Law Commons^™

Institutional Triage: Reflections On Being Acquired, Aric K. Short

Faculty Scholarship

On June 25, 2012, I walked into the dean's office at Texas Wesleyan University School of Law. He and I had been summoned by our university president to a hastily called meeting to discuss the law school's "academic program." Since I helped oversee our academic program as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the time, I was not particularly looking forward to the meeting. I assumed there would be bad news of some sort.

Instead, we were told that Texas Wesleyan University ("TWU") and Texas A&M University ("TAMU") were in negotiations that, it was expected, would result in a "strategic …

"Just Another Little Black Boy From The South Side Of Chicago": Overcoming Obstacles And Breaking Down Barriers To Improve Diversity In The Law Professoriate, Michael Z. Green

Faculty Scholarship

As I reflected on my personal experience to help address the persistence of discrimination in legal academia, I chose to focus on five areas of discussion for the open mic portion of the program held at the Association of American Law Schools Cross-Cutting Program, “The More Things Change ...: Exploring Solutions to Persistent Discrimination in Legal Academia,” held on January 4, 2015, in Washington, D.C. First, I decided to address my personal development as an only child and male in a family of mostly black women struggling through the socioeconomic challenges of being poor and black. To add to that …

Incubating Community Law Practices: Post-Graduate Models For Lawyer Training & Access To Law, Luz E. Herrera

Faculty Scholarship

While the greatest number of lawyers practice in solo and small firms, law schools do not devote sufficient resources to preparing law students for the opportunities and challenges that these types of law firms present. The recent economic recession has highlighted the need to better train lawyers to launch law practices right out of law school. However, experienced lawyers, law professors and state bar policy makers worry that individuals who start their own practices are not sufficiently trained to practice and could irreparably harm a client. Many new lawyers share that concern but also worry about the financial instability that …

Teaching Remedial Problem-Solving Skills To A Law School's Underperforming Students, John F. Murphy

Faculty Scholarship

This article describes a course called the "Art of Lawyering" developed by the Texas A&M University School of Law to help the bottom quarter of the 2L class develop the critical-thinking and problem-solving skills they should have learned in their first year of law school. Students in the bottom quarter of the class at the beginning of their 2L year are most at risk for failing the bar exam after graduation. The Art of Lawyering gives these students the structural framework necessary to solve problems like a lawyer, improve their performance in law school, and pass the bar exam.

The …

Launching The Los Angeles Incubator Consortium, Laura Dym Cohen, Luz E. Herrera, William T. Tanner

Faculty Scholarship

This Article offers a snapshot of the initial two-month development process of a new law firm incubator program-the Los Angeles Incubator Consortium (LAIC). LAIC is a collaborative project of Pepperdine University School of Law, Southwestern Law School, and UCLA School of Law that was launched in collaboration with the Los Angeles Law Library and various local legal aid providers through seed funding from the California Commission on Access to Justice.14 Part II discusses the leadership role of California's Commission on Access to Justice in promoting incubators as models to increase the availability of affordable legal services for the modest-means population. …