Law Commons^™

Educating Lawyers For The Global Economy: National Challenges, Carole Silver

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay addresses the challenge of educating law students to work in an increasingly global context. For students enrolled in United States law school, insight into the ways in which globalization matters can be drawn from the structural approaches to globalization of US-based law firms. These firms pursue their international practices by integrating lawyers educated and licensed in the firm’s home country (the US) and in the host jurisdictions in which the firm has offices. As a result, the success of the firm in its international practice depends upon the ability of its lawyers to develop strong and effective cross-national …

Breaking Down Link Rot: The Chesapeake Project Legal Information Archive’S Examination Of Url Stability, Sarah Rhodes

Digital Preservation Publications

Ms. Rhodes explores URL stability, measured by the prevalence of link rot over a three-year period, among the original URLs for law- and policy-related materials published to the web and archived though the Chesapeake Project, a collaborative digital preservation initiative under way in the law library community. The results demonstrate a significant increase in link rot over time in materials originally published to seemingly stable organization, government, and state web sites.

Top 10 Law School Home Pages Of 2009, Roger Skalbeck

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The website home page represents the virtual front door for any law school. It’s the place many prospective students start in the application process. Enrolled students, law school faculty and other employees often start with the home page to find classes, curricula and compensation plans. Home page content changes constantly. Deciding which home pages are good is often very subjective. Creating a ranking system for “good taste” is perhaps impossible.

The ranking report "Top 10 Law School Home Pages of 2009" includes a tabulation of fourteen objective design criteria to analyze and rank 195 law school home pages. The intent …

How Judicial Hostility Toward Environmental Claims And Intimidation Tactics By Lawyers Have Formed The Perfect Storm Against Environmental Clinics: What's The Big Deal About Students And Chickens Anyway?, Hope M. Babcock

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Since 1976, when the first environmental clinic was started at the University of Oregon’s law school, clinics have proliferated. Today, approximately one out of five law schools has an environmental clinic. With respect to clinics in general, the Association of American Law Schools Directory of Law Teachers lists “nearly 1400 full-time faculty teaching clinical courses.” Yet far from being an uncontroverted part of the academic landscape, clinics—particularly environmental clinics—have endured political blowback from challenging the environmentally destructive behavior of major economic interests. The effectiveness of environmental clinics is no greater than established environmental organizations—perhaps less effective given the length of …

Finding The Middle Ground In Collection Development: How Academic Law Libraries Can Shape Their Collections In Response To The Call For More Practice-Oriented Legal Education, Leslie A. Street, Amanda M. Runyon

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

To examine how academic law libraries can respond to the call for more practice-oriented legal education, the authors compared trends in collection management decisions regarding secondary sources at academic and law firm libraries along with law firm librarians’ perceptions of law school legal research training of new associates.

Closing The Legislative Experience Gap: How A Legislative Law Clerk Program Will Benefit The Legal Profession And Congress, Dakota S. Rudesill

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Most federal law today is statutory or rooted in statutes, which are created through a complicated process best understood through work experience inside legislatures. This article demonstrates that America’s most influential lawyers are not getting it. My new empirical analysis of the work experience of the top 500 lawyers nationwide as ranked by Lawdragon.com finds that work experience in legislative bodies is dramatically less common among the profession’s leaders than is formative work experience in courts, government executive agencies, private practice, and academe. This article continues the empirical study of the professional experience of the legal profession’s elite published in …

Governing Board Accountability: Competition, Regulation And Accreditation, Judith C. Areen

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article examines the three primary ways in which the governing boards of American colleges and universities are held to account: (1) competition; (2) regulation, including state nonprofit corporation laws, tax laws, and licensing laws; and (3) accreditation. It begins by tracing how lay (meaning nonfaculty) governing boards became the dominant form of governance in American higher education. It argues that governing boards provide American institutions of higher education with an exceptional degree of autonomy from state control and that, together with the shared governance approach that gives faculties primary responsibility for academic matters, they have been a vital factor …

An Autobiography Of A Digital Idea: From Waging War Against Laptops To Engaging Students With Laptops, Diana R. Donahoe

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This is an autobiographical account of my attempt to bridge the digital divide to meet students' changing needs. When I first began teaching at Georgetown University Law Center in 1993, I employed many traditional teaching techniques and used printed textbooks. However, laptops soon began peppering my classroom; at first there were only a few, and then suddenly almost every student was hiding behind a laptop. I noticed that my students were looking down at their screens, typing furiously, instead of watching me while I discussed my material written on the blackboard or projected overhead. When I realized that I was …

Harvard And Yale Ascendant: The Legal Education Of The Justices From Holmes To Kagan, Patrick J. Glen

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

With the nomination of Elena Kagan to be a justice of the United States Supreme Court, it is quite possible that eight of the nine justices will have graduated from only two law schools—Harvard and Yale. This article frames this development in the historical context of the legal education of those justices confirmed between 1902 and 2010. What this historical review makes clear is that the Ivy League dominance of the Supreme Court is a relatively recent occurrence whose beginnings can be traced to Antonin Scalia’s 1986 confirmation. Prior to that time, although Harvard and Yale were consistently represented among …