Law Commons^™

High Anxiety: Racism, The Law, And Legal Education, Elayne E. Greenberg

Faculty Publications

Conspicuously absent from the United States’ ongoing discourse about its racist history is a more honest discussion about the individual and personal stressors that are evoked in people when they talk about racism. What if they got it wrong? The fear of being cancelled - the public shaming for remarks that are deemed racist - has had a chilling effect on having meaningful conversations about racism. What lost opportunities!

This paper moves this discussion into the law school context. How might law schools rethink their law school curricula to more accurately represent the role systemic racism has played in shaping …

We Are In This Together: A Faculty-Led Approach To Fostering Innovation In Online Instruction, Courtney Selby, Rachel H. Smith

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

After reviewing this chapter, readers will understand how to:

• Implement a faculty-led approach to improving online instruction at their in­stitutions;
• Convene a faculty task force to spearhead that approach;
• Engage faculty members in productive discussions about the pedagogy of online law teaching;
• Prepare a set of institution-specific recommendations for improved online teaching; and
• Foster a faculty culture invested in innovating online instruction well beyond emergency use.

As so many platitudes tell us, challenges present opportunities. And the challenges of teaching law in a pandemic certainly created an avalanche, a flood, a—pick your natural disaster—of opportunity. Indeed, the sudden switch …

Recommendations For Online Teaching, St. John's University School Of Law Online & Hybrid Teaching Task Force, Renee Nicole Allen, Jennifer Baum, Catherine Baylin Duryea, Robert Ruescher, Courtney Selby, Eric Shannon, Rachel Smith, Jeff Sovern

Faculty Publications

This is a collection of recommendations drawn from a variety of sources, including our colleagues, students, webinars, books, articles, podcasts, and our own experimentation. It is not our expectation that any individual professor would adopt all of these suggestions and indeed no one of us intends to. Instead, we hope that some of these are helpful to you. Some suggestions deal with the nuts and bolts of teaching online while others with how to accomplish broader goals.

The general recommendations are broadly applicable to all courses taught online, while the individual class-type recommendations are intended to complement and augment the …

Contemporary Teaching Strategies: Effectively Engaging Millennials Across The Curriculum, Renee Nicole Allen, Alicia R. Jackson

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

"Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime." - Chinese Proverb

American Bar Association ("ABA") Standard 314, Assessment of Student Learning, requires law schools to "utilize both formative and summative assessment methods in its curriculum to measure and improve student learning and provide meaningful feedback to students." This article will connect multiple formative assessments to Bloom's taxonomy to demonstrate how law teachers can transform and enhance student learning, while promoting key steps in the self-regulated learning cycle. First, it is imperative law teachers …

How To Critique & Grade Contract Drafting Assignments, Robin A. Boyle, Sue Payne, David Epstein

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

I have to give this disclaimer. I am high grader when it comes to contract drafting. So even though my presentation is on critiquing and grading, truthfully it’s more about critiquing for me. I will get into that in a minute. My name is Robin Boyle, and I teach at St. John’s University School of Law. First, my background. I was an evening student at Fordham and worked in law firms during the day in both litigation and corporate practices. By the time I graduated, I worked at a large law firm, which I had summered at and then …

Generation X In Law School: How These Law Students Are Different From Those Who Teach Them, Joanne Ingham, Robin A. Boyle

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Generation X is the group of approximately forty-five million people born between 1961 to 1981. They have been dubbed Generation X, or Gen Xers for short, because there seemed to be nothing dramatic about their experience—not the Vietnam War, not the Civil Rights movement, not the Second Wave of the Feminist Movement. They also have a reputation for disengagement. Gen Xers have been described as disrespectful and suspicious of authority. These stereotypes can negatively influence how law professors conduct their classes and treat their students in general.

This article presents the results of a multi-year study that examined the …

Providing Structure To Law Students — Introducing The Programmed Learning Sequence As An Instructional Tool, Robin A. Boyle, Lynne Dolle

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In the past few decades, legal academics have spawned writings about changing law school teaching methods from the traditional Socratic and case method to alternative approaches. Some of these authors encourage law professors to be aware of individual differences among students. Yet there has been little empirical research conducted in law schools concerning the effectiveness of teaching students according to their individual learning styles. "Learning styles" refers to the ways in which individuals "begin [ ] to concentrate on, process, [internalize,] and [remember] new and difficult [academic] information" or skills. The absence of learning-styles research in law schools spurred …