Such a thing as Education Law? Forum

[TIKITEMBO]

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[Bildungsroman]

What do you mean by education law?

Edit: This question wasn't intended to be facetious. It's just there are a lot of different ways of practicing law that involve education, it helps to narrow down what you mean.

[FlanAl]

pretty sure my torts professor also teaches education law at cornell, could be mistaken though

[TIKITEMBO]

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[kalvano]

Most of the stuff you listed isn't decided by lawyers at all, but instead by school administrators. Principals, teachers on the curriculum board, superintendents, those kind of people.

For policy stuff, get involved with the state legislature.

[yo!]

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[ryemanhattan]

You could specialize in special ed requirements... and then sue (or threaten) school districts that are not providing legally mandated support for kids with autism, etc. Autism rates are on a terrifying rise, and municipalities are broke... this could (unfortunately) be a growth niche for lawyers.

[sinisterkid]

I am not sure of any schools with specific education classes, but I do know the specific niche of education law is alive and well. This guy does quite well: http://www.perrywalters.com/tommy-coleman/

[bogart]

Education law exists, but in any given city there is only a few firms that do it.
These firms represents the districts and/or employees in collective bargaining agreements, public servant issues (such as being fired/tenure issue), tax implications for building projects, some civil rights issue, board of education voting rights, etc... Most larger firms will not have an "education law" department, but will instead represent school districts within their municipal law department.

[apollo2015]

--LinkRemoved-- covers Municipal and School Law. You could contact them (or a similar firm in your area) and ask for advice on how to enter that field.

A bunch of education law links are here on the Hastings' library site http://library.uchastings.edu/library/t ... n-law.html - perhaps some fit your interests. Also, UC Hastings offers "Education Law" and "Special Education Law" as courses.

[jrthor10]

There are definitely law schools that have classes on education policy. Columbia has a whole program devoted to it.

[law_monkey]

Some really large school districts actually have in-house counsel. There are also larger education policy organizations that have lawyers on staff. Some schools have education law clinics (for example the one at HLS does work with kids with special needs and defending students at their suspension hearings, I think), and a lot of schools have at least one education law class now. So it's definitely a thing, and depending on the school you can do some cool stuff with it. I'm not sure how easy it is to get into that field right after law school though. Since it's a smaller niche it might be one of those things where you need to get practical experience first. But I haven't looked into it enough to know the actual answer to that.