Education Commons^™

Teaching, Thinking, And The Legal Creative Process, Barbara P. Blumenfeld

Faculty Scholarship

The author asks how we can teach student how to think as she reflects on how many students with excellent basic writing skills were not fully developing the reasoning before writing their paper.

Part One of this essay formulates the creative process necessary for developing good legal analysis, arguments, and documents, and suggests its encouragement by non-result oriented teaching. Part Two explains a class the author designed, which succeeds, at least in part, in bringing thinking to the surface for study and discussion.

Back To The Future In Law Schools, William L. Reynolds

Faculty Scholarship

This paper first argues for the maintenance of the traditional first-year curriculum. It does so in the context of an examination of what most lawyers do in practice and, therefore, what most lawyers should know. This portion includes a defense of the Socratic Method. The paper then addresses contemporary concerns about legal education, including the devaluation of courses in the private law curriculum, and considers why legal academics are not interested in private law.

Can Havruta Style Learning Be A Best Practice In Law School?, Barbara P. Blumenfeld

Faculty Scholarship

Havruta is a traditional Jewish method that seems compatible with legal education because of its focus on process, and so adaptable to law school training in legal reasoning, and because it is based upon dispute and resolution, another aspect that corresponds with the study of law. A unique form of collaborative student centered learning involving pairs of students, this article considers the application of Havruta to the law school setting and whether it should be incorporated into the law school curriculum.