Law Commons^™

Caring For The Souls Of Our Students: The Evolution Of A Community Economic Development Clinic During Turbulent Times, Gowri J. Krishna, Kelly Pfeifer, Dana Thompson

Articles

Community Economic Development (CED) clinicians regularly address issues surrounding economic, racial, and social justice, as those are the core principles motivating their work to promote vibrant, diverse, and sustainable communities. When COVID-19 arrived, and heightened attention to police brutality and racial injustice ensued, CED clinicians focused not only on how to begin to address these issues in their clinics, but on how to discuss these issues more deeply and effectively with their students. This essay highlights the ways in which the pandemic school year influenced significant rethinking of one CED clinic’s operations: first, the pandemic sharpened the clinic’s mission to …

Explicit Instruction In Legal Education: Boon Or Spoon?, Beth A. Brennan

Faculty Law Review Articles

While legal education unquestionably hones students’ critical thinking skills, it also privileges students who are faster readers and have prior background knowledge or larger working memories. According to the prevailing mythology of law school pedagogy, students learn by struggling to find their way out of chaos. Only then is their learning deep enough to permit them to engage in critical thinking and legal reasoning. Learning theory and research suggest this type of “inquiry” learning is not an effective way to introduce novice learners to a subject. Lacking basic substantive and procedural knowledge, students’ struggles are often unproductive and dispiriting. Initial …

Reflections On Legal Education In The Aftermath Of A Pandemic, Timothy Casey

Faculty Scholarship

This essay considers two significant changes to legal education in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. First, on-line programs will expand, based on the largely successful experiment in delivering legal education on-line during the pandemic. But this expansion must be thoughtful and deliberate. The legal education curriculum could include more on-line courses, but only if the learning outcomes and the pedagogy are aligned with on-line education. Experiential courses may not be the best fit for on-line given the specific learning outcomes and the benefits of in-person instruction in those courses. Second, student well-being will receive more attention in legal education. …

Directed Questions: A Non-Socratic Dialogue About Non-Socratic Teaching, Kris Franklin, Rory Bahadur

Articles & Chapters

Despite frequent criticism of Socratic and case-method teaching, the core teaching in most foundational law classes has been remarkably stagnant. But in a time of turmoil and reexamination of the traditions we have all inherited, there is also opportunity for meaningful adaptation to the modern era. This Article introduces Directed Questions methodology as an alternative to the traditional teaching models currently operating in most law schools. Directed reading pedagogy allows legal educators to seamlessly transition to a modern and effective pedagogy incorporating best practices which recognizes that fostering inclusion and the success of diverse students is mandatory in post-Langdellian legal …

Caring For The Souls Of Our Students: The Evolution Of A Community Economic Development Clinic During Turbulent Times, Gowri Krishna, Kelly Pfeifer, Dana Thompson

Articles & Chapters

Community Economic Development (CED) clinicians regularly address issues surrounding economic, racial, and social justice, as those are the core principles motivating their work to promote vibrant, diverse, and sustainable communities. When COVID-19 arrived, and heightened attention to police brutality and racial injustice ensued, CED clinicians focused not only on how to begin to address these issues in their clinics, but on how to discuss these issues more deeply and effectively with their students. This essay highlights the ways in which the pandemic school year influenced significant rethinking of one CED clinic’s operations: first, the pandemic sharpened the clinic’s mission to …

Law School News: Professor Of The Year 2021: Brittany Raposa 05/20/2021, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Radical Imagination: Fostering Community In Legal Education, Adrienne Baker

Student Scholarship

Study after study alerts us to concerns about law student wellbeing. Statistics are staggering, and law students are more likely to become anxious, depressed, and turn to substance abuse. Self-care is framed as an antidote, but the individual responsibility is still placed on the student. Rather, the issue is better resolved upstream.

Law schools must transgress and transform; they must reimagine their function. This article reflects on law school pedagogy and simple ways to build community in the classroom as well as school-wide administrative suggestions to promote law student wellbeing.

“Presentation Principles”: Connecting Core Lawyering Skills To A Contemporary Lawyering Framework In The Digital Age, Ann Shalleck

Presentations

One way we try to make the connection between core lawyering skills and those inherent in contemporary practice is to examine what unifies what might otherwise be considered discrete lawyering skills. Because we are so aware of how technology is constantly changing and how lawyers and our students need to adapt to its forms and logics in their practice, familiar issues of how to communicate become more evident to us. Technology, therefore, gives us the opportunity to reexamine long held practices, habits of mind, and approaches to teaching students how to present information to colleagues, supervisors, clients, adversaries, tribunals, and …

The Unified Legal Skills Program: How One Law School Adapted To Meet The Needs Of Students Online, And How Those Adaptations May Inform Post-Pandemic Teaching, David Austin, Allison D. Cato, Amy E. Day, Liam Vavasour

Faculty Scholarship

When CWSL was forced to switch to online learning for the COVID-19 pandemic, we worked hard to follow best practices for online learning by attending online conferences and voraciously reading everything we could find to make the learning experience the best we could for our students. CWSL's Legal Skills program earned high praise in student evaluations for adapting so quickly given the difficult circumstances.

During the summer of 2020, we met as a Legal Skills team to discuss how to approach the regular school term. Specifically, we faced a larger-than-anticipated first-year class and contemplated how to remedy the sense of …

Law Library Blog (February 2021): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Getting Real About Procedure: Changing How We Think, Write And Teach About American Civil Procedure, Suzette M. Malveaux

Publications

No abstract provided.

Inside The Master's Gates: Resources And Tools To Dismantle Racism And Sexism In Higher Education, Susan Ayres

Faculty Scholarship

The spring of 2020 saw waves of protest as police killed people of color. After George Floyd’s death, protests erupted in over 140 cities. The systemic racism exhibited by these killings has been uncontrollable, hopeless, and endless. Our country is facing a national crisis. In response to the police killings, businesses, schools, and communities held diversity workshops across the nation, and businesses and organizations posted antiracism statements. Legislators and City Councils introduced bills and orders to defund police and to limit qualified immunity. As schools prepared for the fall semester, teachers considered ways to incorporate antiracism materials into the curriculum. …

Tele-Lawyering And The Virtual Learning Experience: Finding The Silver Lining For Remote Hybrid Externships & Law Clinics After The Pandemic, Lucy J. Johnston-Walsh, Alison Lintal

Faculty Scholarly Works

The COVID-19 pandemic has rocked the world in innumerable ways. This Article argues that the COVID-19 pandemic has a silver lining for law students in experiential learning programs. The pandemic has forced law schools across the country to fully utilize remote learning technology. The pandemic similarly forced courts to accept virtual tools in an environment that had previously relied primarily on in-person appearances. The lessons that law faculty and judges have learned from the pandemic will be permanent and may change the methods of operation going forward. Law schools that embrace the lessons they learned can help their law students …

Inclusivity In Admissions And Retention Of Diverse Students: Leadership Determines Dei Success, Danielle M. Conway, Bekah Saidman-Krauss, Rebecca Schreiber

Faculty Scholarly Works

Penn State Dickinson Law has been leading with an Antiracist admissions philosophy and corresponding plans for implementation before the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Arguably, this approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)was not identified explicitly as a vision priority for the law school until July 2019, when Dickinson Law welcomed Danielle M. Conway as the first Black Dean and first woman Dean in the law school’s 186-year history. Dean Conway outlined four vision priorities to accomplish within her first five years at Dickinson Law. Vision priority number two calls upon the law school’s administrators to move the needle substantially on …

Finding New Classroom Tricks In A Virtual Teaching World: One ‘Old Dog’S’ Tale, Daniel Keating

Scholarship@WashULaw

It has been hard to find many silver linings in this dark cloud we call the pandemic, but here’s one: Two colleagues and I, all three of us at different law schools, were having an e-mail discussion about how online instruction had affected us and challenged our “business as usual” approach to teaching. Among the three of us, we have taught for more than 100 years combined. Yet here we were, trading notes on our successes and failures with polls, online discussion boards, and virtual breakout rooms. Finally, the most senior member of our trio summed it up with this …

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 …