Law Commons^™

How Not To Be Jaded When The World Is Going To The Bad Place In A Hand Basket, Kathryn Fehrman

Kathryn Fehrman

Five proactive steps for lawyers to take to prevent callous and jaded attitudes.

Making Lawyers Out Of Law Students: Shifting The Locus Of Authority, Kathryn Fehrman, Tim Casey

Kathryn Fehrman

This article proceeds in three parts. Recent critiques of legal education have centered on two main themes: the cost of legal education and the need for curricular reform (to teach law students to be lawyers rather than legal theorists). In the first and second sections of this article, we address the call for curricular reform and describe the innovative curricular design of the STEPPS Program at California Western School of Law as an answer to that call. The STEPPS Program, a required second-year course in ethics and skills, provides a unique forum for teaching the knowledge, skills, and values necessary …

The End Of Law Schools, Ray Worthy Campbell

Ray W Campbell

Law schools as we know them are doomed. They continue to offer an educational model originally designed to prepare lawyers to practice in common law courts of a bygone era. That model fails to prepare lawyers for today’s highly specialized practices, and it fails to provide targeted training for the emerging legal services fields other than traditional lawyering.

This article proposes a new ideology of legal education to meet the needs of modern society. Unlike other reform proposals, it looks not to tweaking the training of traditional lawyers, but to rethinking legal education in light of a changing legal services …

Why The Bar Examination Fails To Raise The Bar, Carol Goforth

Carol Goforth

Law Vs. Science: Should Law As A Core Subject Be Eliminated At The U.S. Armed Services Academies In Favor Of More Relevant Stem Courses?, Gregory M. Huckabee

Gregory M. Huckabee

Law vs. Science: Should law as a core subject be eliminated at the U.S. Armed Services Academies in favor of more relevant STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) courses? As recent cyberterror events have unfolded, more STEM knowledge is needed in the armed forces. STEM courses are on the march for inclusion in greater numbers in academy core curriculums. In order for new STEM courses to join the academic heart of academy learning, predecessor courses must be reviewed for relevancy, significance, and materiality. One core course in common at all three military academies is law. Yet few core curriculums can absorb …

Ferguson, The Rebellious Law Professor, And The Neoliberal University, Harold A. Mcdougall Iii

Harold A. McDougall III

Neoliberalism, a business-oriented ideology promoting corporatism, profit-seeking, and elite management, has found its way into the modern American university. As neoliberal ideology envelops university campuses, the idea of law professors as learned academicians and advisors to students as citizens in training, has given way to the concept of professors as brokers of marketable skills with students as consumers. In a legal setting, this concept pushes law students to view their education not as a means to contribute to society and the professional field, but rather as a means to make money. These developments are especially problematic for minority students and …

An Institutional Commitment To Minorities And Diversity: The Evolution Of A Law School Academic Support Program, Jackie Slotkin

Jacquelyn H. Slotkin

Given the severe underrepresentation of minorities in the legal profession, law schools have begun to realize their obligation to provide minorities with access to a quality legal education. This Article profiles the ongoing efforts of one private, free-standing law school to fulfill its commitment to diversity in education.

A Government Of Laws Not Of Precedents 1776-1876: The Google Challenge To Common Law Myth, James Maxeiner

James R Maxeiner

Conventional wisdom holds that the United States is a common law country of precedents where, until the 20th century (the “Age of Statutes”), statutes had little role. Digitization by Google and others of previously hard to find legal works of the 19th century challenges this common law myth. At the Centennial in 1876 Americans celebrated that “The great fact in the progress of American jurisprudence … is its tendency towards organic statute law and towards the systematizing of law; in other words, towards written constitutions and codification.” This article tests the claim of the Centennial Writers of 1876 and finds …

Legal Education As A Rule Of Law Strategy: Problems And Opportunities With U.S.-Based Programs, David Pimentel

David Pimentel

Education can be powerful force in building the rule of law in developing countries and transitional states—especially in light of its power to influence culture and its ability to sustain meaningful change. Building a more effective system of legal education is a long term project, however, and a difficult sell given the way rule of law reform gets funded. Shorter term impacts are possible, however, through U.S.-based educational opportunities, which therefore present a compelling opportunity for rule of law promotion. Addressing short-term legal education deficiencies with U.S.-based education can contribute to a vision for the future of legal education in …

Teaching The Newly Essential Knowledge, Skills, And Values In A Changing World, Section E: Intercultural Effectiveness, Rhonda Magee, Mary Lynch, Robin Boyle, Antoinette Lopez

Rhonda V Magee

Chapter from the forthcoming book "Building on Best Practices: Transforming Legal Education in a Changing World" (2015). addresses the need of legal education to prepare cross-culturally competent lawyers. Outlines techniques and educational outcomes to develop law students' intercultural awareness.

Perspectives On International Students' Interest In U.S. Legal Education: Shifting Incentives And Influence, Carole Silver

Carole Silver

This article seeks to situate the shift to international students in U.S. law school SJD programs within the larger context of globalization and higher education, and was published as a comment on Gail Hupper’s article on “Educational Ambivalence: The Rise of a Foreign-Student Doctorate in Law.” Broadening the framework of analysis allows consideration of the competing factions and opportunities that explain the developing international market for legal education. In addition, this wider lens also offers insight into the incentives shaping new investments in legal (and higher) education, including Yale Law School’s new PhD in law.

On The Battlefield Of Merit: Harvard Law School, The First Century, Daniel Coquillette, Bruce Kimball

Daniel R. Coquillette

What Firms Want: Investigating Globalization's Influence On The Market For Lawyers In Korea, Carole Silver, Jae-Hyup Lee, Jeeyoon Park

Carole Silver

This article addresses one of the central debates regarding globalization: how best to approach liberalizing markets in order to balance the interests of local and non-local actors and institutions. It takes the legal services market as its focus and draws on the South Korean experience as a case study. Korea recently liberalized its regulatory approach to legal services by changing both its method of producing lawyers (including initiating a graduate level law school system and drastically increasing the proportion of bar exam passers) and allowing foreign competition to directly enter its market through foreign law firms and foreign-licensed lawyers working …

Spirals And Schemas: How Integrated Law School Courses Create Higher-Order Thinkers And Problem Solvers, Jennifer Spreng

Jennifer E Spreng

As legal educators continue to shift focus to preparing students for practice, they should put integrated first-year courses and curricula into the top tier of potential reform vehicles. Integration refers to the extent to which a course or curriculum blurs disciplinary boundaries as well as boundaries between doctrine and authentic learning activities. Integrated courses promote active, deep learning that facilitate orderly knowledge construction and reveal more connections between vital legal concepts. The authenticity of integrated courses improves students’ retention and transfer of knowledge. Such accessible, interconnected knowledge in such a vital learning environment is like intellectual rocket fuel to law …

Suppose The Class Began The Day The Case Walked In The Door . . ., Jennifer Spreng

Jennifer E Spreng

Problem-solving is the manifestation of a lawyer’s expertise. Unfortunately, the first year of law school is too highly compartmentalized and often semi-rote-learning experience that does not disturb what are many students’ passive undergraduate school learning strategies. Once taught the same way in law school, students are unlikely to develop the more intellectually sophisticated, relational learning strategies to make the cross-topical and cross-disciplinary connections of which problem-solving expertise is made.

This article argues that horizontally and vertically integrated first-year courses with spiral designs that prioritize honing students’ analytical and problem-solving capacities can break this cycle and prepare students with more self-directed …