General Advice for Students
Professor Greg Sisk at St. Thomas offers the following advice:
Nearly every law school in the country now has opened their doors in one way or another to a greater or lesser extent to displaced New Orleans law students. The AALS has been so swamped with such messages from the various law school deans that the already-long list presently on the AALS web site does not include every law school that has agreed to assist (e.g., it does not yet include the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, although we happily have agreed to participate). For that reason, I would suggest that any displaced New Orleans law student should feel free to contact any law school, knowing that it is likely the school is ready and willing to help, whether or not a formal announcement from that school has made it onto a blog or web page. At this point, the principal remaining question that most law schools must address is how best to ensure that the assistance they are providing does not intrude upon the policies to be adopted by Tulane and Loyola New Orleans, which understandably are still attempting to assess the situation. Given that most law schools are waiving tuition, at least for fall semester, for displaced students (often contingent on the students’ directing tuition payments to their home institutions), and the law book publishers are moving toward providing texts free of charge to such students, I might suggest that each New Orleans student at least could begin attending classes at another law school, even if Tulane and Loyola subsequently should decide to move in a different direction for all or some of their students. At most such students might have spent a week or so in additional legal studies, and surely that can’t hurt anyone, in communities that would welcome them and are eager to help.