Thomas Jefferson School of Law was sued in May by California’s Miller Barondess on behalf of an unemployed 2008 graduate who alleged the school committed fraud by misrepresenting employment statistics for recent graduates. The American Bar Association and the National Association for Law Placement are clashing over which entity should oversee the collection and analysis of law graduates’ jobs data.

The issue [of forced pooling] is complex, said Alan Ackerman, former chairman of the American Bar Association’s land-use section and author of the National Eminent Domain blog. Over the years, there have been a variety of laws limiting individual property rights to promote development — as long as there is fair compensation, Ackerman said.

To qualify for reimbursement [for counties’ spending on public defense attorneys], counties must adopt an ordinance, establish a public defender board, adopt a comprehensive plan, have the plan approved and meet other standards set by the state commission – largely drawn from the American Bar Association.

…In two sharply worded letters to the American Bar Association, [Sen. Charles] Grassley asks the ABA to explain its standards for evaluating law school employment data and student-loan default rates. …In its response to Grassley, the ABA noted that its section on legal education and admissions queries law schools each year on the credentials of entering classes, enrollment, finances, and other matters. Failure to respond can result in withdrawal of accreditation, the ABA said. ‘No one could be more focused on the future of our next generation of lawyers than the ABA and the legal profession we serve,’ the association’s president, Stephen Zack, wrote to Grassley.

The American Bar Association has joined in the decades-long debate among academics, prosecutors and defense attorneys regarding prosecutors’ duty to turn over potentially exculpatory material to criminal defendants.

Pressing Issue: Outgoing American Bar Association President Stephen Zack says the organization’s biggest concern is court funding, the Daily Business Review reports. ‘The problem is people think the court is for troublemakers,’ Zack said.

Courts in nearly every state have been forced to make debilitating cuts—at a time when pressure on the justice system continues to increase. This week the American Bar Association conference in Toronto passed a resolution calling on state legislatures to make adequate funding a ‘priority.’ The resolution was based on a report produced by a special American Bar Association (ABA) Task Force that toured the nation over the last 12 months surveying court conditions.

At its recent annual meeting, the American Bar Association took overdue action to protect judicial fairness and impartiality in the face of skyrocketing special-interest spending in state judicial elections. By a unanimous vote, the A.B.A.’s House of Delegates approved a resolution calling for states to adopt clear new rules for recusal to cover instances when campaign spending by litigants or lawyers causes a judge’s impartiality to be questioned.

The American Bar Association’s House of Delegates passed a resolution on Tuesday, Aug. 9, urging Congress to amend and strengthen federal lobbying rules. HLS Professor Charles Fried co-chaired the bi-partisan ABA Administrative Law Section task force, which proposed the recommendations in its January 2011 report.

The American Bar Association is urging Congress to broaden the definition of ‘lobbyist,’ and create tougher campaign fundraising rules for lobbyists. The resolution passed last week in the association’s House of Delegates.

Frost Brown Todd: William T. ‘Bill’ Robinson III, has been named president of the American Bar Association.

Koerner Hall, the spiffy new performance facility at Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music, is designed to capture acoustic nuance. Stephen Zack, a Miami-based lawyer who this week completed a one-year stint as president of the American Bar Association, used the venue as a platform to challenge the current tenor of U.S. public discourse. ‘The continuing slide into the gutter of incivility demeans us all,’ he said on Saturday at the official opening of the ABA’s annual meeting, this year held in Toronto.