Let me not be facilely misunderstood. Law departments exhibit many bad practices, nor am I a practices relativist – all practices are equally good. Far from it, I believe there are hundreds of solid practices that many, even most, law departments should take to heart (See my post of April 2, 2005 regarding survivor bias and best practices; July 14, 2005 about the most important practices being the hardest to imitate; Sept. 13, 2005 on how easily we overlook common good practices; and May 30, 2006 on our bias toward novel practices.).
Having said that, I commend the reader to the article I wrote that unmasts the ship of best practices.