Law Commons^™

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 …

Beyond The Ada: How Clinics Can Assist Law Students With “Non-Visible” Disabilities To Bridge The Accommodations Gap Between Classroom And Practice, Alexis Anderson, Norah Wylie

Norah Wylie

This article examines how best to educate law students with disabilities so that they can successfully transition from classroom to practice. At the very time that the importance of experiential learning is being trumpeted as critical to the preparation of all law students for practice, all too little attention has been given to the role of clinical education in helping students with non-visible disabilities succeed in their chosen careers. Increasingly, law students are seeking accommodations for a range of mental health, cognitive, and learning disabilities. Law schools have become more adept at providing accommodations in academic classes to qualified students …

A Brief Reflection On The Multiple Identities And Roles Of The Twenty-First Century Clinician, Michael Pinard

Michael Pinard

No abstract provided.

Why I Teach (A Prescription For The Post-Tenure Blues), R. Michael Cassidy

R. Michael Cassidy

In this brief essay from a collection of articles designed to demonstrate the scope and breadth of issues in legal pedagogy, Professor Michael Cassidy explores an important psychological event for many in the legal academy - the post-tenure blues. He offers reasons to keep doing what we do - teach with joy, inspiration and a sense of purpose for the next generation. He encourages us to think of our own reasons for what keeps us going in an occupation that many of us think is one of the best in the world.

"The Purer Fountains": Bacon And Legal Education, Daniel R. Coquillette

Daniel R. Coquillette

Today, the classical underpinnings of American legal education are under intense critical review. The dominant pedagogy, the case book and the Socratic method, were established by Christopher Columbus Langdell (1806-1906) at Harvard Law School more than a century ago. Together with Langdell's first year curriculum, which was exclusively focused on Anglo-American common law doctrine, and his emphasis on a competitive, anonymous graded meritocracy, this system still exercises an incredible grip on elite American law schools. But Langdell's 19th Century model has now been challenged by many rivals, including critical legal studies, law and economics empiricism, global curriculums, and clinical instruction. …

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.

Mind The Gap: How Law Professors, Academic Support Professionals, And Students Can Fill In The Formative Assessment Gap, Heather Zuber-Harshman

Heather Zuber-Harshman

This article serves to accomplish three things. First, to provide students with feedback tools that will help them achieve academic success and improve the quality of their law school experience. Students who do not receive feedback or receive inadequate feedback should use the provided forms to proactively and creatively find ways to obtain feedback. They should never be afraid or too proud to ask others for assistance with generating this feedback.

Second, to encourage professors and Academic Support professionals who believe students should receive adequate feedback to take steps towards providing the feedback.

Third, to provide Academic Support professionals with …

Use Your Words: Providing Informational Feedback As A Means To Support Self-Determination And Improve Law Student Outlook And Outcomes, Paula J. Manning

Paula J Manning

When law school faculty neglect to make careful and informed choices about the words we use, ignoring the impact of those words on our students’ potential for success in law school, law practice and life, we contribute to our students’ psychological distress and decline in motivation and performance—which may well carry forward to the legal profession and justice system. This article uses the lens of self-determination theory to explore a simple and concrete step law school faculty can take to improve students’ outlook and outcomes, by making changes in feedback practices that contribute to the autonomy thwarting educational environment that …

Using John Dewey's Pragmatist Epistemology To Teach Legal Analysis And Communication, David T. Ritchie

David T. Ritchie

In this article I discuss the epistemology of the American pragmatist philosopher John Dewey, who maintained that there is a “common pattern or structure” of human reasoning. According to Dewey, we naturally employ pragmatic problem-solving. In his epistemological works Dewey frequently discussed legal reasoning as a paradigm example of this sort of problem-solving. I develop and explain Dewey’s pragmatist epistemology, and then relate it to how novices can benefit from understanding his account. I end the article by explaining how I use this account of human reasoning in my law school classes.

.Compelling Orthodoxy: Myth And Mystique In The Marketing Of Legal Education, Kenneth Lasson

Kenneth Lasson

Abstract In many ways the story of modern legal education reads like a grim fairy tale, whose moral dénouement is no less compelling and perhaps more consequential than its fabulist forbears. Today's law schools are preoccupied with their reputations -- as much a survival instinct as anything else. The competition for bright students and talented faculty is more intense than ever, and marketing has increasingly come to be treated as a consideration at least as important as the actual academic enterprise. Thus do administrators seek to adopt a strategic identity plans – “building the brand” in the common parlance of …

Teaching Social Justice Lawyering: Systematically Including Community Legal Education In Clinical Legal Education, Margaret Johnson, Catherine Klein, Margaret Barry, Lisa Martin, A. Camp

Margaret E Johnson

There is a body of literature on clinical legal theory that urges a focus in clinics beyond the single client to an explicit teaching of social justice lawyering. This Article adds to this emerging body of work by discussing the valuable role community legal education plays as a vehicle for teaching skills and values essential to single client representation and social justice lawyering. The Article examines the theoretical underpinnings of clinical legal education, community organizing and community education and how they influenced the authors’ design and implementation of community legal education within their clinics. It then discusses two projects designed …

The Law School Firm, Bradley T. Borden, Robert J. Rhee

Robert Rhee

This Article introduces the concept of the law school firm. The concept calls for law schools to establish affiliated law firms. The affiliation would provide opportunities for students, faculty, and attorneys to collaborate and share resources to teach, research, write, serve clients, and influence the development of law and policy. Based loosely on the medical school model, the law school firm will help bridge the gap between law schools and the practice of law.

Ethical Issues In Business And The Lawyer's Role, Robert J. Rhee, Carol Morgan, Tamar Frankel, Mark Fagan

Robert Rhee

No abstract provided.

Standing On Quicksand: Why Law Students Need New Survival Skills For An Evolving Legal Landscape, Allen R. Moye

Allen Moye

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

Donald J. Kochan

How Much Clinic For How Many Students?: Examining The Decision To Offer Clinics For One Semester Or A Full Academic Year, Kele Stewart

Kele Stewart

Calls for legal reform, most notably the Carnegie Report, create an imperative that law schools provide more clinical opportunities to law students. In a world with limited resources, this potentially creates a tension between providing a clinical opportunity to all (or most) students versus providing a deeper clinical experience to those who take clinics to increase the likelihood that they are competent to practice upon graduation. While clinical scholars recognize that the decision to offer a clinic for one semester or the full academic year is an important consideration in clinic design, there has been little analysis of how this …

Painting Beyond The Numbers: The Art Of Providing Inclusive Law School Admissions To Ensure Full Representation In The Profession, Paula Lustbader

Paula Lustbader

The issue of increasing diversity in the profession and the law schools is still timely. In his column for the March 2011 American Bar Association Journal, the ABA President calls for more “to be done to make the legal profession more fully reflect the communities it serves.” In addition, the Society of American Law Teachers is currently preparing to proposal to make to the ABA Accreditation Committee regarding the use of Law School Admission Tests scores and minimum Bar Passage Rates requirements. Many law schools and other institutions of higher learning are wrestling with the issue of diversity and admissions …

The New Legal Writing: The Importance Of Teaching Law Students How To Use E-Mail Professionally, Kendra H. Fershee

Kendra H Fershee

In the past ten to fifteen years, the use of e-mail in a professional setting has become commonplace. Lawyers, clerks, and even judges use e-mail routinely to discuss important legal matters. In fact, there is a debate ongoing regarding whether the objective memo should even be taught in law school any more, because sharing legal analysis via e-mail has become so much more common than writing objective memos. Because of the rising frequency of the use of e-mail in a professional setting, it is important that law students receive instruction about how to communicate professionally via e-mail. This short piece …

What Are Professional Skills And Why Should Law Schools Teach Them?, Donald G. Gifford

Donald G Gifford

No abstract provided.

How Does The Dean Resemble The Islets Of Langerhans?, Donald G. Gifford

Donald G Gifford

In this essay, I suggest an admittedly bizarre analogy between the roles played by an effective dean and the functions of an obscure component of the human body.

Hard Lessons: The Role Of Law Schools In Addressing Prosecutorial Misconduct, Lara Bazelon

Lara A. Bazelon

This Article approaches prosecutorial misconduct from a pedagogical perspective by exploring the ways in which law school clinicians can teach their students how to confront the problem proactively and in-the-moment, with an eye toward reducing its rate of occurrence and blunting its corrosive effect. Prosecutorial misconduct is a serious problem that strikes at the heart of a criminal defendant’s constitutional right to a fair trial. More broadly, it has the potential to impact the integrity of the criminal justice system as a whole. Educating law school students in criminal clinics about this issue before they become prosecutors and criminal defense …

The Role Of The Apprenticeship And Clinics In Legal Education And Legal Culture In The Netherlands, Richard J. Wilson

Richard J. Wilson

Taking Note Of Notes: Student Legal Scholarship In Theory And Practice, Andrew Yaphe

Andrew Yaphe

In recent decades, an inconclusive (even by the standards of academia!) debate has intermittently flared up within the legal academy, as professors, judges, and practitioners have gone back and forth as to what legal scholarship ought to be. This article makes no contribution whatsoever to that debate. Instead, it looks at student legal scholarship, which has gone unnoticed while the larger debate about legal scholarship simpliciter simmered on. The article does two things, neither of which appears to have been attempted by anyone hitherto. First, it offers an extensive critique of the leading guidebooks for aspiring student authors (e.g. Eugene …

On Legal Education And Reform: One View Formed From Diverse Perspectives, Robert J. Rhee

Robert Rhee

This article identifies two interconnected problems in legal education. First, legal education and practice are more disconnected than they should be, a reality which distinguishes law schools from other professional schools. The major flaw of legal education as the failure to produce more market-ready lawyers who have a mix of skills and knowledge to add value in a complex and challenging practice environment. Second, law school imposes large direct and opportunity costs on its students. These costs combine with the problem of a deficiency in academic training and post-graduation financing of additional training in the workplace to impose a growing …

Those Who Can't, Teach: What The Legal Career Of John Yoo Tells Us About Who Should Be Teaching Law, Lawrence Rosenthal

Lawrence Rosenthal

Perhaps no member of the legal academy in America is more controversial than John Yoo. For his role in producing legal opinions authorizing what is thought by many to be abusive treatment of detainees as part of the Bush Administration’s “Global War on Terror,” some have called for him to be subjected to professional discipline, others have called for his criminal prosecution. This paper raises a different question: whether John Yoo – and his like – ought to be teaching law.

John Yoo provides something of a case study in the problems in legal education today. As a scholar, Professor …

The Variable Value Of Us Legal Education In The Global Legal Services Market, Carole Silver

Carole Silver

Many U.S. law firms now claim to be global organizations, and they seek to occupy the same high status everywhere they work. In part, simply supporting overseas offices is an indication of status for U.S.-based firms. But firms want more than this and they strive for recognition as elite advisors around the world. In this pursuit, have firms identified a set of common characteristics and credentials that define a “global lawyer?” That is, is there a uniform and universal profile, or perhaps a set of assets that comprise global professional capital, which are emerging as the indicia of credibility and …

Upper Level Courses: Three Exemplars, Kathy Heller, Mark Fagan, Tamar Frankel, Eric Gouvin

Kathy Z. Heller

This Article presents three exemplars of upper-level law school classes, and is divided into three parts. Part I discusses "Securitization and Asset-Backed Securities"; Part II discusses "Using Transactions to Teach Secured Transactions"; and Part III discusses "Teaching Deals Through a Focus on the Entertainment Industry.

Clinical Professors' Professional Responsibility: Preparing Law Students To Embrace Pro Bono, Douglas L. Colbert

Douglas L. Colbert

This article begins by examining the current crisis in the U.S. legal system where approximately three out of four low- and middle-income litigants are denied access to counsel's representation when faced with the loss of essential rights - -a home, child custody, liberty and deportation - - and where most lawyers decline to fulfill their ethical responsibility of pro bono service to those who cannot afford private counsel. The article traces the evolving ethical standards of a lawyer's professional responsibility that today views every attorney as a public citizen having a special responsibility to the quality of justice.

The author …

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

Mary Ann Chirba

No abstract provided.