Law Commons^™

Why We Should Provide More Support For Women Of Color In Academia, Silvia Chairez-Perez

Golden Gate University Race, Gender, Sexuality and Social Justice Law Journal

My experience as a woman of color in higher education is not unique. In this piece, I will share my own story and discuss challenges women of color face to succeed in academia and how their absence in these spaces negatively affects the success of female students of color. Additionally, I will describe methods institutions of higher learning can implement to hire more women of color and how having women of color teachers has impacted my educational journey.

New Golden Gate University Professors Will Bolster Law School's Work, Golden Gate University School Of Law

Press Releases

Golden Gate University School of Law has added three new faculty members who will strengthen the school's offerings in several key areas. The trio join the school from UCLA , Stanford, and the U.S. Department of Justice. The new professors— Jyoti Nanda , Spencer Williams , and Robert Mullaney —join 32 other full-time faculty at the school.

Law Schools And Learning Outcomes: Developing A Coherent, Cohesive, And Comprehensive Law School Curriculum, Anthony S. Niedwiecki

Publications

This Article will detail a process that law schools can use to comply with the ABA Standards requiring schools develop their learning outcomes for the entire institution, academic programs, and courses. At the same time, this process can be used as a roadmap for curricular review and planning. As an example, this Article will use the steps that The John Marshall Law School took to review and change its professional skills curriculum. Part I will outline the accreditation requirements for developing and publishing learning outcomes. Part 11 of the Article will provide an overview of the process of curricular planning …

Returning To The Basics: Rethinking The Meaning Of “Practice” In Law School, Reichi Lee

Publications

Legal education is in crisis and everyone is talking about it. When the economy took a nosedive, legal jobs were no long-er handed out on a silver platter and law firms began to balk at the expense of training lawyers. You can’t surf the internet without reading yet another blogger’s lament on ‘what law school does not teach you’ or why one ‘should not go to law school.’ Those forces, coupled with the sky-rocketing costs of legal education, have even the United States President (himself a former law professor) suggesting that law school should be shortened to two years. In …

Beyond The Fakultas' Four Walls: Linking Education, Practice, And The Legal Profession, Stephen A. Rosenbaum

Publications

More than fifty years after the first post-colonial Southeast Asian regional conference on legal education, commentators and educators do not necessarily agree on the appropriate curricular balance between theory, doctrine, and practice, or what role the government should play in directing the orientation of legal studies and careers in Indonesia’s law schools. The author argues in favor of legal education that is rich in experiential learning and integrates the involvement of practitioners and doctrinal faculty. This objective may be a relatively new reality in Indonesia, but also one that needs revitalization in other Southeast Asian nations and beyond. This article …

Law Schools’ Untapped Resources: Using Advocacy Professors To Achieve Real Change In Legal Education, Wes R. Porter

Publications

If the current law school model is dilapidated, then the remodel requires more than a face-lift; it requires real structural and architectural changes. Legal education (finally) must cater to the needs of students. By most accounts, that means teaching students the knowledge, skills, and values required to serve clients and solve problems. However, to reinvent legal education in a meaningful way, law schools must involve and elevate their former second-class citizens on the faculty: advocacy professors, clinicians, and legal writing instructors. These faculty members already teach, and have long taught, in the way that would represent real change in law …

Future Of The Legal Profession, Rachel A. Van Cleave

Publications

Many books and articles in the last few years describe a "profession in crisis" with no shortage of demons to blame: many equity partners in large law firms pursuing ever increasing profits, tenured law professors sitting on big salaries with no incentive to change how they teach, accrediting institutions imposing expensive regulation on law schools, and the examples of finger-pointing continue. In the words of YouTube sensation Kid President, "I think we all need a pep talk."

Viewpoint: Happier Law Students, One Client At A Time, Susan Rutberg

Publications

It's not your parents' legal education anymore. To lawyers who came of age in days of yore, legal education today would be almost unrecognizable. True, students still learn how to analyze appellate opinions, and at some schools, still survive the socratic method. But at Golden Gate University and an increasing number of other schools, legal education consists of multiple opportunities to intertwine theory and practice; build oral and written communication skills, learn the values of the profession and shape professional identity, both in and beyond the classroom.

Practice Perfect, Rachel A. Van Cleave

Publications

Institutions of higher education and law schools in particular are currently addressing new questions about the value and form of the education they offer, due, in part, to economic reality, practical necessity, and public scrutiny. Changes in the nature of the legal profession and the market, the cost of legal education, and most recently the purpose of the third year of law school, have each been at the center of professional conversations, public debate and media stories about reform.

Like my colleagues at other law schools, I am certainly involved with these critical conversations. I am also working with GGU …

Professor Mort Cohen: An Advocate Professor's Journey, Leeor Neta

Publications

Professor Mort Cohen has taught at GGU Law for 30 years. In addition to teaching, Cohen has taken on pro bono cases as an advocate, most recently in service of the elderly and mentally ill. In 2012, Cohen successfully represented two individuals and the California Association of Mental Health Patients Rights Advocates in K.G. Et al v. Meredith as a Marin County Public Guardian. In an unprecedented, unanimous decision, a three-judge panel in The California Court of Appeal, First District stated that patients could not be treated with mind-altering drugs without their informed consent. It further stated that the County …

Clinique Togo: Changing Legal Practice In One African Nation In Six Days, Stephen A. Rosenbaum

Publications

In this essay, the author looks at the role of the short-term rule of law consultant in a developing country. The setting is Togo in francophone Africa and the State Department's mandate for the consultant is to help establish a pro bono indigent legal aid program with participation by the national bar association and the country's principal law school — in one week's time. Using the device of a daily journal, the author describes (1) the background for the visit, (2) the series of exchanges with his hosts from the US Embassy, bar association and Université de Lomé, (3) the …

Teaching For Lifelong Learning: Improving The Metacognitive Skills Of Law Students Through More Effective Formative Assessment Techniques, Anthony S. Niedwiecki

Publications

Part II of this article focuses on the need to prepare law students to be expert learners because they will be constant learners in the practice of law. Part III details the concept of metacognition and its role in preparing students to be self-regulated learners. It discusses the components of metacognition, its role in law school, and the current push to include better metacognitive training in law school. Part IV details how formative assessment can be better utilized in improving the metacognitive skills of students. Specifically, it explains the best practices of formative assessment and how professors can adjust their …

The Carnegie Effect: Elevating Practical Training Over Liberal Education In Curricular Reform, Mark Yates

Publications

The Carnegie Foundation issued its book-length report, Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law (Carnegie Report) in 2007. Although there have been numerous responses to it, relatively few have engaged it with any degree of critical analysis. Law schools across the country have enthusiastically mentioned the Carnegie Report in connection with curricular changes intended to “prepare” students, in the words of the Report, for the practice of law. Mostly these changes amount to adding clinical options or even clinical requirements, adding units to legal writing programs, and updating professional responsibility courses. Very few, if any law schools, however, have …

A Primer For Teaching Law As An Adjunct Professor, Rachel A. Van Cleave

Publications

After practicing law and perhaps specializing in a particular area for several years, you cannot help but think, "I wish they had taught me [blank] in law school." You start to wonder whether you could teach a class at a local law school. Here are some tips for pursuing such an endeavor.

So You Want To Teach Law, Rachel A. Van Cleave

Publications

After practicing law and perhaps specializing in a particular area for several years, you cannot help but think, "I wish they had taught me [blank] in law school." You start to wonder whether you could teach a class at a local law school. Here are some tips for pursuing such an endeavor.

Lawyers And Learning: A Metacognitive Approach To Legal Education, Anthony S. Niedwiecki

Publications

This article will detail the concept of metacognition, how current law school teaching does not teach metacognitive skills, and how legal educators can incorporate metacognitive learning into the law school curriculum to help students better transfer knowledge and skills to the practice of law. Teaching metacognitive skills to law students should focus on explaining learning theory and modeling appropriate planning, monitoring, and evaluating techniques across the curriculum. Part II of this article details how law schools have been slow to integrate and apply learning theory to the law school classroom. Part III details the theory behind metacognition and how it …

Inclusive Teaching Methods Across The Curriculum: Academic ·Resource And Law Teachers Tie A Knot At The Aals, David Dominguez, Laurie Zimet, Fran Ansley, Charles Daye, Rodney O. Fong

Publications

This article describes an educational journey of seven diverse law teachers, located in different parts of the country, at various stages of our careers, who, in the course of preparing a simple panel, found that we had created a truly rewarding experience of our own. We write with the conviction that we need to share what we learned from those four months of "schoolwork" and from the AALS program we eventually presented in January, 1997. As we reconstruct our collaboration on inclusive teaching methods and ponder where it is taking us, we find we worked through the following stages of …