciting year filled with love, laughter and major accomplishments for the School of Law community.

New Year’s Day started out with a wonderful dinner at Mama Dean’s.  That’s now become a tradition, to go down and eat at Mama Dean’s.  I was very happy to have my nephew, Kendall Rapier, back from the U.S. Army and to be able to eat with he, his wife and his little baby, Xavier, along with two of the breakfast bunch, Jackie and Gene Elsasser.  A good time was had by all.  If you don’t have plans on New Year’s Day and you want to go and eat a traditional new year’s supper in a family environment, I highly recommend Mama Dean’s.  It’s always a lot of fun and the folks there are always very warm.  It was a wonderful meal.  Although we all ate different things, each of us knew to have our blackeyed peas and greens.  At least in my family’s tradition, blackeyed peas represent coins and greens represent paper money.  Among us our meals included baked chicken, fried chicken, fried pork chops, I think someone had brisket, macaroni and cheese, dressing, mashed potatoes and fried okra.  Mama Dean’s had cooked up some chitlins, but I didn’t have those this year.  It was a crazy good meal and a great start to the New Year.  I really appreciate them being open, and the warm welcome they extend.

Judge Courtney Henry

A special nod to one of our current LL.M. students, Judge Courtney Henry, who was sworn in to the Arkansas Court of Appeals.  We are very, very proud to count her among our alums and as a current student.  She will soon be a double alum.  As far as I know (at least in my time at the law school) this is the first time we’ve had a current student sworn in as a judge.  It’s awesomely exciting and we’re very proud of her.

Friday, August 1, was a really fun one for me because that day featured the workshop on labor and employment law which meant that all day long there were labor and employment law programs and that’s great for a couple of reasons. First of all, it’s just to stay enmeshed in the substance of labor and employment law, but also to see my colleagues from the section. I think I’ve mentioned several times before what great comradery there is and it was really fun to be able to hang out with them and hear their research ideas and presentations. The first one was a workshop on “The Federal Arbitration Act of 2008.” The members of that panel were Margaret Moses of Loyola, Richard Reuben of University of Missouri, Stephen Ware of Kansas City and Jean Sternlight of UNLV. The panelists began with a discussion of the definition of mandatory arbitration and they tended to disagree quite frankly in terms of what’s mandatory, but they talk about a third of the standard form contracts include mandatory arbitration language typically in health care, financial services, and insurance industry and that often the consumers are unaware of the existence of this language and the majority of the members of the panel found that problematic. Under the FAA (The Federal Arbitration Act) the only way to get out of that is unconscionability. That’s the only reason to deny enforcement of that clause, so the 2000 Act is the Arbitration Fairness Act which would invalidate pre-dispute arbitration agreements in the employment area, consumer or franchise disputes, or and then there’s broad language, a dispute arising under any statute intended to protect civil rights or regulated contracts or transactions between parties on unequal bargaining power. And so the rest of the presentation was about what that language might mean, the probability of that passing given the pending change of the administration and how that language might play itself out, so that was a pretty interesting panel.

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Thursday morning began for me with a session on “Revamping the Law School Curriculum.” It was focused on how different schools have moved to alter or revamp their curriculum, especially the first year. The moderator was Dean Dennis Honabach, Northern Kentucky University. The speakers were Dean Edward Rubin of Vanderbilt University Law School, Prof. John Sobieski of University of Tennessee, and Associate Dean Mark Niles of American University, Washington College of Law. This was a really interesting panel and I’m glad I attended.

Associate Dean Niles talked about integrated teaching and the notion of a first year elective in the spring. The motivation for those changes were to make the first year curriculum more helpful for other curriculum. In other words, to help the students prepare more for the upper-level classes and also for the practice of law. The integrated teaching was fascinating. The way it would work, for example, is the sections of the first years, the teachers who taught all the different subject areas would come together and teach in a coordinated manner so that the subjects they were talking about correlated or corresponded to those going on in other classes. They also came up with a joint problem that involved all the subject areas. The pedagogical reason for this is that in the practice of law you rarely have a torts problem, it has a lot of components to it and so they want us to think about the first year curriculum more globally. The second idea and sudden innovation there was an elective for students in the first year and there were 10 that students could choose from like international law, environmental, state regulation, there were just a number and those were a segway also into upper-level classes. Now the problem was coordinating if a student took that class what that meant for say environmental law in a second and third year and they’re still working through that and different professors have responded in different ways, but those are some interesting ideas.

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Wednesday the programs didn’t start until 1:00 p.m. which is also a nice touch to give people a chance to get out and see and do.  That morning I got dressed in some shorts and tennis shoes and took a long, long walk down to the city of Lake Worth.  The street name was Lake Street and you can walk along A1A there and I just took a long walk looking at all the different condos and the parks and the water, just quietly.  That felt great and then I came back and took a shower and had lunch, checked e-mails and returned phone calls.  It was really nice and a nice pace.  I actually got a little bit of a New York Times read before attending an afternoon session on “Dealing with Difficult Economic Times.”  The moderator was Prof. Christopher Pietruszkiewicz from Louisiana State University.  The speakers were Dean Hannah Arterian from Syracuse; Dean Daisy Floyd of Mercer; John Plummer, Assistant Dean of Administrative Services for Florida; and Dean John White of UNLV.

Dean Floyd talked about when you are in a financial crunch at your law school or because of the state economy, the most important thing is to keep your prospective and remain focused on the long term goal for the school and to do what you really need to assess your priorities.  You should have that done before an economic crisis arises because that way you know which things are most important and you know how to prioritize in terms of having to cut the budget.  The other thing she emphasized was making sure to communicate to key constituencies exactly the situation and the choices you’re making and why.

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Monday the flight to the SEALS Conference was at 10:15 a.m. For some reason, I had it in my mind that I had a lot longer to get ready and I left in the afternoon, so I had to call Claudia very early in the morning leaving a message at the Pilates studio that I wouldn’t be able to make it because I was still scrambling to get ready for the flight to SEALS. I got to the airport on time. There were no hang ups except that once I got there the flight from Northwest Arkansas to Dallaswo was delayed because of a maintenance log issue. Once we got that, I arrived in Dallas late, but the flight to Palm Beach was also late and it was delayed because of a maintenance issue by an hour and a half. So as is typical if you follow the blog, I tend to run into flight delays pretty regularly and in fact I think there was a New York Times article recently that said that the airlines are not doing very well on that issue generally, so it’s not surprising that I would encounter so many delays. Anyway, when I arrived at The Ritz-Carlton in Palm Beach, Florida, actually technically it calls itself The Palm Beach Ritz-Carlton but it’s located in Manalapan, Florida. It’s a beautiful hotel and one of the cool things about it is that it’s high tech. I know that sounds like a strange thing to say about a hotel, but let me explain. First of all, if you sit at the desk to work there are plenty of plugs for road warriors with laptops, cell phone chargers, and all that, so they anticipated that. It’s adequately lighted, which is also a problem a lot of times in hotels, you’re trying to work and there’s just not enough light. If you notice, most hotels do not have overhead lights in the rooms, but this one had so many lights scattered throughout the room that it was easy to get work done. The other thing is that it has a, for lack of a better word, control console which is by the side of the bed. From there you can control the temperature of the room (heat and air), you can control all the lights in the room individually or together, you can turn on the radio; it’s really a cool thing. In addition to it being high tech, it’s just a pleasant hotel, very clean with excellent service. Apparently the summer is the slow season down here and the rates are also pretty reasonable, so if you’re looking for a summer vacation that’s not too much money in a nice hotel. The only issue is that it has a very limited dining menu, probably because it’s off season, but when you’re at a conference and you’re stuck and you don’t have much time or there’s not many places to walk to, the fact that you come back to such a limited menu every day is a little bit irritating, but it’s fine and the food is fine, so I digress.

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Sunday, it was great to be back in church at home after having been away for so long. We had a visiting pastor, but it didn’t matter because it was good to see old friends and to worship at home again. Afterwards, Mom and I went to breakfast with the breakfast bunch. Then we headed to the J.C. Penney, which was having a luggage sale, because Mom needed to replace hers. The last time she flew, a 9000 pound gorilla jumped up and down on her luggage and threw it off the plane. When we got it back it was in shambles. We were able to find good deal on a four piece set of luggage.

Now having travelled a bit, I have several simple rules when buying luggage. One rule is that the large bags have a handles on the top, the bottom, and the side so that when lugging them in and out of the car or off the luggage carousel, you can lift them. The second thing, of course, is that luggage must be on wheels. It’s also best if a suitcase has generous outside and inside pockets–particularly an inside pocket with plastic to hold things likely to spill or a wet swimsuit or wet items. Another feature I look for is that the luggage not be too heavy. The set should have connectors too, so that if you’re traveling alone and you have two bags, you can use the connectors to hook them all together and pull them through the airport. And, finally, luggage should not be black. It’s a pain looking for black luggage on the luggage carousel.

Anyway, we looked for luggage with all those criteria and Mom was lucky enough to find a chocolate brown set that met all our requirements. After our shopping spree, it was time to drop mom off and head home to prepare for a trip to the SEALS Conference first thing Monday morning.