Law Commons^™

Collared—A Film Case Study About Insider Trading And Ethics, Garrick Apollon

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

This Article discusses the visual legal advocacy documentary film, Collared, by Garrick Apollon (author of this Article). Collared premiered in fall 2018 to a sold-out audience at the Hot Docs Cinema in Toronto for the Hot Docs for Continuing Professional Education edutainment initiative. Collared features the story and reveals the testimony of a convicted ex-insider trader who is still struggling with the tragic consequences of “the most prolonged insider trading scheme ever discovered by American and Canadian securities investigators.” The intimate insights shared by former lawyer and reformed white-collar criminal, Joseph Grmovsek, serves as a painful reminder of the …

Research Across The Curriculum: Using Cognitive Science To Answer The Call For Better Legal Research Instruction, Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

The American Bar Association (ABA), law students, and employers are demanding that law schools do better when teaching legal research. Academic critics are demanding that law professors begin to apply the lessons from the science of learning to improve student outcomes. The practice of law is changing.

Yet, the data shows that law schools are not changing their legal research curriculum to respond to the need of their students or to address the ABA’s mandate. This stagnation comes at the same time as an explosion in legal information and a decrease in technical research skills among incoming students. This article …

Mindfulness In Legal Ethics And Professionalism, Peter H. Huang

Publications

Mindfulness involves paying attention with curiosity in an intentional, open, and compassionate way to life as it unfolds moment to moment. Law students, lawyers, law professors, legal clients, and indeed all people can improve their lives through mindfulness. Mindfulness can lead to individual benefits and personal transformation. Mindfulness can also lead to societal benefits and social change. This invited symposium contribution exemplifies how mindfulness can facilitate the positive personal and professional development of law students by presenting excerpts of law students' answers discussing mindfulness to questions from the final examination of the course: Legal Ethics and Professionalism. Notably, none of …

The Zombie Lawyer Apocalypse, Peter H. Huang, Corie Rosen Felder

Pepperdine Law Review

This article uses a popular cultural framework to address the near-epidemic levels of depression, decision-making errors, and professional dissatisfaction that studies document are prevalent among many law students and lawyers today. Zombies present an apt metaphor for understanding and contextualizing the ills now common in the American legal and legal education systems. To explore that metaphor and its import, this article will first establish the contours of the zombie literature and will apply that literature to the existing state of legal education and legal practice — ultimately describing a state that we believe can only be termed “the Zombie Lawyer …

Psychology And Effective Lawyering: Insights For Legal Educators, Jean R. Sternlight, Jennifer K. Robbennolt

Scholarly Works

Psychology-the science of how people think, feel and behave-has a great deal to teach about a range of core competencies related to working with people and making good decisions. For example, psychologists have conducted extensive research into perception, memory, communication, individual and group decision-making, conflict, goal setting and planning, self-assessment, motivation, "grit," and many other matters that are central to effective lawyering. This research has much to contribute to an understanding of the work of lawyers and can be effectively incorporated into how we teach law students to practice law.

What's On First?: Organizing The Casebook And Molding The Mind, Donald G. Gifford, Joseph L. Kroart Iii, Brian Jones, Cheryl Cortemeglia

Faculty Scholarship

This study empirically tests the proposition that law students adopt different conceptions of the judge’s role in adjudication based on whether they first study intentional torts, negligence, or strict liability. The authors conducted an anonymous survey of more than 450 students enrolled in eight law schools at the beginning, mid-point, and end of the first semester of law school. The students were prompted to indicate to what extent they believed the judge’s role to be one of rule application and, conversely, to what extent it was one of considering social, economic, and ideological factors. The survey found that while all …

Understanding The Cycle Of Procrastination, Meehan Rasch

Meehan Rasch

Procrastination is one of the enduring challenges of human existence, as well as one of the chief problems with which law students struggle. Understanding the cycle of procrastination can help law professors and advisors more constructively address students’ issues in this area—not to mention our own.

What's On First?: Organizing The Casebook And Molding The Mind, Donald G. Gifford, Joseph L. Kroart Iii, Brian Jones, Cheryl Cortemeglia

Donald G Gifford

This study empirically tests the proposition that law students adopt different conceptions of the judge’s role in adjudication based on whether they first study intentional torts, negligence, or strict liability. The authors conducted an anonymous survey of more than 450 students enrolled in eight law schools at the beginning, mid-point, and end of the first semester of law school. The students were prompted to indicate to what extent they believed the judge’s role to be one of rule application and, conversely, to what extent it was one of considering social, economic, and ideological factors. The survey found that while all …

Thinking Like Thinkers: Is The Art And Discipline Of An "Attitude Of Suspended Conclusion" Lost On Lawyers?, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

In his 1910 book, How We Think, John Dewey proclaimed that “the most important factor in the training of good mental habits consists in acquainting the attitude of suspended conclusion. . .” This Article explores that insight and describes its meaning and significance in the enterprise of thinking generally and its importance in law school education specifically. It posits that the law would be best served if lawyers think like thinkers and adopt an attitude of suspended conclusion in their problem solving affairs. Only when conclusion is suspended is there space for the exploration of the subject at hand. The …

Happy Law Students, Happy Lawyers, Nancy Levit, Douglas Linder

Nancy Levit

This article draws on research into the science of happiness and asks a series of interrelated questions: Whether law schools can make law students happier? Whether making happier law students will translate into making them happier lawyers, and the accompanying question of whether making law students happier would create better lawyers? After covering the limitations of genetic determinants of happiness and happiness set-points, the article addresses those qualities that happiness research indicates are paramount in creating satisfaction: control, connections, creative challenge (or flow), and comparisons (preferably downward). Those qualities are then applied to legal education, while addressing the larger philosophical …

Maiming The Cubs, James J. White

Articles

It is easy to believe that students are made anxious and even depressed by law school and that the anxiety and depression stay with many students throughout school. It is harder to believe that these stresses cause permanent and irreversible change and that the ills of lawyers are traced in any meaningful way to the stresses of the three years of law school.

Maiming The Cubs, James J. White

Articles

In the last twenty years much has been written about the deleterious effect that law school has on the mental well-being of law students.' Many have called for "humanizing" law school. In support of their case, the advocates of humanizing cite numerous anecdotes, much scholarly writing in the psychology literature, and even a few rigorous studies of law students. A principal voice is that of Professor Krieger who has done the most careful and elaborate study, a study of students at two law schools.1 You should understand that Professor Krieger and his cohorts do not merely claim that we make …

The Logician Versus The Linguist- An Empirical Tale Of Functional Discrimination In The Legal Academy, Andrea Kayne Kaufman

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This paper, focusing exclusively on gender, asks whether male and female law students express different preferences for logic-based learning models. A wide variety of educational theories and other theories have been used to conceptualize different learning preferences among law students but until now, none has focused on logical intelligence compared with the other intelligences. Using Harvard educational psychologist Howard Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligences, this paper describes an empirical study establishing that male and female law students express differences in preferring logical intelligence over the other intelligences. This paper introduces the concept of "functional discrimination," addressing the ways in which …

Stress And Health In 1st-Year Law Students: Women Fare Worse, Daniel N. Mcintosh, Julie Keywell, Alan Reifman, Phoebe C. Ellsworth

Articles

The social and psychological consequences of being a female law student may include greater stress and worse health than that experienced by male students. First-year law students at a major state university were surveyed about their physical and psychological health prior to, in the middle of, and at the end of the school year. They were also asked about specific sources of strain (e.g., grades, time pressure) at mid-year. Relative to men, women reported greater strain due to sexism, lack of free time, and lack of time to spend with one’s spouse/partner. Women also displayed more depression and physical symptoms …

Invisible Teachers: A Comment On Perceptions In The Classroom, Robert F. Nagel

Publications

No abstract provided.

Invisible Teachers: A Comment On Perceptions In The Classroom, Robert F. Nagel

Publications

No abstract provided.