From Mary Flood's Legal Trade blog, John Hill book signing Wed. 5-7 p.m.

This Wednesday night at River Oaks Bookstore, one of my favorite places to book browse, Ernie Stomberger will sign his book "John Hill: For the State of Texas".

The late Texas chief justice John Hill's children Graham Hill and Martha Hill Jamison report that the book was co-written by their father and it focuses on his service as attorney general of Texas during the 1970's.

"It covers a unique period of Texas history and my father's advancement of consumer rights, environmental protection, open records, state regulation of utility companies, etc. as Texas AG. He was the only person in Texas history to have served as AG, Secretary of State and Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court," the Hill children note.

The bookstore is at 3270 Westheimer and it and its owner are a delight even when there is no book signing.

Casebook Sherpa at Fight the Hypo has his own take on the subject in response to this post in Going to Law School Part-Time.

His post made my think of a caveat to my first point about location: "On the 'go where you practice' point - your description made me think of a caveat to my original post, that being that there are some places that really lend themselves to a vibrant evening law program and D.C. has got to be one of them, due in no small part to size of the legal community there. I think evening programs thrive where there are abundant job opportunities, i.e. large cities, that shift the cost-benefit analysis in favor of working. For someone evaluating evening programs, I think there's a premium on large cities with robust legal markets that might cause one to look a little further afield even if you were thinking of eventually going back to a smaller market."

Good to know and thanks for letting me know about the "M" - I bet they hate that. I had no idea they did anything with students. I'll have to look into it.

My favorite lawyer-as-juror story comes from a federal public defender who was put on a jury in a state criminal case. It turned out the prosecutor thought a 'public defender' was some sort of FBI agent. We obviously don't have state public defenders in our jurisdiction.

It would probably just award virtual law degrees, but hey, you could probably make some real money that way in Second Life. ;-)

My only concern about separate rankings is that they run the risk of diverging the evening and full-time programs when in an ideal world they converge. The two tracks should be interchangeable. Overall I think UHLC does an excellent job of this. I know several students who started in the full-time program and switched to part-time to take advantage of job opportunities. Of course a significant number who start in the evening program switch to full-time. It is and should be a lifestyle choice. A major test of the rankings should be the parity of the programs in resources and opportunities available. The differences should focus on evening-specific criteria such as accessibility - are tenured professors used to teach both sections? do student and career services accommodate part-time schedules? are the same career opportunities available to evening students in terms of OCI? are the extra-curricular activities such as moot court and mock trial accessible?

The history of evening law programs is an interesting and undeveloped one. More at my previous post this summer Why is Admission Based on Anything but GPA and LSAT, "Gaming" Law School Admissions?