Law Commons^™

Building Community, Still Thirsty For Justice: Supporting Community Development Efforts In Baltimore, Renee Hatcher, Jaime Alison Lee

Renee Hatcher

Baltimore is a city of many challenges, but it possesses true communitybased strength. The city’s residents and community organizations are its greatest assets. This article highlights some of the community’s work and how the Community Development Clinic at the University of Baltimore School of Law (CDC) supports this work through its experiential learning curriculum. The challenges facing Baltimore’s communities (systemic disinvestment, structural racism, vacant buildings, unemployment, and the criminalization of poverty, to name a few) existed long before the national media coverage and uprising surrounding the death of Freddie Gray, an unarmed Black man who suffered a fatal spinal injury …

The Behaviour Of Family Lawyers And The Implications For Legal Education, John H. Wade

John Wade

Legal educators have often developed courses with the purported goal of teaching students to “think like lawyers.” Yet little is known about the ways various classes of lawyers think or behave. This paper offers some insights through anecdotal observations of the behaviour of family lawyers in Sydney. It must be conceded, however, that even beginning to demystify lawyerly behaviour does little to resolve current debates about the goals and methods of legal education.

Distributed Graduate Seminars: An Interdisciplinary Approach To Studying Land Conservation, Jessica Owley, Adena R. Rissman

Jessica Owley

No abstract provided.

Normalizing Trepidation And Anxiety, Christine P. Bartholomew, Johanna Oreskovic

Johanna Oreskovic

No abstract provided.

Redefining Open Access For The Legal Information Market, James G. Milles

James G. Milles

The open access movement in legal scholarship, inasmuch as it is driven within the law library community over concerns about the rising cost of legal information, fails to address - and in fact diverts resources from - the real problem facing law libraries today: the soaring costs of nonscholarly, commercially published, practitioner-oriented legal publications. The current system of legal scholarly publishing - in student-edited journals and without meaningful peer review - does not face the pressures to increase prices common in the science and health disciplines. One solution to this problem is for law schools to redirect some of their …

Creating An Information Commons, James G. Milles

James G. Milles

No abstract provided.

Leaky Boundaries And The Decline Of The Autonomous Law School Library, James G. Milles

James G. Milles

Academic law librarians have long insisted on the value of autonomy from the university library system, usually basing their arguments on strict adherence to ABA standards. However, law librarians have failed to construct an explicit and consistent definition of autonomy. Lacking such a definition, they have tended to rely on an outmoded Langdellian view of the law as a closed system. This view has long been discredited, as approaches such as law and economics and sociolegal research have become mainstream, and courts increasingly resort to nonlegal sources of information. Blind attachment to autonomy as a goal rather than a means …

Law Librarians As Educators And Role Models: The University At Buffalo's Jd/Mls Program In Law Librarianship, James G. Milles

James G. Milles

No abstract provided.

Out Of The Jungle, James G. Milles

James G. Milles

No abstract provided.

Legal Education In Crisis, And Why Law Libraries Are Doomed, James G. Milles

James G. Milles

The dual crises facing legal education - the economic crisis affecting both the job market and the pool of law school applicants, and the crisis of confidence in the ability of law schools and the ABA accreditation process to meet the needs of lawyers or society at large - have undermined the case for not only the autonomy, but the very existence, of law school libraries as we have known them. Legal education in the United States is about to undergo a long-term contraction, and law libraries will be among the first to go. A few law schools may abandon …

New Career Paths: From Computing Services To Library Director, James G. Milles

James G. Milles

No abstract provided.

Encountering Attica: Documentary Filmmaking As Pedagogical Tool, Teresa A. Miller

Teresa A. Miller

No abstract provided.

Elucidating The Elephant: Interdisciplinary Law School Classes, Kim Diana Connolly

Kim Diana Connolly

This Essay explores the use of interdisciplinary law school classes as a fundamental way to connect law students with future colleagues who are receiving different professional training, as well as with concepts related to but outside of traditional doctrinal law. While these classes offer rich learning opportunities, their design and implementation present a host of different issues. Part I of this Essay briefly explores the history and range of interdisciplinary class opportunities, looking both outside and within the law school context. Part II provides an overview of the benefits and barriers to successful interdisciplinary law school courses. Part III offers …

Is It Time For Real Reform: Nysba's 20 Years Of Examining The Bar Exam, Mary A. Lynch, Kim Diana Connolly

Kim Diana Connolly

No abstract provided.

Cali Lessons In Legal Research Courses: Alternatives To Reading About Research, Elizabeth G. Adelman

Elizabeth Adelman

No abstract provided.

Mexican Law And Legal Research, Julienne Grant, Jonathan Pratter, Bianca Anderson, Marisol Floren-Romero, Jootaek Lee, Lyonette Louis-Jacques, Teresa Miguel-Stearns, Sergio Stone

Marisol Florén-Romero

No abstract provided.

Institutional Triage: Reflections On Being Acquired, Aric K. Short

Aric Short

On June 25, 2012, I walked into the dean's office at Texas Wesleyan University School of Law. He and I had been summoned by our university president to a hastily called meeting to discuss the law school's "academic program." Since I helped oversee our academic program as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the time, I was not particularly looking forward to the meeting. I assumed there would be bad news of some sort. Instead, we were told that Texas Wesleyan University ("TWU") and Texas A&M University ("TAMU") were in negotiations that, it was expected, would result in a "strategic …

Encouraging Engaged Scholarship: Perspectives From An Associate Dean For Research, Sonia K. Katyal

Sonia Katyal

No abstract provided.

The Economic Justice Imperative For Transactional Law Clinics, Lynnise E. Pantin

Lynnise E. Pantin

The economic, political, and social volatility of the sixties and seventies, out of which clinical legal education was born, has certain mythical qualities for most law students, and perhaps some law professors. America still bears the scars of the economic policies of those previous eras, such as redlining, blockbusting, poverty and urban decay. While the realities of the era may seem out of reach for many of our students, those policies arising out of that era have contributed to the wealth gap in this country, which has worsened over the last twenty years. Now more than ever, society needs social …

Roundtable – Teaching Human Rights: Challenges And Best Practices, Shayna Plaut, Kristi Kenyon, Joel Pruce, William Simmons

Joel Pruce

Over the past 20 years, courses addressing human rights have grown dramatically at both the undergraduate and graduate levels worldwide. Many of these courses are housed in specific disciplines, focus on specific issues, and require practical experience in the form of internships/practicums. Amid this growth there is a need to reflect on teaching human rights including the challenges, fears, and best practices. Recognizing that education takes place inside and outside a classroom, this roundtable brings together scholars teaching human rights in a variety of settings to examine the current state of university human rights education. This includes a discussion of …

中国法律检索教育新发展, Liying Yu, Ning Han

Ning Han

本文通过问卷调查揭示中国法律检索教学领域的最新状况和发展趋势。该调查是作者2008年调查的继续，以期发现近年来国内该项教学的进展和变化。作者希望以中美法律图书馆员的视角对中国法律检索教学中诸如课程设置、教学方式、学分、考核评估等方面进行具体观察和分析；同时，对法律职业与法律教育者之间的反馈系统、学生对法律检索能力的认知、全国性指导标准等相关方面也有涉及。文章指出，当前，中国法律检索教学局限与机遇并存，特别是伴随信息与数据时代对社会经济文化的全面影响，中国法学教育改革适逢其时，法律检索教育也会不可避免地提到议事日程。而且，作者乐观地认为，中美法律图书馆员在其中的积极与促进作用也是无可替代的。

Legal Research Instruction And Law Librarianship In China: An Updated View Of Current Practices And A Comparison With The U.S. Legal Education System, Ning Han, Liying Yu, Anne Mostad-Jensen

Ning Han

This article follows up on Liying Yu’s 2008 survey exploring the state of legal research instruction in Chinese law schools. The updated survey revisits the state of legal research instruction in China, explores several aspects not previously addressed, and discusses broader issues relevant to law librarianship in China such as management models, funding, staffing, and law librarian faculty status.

A Reply To The National Conference Of Bar Examiners: More Talk, No Answers, So Keep On Shopping, Suzanne Darrow Kleinhaus

Suzanne Darrow Kleinhaus

In Let the Games Begin: Jurisdiction-Shopping for the Shopaholics (Good Luck With That) Mark Albanese defends the National Conference of Bar Examiners’ grading practices as essential to assuring reliability given the variability in grading between UBE jurisdictions. In addressing the claim that it is possible to achieve different outcomes on the same test by the same candidate if taken in different UBE jurisdictions, he describes how NCBE monitors jurisdiction variation to ensure grading consistency. Those of us concerned, however, with the possibility that the jurisdiction in which a candidate takes the Uniform Bar Examination (UBE) may make the difference between …

Teaching Gender As A Core Value In The Firstyear Contracts Class, Kerri Lynn Stone

Kerri Stone

No abstract provided.

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

Kendall L. Kerew

No abstract provided.

A Novel Tool For Teaching Property: Starting With The Questions, Tim Iglesias

Tim Iglesias

The Path To Lawyer Well-Being: Practical Recommendations For Positive Change (The Report Of The National Task Force On Lawyer Well-Being), Part Ii, Recommendations For Law Schools, David Jaffe

David Jaffe

Legal Education As A Strategy For Change In The Legal Profession, Mary Jane Mossman

Mary Jane Mossman

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Legal Education: Three Visions And A Prediction, Harry W. Arthurs

Harry Arthurs

In this article, the author examines three visions of the future of law schools. The first vision is that they should focus on producing "practice ready lawyers" to meet the immediate needs of today's legal profession. The second is that law schools should focus on training "tomorrow's lawyers, "graduates who are able to adapt to a rapidly-changing world. The third insists that law schools are knowledge communities whose many functions include, but are not limited to, providing students with a large and liberal understanding of law that will prepare them for a variety of legal and non-legal careers and for …

Common Ground: Perspectives On Latino-Latina Diversity, Ediberto Román

Ediberto Roman

In academic circles, when one speaks of scholarship, one speaks of scholarly legal publications. While such writing is obviously important for reform as well as for professional self-preservation,, I would take the term scholarship a step further. As true students of the law, we have a status in society that gives us a forum, and as Latinos/as we have an obligation to use our status to affect our communities. I, therefore, strongly support becoming more active by getting our voices heard beyond traditional modes of legal discourse. There are scores of communication mediums, such as newspapers and non-legal journals whose …