Education Commons^™

Mission: Impossible, Mission: Accomplished Or Mission: Underway? A Survey And Analysis Of Current Trends In Professionalism Education In American Law Schools, Alison Kehner, Mary Ann Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article identifies common characteristics of effective professionalism instruction to provide guidance in how to design innovative professionalism instruction. After introducing the topic in Part I, Part II of this Article describes the origins and development of the professionalism education movement in American Law schools. Part III of this Article explains our methods for collecting information and identifies and summarizes the predominant trends, and provides examples of noteworthy programs or initiatives. Part IV concludes by describing our method for assessing successful programs and identifying the characteristics of effective professionalism instruction.

Is Our Students Learning?: Using Assessments To Measure And Improve Law School Learning, Rogelio Lasso

Rogelio A. Lasso

Is Our Students Learning?: Using Assessments to Measure and Improve Law School Learning

Using Assessments to Improve Student Performance

Rogelio A. Lasso

The primary role of a law school is to make sure students learn skills to become competent lawyers. Learning is a loop in which the teacher facilitates learning, students perform tasks to show what they have learned, the teacher assesses and provides feedback on students’ performance, and students use the feedback to improve their learning skills for the next learning task. Teacher assessment feedback is critical to student learning. Prompt and frequent feedback allows students to take control …

Exporting Legal Education: Lessons Learned From Efforts In Transition Countries, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

A convergence of inward and outward-looking processes in US law schools creates both risk and potential reward in the development of legal education. As law faculties engage in the current process of changing the traditional law school curriculum, they should carefully coordinate a desire for internal goals with an understanding of external impact, realizing that this process is likely to affect not just US law schools, but legal education across the globe. Changes in the curriculum at US law schools should be responsive, not only to concerns about the legal marketplace in the United States, but also to the impact …

Law School 2.0: Legal Education For A Digital Age, David I.C. Thomson

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Legal education is at a crossroads. As today's media-saturated students enter law school, they find themselves thrust into old style lecture-orientated, casebook modes of instruction, much of which is over 100 years old. Over those years legal education has resisted many studies recommending change, most recently from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Clinical Legal Education Association. . .

The Bologna Process And Its Impact In Europe: It's So Much More Than Degree Changes, Laurel S. Terry

Laurel S. Terry

The Bologna Process is a massive, multi-year project designed to create the European Higher Education Area by the year 2010. It began approximately ten years ago when four European Union (EU) countries signed a relatively vague declaration. It has now grown to forty-six countries, including all of the EU Member States and nineteen non-EU countries. The Bologna Process countries have agreed on ten action lines for restructuring European higher education. These action lines are nothing short of revolutionary - they address everything from adoption of a three-cycle degree system (e.g., bachelor-master's-doctorate degrees), European-wide quality assurance efforts, mobility of higher education …

Teaching As Art Form - Review Of The Elements Of Teaching, David I.C. Thomson

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

The authors of this gem of a book—both retired college teachers who gave their professional lifetimes to teaching—write simply and passionately about what it takes to be an effective teacher, and manage to reduce the key aspects of a complex process down to nine primary elements. In so doing, they provide not only a road map of aspiration for the new teacher, but also signposts of inspiration for the experienced teacher.

Everything I Wanted To Know About Teaching Law School I Learned From Being A Kindergarten Teacher: Ethics In The Law School Classroom, Debra Moss Curtis

Faculty Scholarship

This article discusses the ethics of teaching law school. It was not until the 1920s and 1930s that full-time law teachers, rather than part-time practitioners or judges, held the main responsibility for teaching at many law schools. When this shift began to occur, the field of "law professor" was born, and there arose the need for rules in all areas governing law professors, including ethics. Today, most law professors in the United States are members of both the legal and teaching professions and therefore must comply with the ethical rules of each profession. However they may be professionally licensed, law …

Teach The Children Well: Incorporating Cultural Literacy Into The Law School Learning Experience, Debra Moss Curtis

Faculty Scholarship

This article is an examination of what and how we teach in law school. Much attention has been given to the concept of the Socratic Method and whether teaching in this manner "hides the ball" from students. Rather than focusing on whether the ball is hidden, my work shall focus on whether students know what the ball is in the first place.

"In A Case, In A Book, They Will Not Take A Second Look!" Critical Reading In The Legal Writing Classroom, Debra Curtis, Judith Karp

Faculty Scholarship

This article is based on a presentation that was first assembled for the Southeastern Regional Legal Writing Conference in September 2003. The theme of that conference was "The Basics and Beyond: Building Solid Skills on Flawed Foundations." As legal writing professions with nine years of teaching experience between us, we immediately honed in on "reading" as a core lawyering skill--though it is the one that seemed most flawed in the first-year legal writing class. We determined that case analysis, statute analysis, synthesis, and application were not possible unless students critically read the material with which they were working. Many students …

You've Got Rhythm: Curriculum Planning And Teaching Rhythm At Work In The Legal Writing Classroom, Debra Curtis

Faculty Scholarship

With increased frequency, attention is being given to the methods and style of teaching the law, and to the educational knowledge of law teachers necessary for their development. While teachers in many other areas of higher education are required to take credit hours in education courses, that requirement or focus on pedagogy itself has not yet fully spilled over to legal education professionals. In addition, although law professions, have been encouraged to think and learn about the law, they generally have long since accepted the Socratic method as a primary method of teaching. Recently information about students' learning styles, and …

The Challenge And Promise Of Public Legal Education, Lauren K. Robel

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Foreign Languages In Educating Lawyers For Transnational Challenges, Vivian Grosswald Curran

Articles

In a world in which every other country seems intent on teaching English to their youth, and in which the United States educational system does not place a high priority on teaching foreign languages, the American law student, dean and professor may doubt if foreign language knowledge is anything more than marginally helpful to law graduates. Similarly, educators at the primary school level may not be likely to assess foreign language education as warranting a greater allocation of scarce public resources.

The usefulness of foreign languages to the United States lawyer gradually has been gaining increased recognition in the profession, …

The Indentured Servants Of Academia: The Adjunct Faculty Dilemma And Their Limited Legal Remedies, John C. Duncan, Jr.

Journal Publications

In this half of the twentieth century, the academic equivalent of the indentured servant is the adjunct faculty member in higher education. Adjuncts cannot say or do much about their plight. The dilemma of adjunct faculty leads to what should be considered a violation of due process rights. This Article first examines who are the adjunct faculty, what are their dilemmas, and how are they viewed in the academic world. The heart of the paper then explores the limited legal remedies available. The essential problems of lack of due process and minimal protection through collective bargaining and contractual agreements are …

Training For Socio-Legal Research: College Prior To Law School, Self Help And On-The-Job Training, Dan Hopson Jr.

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Teaching Of Law In Schools Of Business, William E. Britton

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.