Law Commons^™

The Bar Exam And The Covid-19 Pandemic: The Need For Immediate Action, Claudia Angelos, Sara J. Berman, Mary Lu Bilek, Carol L. Chomsky, Andrea A. Curcio, Marsha Griggs, Joan W. Howarth, Eileen Kaufman, Deborah Jones Merritt, Patricia E. Salkin, Judith Welch Wegner

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The novel coronavirus COVID-19 has profoundly disrupted life in the United States. Among other challenges, jurisdictions are unlikely to be able to administer the July 2020 bar exam in the usual manner. It is essential, however, to continue licensing new lawyers. Those lawyers are necessary to meet current needs in the legal system. Equally important, the demand for legal services will skyrocket during and after this pandemic. We cannot close doors to the profession at a time when client demand will reach an all-time high.

In this brief policy paper, we outline six licensing options for jurisdictions to consider for …

A Simple Low-Cost Institutional Learning-Outcomes Assessment Process, Andrea A. Curcio

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Law school institutional learning outcomes require measuring nuanced skills that develop over time. Rather than look at achievement just in our own courses, institutional outcome-measures assessment requires collective faculty engagement and critical thinking about our students’ overall acquisition of the skills, knowledge, and qualities that ensure they graduate with the competencies necessary to begin life as professionals. Even for those who believe outcomes assessment is a positive move in legal education, in an era of limited budgets and already over-burdened faculty, the new mandated outcomes assessment process raises cost and workload concerns. This essay addresses those concerns. It describes a …

Marking The Path From Law Student To Lawyer: Using Field Placement Courses To Facilitate The Deliberate Exploration Of Professional Identity And Purpose, Timothy W. Floyd, Kendall L. Kerew

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No abstract provided.

Measuring The Impact Of Social Justice Teaching: Research Design And Oversight, Lisa Radtke Bliss, Sylvia B. Caley, Leslie E. Wolf

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Research and the production of scholarship is a fundamental part of being a legal academic. Such endeavors identify issues and answer questions that further understanding of the law, the profession, and the justice system itself. Research and scholarship in the legal academy traditionally meant the study of law and legal theory. A growing body of legal academics are focusing research and scholarship on legal education itself, as well as research that measures the impact of legal education on the development of students' practical and professional skills. The impact of clinical legal education is an important aspect of this scholarship. This …

Crafting Comment Letters: Teach Policy, Develop Skills, And Shape Pending Regulation, Nicole G. Iannarone, Benjamin P. Edwards

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This essay unpacks the regulatory comment letter process and how to incorporate it into the law school curriculum. Participating in live rulemaking offers unique opportunities for students, from mastering the substantive area of law, developing critical thinking skills, and developing their professional identities and expertise. We describe our own experiences in incorporating students into the regulatory rulemaking process. Because of our focus on securities law, our students review and comment on proposed actions by securities regulators — the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). After providing an overview of the pedagogical and practical rationale for …

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

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Understanding subconscious biases, their pervasiveness, and their impact on perceptions, interactions, and analyses, helps prepare lawyers to represent people from cultural and racial backgrounds different from their own, and to address both individual and institutional injustice. Two law student surveys suggest many students believe lawyers are less susceptible than clients to having, or acting upon, stereotypes or biases. The survey results also indicate that many students suffer from bias blind spot – i.e. they believe that while others cannot recognize when they are acting based upon stereotypical beliefs and biases, the students know when they are doing so. The survey …

An Incredible Legacy, Kristina L. Niedringhaus

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No abstract provided.

International Clinical Legal Education Perspectives: How Teaching Abroad Makes Us Better Clinicians, Lisa Radtke Bliss

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No abstract provided.

Teaching Llcs By Design, Anne M. Tucker

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Experiential learning is intended to contextualize studying the law and equip students with lawyering skills required in practice. “Experiential education integrates theory and practice by combining academic inquiry with actual experience.” From a pedagogical perspective, LLC-based experiential exercises provide an efficient vehicle to teach the traditional doctrinal foundation of LLCs such as the unique attributes of the entity i.e., limited liability with pass-through taxation and flexible management structures), the default statutory rules that govern LLCs, and a host of transactional skills.

Teaching unincorporated business entities, particularly LLCs, presents a unique platform to design a course — or a course element …

Lessons Learned From Teaching Clinical Legal Education In Thailand, Lisa Radtke Bliss

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All around the globe, legal educators, law students, consumers of legal services and others in the legal community are debating reforms to legal education, prompted by external demands on the profession, the need for law graduates to be competent in rapidly developing areas of law, and changes in practice due to globalization and technology. The drum beat for change is familiar by now in the United States, with a renewed interest in curricular reform that seeks to balance teaching students foundational legal knowledge with important lawyering skills and professional values. In Asia, in particular, globalization, economic growth and development, funding …

Building On Best Practices: Looking Back, Looking Forward, Carolyn Wilkes Kaas, Lisa Radtke Bliss

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No abstract provided.

A Person's A Person: Children's Rights In Children's Literature, Jonathan Todres, Sarah Higinbotham

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Although the Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history, children’s rights are still seen in many circles as novel and quaint ideas but not serious legal theory. The reality, however, is that the realization of children’s rights is vital not only for childhood but for individuals’ entire lives. Similarly, although the books children read and have read to them are a central part of their childhood experience, so too has children’s literature been ignored as a rights-bearing discourse and a means of civic socialization. We argue that children’s literature, like …

Empirical Evidence That Formative Assessments Improve Final Exams, Carol Springer Sargent, Andrea A. Curcio

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Despite the recent widespread call for law professors to incorporate more feedback during the semester, there is a relative dearth of empirical evidence about the impact of practice materials and feedback on law student performance. This study begins to fill that gap. Using five ungraded quizzes, a graded midterm, and reflection exercises, this study shows that feedback improved student performance on a cumulative final exam up to a full letter grade compared to a cohort with only a traditional end-of-semester final exam. The study confirms an earlier study showing that learning gains from formative assessments concentrate among those with stronger …

Resource-Based Learning And Course Design: A Brief Theoretical Overview And Practical Suggestions, Meg Butler

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Law librarians teaching legal research should follow resource based learning pedagogical strategies. This paper provides a background in constructivist educational theory and resource based learning before identifying useful instructional strategies regarding course design decisions related to goal-setting, assignments, rubrics, and assessment.

Collaborating With The Real World: Opportunities For Developing Skills And Values In Law Teaching, Charity Scott

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This article describes a broad range of teaching innovations and opportunities that classroom law professors can take advantage of in their own backyards. It presents examples of real-world engagement by faculty who help their students learn the skills, values, and attributes of good professional practice by supplementing what they already are teaching well with opportunities to learn the law in real-world contexts. Classroom professors do not need to become clinical professors or start teaching lawyering skills courses. Instead, they can collaborate with clinical professors, practicing lawyers, and other professionals outside their classrooms in settings that relate to their doctrinal fields. …

Law School Of The Future: Centre Of Cutting-Edge Practice?, Clark Cunningham

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No abstract provided.

A Tale Of One Cali Lesson: Librarians Share A New Approach, Terrance K. Manion, Ronald E. Wheeler

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No abstract provided.

Looking At The Initial Client Meeting Through An Interdisciplinary Lens: Applying Lessons From The Medical Profession To Law Teaching And Practice, Lisa Radtke Bliss

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In this essay a clinical law professor observes similarities in the way that physicians and lawyers interact with patients and clients during the initial consult/interview, based upon her experiences teaching in a medical legal partnership clinic.

Academic Achievers, Meg Butler

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No abstract provided.

Legal Education After Law School: Lessons From Scotland And England, Clark D. Cunningham

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No abstract provided.

Georgia's Public Service Bar Exam Alternative, Andrea A. Curcio, Clark D. Cunningham

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No abstract provided.

E-Development: Should Librarians Expand Their Online Learning Opportunities?, Kristina L. Niedringhaus

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No abstract provided.

Finding Our Voices, Teaching Our Truth: Reflections On Legal Pedagogy And Asian American Identity, Natsu Taylor Saito

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No abstract provided.