Law Commons^™

Leveraging Technology To Promote Access To Justice, Amy Emerson

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

We Are In This Together: A Faculty-Led Approach To Fostering Innovation In Online Instruction, Courtney Selby, Rachel H. Smith

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

After reviewing this chapter, readers will understand how to:

• Implement a faculty-led approach to improving online instruction at their in­stitutions;
• Convene a faculty task force to spearhead that approach;
• Engage faculty members in productive discussions about the pedagogy of online law teaching;
• Prepare a set of institution-specific recommendations for improved online teaching; and
• Foster a faculty culture invested in innovating online instruction well beyond emergency use.

As so many platitudes tell us, challenges present opportunities. And the challenges of teaching law in a pandemic certainly created an avalanche, a flood, a—pick your natural disaster—of opportunity. Indeed, the sudden switch …

Anthrogogy: Towards Inclusive Law School Learning, Rebecca C. Flanagan

Faculty Publications

At the time it was introduced, andragogy did offer benefits over “chalk and talk;” where most law students passively took notes while one student at a time actively engaged with their professor in a Socratic dialogue. While andragogy has sustained several modifications and revisions over the last fifty years, it does not reflect the life stage or life experiences that blur the boundaries of childhood and adulthood for over half the current student body in most law schools. Andragogy, designed as a teaching methodology for traditional adults seeking continuing education or to gain credentials for upward mobility in their current …

Law As Instrumentality, Jeremiah A. Ho

Faculty Publications

Our conceptions of law affect how we objectify the law and ultimately how we study it. Despite a century’s worth of theoretical progress in American law—from legal realism to critical legal studies movements and postmodernism—the formalist conception of “law as science,” as promulgated by Christopher Langdell at Harvard Law School in the late-nineteenth century, still influences methodologies in American legal education. Subsequent movements of legal thought, however, have revealed that the law is neither scientific nor “objective” in the way the Langdellian formalists once envisioned. After all, the Langdellian scientific objectivity of law itself reflected the dominant class, gender, power, …

Contemporary Teaching Strategies: Effectively Engaging Millennials Across The Curriculum, Renee Nicole Allen, Alicia R. Jackson

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

"Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime." - Chinese Proverb

American Bar Association ("ABA") Standard 314, Assessment of Student Learning, requires law schools to "utilize both formative and summative assessment methods in its curriculum to measure and improve student learning and provide meaningful feedback to students." This article will connect multiple formative assessments to Bloom's taxonomy to demonstrate how law teachers can transform and enhance student learning, while promoting key steps in the self-regulated learning cycle. First, it is imperative law teachers …

Choosing A Criminal Procedure Casebook: On Lesser Evils And Free Books, Ben L. Trachtenberg

Faculty Publications

Among the more important decisions a law teacher makes when preparing a new course is what materials to assign. Criminal procedure teachers are spoiled for choice, with legal publishers offering several options written by teams of renowned scholars. This Article considers how a teacher might choose from the myriad options available and suggests two potentially overlooked criteria: weight and price.

Function, Form, And Strawberries: Subverting Langdell, Jeremiah A. Ho

Faculty Publications

Beyond this Part I Introduction, Part II will briefly summarize why the Langdell tradition is at heart a learning model that intrinsically marginalizes active learning and exalts only a limited experience of skills teaching and acquisition and will conclude that the Langdellian tradition creates a hierarchy that juxtaposes knowledge of legal doctrine over skills. Part III will demonstrate a method for law teachers to incorporate skills teaching actively in the classroom, and do so in a way that legitimizes legal reasoning skills and elevates the teaching and learning of skills. Hopefully, as the Conclusion points out, the new normative in …

A Promising Beginning, Jeremiah A. Ho

Faculty Publications

When I began teaching at the University of Massachusetts in August 2012, one of my first encounters was with the newly-formed UMass Law Review. The editorial staff was wrapping up its initial preparations for publishing the inaugural volume. Now, over a year later, those nascent processes have since been refined; the inaugural year is over. We are excited to say that the UMass Law Review enters its sophomore year with this current issue, affectionately dubbed “9:1”.

Lessons From Teaching Students To Negotiate Like A Lawyer, John M. Lande

Faculty Publications

This article reports my observations from teaching those courses and offers suggestions for future efforts to improve legal education. My experience supports the (1) focus on negotiation in a wide range of situations in addition to the final resolution of disputes and transactions, (2) addition of "ordinary legal negotiation" to the two traditional theories of negotiation, and (3) use of multi-stage simulations in addition to traditional single-stage simulations. These approaches were critical in providing students with a more realistic understanding of negotiation. This article also describes experiments with other teaching techniques in my courses.

Teaching The Post-Sex Generation, Kerri Lynn Stone

Faculty Publications

There is a trend that I have observed in the course of leading my classes in discussions about the kinds of behavior that may constitute unlawful discrimination: the emergence of an attitude among students that society is simply “post-sex,” or no longer in need of most or all anti-sex discrimination jurisprudence. This Article details my own approach to teaching and to raising and conducting discussions about how anti-discrimination legislation and jurisprudence works in theory, in practice, and how it would/could work in an ideal world. I enjoy teaching students with a diversity of viewpoints. However, when I began to encounter …

Teaching Students To Negotiate Like A Lawyer, John M. Lande

Faculty Publications

Some important stages might include: (1) initial client interview, (2) negotiation of a retainer agreement, (3) developing good working relationships with counterpart lawyers, (4) conducting factual investigation and/or legal research, (5) working with counterparts to plan the negotiation process, (6) resolving discovery disputes, (7) preparing client for negotiations, (8) conducting an ultimate negotiation, (9) engaging a mediator and mediating the matter, and (10) drafting a settlement agreement. This essay suggests that by using both single-stage and multi-stage simulations, instructors can better prepare students for negotiations that they will actually conduct in practice. These suggestions grow out my book, Lawyering with …

Bringing Mindfulness Into The Law School Classroom: A Personal Journey, Richard C. Reuben

Faculty Publications

This autobiographical essay discusses how the author used the techniques and benefits associated with mindfulness to improve his law school classroom teaching. Mindfulness is a state of non-judgmental present moment awareness that is often cultivated through meditation practice but also carried forward into everyday life. The essay discusses how this stance of mindfulness helped the author achieve a greater connection with his students in a variety of both doctrinal and non-traditional classes by fostering more openness, receptivity, and responsiveness to where students are at in the classroom moment, as well as the greater clarity, courage, and compassion that can be …

Teaching Gender As A Core Value In The Firstyear Contracts Class, Kerri Lynn Stone

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Benefits Of Integrated Programs Over Non-Integrated Programs, Rebecca Flanagan

Faculty Publications

I do see hybrid teaching as the ASP model of the future. It is not a method that will be adopted by all schools, and it will certainly take time, and analysis, to refine the model to fit the student and school culture. Success is always a work in progress, but can only be achieved once you step from your comfort zone and try a new method.

Using Graphics To Teach Evidence, Kevin C. Mcmunigal

Faculty Publications

As an Assistant United States Attorney in the general crimes unit of a metropolitan United States Attorney's Office, I regularly tried a variety of cases ranging from bank robberies and drug offenses to white collar crimes. Regardless of the type of crime, I frequently found various types of graphics useful in presenting the case. Examples included a chart providing a point by point comparison of modus operandi in two armed bank robberies and a map of the scene of a controlled purchase of cocaine showing the locations and movements of multiple defendants, an informant, and federal agents. Such graphics helped …

Law Students With Attention Deficit Disorder: How To Reach Them, How To Teach Them, Robin A. Boyle

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Most law school classes are likely to include students with Attention Deficit Disorder ("ADD") or its related disorder - Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. ADD is a neurological disorder, and many people with it additionally have learning disabilities. Law students with ADD that manifests itself in learning disabilities are the focus of this Article. There has been a growth of services for those with ADD, such as counseling, but unfortunately, "less attention is paid to the thousands of teachers who have been charged with instructing" ADD students. It is imperative for teachers to be equipped for teaching ADD students. To …

Teaching Law Students Through Individual Learning Styles, Robin A. Boyle, Rita Dunn

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Teaching can be rewarding, but it can also be frustrating when some students fail to grasp the material. Professor Robin A. Boyle of St. John’s University School of Law has been teaching Legal Research and Writing in small sections of approximately twenty to thirty students for four years. She, like many of her similarly exasperated colleagues, has repeated the same course content by using either lecture or collaborative learning, and has observed some students doing well, whereas others continued to perform poorly. Then, Dr. Rita Dunn was introduced to the law school faculty and suggested that law professors incorporate …

All We Really Need To Know About Teaching We Learned In Kindergarten, R. Lawrence Dessem

Faculty Publications

Being asked to talk recently about teaching to non-law school professors caused me to think about some of the successful techniques I have used or seen used in law school teaching. I was concerned, though, that these techniques might not be transferrable to other teachers in other settings. However, the more I thought about it the more I realized that the techniques we use in teaching law students are comparable to, if not identical with, techniques used by any successful teacher. These are the same techniques we all have seen utilized by our best teachers over our many years of …

Goodness And Humanness: Distinguishing Traits, James E. Moliterno

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.