Law Commons^™

Law School News: The Power Of Yes: Stefanie Fischer L'24, Suzi Morales

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Listening To Our Students: Fostering Resilience And Engagement To Promote Culture Change In Legal Education, Ann N. Sinsheimer, Omid Fotuhi

Articles

In this Article, we describe a dynamic program of research at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law that uses mindset to promote resilience and engagement in law students. For the last three years, we have used tailored, well-timed, psychological interventions to help students bring adaptive mindsets to the challenges they face in law school. The act of listening to our students has been the first step in designing interventions to improve their experience, and it has become a kind of intervention in itself. Through this work, we have learned that simply asking our law students about their experiences and …

Rebooting Empathy For The Digital Generation Lawyer, Lauren A. Newell

Law Faculty Scholarship

There is a growing preference in today’s technology-saturated society for online interaction via email, text messages, social networks, and instant messaging, rather than real-world interaction through face-to-face or telephonic conversations. For today’s young people—the Digital Generation—this is more than a mere preference; it is a way of life. Research indicates that the movement toward virtual communication comes with negative consequences, such as poor real-world communication skills and underdeveloped social skills. Most significantly, research suggests that the Digital Generation are less empathic than elder generations are. Some researchers speculate that the rising prominence of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in everyday …

Trigger Warnings: From Panic To Data, Francesca Laguardia, Venezia Michalsen

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Following a practice originated online, university faculty and staff have increasingly used “trigger warnings” to alert students to the possibility that they might be affected or even harmed by potentially traumatic material. This practice has led to a passionate debate about whether such warnings stifle or encourage student expression and academic freedom, and whether they are beneficial or detrimental to learning. In this article, we illustrate the history and current state of this debate, and examine the scientific support for the arguments for and against the use of such warnings. Specifically, we question the scientific basis for the suggestion that …

Improving Lawyers’ Judgment: Is Mediation Training De-Biasing?, Douglas N. Frenkel, James H. Stark

All Faculty Scholarship

When people are placed in a partisan role or otherwise have an objective they seek to accomplish, they are prone to pervasive cognitive and motivational biases. These judgmental distortions can affect what people believe and wish to find out, the predictions they make, the strategic decisions they employ, and what they think is fair. A classic example is confirmation bias, which can cause its victims to seek and interpret information in ways that are consistent with their pre-existing views or the goals they aim to achieve. Studies consistently show that experts as well as laypeople are prone to such biases, …

The Zombie Lawyer Apocalypse, Peter H. Huang, Corie Rosen Felder

Pepperdine Law Review

This article uses a popular cultural framework to address the near-epidemic levels of depression, decision-making errors, and professional dissatisfaction that studies document are prevalent among many law students and lawyers today. Zombies present an apt metaphor for understanding and contextualizing the ills now common in the American legal and legal education systems. To explore that metaphor and its import, this article will first establish the contours of the zombie literature and will apply that literature to the existing state of legal education and legal practice — ultimately describing a state that we believe can only be termed “the Zombie Lawyer …

The Emotionally Attentive Lawyer: Balancing The Rule Of Law With The Realities Of Human Behavior, Randall Kiser

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Teaching Emotional Intelligence To Law Students: Three Keys To Mastery, William S. Blatt

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Psychology And Lawyering: Coalescing The Field, Jean R. Sternlight

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Addressing Barriers To Cultural Sensibility Learning: Lessons From Social Cognition Theory, Andrea A. Curcio

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Redefining Attention (And Revamping The Legal Profession?) For The Digital Generation, Lauren A. Newell

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Using A Communication Perspective To Teach Relational Lawyering, Susan L. Brooks

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Getting Students Psyched: Using Psychology To Encourage Classroom Participation, Marybeth Herald

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Using Principles From Cognitive Behavioral Therapy To Reduce Nervousness In Oral Argument Or Moot Court, Larry Cunningham

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Implicit Bias And The Legal Profession's "Diversity Crisis": A Call For Self-Reflection, Nicole E. Negowetti

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Zombie Lawyer Apocalypse, Peter H. Huang, Corie Rosen Felder

Publications

This Article uses a popular cultural framework to address the near-epidemic levels of depression, decision-making errors, and professional dissatisfaction that studies have documented are prevalent among law students and lawyers today.

Zombies present an apt metaphor for understanding and contextualizing the ills now common in the American legal and legal education systems. To explore that metaphor and its import, this Article will first establish the contours of the zombie literature and will apply that literature to the existing state of legal education and legal practice, ultimately describing a state that we believe can only be termed "the Zombie Lawyer Apocalypse." …

On Reading The Language Of Statutes (Book Review), Linda D. Jellum

University of Massachusetts Law Review

Linda D. Jellum reviews Lawrence M. Solan, The Language of Statutes: Laws and Their Interpretation (The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2010), ISBN-13: 978-0-226-76796-3.

Overcoming Writer's Block And Procrastination For Attorneys, Law Students, And Law Professors, Meehan Rasch

Meehan Rasch

Law is a particularly writing-heavy profession. However, lawyers, law students, and law professors often struggle with initiating, sustaining, and completing legal writing projects. Even the most competent legal professionals experience periods in which the written word just does not flow freely. This article provides a guide for legal writers who are seeking to understand and resolve writing blocks, procrastination, and other common writing productivity problems.

Understanding The Cycle Of Procrastination, Meehan Rasch

Meehan Rasch

Procrastination is one of the enduring challenges of human existence, as well as one of the chief problems with which law students struggle. Understanding the cycle of procrastination can help law professors and advisors more constructively address students’ issues in this area—not to mention our own.

Challenges Of "Sameness": Pitfalls And Benefits To Assumed Connections In Lawyering, Carwina Weng, Lynn Barenberg, Alexis Anderson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Individuals are drawn to connect with other people because of shared experiences and personal characteristics. These connections often help people establish rapport, trust, and engagement. Surely these same benefits would apply in the lawyer-client relationship where a lawyer’s ability to find common links with her client would facilitate the lawyering process.

Perhaps that is true, but not necessarily and not without some potential costs. As clinical teachers, we have become increasingly wary that assumptions attributable to sameness can complicate lawyering. Untested assumptions, whatever their source, can impair lawyering judgments. In our collective experience, we have found that assumptions rooted in …

How Students’ Gratitude For Feedback Can Identify The Right Attitude For Success: Disciplined Optimism, Anna Hemingway

Anna P. Hemingway

Psychological Consequences Of Adopting A Therapeutic Lawyering Approach: Pitfalls And Protective Strategies, Lynda L. Murdoch

Seattle University Law Review

The integration of preventive law and therapeutic jurisprudence holds promise for enriching the careers of many practicing lawyers. However, the process of becoming more therapeutic in orientation also involves risk. This Article discusses four potential pitfalls: (1) the process of becoming psychologically-minded and its inherent hazards, including overidentification; (2) the difficulty of balancing neutrality and involvement; (3) the need to identify and manage transference and countertransference; and (4) the risk of secondary trauma. Protective strategies, drawn from the psychotherapeutic and burnout literature, are outlined. This Article stresses the need for lawyers to recognize potential hazards and draw on the experience …

"Johnny's In The Basement/Mixing Up His Medicine": Therapeutic Jurisprudence And Clinical Teaching, Keri K. Gould, Michael L. Perlin

Seattle University Law Review

Therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) provides a new and exciting approach to clinical teaching. By incorporating TJ principles in both the classroom and out-of-classroom components of clinic courses, law professors can give students new and important insights into some of the most difficult problems regularly raised in clinical classes and practice settings. This Article will proceed in three sections. The first section briefly provides some background about TJ and how it has been employed to investigate other areas of the law. Then, the Article discusses some of the important new theoretical developments in clinical legal education, mostly from the "critical lawyering" perspective. …

What We're Not Telling Law Students - And Lawyers - That They Really Need To Know: Some Thoughts-In-Action Toward Revitalizing The Profession From Its Roots, Lawrence S. Krieger

Journal of Law and Health

Part I of this article sets forth a generally encouraging set of propositions about student and attorney life that I have found to be true. If they are, law students and lawyers need to hear them repeatedly. They collectively represent an approach to life and law which, to the extent it is internalized, can increase life satisfaction, raise standards of professional behavior, and relieve many of the kinds of distress that law students and lawyers are prone to experience. Some students seem to bring much of this information with them to law school years and after, do not lose sight …