Law Commons^™

Teaching Legal Research And Writing With Actual Legal Work: Extending Clinical Education Into The First Year, Michael A. Millemann, Steven D. Schwinn

Faculty Scholarship

In this article, the co-authors argue that legal research and writing (LRW) teachers should use actual legal work to generate assignments. They recommend that clinical and LRW teachers work together to design, co-teach, and evaluate such courses. They describe two experimental courses they developed together and co-taught to support and clarify their arguments. They contend that actual legal work motivates students to learn the basic skills of research, analysis and writing, and thus helps to accomplish the primary goals of LRW courses. It also helps students to explore new dimensions of basic skills, including those related to the development and …

Open Water: Affirmative Action, Mismatch Theory And Swarming Predators: A Response To Richard Sander, André Douglas Pond Cummings, Seth Harper

Faculty Scholarship

"Open Water" offers a sharp normative critique of Richard Sander's Stanford Law Review study (57 STAN. L. REV. 367 (2004)) that claims to prove empirically that affirmative action positively injures African American law students. Sander's law review article and conclusions are troublesome for a range of reasons and my critique unfolds as follows: First, Sander promulgates an objectionable form of racial paternalism in his anti-affirmative action study; Second, Sander casts himself in the fateful and historically disturbing role of the "Great White Father"; Third, Sander seemingly manipulated the mass media in drawing attention to his study and purported findings, particularly …

Justice In The Balance: An Evaluation Of One Clinic's Ability To Harmonize Teaching Practical Skills, Ethics And Professionalism With A Social Justice Mission, Lauren Carasik

Faculty Scholarship

A number of developments have firmly established the role of clinics in legal education, allowing law school clinicians greater latitude in designing programs consistent with law school curricular values and priorities. Consequently, current law school clinical offerings are comprised of richly varied structures and goals. A myriad of goals fall under the general rubric of clinical legal education. Among the most widely cited goals are providing practical skills training in a real world context, instilling a public interest ethos in students, advancing social justice, encouraging the critique of the law and legal institutions, inculcating high standards of ethics and professionalism …

Helping Students Develop A Humanistic Philosophy Of Lawyering, Beth Cohen

Faculty Scholarship

This Article considers the need to help students develop a cohesive philosophy of lawyering and suggests some ideas and methods to help introduce these concepts and concerns to students. Although this Article focuses primarily on aspects of the legal research and writing curriculum and pedagogy as well as professional development programs that can enhance the curriculum, the concepts are applicable and transferable to other subjects and courses. The purpose of this Article is to explore the issues raised by a conscious decision to help students consider and develop a beneficial philosophy of lawyering in areas including the development of legal …

Tribute: An Extraordinary Lawyer, Arthur Leavens

Faculty Scholarship

Charles Ogletree, Jr., is one of those persons who, by virtue of his many and varied achievements, has become almost larger than life. Ogletree is a leader in the struggle for civil rights. The Author pays tribute to this tenured Harvard Law School professor.

As A Last Resort, Ask The Students: What They Say Makes Someone An Effective Law Teacher, James B. Levy

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Everything I Wanted To Know About Teaching Law School I Learned From Being A Kindergarten Teacher: Ethics In The Law School Classroom, Debra Moss Curtis

Faculty Scholarship

This article discusses the ethics of teaching law school. It was not until the 1920s and 1930s that full-time law teachers, rather than part-time practitioners or judges, held the main responsibility for teaching at many law schools. When this shift began to occur, the field of "law professor" was born, and there arose the need for rules in all areas governing law professors, including ethics. Today, most law professors in the United States are members of both the legal and teaching professions and therefore must comply with the ethical rules of each profession. However they may be professionally licensed, law …

Teach The Children Well: Incorporating Cultural Literacy Into The Law School Learning Experience, Debra Moss Curtis

Faculty Scholarship

This article is an examination of what and how we teach in law school. Much attention has been given to the concept of the Socratic Method and whether teaching in this manner "hides the ball" from students. Rather than focusing on whether the ball is hidden, my work shall focus on whether students know what the ball is in the first place.

Misuse And Abuse Of The Lsat: Making The Case For Alternative Evaluative Efforts And A Redefinition Of Merit, Phoebe A. Haddon, Deborah W. Post

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Persistent Critique: Constructing Clients’ Stories, Carolyn Grose

Faculty Scholarship

Drawing on narrative, post-colonial, clinical and other critical theory, this article explores the role and necessity of critical reflection by lawyers in the construction of clients' stories in representation. In particular, the piece is framed by the experiences of transgender clients and their student attorneys. The piece begins by examining the "problem of representation" - the challenge of seeing and hearing clients' stories, particularly when those stories do not fit in to our understanding of how the world works. It moves on to describe first the "official stories" that govern how the legal system treats transgender people and second how …

Cross-Cultural Lawyering By The Book: The Latest Clinical Texts And A Sketch Of A Future Agenda, Ascanio Piomelli

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

"The Irresistible Force Meets The Immovable Object": When Antidiscrimination Standards And Religious Belief Collide In Aba-Accredited Law Schools, Kristin B. Gerdy

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Grave Building: A Tribute To Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., And His Evolving Legacy, Robin A. Lenhardt

Faculty Scholarship

This tribute celebrates the tremendous legal career of Professor Charles J. Ogletree, Jr. It highlights his many contributions to the legal profession and academy, including his role in preparing a cadre of lawyers for the 21st Century; body of scholarship focusing on racial justice issues; and instrumental role in developing new approaches to civil rights lawyering.

A Conversation Among Deans, Katharine T. Bartlett, Edward Rubin, W. H. Knight

Faculty Scholarship

On March 10, 2006, the Harvard Journal of Law & Gender, Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, and Harvard Law Review co-sponsored a conference, "Results: Legal Education, Institutional Change, and a Decade of Gender Studies," to address the number of student experience studies that detail women's lower performance in and dissatisfaction with law school. Rather than advocate for a particular set of responses to the different experiences of men and women in legal education , this conference sought to foster a discussion about the institutional challenges these patterns highlight. As a means of accomplishing this end, law school deans from …

Aals As Creative Problem Solver: Implementing Bylaw 6-4(A) To Prohibit Discrimination On The Basis Of Sexual Orientation In Legal Education, Barbara Cox

Faculty Scholarship

I wrote this article because it is important for the legal education community to understand the important leadership that the AALS has provided in lessening the discrimination that sexual minorities encounter in legal education, and to know of the challenges and problems it encountered in making Bylaw 6-4(a) into more than a membership requirement in name only.

Balancing The Five Hundred Hats: On Being A Legal Educator/Scholar/Activist, Susan Herman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

On Nourishing The Curriculum With A Transnational-Law Lagniappe (From The Association Of American Law Schools' Workshop On Integrating Transnational Legal Perspectives Into The First-Year Curriculum, Annual Meeting, Torts Panel, January 2006), Anita Bernstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Clinical Legal Education In Hong Kong: A Time To Move Forward, Stacy Caplow

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Transsystemia – Are We Approaching A New Langdellian Moment? Is Mcgill Leading The Way?, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

To start, I'd like you to imagine an agglomeration of twenty to thirty jurisdictions experiencing a profound change in the nature of their economic realities. Their economies, and thus the transactions within them and the businesses that conduct them, have been predominantly local in character. Now, political and economic developments are producing businesses and transactions increasingly trans-jurisdictional in character. Increasingly the counseling, drafting, and litigating that goes on in lawyers' offices involves not one jurisdiction but two or three. What happens to legal education?

As the United States emerged from the Civil War and a truly national economy began to …