Law Commons^™

Creating A Six-Semester Writing Requirement: Using Legal Writing's "Hobble" To Solve Legal Education's Problem", Kristen Konrad Robbins-Tiscione

Kristen Konrad Robbins-Tiscione

The attached article argues that the best way to solve the current crisis in legal education is for law schools to commit to teaching writing by creating a six-semester writing requirement. In a 2011 article published in the Journal of Legal Education, John Lynch urged legal writing faculty to return to an outmoded and ineffective writing pedagogy, the “product approach,” on the grounds that it would make teaching legal writing easier. This article demonstrates that what Lynch calls legal writing’s hobble has become legal education’s problem. By failing to commit to teaching writing, law students are graduating without adequate preparation …

Synaptic Plasticity In Neurological Deficit As A Form Of Indemnification: The Utility Of Analogical Thinking, Madeleine Schachter, Madeleine Schachter

Madeleine Schachter

The need for creative problem-solving is as infinite as are the ways in which to engage in it. This article posits that one useful, albeit not flawless, mechanism in which to seek scientific advancements is through the use of analogical thinking. The technique has been invoked in virtually all disciplines, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. The utility of thinking by analogy lies, paradoxically, in its capacity to conceptualize a solution or a viable avenue of further inquiry as much as in its capacity to expose flaws in the analogical concept hypothesized. As such, it is an important means of stimulating …

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

Sherri Keene

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 …

Is There Life After Laptops? Further Thoughts On The Effects Of Unplugging A Uniquely "Wired-In" Generation, Eric A. Degroff

Eric A DeGroff

The Millennial Generation is the most technologically savvy age group ever to enter the legal academy. Many, however, enter law school with learning styles and other traits that make a legal education challenging. Though research suggests that accommodating student learning styles may enhance the educational experience generally, there is mounting evidence that accommodating student preferences for technology in the classroom may be counterproductive in some ways. This article summarizes that evidence, discusses the results of the author's two-year experiment with a no-laptop policy in his first-year doctrinal course, and suggests that such a policy may be well received by most …

A Dialogue On Jordanian Legal Education, George Critchlow, Nisreen Mahasneh

George Critchlow

This a readable article about the need for legal education reform in Jordan. It grew out of the experiences, discussions, and shared interests of the co-authors – a Jordanian female law professor and an American male law professor who have worked with the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI) and Jordanian law faculties to develop strategies for strengthening legal education in Jordan. The article is unusual in that it is presented as a dialogue in order to identify and reflect the authors’ different professional and cultural perspectives. The text is supported by citation to authority in conventional …

Judicial Training Programs In Bosnia And The Efficacy Of Rule Of Law Training, E. Joan Blum

E. Joan Blum

Presentation on personal experience conducting judicial training programs in Bosnia, including observations and recommendations on the efficacy of rule of law training programs.

Student, Esquire?: The Practice Of Law In The Collaborative Classroom, Nantiya Ruan

Nantiya Ruan

Law faculty and non-profit lawyers are working together in a variety of partnerships to offer students exposure to “real life” clients in the first year of law school, as well as in advanced courses in substantive areas. Teachers engaged in client-centered advocacy through experiential frameworks have broken out of their isolated silos in the law school (e.g., legal writing, clinical, externship, and doctrinal) and begun to work together. To help students develop a sense of professional identity, cultivate professional values, and tap into key intrinsic motivations for lawyering, such as serving the public good, collaborative classrooms have an important role …

Thinking Outside The Box: Publication Opportunities Beyond The Traditional Law Review, Susan Chesler, Anna Hemingway, Tamara Herrera

Anna P. Hemingway

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 Keene

Sherri Keene

Legal writing is more than an isolated practical skill or a law school course; it is a valuable tool for broadening and deepening one’s 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 work on legal writing …

A Strategy For Teaching Objectivity To The Domestic Relations Student: Utilizing Psychodrama To Explore Attorney Empathy Toward Improving Family Law Outcomes, Bruce L. Beverly

Bruce L. Beverly

The basic domestic relations law course is often taught by the casebook method, with little reference to actual underlying human drama. In order to produce effective advocates, it is necessary for student to be brought out of the sterile case recitation model and into a role where the student experiences, in a controlled and directed fashion, some of the hardships faced by the players in a family law case. This article proposes that, in line with new emphasis on experiential learning and alternate learning styles, one might employ a psychodramatic approach to teaching the domestic relations course, in order to …

Outcomes Assessment And Legal Research Pedagogy, Vicenç Feliú, Helen Frazer

Vicenç Feliú

This article explores application of a taxonomic approach in legal research pedagogy to outcomes assessment based on Prof. Paul Callister's adaptation of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives which integrates instructional design and learning activities compatible with formative assessment during the learning process and summative assessment at its conclusion. It reviews the development of outcomes assessment initiatives by legal educators and the development of outcomes assessment standards by the American Bar Association for the accreditation of law schools.

Accomplishing Your Scholarly Agenda While Maximizing Students’ Learning (A.K.A., How To Teach Legal Methods And Have Time To Write Too), Anna P. Hemingway

Anna P. Hemingway

The Importance Of Comparative Law In Legal Education: United States Goals And Methods Of Legal Comparisons, Hugh J. Ault, Mary Ann Glendon

Hugh J. Ault

This Essay discusses the gradual changes occurring within legal education, which are finding wide acceptance in law schools throughout the United States. These changes include greater attention to other disciplines, primarily economics and behavioral sciences, and the contributions they make to a fuller understanding of the legal system. In addition, law schools are increasingly exploring the ways in which the law in textbooks may differ from the law in action. Nearly every law school, therefore, is seriously investigating the social and economic background of legal rules and their consequences through clinical legal education, which attempts to provide a real or …

Emerging Models For Alternatives To Marriage, Sanford N. Katz

Sanford N. Katz

Perhaps one of the most important changes in family law in the past thirty years has been the inclusion of certain kinds of friendships in the range of relationships from which rights and responsibilities can flow. Domestic partnership laws, a phenomenon of the 1990s, may be seen as a natural development from the judicial recognition of contract cohabitation and the legislative and judicial response to same-sex couples who, unable to meet statutory requirements for marriage, have sought official recognition of their relationships. This essay discusses an aspect of certain kinds of domestic partnership laws-their formal requirements and the extent to …

Environmental Law And Three Economies: Navigating A Sprawling Field Of Study, Practice, And Societal Governance In Which Everything Is Connected To Everything Else, Zygmunt J.B. Plater

Zygmunt J.B. Plater

The vast sprawl of the environmental law field makes it a bemusing and confounding puzzle even to those who pursue it as their primary academic vocation. The amorphous breadth and intricate depths of environmental law present special challenges to anyone who tries to navigate the field. This Article addresses several of these challenges, briefly analyzing how environmental curricula are designed, and then suggests a potentially useful new way to conceptualize the realm of environmental law.

"Learning" Research And Legal Education: A Brief Overview And Selected Bibliographical Survey, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

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

Anna P. Hemingway

What Legal Employers Want And Really Need, E. Joan Blum, Mary Ann Chirba, Elisabeth Keller, Judith Tracey

Mary Ann Chirba

No abstract provided.

What Legal Employers Want And Really Need, E. Joan Blum, Mary Ann Chirba, Elisabeth Keller, Judith Tracey

Elisabeth Keller

No abstract provided.

What Legal Employers Want And Really Need, E. Joan Blum, Mary Ann Chirba, Elisabeth Keller, Judith Tracey

E. Joan Blum

No abstract provided.

Studying And Teaching "Law As Rhetoric": A Place To Stand, Linda L. Berger

Linda L. Berger

This article proposes that law students may find a better fit within the legal culture of argument if they are introduced to rhetorical alternatives to counter narrowly formalist and realist perspectives on how the law works and how judges decide cases. The article makes a two-part argument: first, introducing law students to rhetorical alternatives allows them to envision their role as lawyers as constructive, effective, and imaginative while grounded in law, language, and reason. Second, offering rhetorical alternatives allows law professors to enrich their own study and teaching and to develop a more nuanced understanding of the law school classroom …

Making Effective Use Of Practitioners' Briefs In The Law School Curriculum, Anna Hemingway

Anna P. Hemingway

The Past, Presence, And Future Of Legal Writing Scholarship: Rhetoric, Voice, And Community, Linda L. Berger

Linda L. Berger

This Article welcomes a new generation of legal writing scholars. In the first generation, legal writing professors debated whether they should be engaged in legal scholarship at all. In the second generation, assuming that they should be engaged in scholarship, legal writing professors discerned and defined different genres of and topics for the scholarship in which some or all of us were or should be engaged. In this Article, we map the contours of a third generation of legal writing scholarship—one that integrates the elements of our professional lives and engages more effectively with our professional communities. The core of …

Happy Law Students, Happy Lawyers, Nancy Levit, Douglas Linder

Nancy Levit

This article draws on research into the science of happiness and asks a series of interrelated questions: Whether law schools can make law students happier? Whether making happier law students will translate into making them happier lawyers, and the accompanying question of whether making law students happier would create better lawyers? After covering the limitations of genetic determinants of happiness and happiness set-points, the article addresses those qualities that happiness research indicates are paramount in creating satisfaction: control, connections, creative challenge (or flow), and comparisons (preferably downward). Those qualities are then applied to legal education, while addressing the larger philosophical …

Morte E Ressurreição Da Hermenêutica, Ivo T. Gico

Ivo Teixeira Gico Jr.

Este artigo trata dos objetivos e utilidades da hermenêutica, seja para tomada de decisões, seja para a compreensão do que é Direito. É por meio da hermenêutica que juristas de toda sorte acreditam extrair sentido e conteúdo das normas jurídicas de modo científico, quando, na verdade, a utilizam para fundamentar sua decisão pré-concebida. É a hermenêutica verdadeiro instrumento científico para se chegar a soluções justas ou mera forma de expressão para legitimação de decisões?

This article deals with hermeneutics true objectives and utilities, either as a decision making instrument or to answer the question: What is the Law? It’s through …

Calling For Stories, Nancy Levit, Allen Rostron

Nancy Levit

Storytelling is a fundamental part of legal practice, teaching, and thought. Telling stories as a method of practicing law reaches back to the days of the classical Greek orators. Before legal education became an academic matter, the apprenticeship system for training lawyers consisted of mentoring and telling war stories. As the law and literature movement evolved, it sorted itself into three strands: law in literature, law as literature, and storytelling. The storytelling branch blossomed.

Over the last few decades, storytelling became a subject of enormous interest and controversy within the world of legal scholarship. Law review articles appeared in the …

Keeping Students Interested While Teaching Citation, Anna P. Hemingway

Anna P. Hemingway

No abstract provided.

Why You Should Use A Course Web Page, E. Joan Blum

E. Joan Blum

No abstract provided.

Get Your Library Ready For Distance Education, Ann Long

Ann Walsh Long

No abstract provided.

Audiotaped Critiques Of Written Work, Elisabeth Keller

Elisabeth Keller

No abstract provided.