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Full-Text Articles in Law
Beg, Borrow, Or Steal: Ten Lessons Law Schools Can Learn From Other Educational Programs In Evaluating Their Curriculums, Debra Curtis
Beg, Borrow, Or Steal: Ten Lessons Law Schools Can Learn From Other Educational Programs In Evaluating Their Curriculums, Debra Curtis
Faculty Scholarship
INDISPUTABLY, LAW SCHOOLS are under attack.' Because of concerns about the legal field and legal education's responsibility in the crisis of new graduates without jobs, law schools are clamoring to respond by seeking and working toward curriculum change. Generally, higher education institutions acknowledge a "responsibility to endeavour to prepare graduates who are able to manage and respond effectively to change and its inherent demands challenges and tensions." However, there are questions about law schools' ability to do just that. There have been many years of repeated criticisms of the case method and active discussions regarding curriculum reform.
"Practice Ready Graduates": A Millennialist Fantasy, Robert J. Condlin
"Practice Ready Graduates": A Millennialist Fantasy, Robert J. Condlin
Faculty Scholarship
The sky is falling on legal education say the pundits, and preparing “practice ready” graduates is one of the best strategies for surviving the fallout. This is a millennialist version of the argument for clinical legal education that dominated discussion in the law schools in the 1960s and 1970s. The circumstances are different now, as are the people calling for reform, but the two movements are alike in one respect: both view skills training as legal education’s primary purpose. Everything else is a frolic and detour, and a fatal frolic and detour in hard times such as the present.
No …
Infusing Technology Skills Into The Law School Curriculum, Simon Canick
Infusing Technology Skills Into The Law School Curriculum, Simon Canick
Faculty Scholarship
Legal education has never considered technological proficiency to be a key outcome. Law professors may debate the merits of audiovisual teaching tools: do they work when they should?; do they facilitate learning objectives or are they just toys?; whom should they call when something breaks?; and so on. Teachers use course management sites like TWEN and Blackboard to share information and manage basic course functions. Many fear that laptops and other devices distract students in class, and some institute outright bans. Among many law teachers, technology is warily accepted, but only for the purpose of achieving traditional educational objectives.
What …
Critiquing Modern-Day U.S. Legal Education With Rhetoric: Frank's Plea And The Scholar Model Of The Law Professor Persona, Carlo A. Pedrioli
Critiquing Modern-Day U.S. Legal Education With Rhetoric: Frank's Plea And The Scholar Model Of The Law Professor Persona, Carlo A. Pedrioli
Faculty Scholarship
This article explains how, from 1920 to 1960, the role, or persona, of the law professor in the United States remained the situs of considerable rhetorical controversy that the role had been in the fifty years before 1920. On one hand, lawyers used rhetoric to promote a persona, that of a scholar, appropriate for the law professor situated within the university, a context suitable for the professionalization of law. On the other hand, different lawyers like Judge Jerome Frank used rhetoric to critique, often in a scathing manner, the scholar persona and put forth their own persona, that of a …
Embedding Assessment Principles In Externships, Kelly S. Terry
Embedding Assessment Principles In Externships, Kelly S. Terry
Faculty Scholarship
Externships have become an increasingly important component of legal education, as law schools seek to increase experiential learning opportunities for students to gain practice skills prior to entering the profession. As externship courses grow and become an integral part of the law school curriculum, externship teachers should implement best practices for assessing their students' learning, including setting learning outcomes for their courses, selecting assessment tools, gathering and analyzing assessment data, and using assessment data to make course adjustments that will improve student learning. This Article provides a primer on the process of course-level assessment and then explains how to apply …
Balancing Between Two Worlds: A Dakota Woman’S Reflections On Being A Law Professor, Angelique Eaglewoman
Balancing Between Two Worlds: A Dakota Woman’S Reflections On Being A Law Professor, Angelique Eaglewoman
Faculty Scholarship
There were many paths I considered as a young woman and none of them included becoming a law professor. My journey to my present life as a Dakota woman law professor is about balancing between the worlds I travel back and forth in. There is my tribal world, where I feel replenished and part of an on-going community experience stretching back to time immemorial. I feel that I am part of an unfolding history of endurance, strong Native women, and a participant in sustaining our traditional Native ways. On the other hand, there is the non-Indian world, where I often …
What Cornell Veterinary School Taught Me About Legal Education, Tina Stark
What Cornell Veterinary School Taught Me About Legal Education, Tina Stark
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
One Small Step For Legal Writing, One Giant Leap For Legal Education: Making The Case For More Writing Opportunities In The "Practice-Ready" Law School Curriculum, Sherri Lee Keene
One Small Step For Legal Writing, One Giant Leap For Legal Education: Making The Case For More Writing Opportunities In The "Practice-Ready" Law School Curriculum, Sherri Lee Keene
Faculty Scholarship
Legal writing is more than an isolated practical skill or a law school course; it is a valuable tool for broadening and deepening law students’ and new attorneys’ knowledge and understanding of the law. If experienced legal professionals, both professors and practitioners alike, take a hard look back at their careers, many will no doubt remember how their work on significant legal writing projects advanced their own knowledge of the law and enhanced their professional competence. Legal writing practice helps the writer to gain expertise in a number of ways: first, the act of writing itself promotes learning; second, close …
William Mitchell College Of Law's Hybrid Program For J.D. Study: Answering The Call For Innovation, Eric S. Janus, Gregory M. Duhl, Simon Canick
William Mitchell College Of Law's Hybrid Program For J.D. Study: Answering The Call For Innovation, Eric S. Janus, Gregory M. Duhl, Simon Canick
Faculty Scholarship
In January 2015, William Mitchell College of Law will launch the first American Bar Association (ABA)-approved, on-campus/ online J.D. program to further the college's mission: to provide accessible, experiential, rigorous training for tomorrow's lawyers. Known as the hybrid program, it will offer a legal education to talented, hard-working students who cannot access a traditional J.D. program because of location or family or work commitments. In this article, we explain the origins and pedagogical foundations of the program, as well as give an overview of the program.
Keep Calm And Carry On, René Reich-Graefe
Keep Calm And Carry On, René Reich-Graefe
Faculty Scholarship
This Essay examines some of the hard data available for today’s legal market and develops very basic forecasts and hypotheses about what the future will bring for the U.S. legal profession during the next decades. In conclusion, it projects that recent law school graduates and current and future law students are standing at the threshold of the most robust legal market that ever existed in this country—a legal market which will grow, exist for, and coincide with, their entire professional careers. Using admittedly back-of-the-envelope math based on current trends affecting the legal market (in particular, lawyer retirements, population growth, and …