Congratulations to our new (2 year old) neighbors, the FIU Law school, who have just passed a critical milestone on the road towards provisional accreditation. The Miami Herald reports that FIU's site visit went well, and that the provisional accreditation could happen as early as August, which would then allow FIU's first class to take the bar exam.
FIU has done everything by the book. They hired a Dean, Leonard Strickman, who is very experienced at navigating the ABA process, and I'm certain they will jump through all the necessary hoops in the shortest possible time.
One interesting thing, though. FIU is marketing itself as a more practice-oriented law schol, and a very international one, the implication being it's not trying to be like U.M. (although in fact we are very very international). Yet if rumors are to be believed, the folks they are hiring this year are exactly the kind of people we hire here at Miami. Indeed, some of them are people we interviewed.
So far we haven't had anyone we offered a job to go there, even though their salaries (a matter of public record as it's a state school) are significantly higher than ours—partly because ours slipped well below market when we downsized the student body a few years ago and took a volunatary pay (near) freeze.
It's a sign of FIU's smarts that they are paying a bit over (local) market—going to a startup school can be exciting, but usually it's more work, in tougher conditions. And before the school has its final accreditation, new hires are entitled to command a risk premium—although in fact as noted above FIU is not really a risk in that department.
