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Full-Text Articles in Law

Reforming Legal Education: Law Schools At The Crossroads, Debra Curtis, David Moss Nov 2012

Reforming Legal Education: Law Schools At The Crossroads, Debra Curtis, David Moss

Faculty Scholarship

In today's volatile law school environment, curriculum reform has emerged as a significant focus. It is commonly understood that law schools effectively teach certain analytical skills, but are less successful in other areas, and often scramble to adapt to evolving aims. This book demonstrates how law schools are successfully reforming their curriculum - and lays the framework to show how all schools of law can engage in a continuous reform model that proactively shapes our profession. It is expected that faculty and professional staff engaged in legal education will utilize this book as a primary resource to guide their respective …


Section On The Education Of Lawyers Remains Committed To Improving Legal Training, A. Benjamin Spencer Oct 2012

Section On The Education Of Lawyers Remains Committed To Improving Legal Training, A. Benjamin Spencer

Popular Media

No abstract provided.


The Law School Critique In Historical Perspective, A. Benjamin Spencer Oct 2012

The Law School Critique In Historical Perspective, A. Benjamin Spencer

Faculty Publications

Contemporary critiques of legal education abound. This arises from what can be described as a perfect storm: the confluence of softness in the legal employment market, the skyrocketing costs of law school, and the unwillingness of clients and law firms to continue subsidizing the further training of lawyers who failed to learn how to practice in law school. As legal jobs become increasingly scarce and salaries stagnate, the value proposition of law school is rightly being questioned from all directions. Although numerous valid criticisms have been put forth, some seem to be untethered from a full appreciation for how the …


Challenges And Choices In Criminal Law Course Design Commentary Symposium: Criminal Law Pedagogy, Roger Fairfax Oct 2012

Challenges And Choices In Criminal Law Course Design Commentary Symposium: Criminal Law Pedagogy, Roger Fairfax

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

I thoroughly enjoy every course in my teaching package, but the first-year Criminal Law course occupies a special place in my heart. The subject matter in the Criminal Law course is perhaps the most compelling of any offered in the first-year curriculum. As such, it provides Criminal Law instructors the tremendous opportunity to capture the imagination of students and to highlight the nexus between law in books and law in action.


Educating New Lawyers, Tara L. Casey Oct 2012

Educating New Lawyers, Tara L. Casey

Law Faculty Publications

In this article, the author discusses how law schools have been challenged recently to place greater emphasis on preparing students for the realities of legal practice through skills training and community-based learning.


Mission: Impossible, Mission: Accomplished Or Mission: Underway? A Survey And Analysis Of Current Trends In Professionalism Education In American Law Schools, Alison Kehner, Mary Ann Robinson Oct 2012

Mission: Impossible, Mission: Accomplished Or Mission: Underway? A Survey And Analysis Of Current Trends In Professionalism Education In American Law Schools, Alison Kehner, Mary Ann Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article identifies common characteristics of effective professionalism instruction to provide guidance in how to design innovative professionalism instruction. After introducing the topic in Part I, Part II of this Article describes the origins and development of the professionalism education movement in American Law schools. Part III of this Article explains our methods for collecting information and identifies and summarizes the predominant trends, and provides examples of noteworthy programs or initiatives. Part IV concludes by describing our method for assessing successful programs and identifying the characteristics of effective professionalism instruction.


Compelling Orthodoxy: Myth And Mystique In The Marketing Of Legal Education, Kenneth Lasson Oct 2012

Compelling Orthodoxy: Myth And Mystique In The Marketing Of Legal Education, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

This article seeks to demonstrate the negative effects of law schools’ preoccupations with enhancing their image and marketing strategy, especially as they are reflected in both scholarship and academic freedom.


Universal Citation In Sixty Seconds, Anne Burnett Jul 2012

Universal Citation In Sixty Seconds, Anne Burnett

Presentations

A large format infographic describing the system for citation which permits reference to legal or law-related information in any medium without requiring reference to proprietary products. Includes a timeline of the Universal Citation Guide from 1993 to 2012, citation elements, a list of states and territories that adopted the practice and an interactive QR code for accessing AALL's page on this citation format. The poster also encouraged viewers to advocate for adopting Universal citation with judges, attorneys and legislators.


Agenda: A Life Of Contributions For All Time: Symposium In Honor Of David H. Getches, University Of Colorado Boulder. School Of Law, University Of Colorado Law Review Apr 2012

Agenda: A Life Of Contributions For All Time: Symposium In Honor Of David H. Getches, University Of Colorado Boulder. School Of Law, University Of Colorado Law Review

A Life of Contributions for All Time: Symposium in Honor of David H. Getches (April 26-27)

On April 26-27, 2012, Colorado Law honored David H. Getches with a symposium to celebrate his life and legacy of trailblazing scholarship. “A Life of Contributions for All Time” featured a keynote address by Distinguished Professor Charles Wilkinson entitled, “Hero for the People, Hero for the Land and Water: Reflections on the Enduring Contributions of David Getches.” Top scholars in the fields of natural resources, water, and American Indian law reflected on Dean Getches’ contributions and their own insights into these fields, including Professor John Leshy, John Echohawk, Professor Carole Goldberg, Professor Joe Sax, Professor Rebecca Tsosie, Justice Greg Hobbs, …


Enlivening Election Law, Joshua A. Douglas Apr 2012

Enlivening Election Law, Joshua A. Douglas

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Election law cases are often lengthy and include complex discussion of constitutional doctrines. Moreover, there is rarely a clear-cut answer to a tricky election law question. The field is full of balancing tests, competing interests to weigh, and ever-shifting standards. A challenge for Election Law teachers, then, is to ensure that the long judicial opinions and difficult constitutional doctrines undergirding the field of election law do not bury the vibrancy of the topic. One way to keep an Election Law course student-friendly is to make frequent use of electronic media. Election law is well-suited to the adoption of images, videos, …


Race To The Finish Line: Legal Education, Jobs, And The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of, Gary A. Munneke Jan 2012

Race To The Finish Line: Legal Education, Jobs, And The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of, Gary A. Munneke

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

It is true that the recession of 2008–2009 seriously undermined the job market for both new and experienced lawyers. It is also true that legal education is expensive, and many students pay for it through loans that have to be repaid after graduation. And it is well documented that some law schools misstated employment and other statistics in the tight, competitive job market of recent years. But connecting the dots in this case does not lead to a conclusion that our system of legal education is bankrupt or that law school is not an excellent career choice for many students. …


How Derrick Bell Helped Me Decide To Become An Educator, Not Just A Faculty Member, Vanessa Merton Jan 2012

How Derrick Bell Helped Me Decide To Become An Educator, Not Just A Faculty Member, Vanessa Merton

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Way ahead of the current chorus of critique of American legal education, Derrick Bell was a fierce, but lucid and incisive, critic of every aspect of American legal education, from law professors’ inadequacies, to the repetitive passivity of the law school classroom, to the financial exploitation of students, to the negative consequences of the tenure system. Dean Bell did not merely voice these concerns, he creatively structured his own courses to make them more relevant, effective, and student-centered. The author’s chance encounter with Dean Bell’s 1982 article, The Law Student as Slave, which presaged later calls for wholesale reform of …


Clinique Togo: Changing Legal Practice In One African Nation In Six Days, Stephen A. Rosenbaum Jan 2012

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 Jan 2012

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 …


Gender And The Crisis In Legal Education: Remaking The Academy In Our Image, Paula A. Monopoli Jan 2012

Gender And The Crisis In Legal Education: Remaking The Academy In Our Image, Paula A. Monopoli

Faculty Scholarship

American legal education is in the grip of what some have called an “existential crisis.” The New York Times proclaims the death of the current system of legal education. This is attributed, in part, to the incentivizing of faculty to produce increasingly abstract scholarship and the costs this imposes on pedagogy and the mentoring of students. At the same time, despite women graduating from law schools in significant numbers since the 1980s, they continue to lag behind in the most prestigious positions in academia—tenured, full professorships: From academic year 1998-99 to academic year 2007-08, the percentage of women full professors …


Female Law Students, Gendered Self-Evaluation, And The Promise Of Positive Psychology, Dara Purvis Jan 2012

Female Law Students, Gendered Self-Evaluation, And The Promise Of Positive Psychology, Dara Purvis

Journal Articles

For the last several decades, studies and surveys have shown that female law students perform worse and feel worse about their experiences in law school than do male students. Hidden in average figures, however, is a subgroup of female students who thrive. Positive psychology, focusing on what traits make people happy rather than how to alleviate depression, provides novel ideas of how to improve legal education for women without making accommodations specifically targeting gender.


Talking In The Dark: Using Technology For Basic Academic Support, Ian Gallacher Jan 2012

Talking In The Dark: Using Technology For Basic Academic Support, Ian Gallacher

College of Law - Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


How Are Law Schools Addressing Major Changes In The Practice Of Law And In Accrediting Standards For Legal Education?, Margaret Ivey Bacigal Jan 2012

How Are Law Schools Addressing Major Changes In The Practice Of Law And In Accrediting Standards For Legal Education?, Margaret Ivey Bacigal

Law Faculty Publications

There was a consensus at the first panel discussion on how law schools are addressing major changes in legal practice and accrediting standards for legal education, that law schools are doing a good job teaching critical thinking and legal analysis. A recurring theme was that more experiential legal education is needed to help students become "practice ready." Deficits in legal writing, problem solving, and understanding the various contexts within which legal problems arise were concerns. A major issue is how do schools enhance legal education given the unsustainable costs and changes in the legal profession?


The Challenges To Legal Education In 1973 And 2012: An Introduction To The Anniversary Issue Of The Hofstra Law Review, Nora V. Demleitner Jan 2012

The Challenges To Legal Education In 1973 And 2012: An Introduction To The Anniversary Issue Of The Hofstra Law Review, Nora V. Demleitner

Scholarly Articles

Not available.


Equipping Our Lawyers: Mitchell's Outcomes-Based Approach To Legal Education, Gregory M. Duhl Jan 2012

Equipping Our Lawyers: Mitchell's Outcomes-Based Approach To Legal Education, Gregory M. Duhl

Faculty Scholarship

It is timely that the William Mitchell Law Review has decided to dedicate an issue to outcomes in legal education. As a long-time innovator in pedagogy, professional skills education, and experiential learning, William Mitchell has once again emerged as a leader in its outcomes-based approach to course and curricular design. Amid the current climate of uncertainty in legal education and the legal profession, and as a relative newcomer to Mitchell’s history, I believe in Mitchell’s future – tied to the past, but innovative and distinct. In this essay, I share our vision for increasing emphasis on outcomes, expanding experiential learning …


The Mindful Law School: An Integrative Approach To Transforming Legal Education, Scott L. Rogers Jan 2012

The Mindful Law School: An Integrative Approach To Transforming Legal Education, Scott L. Rogers

Articles

No abstract provided.


Not Everyone Works For Biglaw: A Response To Neil J. Dilloff, Louis N. Schulze Jr., Lawrence Friedman Jan 2012

Not Everyone Works For Biglaw: A Response To Neil J. Dilloff, Louis N. Schulze Jr., Lawrence Friedman

Faculty Publications

In a law review article entitled "The Changing Cultures and Economics of Large Law Firm Practice and Their Impact on Legal Education," DLA Piper partner Neil J. Dilloff details recent changes in the way that BigLaw does business. He then suggests a number of improvements in legal education ostensibly compelled by the new economic realities of large firm practice. While many of Attorney Dilloff's suggestions make very good sense, several problems exist. In this short essay, we take the position that law schools should not pattern current reforms solely on the needs of BigLaw. Instead, we suggest that reforming legal …


Tiger Cub Strikes Back: Memoirs Of An Ex-Child Prodigy About Legal Education And Parenting, Peter H. Huang Jan 2012

Tiger Cub Strikes Back: Memoirs Of An Ex-Child Prodigy About Legal Education And Parenting, Peter H. Huang

Publications

I am a Chinese American who at 14 enrolled at Princeton and at 17 began my applied mathematics Ph.D. at Harvard. I was a first-year law student at the University of Chicago before transferring to Stanford, preferring the latter's pedagogical culture. This Article offers a complementary account to Amy Chua's parenting memoir. The Article discusses how mainstream legal education and tiger parenting are similar and how they can be improved by fostering life-long learning about character strengths, emotions, and ethics. I also recount how a senior professor at the University of Pennsylvania law school claimed to have gamed the U.S. …


The Crisis Of The American Law School, Paul Campos Jan 2012

The Crisis Of The American Law School, Paul Campos

Publications

The economist Herbert Stein once remarked that if something cannot go on forever, it will stop. Over the past four decades, the cost of legal education in America has seemed to belie this aphorism: it has gone up relentlessly. Private law school tuition increased by a factor of four in real, inflation-adjusted terms between 1971 and 2011, while resident tuition at public law schools has nearly quadrupled in real terms over just the past two decades. Meanwhile, for more than thirty years, the percentage of the American economy devoted to legal services has been shrinking. In 1978 the legal sector …


Teaching Elements Of Election Law Beyond The Disciplinary Borders Of "Election Law", Frances R. Hill Jan 2012

Teaching Elements Of Election Law Beyond The Disciplinary Borders Of "Election Law", Frances R. Hill

Articles

No abstract provided.


Educating Lawyers For Community, Anthony V. Alfieri Jan 2012

Educating Lawyers For Community, Anthony V. Alfieri

Articles

This Essay is part of an ongoing classroom study and clinical service project addressing the mindful education of law students and the civic training of lawyers. Its purpose is to build a pedagogy of community and public citizenship within an outcome-based, rotation curricular model of legal education sketched out by commonly allied scholars in prior work here in the Wisconsin Law Review and elsewhere. The Essay seeks to advance this earlier curricular work by integrating ethics, education and psychology, and law and religion into a cohesive pedagogical approach to civic professionalism and community engagement. From the springboard of integration next …


Changing The Modal Law School: Rethinking U.S. Legal Education In (Most) Schools, Nancy B. Rapoport Jan 2012

Changing The Modal Law School: Rethinking U.S. Legal Education In (Most) Schools, Nancy B. Rapoport

Scholarly Works

This essay argues that discussions of educational reform in U.S. law schools have suffered from a fundamental misconception: that the education provided in all of the American Bar Association-accredited schools is roughly the same. A better description of the educational opportunities provided by ABA-accredited law schools would group the schools into three rough clusters: the “elite” law schools, the modal (most frequently occurring) law schools, and the precarious law schools. Because the elite law schools do not need much “reforming,” the better focus of reform would concentrate on the modal and precarious schools; however, both elite and modal law schools …


The Law School Bubble: Federal Loans Inflate College Budgets, But How Long Will That Last If Law Grads Can't Pay Their Bills?, William D. Henderson, Rachel M. Zahorsky Jan 2012

The Law School Bubble: Federal Loans Inflate College Budgets, But How Long Will That Last If Law Grads Can't Pay Their Bills?, William D. Henderson, Rachel M. Zahorsky

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.


Standard Lawyer Behavior? Professionalism As An Essential Standard For Aba Accreditation, Nicola A. Boothe-Perry Jan 2012

Standard Lawyer Behavior? Professionalism As An Essential Standard For Aba Accreditation, Nicola A. Boothe-Perry

Journal Publications

This article addresses the ABA as a source of pressure to encourage and foster professionalism education in law schools. The ABA holds a uniquely powerful position in the American legal community, and with it the ABA enjoys the attendant ability to influence professionalism training and awareness. The principal tool at the ABA's disposal considered in this article is the ABA's ability to promulgate standards for professionalism as a requirement for law school accreditation. This article argues that this is the proper time for the ABA to institute a specific standard in an effort to increase professionalism in the legal profession.


Gaining From The System: Lessons From The Law School Survey Of Student Engagement About Student Development In Law School, Carole Silver, Louis Rocconi, Heather Haeger, Lindsay Watkins Jan 2012

Gaining From The System: Lessons From The Law School Survey Of Student Engagement About Student Development In Law School, Carole Silver, Louis Rocconi, Heather Haeger, Lindsay Watkins

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This paper considers the factors that influence law students' assessment of their professional and academic development during law school. It uses responses of 5,612 third- and fourth-year law students to the Law School Survey of Student Engagement to identify student activities and behaviors that relate to professional and academic gains; individual and law school characteristics also are examined. Four aspects of the law school experience emerge as integral parts of students' professional and academic development.