AALL Spectrum Blog

Every other month I visit the Dakota County Jail in Hastings, Minnesota, to serve as a community speaker. The jail houses 250-300 inmates at any given time. Some inmates are awaiting trial; others are serving a sentence. All of the inmates are men. The jail no longer has facilities for women, and female offenders are sent to neighboring Ramsey County. Many of the men are here because of drugs, probation violations, and DWIs. There are a few, however, who have been accused of shocking crimes. Some of these cases make the news.

Given the bad press that law schools have received over the past year, a common question and assumption are, “Why would a student attend a school not accredited by the ABA? It must be because he or she is not able to get into a ‘real’ law school.”

There is a corollary to that statement in terms of administrators, faculty, and librarians. Sometimes these individuals are perceived as “not good enough” to make it in a “real” law school; thus, they took the only job they could find.

Whatever your feelings about social media, it is undeniable that social media remain a force in our culture, despite the Facebook IPO fiasco. My Communities aside, I believe that one social media forum stands atop the field for its unique ability to sample the word on the street: Twitter.

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