Law Commons^™

A Synergistic Pedagogical Approach To First-Year Teaching, Jamie Abrams

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The First “Colonial Frontier” Legal Writing Conference, held at Duquesne University School of Law, focused on Engendering Hope in the Legal Writing Classroom: Pedagogy, Curriculum, and Attitude. This conference built on the foundational work of Allison Martin and Kevin Rand in which these scholars call for educators to engender hope in law students to prepare them for practice. Martin and Rand conclude that hope is a predictor of students’ academic performance and psychological health during the first semester of law school and recommend that law professors “maintain and creat[e] hope in law students” by embracing five core principles. Martin and …

A Tribute To Mary Lawrence, Ruth C. Vance

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A “Sending Down” Sabbatical: The Benefits Of Lawyering In The Legal Services Trenches, Stephen A. Rosenbaum, Suzanne Rabé

Publications

This article proposes that clinical professors, and legal writing professors in particular, consider practicing law - in real-life, non-clinical settings - during some significant portion of their sabbaticals from teaching. This proposal would (1) improve the learning experience for students in clinics, writing classes, and skills classes, (2) offer a vital public service to the under-represented, and (3) improve the overall administration of justice. At little cost, this proposal would foster a richer engagement by clinicians and legal writing professors with the world of legal practice. This idea could also infuse increased life and meaning into our law school classes. …

Before They Even Start: Hope And Incoming 1ls, Barbara Brunner

Journal Articles

Newly-accepted law school 1Ls often express interest in how they should spend the summer before starting their fall courses in order to be best prepared for success in their first semester. This desire to have a "leg up" on law school success leads those of us teaching first-year courses to think more deeply about what constitutes a "good preparation" for the unique experiences that new law students will face, and what skills are really necessary to increase their possibilities of success, especially in the first semester.

Over the past few years, I have compiled a list of activities which I …

Who Wants To Be A Muggle? The Diminished Legitimacy Of Law As Magic, Mark Edwin Burge

Faculty Scholarship

In the Harry Potter world, the magical population lives among the non-magical Muggle population, but we Muggles are largely unaware of them. This secrecy is by elaborate design and is necessitated by centuries-old hostility to wizards by the non-magical majority. The reasons behind this hostility, when combined with the similarities between Harry Potter-stylemagic and American law, make Rowling’s novels into a cautionary tale for the legal profession that it not treat law as a magic unknowable to non-lawyers. Comprehensibility — as a self-contained, normative value in the enactment interpretation, and practice of law — is given short-shrift by the legal …