Law Commons^™

Change At The Speed Of Leadership, Lee Fisher

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

“The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born—that there is a genetic factor to leadership. . . That’s nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.”

“Lawyers are in the anomalous position of serving as leaders but generally lacking leadership training and skills. Competency in lawyering skills often functions as a proxy for leadership skills, despite the evidence that leadership skills are distinct and may take years to develop. Our neglect of leadership skills is reaching crisis proportions because nearly half of all current law firm partners will retire within the next ten …

Sociolegal Research, The Law School Survey Of Student Engagement, And Studying Diversity In Judicial Clerkships, Shih-Chun Steven Chien, Ajay K. Mehrotra, Xiangnong Wang

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

The Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE) is an extraordinary asset for examining a vast array of topics related to the educational experiences of law students. By focusing on student-oriented surveys, LSSSE provides law schools and researchers an invaluable opportunity to delve into a wide range of issues dealing with the law student experience, including the career preferences and expectations of students throughout their law school years. In particular, there remains a wealth of opportunity for scholars interested in using LSSSE data to explore issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in legal education and the profession.

The American Bar …

The Moral Lawyer And The Machiavellian Nature Of Law Practice, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

In Western culture the name Niccolo Machiavelli has become Machiavellianism, a pejorative signifying the willingness to do anything to achieve desired ends. American lawyers do have limits, however, and are expected to operate according to an ethical code that is at least intended to prevent the worst abuses. The effectiveness of this ethical code has often been questioned, as have the questionable efforts of the organized bar to enforce its rules, but on the surface it differentiates law practice from hand-to-hand combat and military struggles. Even though I have sometimes used the concepts of the warrior lawyer, the general and …

Apps, Artificial Intelligence, And Androids: Beyond Schumpeter’S “Creative Destruction” To “Destructive Destruction” David Barnhizer, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

The analysis offered here is not a Neo-Luddite rage against “the machine”. As with the oft-stated reproach about paranoia, there sometimes really are situations in which people are “out to get you”. In our current situation the threat is not from people but from the convergence of a set of technological innovations that are and will increasingly have an enormous impact on the nature of work, economic and social inequality and the existence of the middle classes that are so vital to the durability of Western democracy. The fact is that developed nations’ economies such as found in Western Europe …

The Moral Lawyer And The Machiavellian Nature Of Law Practice, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

In Western culture the name Niccolo Machiavelli has become Machiavellianism, a pejorative signifying the willingness to do anything to achieve desired ends. American lawyers do have limits, however, and are expected to operate according to an ethical code that is at least intended to prevent the worst abuses. The effectiveness of this ethical code has often been questioned, as have the questionable efforts of the organized bar to enforce its rules, but on the surface it differentiates law practice from hand-to-hand combat and military struggles. Even though I have sometimes used the concepts of the warrior lawyer, the general and …

Survival Strategies For "Ordinary" Law Schools, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

This analysis is focused on approaches and actions that involve “ordinary” American law schools located in the middle range of competition that are not insulated from the worst of the trends. It is important to understand that for those “ordinary” law schools there is no single choice that could be effective in their struggle to adapt to the changing environment. The specific conditions for creating and implementing effective strategies vary depending on the particular law school, and the applicant and employment markets to which the school has access. These are further influenced positively or negatively by reputational and programmatic realities …

Self-Interest And Sinecure: Why Law School Can’T Be “Fixed” From Within, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

The issue of how best to do a legal education is being approached as if it were an intellectual and pedagogical question. Of course in a conceptual sense it is. But from a political and human perspective (law faculty, deans and lawyers) it is a self-interested situation in terms of how does this affect me? The reality is that for law faculty and deans it is mainly a life style, status, economic benefit and political situation in which the various interests protected by the traditional faculty slot placeholders [as well as the non-traditional practice-oriented teachers) are being masked by self-serving …

Law School Enrollments And Adaptive Strategies, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

There is no “national” or “global” law school enrollment crisis but a serious enrollment decline being experienced by a large number of law schools that requires adaptive strategies. Those strategies are not general but need to be designed and applied within a realistic understanding of the specific competitive marketplaces within which individual law schools are operating. In some cases not all obstacles can be overcome or problems fixed within a relevant timeframe. It is likely that some law schools will be forced to close their doors. And it is difficult to argue against that outcome in a number of instances. …

"Practice Ready" Law Graduates, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

Whatever view one holds on the idea of “practice ready” law graduates in the abstract it seems clear that it does not and could not mean that a new graduate can be fully capable of providing high quality services across the board to clients unfortunate enough to be using the services of the neophyte lawyer. If that were the case I can hear a client’s conversation with the brand new lawyer in a complex corporate merger with numerous parties, millions of dollars at stake, estate and tax issues, patent rights and differing valuations for the deal. “How many of these …

Teaching American Legal History In A Law School, Peter D. Garlock

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Professor Peter Garlock describes his legal history course.

Would You Say That To Your Children? Enhancing Learning Through Improved Communication, Karin M. Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This paper discusses how an aging professor must change how she teaches in relation to how her relationship with her student changes. Sometimes professors see themselves in one way and do not realize that they are not perceived the same way they were years ago. The paper sets out advice for appearing less intimidating to students as they grow younger while we grow older.

From Reconstruction To Obama: Understanding Black Invisibility, Racism In Appalachia, And The Legal Community's Responsibility To Promote A Dialogue On Race At The Wvu College Of Law, Brandon Stump

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This Note focuses on legal education in the United States and West Virginia in particular. Discussions on race, racism, and American law should take place in every legal classroom where race is relevant to the subject being discussed as a way to bridge gaps between communities. This is especially true for the West Virginia University College of Law ("College of Law"), which sits in the third whitest state in the country. The College of Law is the only law school in the state, and a majority of students at the College of Law are white and West Virginian. Thus, at …

Games In The Law School Classroom: Enhancing The Learning Experience, Karin M. Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Educators have always been concerned with devising ways to make education fun while engaging students in an activity that will be intellectually beneficial. This article explores the use of games in the legal writing classroom.

What's In A Name? A Gen Xer And Gen Yer Explore What It Means To Be Members Of Their Generations In The Workplace, Lauren M. Collins, Elizabeth A. Yates

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

In the NextGen Librarian's Survival Guide by Rachel Singer Gordon, the author cites several reasons this time is different than times before in librarianship. Those that are most relevant to law librarianship include:

• Flattening workplace hierarchies and participative management increase the input of newer librarians in workplace decision making

• New technologies require changing skills that affect attitudes toward the integration of those technologies into our daily work

• Outside pressures, such as the prevalence of the Internet, impose a need for librarians to continually prove our relevance and improve relations with younger patrons

• The much talked about …

Review: Voices Of American Law: Us Supreme Court Cases Meet The 21st Century, Lauren M. Collins

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Review of documentary series Voices of American Law (Thomas B. Metzloff & Sarah Wood, producers)

A Frank & Honest Talk: Aall’S Diversity Symposium Takes On Hard Questions Of Creating And Maintaining Diversity In The Legal Community, Lauren M. Collins

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

"Getting a Rise Out of Diversity: Celebrating the Challenge" took on hard questions of diversity, while keeping the spirit of New Orleans alive through celebration. With speakers who work to maintain diversity in legal practice and education every day, participants engaged in a lively discussion of what diversity actually is and how to create and sustain it.

I Didn't Take The Road Less Traveled, And What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been, Brian A. Glassman

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

The author describes his career path and the ways he has sought to combine his interests in law and art. The article concludes with ten survival tips to help others on their career journeys.

Thanks, But I'M Just Looking : Or Why I Don't Want To Be A Dean, Susan J. Becker

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

The author discusses the challenges facing law faculty who consider taking on the duties of law school administration.

Self-Reflection Within The Academy: The Absence Of Women In Constitutional Jurisprudence, Karin M. Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This article will suggest that legal education has failed to represent the significant contributions of women in our American legal heritage within its curriculum. It urges that an acknowledgment of the feminine contribution must now be included within the curriculum of law schools in such a way that the contribution is incorporated within traditional substantive courses rather than select courses dealing with primarily "women's issues." Focusing on the Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries, this article highlights the achievements and legal battles of women which were integral to the overall development of legal theory in our country. It discusses some of …

What We're Not Telling Law Students - And Lawyers - That They Really Need To Know: Some Thoughts-In-Action Toward Revitalizing The Profession From Its Roots, Lawrence S. Krieger

Journal of Law and Health

Part I of this article sets forth a generally encouraging set of propositions about student and attorney life that I have found to be true. If they are, law students and lawyers need to hear them repeatedly. They collectively represent an approach to life and law which, to the extent it is internalized, can increase life satisfaction, raise standards of professional behavior, and relieve many of the kinds of distress that law students and lawyers are prone to experience. Some students seem to bring much of this information with them to law school years and after, do not lose sight …

Innovative Teaching Methods And Practical Uses Of Literature In Legal Education, Karin M. Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Because I believe a breadth of reading enhances one's ability to think and write, throughout the years I have tried to encourage extra curricular and diversified reading to be done in conjunction with my Legal Writing class. Unfortunately, yet understandably, law students generally only do the required work, but not more. As a consequence, I have discovered, over time, that the "readers" in my classes continue to read while the "non-readers" never take the opportunity to discover what advantage there might be in taking my advice. Because no change has occurred in students' overall attitudes, I decided to make life …

Of Rat Time And Terminators, David R. Barnhizer

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

A version of rat time is being created within the legal profession as law schools pump 40,000 graduates a year into a saturated system. Understanding our present condition as a period of rat time can help us diagnose the problems of the legal profession, identify the future responsibilities of law schools and the profession, and create more effective solutions than the bandaids that have been proposed or applied thus far. This is particularly important because lawyers and law schools have lost their way. They are afraid to address their most troubling problems and to take the principled actions necessary for …

Freedom To Do What? Institutional Neutrality, Academic Freedom And Academic Responsibility, David R. Barnhizer

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Our topic is whether law schools should remain institutionally neutral, presumably concerning the fundamental political and moral issues that besiege our society. The answer depends on several competing considerations, including one's concept of the university as either ivory tower or critical force obligated to serve the society that sustains it. I opt in the direction of the university as social force while also accepting the validity of the passive mode and seeing the dispassionate search for knowledge as a means to serve important human needs. The abstract formulation of the university as institutionally neutral is in many ways illusory because …

The Distinction Between Lawyers As Advocates And As Activists; And The Role Of The Law School Dean In Facilitating The Justice Mission, James Douglas

Cleveland State Law Review

When David Barnhizer invited me to be involved in the Justice Mission conference I jumped at the opportunity; because justice is an issue that is extremely important to me, especially being a person of color in America. In presenting my ideas about the justice mission, I will be talking about two distinct concerns. One is the role of the law school dean in facilitating the justice mission in the law schools. The second is related but applies even more broadly since it draws upon the experiences of lawyers both in their roles as practitioners and as social activists. The point …

Clinical Scholarship And The Justice Mission, Robert D. Dinerstein

Cleveland State Law Review

To many people, the relationship between clinical programs and the justice mission of American law schools is so clear as to be self-evident. These programs may pursue justice on behalf of individual clients or for groups of clients through class-action or other impact litigation. Moreover, clinical teachers frequently discuss with their students the need for the latter to serve justice in their legal careers, whether as the principal focus of their legal work or through pro bono publico activities. Indeed, for many law students, the law clinic may be the only place in which concerns about justice are discussed and, …

Advocacy Strategies In Social Welfare Policy: Homelessness, Barbara Sard

Cleveland State Law Review

I currently direct the homelessness unit at Greater Boston Legal Services after having been a welfare lawyer for fifteen years. When I first started teaching at Harvard about six years ago, I taught a course on Welfare Law. There is a value in teaching homelessness law as a discrete topic rather than lumping it under the traditional topics of welfare law or housing law. Initially, when I started teaching at Harvard, my goal was to impress the students with the fact that a poverty law subject like Welfare Law was as complicated doctrinally as anything else that they might learn. …

Problems With The Structure Of Casebooks And Instruction, John Makdisi

Cleveland State Law Review

The case method of instruction has served to instruct generations of students from the time of its introduction by Christopher Langdell at the Harvard Law School. It has much to recommend it inasmuch as the lawyers who have been trained to think, analyze and solve problems by analyzing cases include some of the best minds in the country. However, this time-honored method of instruction contains some major flaws and it is time that we reexamine a pedagogic approach satirized for its punishing role in The Paper Chase. A pedagogic approach to law training that focuses on problem solving is not …

The Justice Mission Of American Law Schools, David R. Barnhizer

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

The scholar's dilemma, particularly those scholars in disciplines such as law that are irreversibly linked to the operation of power and implicit willingness to do violence if necessary, is that societies require shared consensus far more than truth. Negative truths about the scientifically unsupportable premises of our fundamental beliefs might interfere with the quality of the operating consensus, at least for those satisfied with their lot. The stark truth about opportunity, fairness, racial and gender bias, about who receives economic benefits and so forth would not be knowledge that “sets us free” but “sets us at each other's throats”. If …

Advice For The New Law Professor: A View From The Trenches, Susan J. Becker

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

A decade ago, Professor Douglas Whaley published an essay that offers comfort and advice to those commencing the metamorphosis from practitioners, judicial clerks, and students into professors of law. The purpose of this article is twofold: to offer a confirmation from the trenches of many of Professor Whaley's observations and to supplement his suggestions with some of my own.

Law Schools Should Be About Justice Too, Henry Rose

Cleveland State Law Review

Millions of low and middle-income Americans face legal problems every day. Most cannot afford an attorney. What is remarkable about these legal problems is that they are ignored by legal educators. American law schools, the training ground for our lawyers, do not focus on the civil legal problems of low and middle income persons. American law students are taught to focus on the legal problems of persons or entities able to pay for legal services. Not only are the common legal problems of Americans not studied in our law schools, the maldistribution of legal services in the society is barely …