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Full-Text Articles in Law
Becoming Global Lawyers? A Comparative Study Of Civic Professionalism, John Bliss
Becoming Global Lawyers? A Comparative Study Of Civic Professionalism, John Bliss
Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship
Through their professional education and training, new lawyers are generally encouraged to adopt a civic vision of professional identity. This article explores convergences and diverges in how new lawyers entering an increasingly globalized legal profession conceive of their civic roles in different national contexts. In particular, I examine corporate lawyers-in-training in the U.S. and China, drawing on interviews and a cross-cultural identity mapping method to compare their accounts of the lived experiences of civic professionalism. I find that professional identity formation in the U.S. sample is largely marked by role distancing and a sense of constrained public-interest expression. In contrast, …
Looking Back: A Case Study Of Career Interest And Experiential Learning In Law School, David I.C. Thomson, Stephen Daniels
Looking Back: A Case Study Of Career Interest And Experiential Learning In Law School, David I.C. Thomson, Stephen Daniels
Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship
This article is divided into four parts. First, some general observations on what led us to think about our research differently-the importance of career relevance with attention to students interested in a business-related career. Second, an overview of our ongoing study of students and experiential learning at Denver Law-a study designed to follow an incoming class as it goes from first year to last and into the practice of law. Third, through the lens of career interest, an analysis of 1L Denver Law students' preferred style of learning and their views on experiential learning. Fourth, a corresponding analysis of Denver …
If You Build It, They Will Come: What Students Say About Experiential Learning, David I.C. Thomson, Stephen Daniels
If You Build It, They Will Come: What Students Say About Experiential Learning, David I.C. Thomson, Stephen Daniels
Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship
Our purpose here is to explore one of the “natural experiments” cited by the Task Force: the Experiential Advantage (EA) program at the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law (Denver Law). EA was developed as a part of a greater general focus on experiential learning and is built upon the three “Carnegie Apprenticeships” – “the intellectual or cognitive,” “the forms of expert practice,” and “identity and purpose.” It was implemented at Denver Law starting with students entering in August 2013. To explore this natural experiment, we took a particular route and did so for what we see as good …
Divided Selves: Professional Role Distancing Among Law Students And New Lawyers In A Period Of Market Crisis, John Bliss
Divided Selves: Professional Role Distancing Among Law Students And New Lawyers In A Period Of Market Crisis, John Bliss
Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship
In the terms of Erving Goffman’s classic role distancing analysis, newly admitted law students often aspire to an “embraced” lawyer role that directly expresses their personal and political values. Empirical research has suggested that during law school these students are instructed in an amoral and apolitical vision of professionalism. The literature has paid less attention to how students internally experience these norms within their continual processes of self-construction. This article takes an exploratory microdynamic look at professional identity formation drawing on longitudinal interviews and identity mapping with three student cohorts. I find that over the course of their legal education …
Fred Cheever - The Denver Law Ideal, Martin J. Katz
Fred Cheever - The Denver Law Ideal, Martin J. Katz
Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship
Fred was a mythical figure at Denver Law. Truly. I arrived at the school in the fall of 2000, while Fred and his family were overseas on sabbatical. From the first day I arrived, people would say, ""You have to meet Fred. He is the greatest."" He was billed as the greatest mentor, the greatest teacher, the greatest scholar, and the most thoughtful addition to any endeavor we might be contemplating. As the accolades for Fred-in-absentia piled up, I became convinced that Fred did not actually exist; that he was a mythic hero created by my colleagues to describe their …
"Teaching" Formation Of Professional Identity, David I.C. Thomson
"Teaching" Formation Of Professional Identity, David I.C. Thomson
Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship
This Article is my attempt to provide a guide to what professional identity formation is—as distinct from more familiar concepts of professionalism and ethics—and what legal educators are doing, and could do in the future, to foster this sort of professional formation in their courses and curricula. In Part I, I offer some background and history of the topic, which supports a new definition provided in the Article for lawyer professional identity formation. I describe in Part II what some schools are doing to “teach” formation of professional identity and argue that those efforts have some significant limitations. I argue …
Understanding The Costs Of Experiential Legal Education, Martin J. Katz
Understanding The Costs Of Experiential Legal Education, Martin J. Katz
Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship
Law schools across the country are under pressure to do two seemingly contradictory things. First, we must do a better job of preparing our graduates for practice. Most commentators, including me, believe that this requires law schools to increase the quantity and quality of experiential education we provide. At the same time, law schools are under pressure to control costs. If we do not do so, we risk pricing a large and growing segment of the population out of our market. Can law schools meet both of these mandates simultaneously? The received wisdom seems to be that experiential education is …
Good-Bye Christopher Columbus Langdell?, K.K. Duvivier
Good-Bye Christopher Columbus Langdell?, K.K. Duvivier
Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship
The call of this Article was to take "A Prospective Look" at Environmental and Natural Resources Law for the next 40 years with a special focus on law school teaching. Daunted by the hubris involved in prognosticating so far into the future, this piece more modestly explores three areas in which law school teaching is currently changing: I. Methods of Presentation; II. Use of Skills Exercises; and III. Influence of Digital Technologies and the Internet. To add an empirical component, the author canvassed AALS members about pedagogies they used both in class and outside of classroom time, as well as …
Outcomes & Assessment: A Golden Opportunity For Lrw Professors, David I.C. Thomson
Outcomes & Assessment: A Golden Opportunity For Lrw Professors, David I.C. Thomson
Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship
The American Bar Association is currently discussing drafts of a proposal to shift the law school accreditation standards from inputs measurements (such as numbers of books, faculty student ratios, etc.) to outcomes assessment. While still in discussion, this shift has the potential to create profound change in legal education. For the first time, law schools may be held accountable – beyond the bar exam – for what and how they teach their students. Law schools all across the country are busy trying to determine what this will mean, and how to go about meeting the new ABA standard.
New Ways To Teach Drafting And Drafting Ethics, Lisa Penland, David I.C. Thomson, Susan Duncan, Karen J. Sneddon, Susan M. Chesler
New Ways To Teach Drafting And Drafting Ethics, Lisa Penland, David I.C. Thomson, Susan Duncan, Karen J. Sneddon, Susan M. Chesler
Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship
As foreign as it can seem to not be in a physical classroom with bodies sitting in the chairs listening, it is a very different way of teaching but it can be very effective. If you go through this process of developing and dividing outcomes, dividing modules, and selecting the right technology, it can work. And that is kind of a scary thought to some people. Perhaps not people who have come to this section today or to this conference about What's Next, but for many of our colleagues, this is kind of a scary thought – that you might …
Law School 2.0: Legal Education For A Digital Age, David I.C. Thomson
Law School 2.0: Legal Education For A Digital Age, David I.C. Thomson
Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship
Legal education is at a crossroads. As today's media-saturated students enter law school, they find themselves thrust into old style lecture-orientated, casebook modes of instruction, much of which is over 100 years old. Over those years legal education has resisted many studies recommending change, most recently from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Clinical Legal Education Association. . .
Using A Wiki To Increase Student Engagement In Administrative Law, David I.C. Thomson
Using A Wiki To Increase Student Engagement In Administrative Law, David I.C. Thomson
Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship
Administrative law is one of the courses students love to hate. This is particularly true in schools where Admin is a required course, since many students in the class would not take it otherwise, and gripe about being forced to. The problem with Admin law – for both the teacher and the student – is that it is such a vast topic that teaching it in a manner students can comprehend is diffi cult. When I was asked to teach Admin law last year, I looked at this as a challenge, rather than a burden. Because I am fairly comfortable …
Teaching As Art Form - Review Of The Elements Of Teaching, David I.C. Thomson
Teaching As Art Form - Review Of The Elements Of Teaching, David I.C. Thomson
Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship
The authors of this gem of a book—both retired college teachers who gave their professional lifetimes to teaching—write simply and passionately about what it takes to be an effective teacher, and manage to reduce the key aspects of a complex process down to nine primary elements. In so doing, they provide not only a road map of aspiration for the new teacher, but also signposts of inspiration for the experienced teacher.
Sometimes You Have To Be The Guide On The Side, David I.C. Thomson
Sometimes You Have To Be The Guide On The Side, David I.C. Thomson
Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship
A saying in the literature of collaborative learning scolds us teachers for being too fond of the sound of our own voices: “You need to be less of the ‘Sage on the Stage’ and more of the ‘Guide on the Side.’” The night of my “best class” this saying really hit home to me. I was the Guide on the Side, and the students took over the teaching– and the learning.
Legal And Medical Education Compared: Is It Time For A Flexner Report On Legal Education, Robert M. Hardaway
Legal And Medical Education Compared: Is It Time For A Flexner Report On Legal Education, Robert M. Hardaway
Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship
The purpose of this Article is to explore the common elements of legal and medical education and to compare the reform movements in each profession, with a view toward finding an explanation for the widely differing conditions that exist today in the education of each profession. For example, why is it that medical education can provide facilities and training costing up to ten times that provided law students? Why do medical schools receive outside financial support paying up to 95% of the costs of medical education while law schools are supported primarily by tuition and fees? Why do medical students …