What Nashville Needs: More Lawyers

I was surprised to read last week that Nashville’s Belmont University plans to open a law school in 2011. This will be the first new law school to open in Tennessee in over a century. Nashville already has two law schools, Vanderbilt University and the venerable Nashville School of Law, so one wonders why the area needs another law school or indeed more lawyers. On the other hand, the school has apparently identified a specific need. In an interview in the Tennessean, one of the schools’ consultants pointed out that over fifty percent of the applicants for the Tennessee Bar came from law schools outside of the state (myself included). Also, Belmont has already established itself with a strong MBA program and a strong music business program (they even have a Turtle on the faculty). The school is hinting that it might offer a focus in entertainment and intellectual property law; that would be a very good thing.