Law Commons^™

Will Legal Education Change Post-2020?, Heather K. Gerken

Michigan Law Review

The famed book review issue of the Michigan Law Review feels like a reminder of better days. As this issue goes to print, a shocking 554,103 people have died of COVID-19 in the United States alone, the country seems to have begun a long-overdue national reckoning on race, climate change and economic inequality continue to ravage the country, and our Capitol was stormed by insurrectionists with the encouragement of the president of the United States. In the usual year, a scholar would happily pick up this volume and delight in its contents. This year, one marvels at the scholars who …

Affirmative Inaction: A Quantitative Analysis Of Progress Toward “Critical Mass” In U.S. Legal Education, Loren M. Lee

Michigan Law Review

Since 1978, the Supreme Court has recognized diversity as a compelling government interest to uphold the use of affirmative action in higher education. Yet the constitutionality of the practice has been challenged many times. In Grutter v. Bollinger, for example, the Court denied its use in perpetuity and suggested a twenty-five-year time limit for its application in law school admissions. Almost two decades have passed, so where do we stand? This Note’s quantitative analysis of the matriculation of and degrees awarded to Black and Latinx students at twenty-nine accredited law schools across the United States illuminates a stark lack of …

#Fortheculture: Generation Z And The Future Of Legal Education, Tiffany D. Atkins

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Generation Z, with a birth year between 1995 and 2010, is the most diverse generational cohort in U.S. history and is the largest segment of our population. Gen Zers hold progressive views on social issues and expect diversity and minority representation where they live, work, and learn. American law schools, however, are not known for their diversity, or for being inclusive environments representative of the world around us. This culture of exclusion has led to an unequal legal profession and academy, where less than 10 percent of the population is non-white. As Gen Zers bring their demands for inclusion, and …

Notes On Nuance: Volume 1, Patrick Barry

Books

To succeed in law, business, education, government, health care, and many other fields, it is becoming increasingly important to distinguish yourself as a savvy communicator. Social media has only accelerated the ways in which we all must learn to use our words to connect, compete, and create. There are features of the English language, however, that many of us haven’t taken full advantage of yet. Notes on Nuance is designed to help change that.

Drawing on a diverse collection of authors—from novelists to physicists, from ancient Greek historians to modern-day CEOs—it reveals the hidden mechanics that skilled writers use to …

Good With Words: Speaking And Presenting, Patrick Barry

Books

Suppose you were good with words. Suppose when you decided to speak, the message you delivered—and the way you delivered it—successfully connected with your intended audience. What would that mean for your career prospects? What would that mean for your comfort level in social situations? And perhaps most importantly, what would that mean for your satisfaction with the personal relationships you value the most?

This book is designed to help you find out. Based on an award-winning course and workshop series at the University of Michigan taken by students training to enter a wide range of fields—law, business, medicine, social …

How I Finally Overcame My Apprehension About Peer Review, Beth H. Wilensky

Articles

I’ll admit it: I was afraid to try peer review in my Legal Practice class. I’ve been teaching legal analysis, writing, and research for 17 years. I know all of the benefits of peer review. I’ve read plenty of scholarship about why and how to do it well. I have space in my syllabus to incorporate it into my teaching. But I’ve been reluctant. I worried that students would be averse to sharing their work with a classmate. I worried that the exercise would embarrass students who felt self-conscious about their writing. And I worried that the truly excellent writers …

What Will (Or Might?) Law School Look Like This Fall?: Teaching In The Midst Of A Pandemic, Ted Becker

Articles

January 2020 marked the start of a new semester for Michigan law schools. There was little reason to suspect it wouldn’t be a semester like any other: for 3Ls, the start of the stretch run to graduation; for 1Ls, a chance to begin anew after the stress of their first set of law school final exams; for law school faculty, administrators, and staff, a return to the excitement and activity of crowded hallways and classrooms after the brief interlude of winter break. Classes began and proceeded as normal.

Acknowledgements As A Window Into Legal Academia, W. Nicholson Price Ii, Jonathan Tietz

Law & Economics Working Papers

Legal scholarship in the United States is an oddity—an institution built on student editorship, a lack of peer review, and a dramatically high proportion of solo authorship. It is often argued that this makes legal scholarship fundamentally different from scholarship in other fields, which is largely peer-reviewed by academics. We use acknowledgments in biographical footnotes from law-review articles to probe the nature of legal knowledge co-production and de facto peer review in legal literature. Using a survey of authors and editors and a textual analysis of approximately thirty thousand law-review articles from 2008 to 2017, we examined the nature of …

95th Henry M. Campbell Moot Court Competition: Final Round, University Of Michigan Law School

Event Materials

Henry Munroe Campbell was a distinguished lawyer who served as legal counsel to the University of Michigan's Board fo Regents for several years.

Following Mr. Campbell's death in 1926, his law partners met with then University of Michigan Law School Dean Henry M. Bates to discuss a fitting memorial. They decided to establish a case club competition to foster training for law students in appellate advocacy in his honor. The first Henry M. Campbell competition was held in the 1927-28 academic year.

A trust fund to finance the competition was established in 1927 and has been periodically augmented with gifts …

Using Transactional Practice Competitions To Introduce Students To Key Deal-Making Skills, Ted Becker, Eric Zacks

Articles

Law school moot court competitions are everywhere. That is a bit of an exaggeration, to be sure, but not by much. At last count, students with an interest in litigation had more than 60 interschool appellate advocacy competitions to choose from, ranging in topics from admiralty to space law to veterans law. Toss in trial advocacy competitions, and the number of opportunities to hone litigation skills increases significantly. And seemingly every law school has its own intraschool litigation competitions, ranging from part of a 1L legal writing program to school-wide appellate advocacy competitions whose final rounds attract prominent judges or …

Courage // Purpose // Authenticity: Black Women Leaders In The Civil Rights Movement Era And Beyond, University Of Michigan Law School

Event Materials

Program for the 2020 special lecture in honor of the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday.

Center On Finance, Law & Policy Progress Report, 2020, Center On Finance, Law & Policy

Miscellaneous Law School History & Publications

Six years after its 2013 launch, the Center on Finance, Law, and Policy (CFLP) continues to uphold its commitment to actionable, interdisciplinary research. What started with convening of 40 faculty members from across the University has evolved into a robust team of more than 70 faculty affiliates with expertise ranging from fintech to financial egulation to entrepreneurship to behavioral economics, along with three staff members, and a network of 26 student research assistants from seven schools across the University.

Senior Day December 2019, University Of Michigan Law School

Commencement and Honors Materials

Program for the December 20, 2019 Senior Day ceremonies.

Central Bank Of The Future, University Of Michigan Law School

Event Materials

Program for the 2019 Central Bank of the Future Conference, hosted by the University of Michigan's Center on Finance, Law & Policy.

Spoiler Alert: When The Supreme Court Ruins Your Brief Problem Mid-Semester, Margaret Hannon

Articles

Partway through the winter 2019 semester,1 the Supreme Court ruined my favorite summary judgment brief problem while my students were working on it. I had decided to use the problem despite the Court granting cert and knowing it was just a matter of time before the Court issued its decision. In this Article, I share some of the lessons that I learned about the risks involved in using a brief problem based on a pending Supreme Court case. I conclude that, while I have not typically set out to base a problem on a pending Supreme Court case, doing so …

Law School Grades And Their Effects: The University Of Michigan Law School Alumni Survey, David L. Chambers

Bibliography of Research Using UMLS Alumni Survey Data

This short paper is based on a study of graduates of the University of Michigan Law School that was initiated in 1966 and continues today. The paper draws upon information about graduates’ grades in law school as recorded in the law school’s records and combines it with data from surveys of the graduates conducted by mail five, fifteen, twenty-five, thirty-five and forty-five years after graduation. Among the central findings reported are the following. (1) grades and gradepoint averages of Michigan law students rose hugely during the 1960s and 1970s, which can be explained in part by simple grade inflation but …

The Increasing Reliance On Educational Loans By University Of Michigan Law School Graduates, David L. Chambers

Bibliography of Research Using UMLS Alumni Survey Data

Among graduates of the University of Michigan Law School in the classes of 1970 through 1979, about half borrowed to pay for their college or legal education. By the early 1980s the portion who borrowed had risen to about 80 percent and has remained at that level through the classes of early twenty-first century. Even greater growth has occurred in the average debt of those who incurred debt. In actual dollars, average debts among those with debt have increased twenty-fold from the 1970s to the early 2000s. Even in CPI-adjusted dollars, average debts have tripled. By the classes of 2000-2001, …

Political Views Of Graduates Of University Of Michigan Law School, Classes Of 1952-2001, David L. Chambers

Bibliography of Research Using UMLS Alumni Survey Data

In 1966, the University of Michigan Law School initiated an annual survey its graduating classes five and fifteen years after graduation. In 1981, with the survey of the graduates of the class of 1976 after they had been out of law school 5 years and the graduates of the class of 1966 after they been out 15 years, the survey instrument added questions about graduates’ current political views and their recollection of their political views when they began law school. In all years since, graduates have been asked to place themselves on a 7-point scale from “extremely liberal (left)” to …

The Effects Of Educational Debts On Career Choices Of Graduates Of The University Of Michigan Law School, David L. Chambers

Bibliography of Research Using UMLS Alumni Survey Data

In 1966, the University of Michigan Law School began an annual survey of selected classes of its graduates. Beginning in the early 1980s, annual surveys of those five and fifteen years after law school included questions about educational debts incurred during college and law school as well as about career plans at the beginning and end of law school and actual job held in the years since law school. This paper, written in 2009, examines the possible effects of debts on career decisions and job choices made before, during and after law school by the graduating classes of 1976 through …

The University Of Michigan Law School Alumni Survey Project: Description, Scope And Limits, David L. Chambers

Bibliography of Research Using UMLS Alumni Survey Data

For 41 consecutive years, from 1966 through 2006, the University of Michigan Law School surveyed by mail its graduates after they had been out of law school for 15 years, asking questions about their lives since law school and particularly about their careers as lawyers. Beginning in 1973, the graduates five years out of law school were added to the survey and beginning in 1997, the classes twenty-five, thirty-five and forty-five years out were added as well. Across the years of surveying, 79 percent of the law school’s graduates in the classes of 1952 through 2001 responded to at least …

Satisfaction With Law School Among Graduates Of The University Of Michigan Law School, Classes Of 1952-2001, David L. Chambers

Bibliography of Research Using UMLS Alumni Survey Data

The University of Michigan Law School conducted mail surveys of selective classes of its alumni each year from 1966 and 2006. The survey was revived online in 2014 and has continued to the present. This memo relates to the surveys through 2006.

For many years, the survey instrument has included questions about graduates’ satisfaction with their law school experience “overall” as well as specific questions about their satisfaction with law school “intellectually,” “as career training” and “socially.” Strongly related to overall satisfaction with law school is the length of time that graduates have been out of law school – the …

The Changing Student Body At The University Of Michigan Law School, David L. Chambers

Bibliography of Research Using UMLS Alumni Survey Data

Most of the content of the memo that follows has been previously published in the article "Who We Were and Who We Are: How Michigan Law Students Have Changed Since the 1950s: Findings from 40 Years of Alumni Surveys." T. K. Adams, co-author. Law Quad. Notes 51, no. 1 (2009): 74-80, available through this website. This memo provides more detail about changing entry credentials and about the great expansion beginning in the 1970s in the numbers of women students and of racial/ethnic minority students. It also provides information not in the article about the patterns over time in students’ …

Senior Day May 2019, University Of Michigan Law School

Commencement and Honors Materials

Program for the May 10, 2019 Senior Day ceremonies.

Incorporating Social Justice Into The 1l Legal Writing Course: A Tool For Empowering Students Of Color And Of Historically Marginalized Groups And Improving Learning, Sha-Shana Crichton

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The media reports of police shootings of unarmed Black men and women; unprovoked attacks on innocent Jews, Muslims, religious minority groups, and LGBTQ persons; and current pervasive, divisive, and misogynistic rhetoric all cause fear and anxiety in impacted communities and frustrate other concerned citizens. Law students, and especially law students of color and of historically marginalized groups, are often directly or indirectly impacted by these reports and discrimination in all its iterations. As a result, they are stressed because they are fearful and anxious. Research shows that stress impairs learning and cognition. Research also shows that beneficial changes are made …

Just Say No To The Cheap Double Play, Richard D. Friedman

Reviews

The Infield Fly Rule has drawn a considerable amount of attention from legal scholars for nearly half a century. Much of the writing, in keeping with the tone of the keynote work discussing the rule, the famous Aside by William Stevens published in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review in 1975, has been whimsical and ironical. But the Aside was also a genuine piece of legal scholarship. And now, Howard Wasserman has written a book—an entire book!— on the rule, and done so without whimsy or irony.

Public Service Banquet 2019, University Of Michigan Law School

Event Materials

Program for the 2019 Public Service Banquet.

14th Annual Origins Banquet, Asian Pacific American Law Students Association

Event Materials

The Origins Banquet celebrates the heritage and achievements of the Asian Pacific American community at the University of Michigan Law School and in the legal profession more broadly.

94th Henry M. Campbell Moot Court Competition: Final Round, University Of Michigan Law School

Event Materials

Henry Munroe Campbell was a distinguished lawyer who served as legal counsel to the University of Michigan's Board fo Regents for several years.

Following Mr. Campbell's death in 1926, his law partners met with then University of Michigan Law School Dean Henry M. Bates to discuss a fitting memorial. They decided to establish a case club competition to foster training for law students in appellate advocacy in his honor. The first Henry M. Campbell competition was held in the 1927-28 academic year.

A trust fund to finance the competition was established in 1927 and has been periodically augmented with gifts …

The 34th Annual Juan Luis Tienda Scholarship Banquet., University Of Michigan Law School

Event Materials

In addition to remembering Juan Luis and honoring his contribution to the Latino community, the Banquet is also an opportunity to recognize the newest members of the Latino Law Student Association (LLSA) family. The Class of 2021 LLSA members have been very active at our events this year; their individual and collective enthusiasm, leadership, and great ideas have been essential to LLSA's success. In addition to remembering Juan Luis and honoring his contribution to the Latino community, the Banquet is also an opportunity to recognize the newest members of the LLSA family. The Class of 2021 LLSA embers have been …

Consumer Protection In An Age Of Uncertainty, University Of Michigan Law School

Event Materials

Program for a 2019 Conference on consumer protection.