Law Commons^™

Reforming High School American History Curricula: What Publicized Student Intolerance Can Teach Policymakers, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

This article concerns the way public high schools teach American history under curricula and standards mandated by state law. “We’re raising young people who are, by and large, historically illiterate,” says David McCullough, the dean of American historians.

The article describes three recent nationally publicized incidents in which high school students belittled lynching and the Trail of Tears, evidently without appreciating the episodes’ legal and historical significance to African Americans and Native Americans respectively. Standards and textbooks typically recognize diversity and multiculturalism, but research and surveys indicate that classroom teachers frequently sanitize or avoid discomforting topics that might trigger complaints, …

Technology And Client Communications: Preparing Law Students And New Lawyers To Make Choices That Comply With The Ethical Duties Of Confidentiality, Competence, And Communication, Kristin J. Hazelwood

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

That the use of technology has radically changed the legal profession is beyond dispute. Through technology, lawyers can now represent clients in faraway states and countries, and they can represent even local clients through a “virtual law office.” Gone are the times in which the lawyer’s choices for communicating with clients primarily involve preparing formal business letters to convey advice, holding in-person client meetings in the office, or conducting telephone calls with clients on landlines from the confines of the lawyer’s office. Not only do lawyers have choices about how to communicate with their clients, but they also frequently choose …

Foundations: Curriculum & Faculty, University Of Michigan Law School

Miscellaneous Law School History & Publications

Michigan Law Faculty are the best of the best. As you look through these pages, you will see some of their accomplishments: They serve as senior advisers to policymakers and governments around the world, they argue important cases in courts of every level, and they produce superb research that addresses society's greatest problems.

Our faculty also take teaching very seriously. They are dedicated to using their research and experience to help create a curriculum that will challenge and transform you. Michigan Law's rich curriculum features foundational courses that evolve with the needs of the profession, a wide array of upper-level …

Academic Libraries And The Crisis In Legal Education, Genevieve B. Tung

Librarian Scholarship at Penn Law

Today’s law schools are threatened by declining enrollments and poor job prospects for graduates. Prominent reformers are exposing dysfunctions within the current system and recommending improvements, but many of these proposals misunderstand academic law libraries and their contributions to student and faculty success. This article examines four possible curricular reforms and suggests ways that law librarians can participate in a comprehensive effort to make legal education more useful.

And Now A Crisis In Legal Education, James E. Moliterno

Scholarly Articles

The current crisis in legal education coincides with a crisis in the practice of law. Law practice has changed as a result of technology, globalization, and economic pressures. The market for legal education's product, law graduates, have diminished. Law schools cannot remain the same in this environment. Except for a very small number of elite schools, those that do not adjust are at serious risk of failing.

An economic change has taken place against a system in which mostly corporate clients willingly paid for the training of beginners at major law firms. Law firms could absorb those costs if partners …

Clinical Collaborations: Going Global To Advance Social Entrepreneurship, Deborah Burand, Susan R. Jones, Jonathan Ng, Alicia E. Plerhoples

Articles

In the summer of 2012, transactional law clinics from three U.S. law schools: George Washington University; Georgetown University; and the University of Michigan launched a collaboration to serve a common client — Ashoka, a global nonprofit organization that supports close to 3,000 social entrepreneurs across 76 countries. While clinic collaborations within universities happen occasionally, clinic collaborations across universities are unusual. This essay focuses on the motivations, operations, lessons, and next steps of this cross-university, clinical collaboration aimed at advancing social entrepreneurship globally. Specifically, this essay examines why the collaboration was launched, how the collaboration is structured, what the collaboration offers …

History Foundation To Year 12 (In Review Of The Australian Curriculum - Supplementary Material), Gregory Melleuish

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The Australian history curriculum is compulsory for Years Foundation through to Year 10. It states that its rationale is as follows: ‘The curriculum generally takes a world history approach within which the history of Australia is taught.’ The curriculum is also defined, and limited, by its three cross-curriculum priorities:

* Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures

* Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia

* Sustainability.

A Book-End Approach To Ethics: The Increasing Importance Of Incorporating Ethics Into The First-Year Curriculum, Karina Murray

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Recently, the law degree has become a more generalist degree. Yet the Council of Australian Law Deans advises that almost two-thirds oflaw graduates ultimately seek admission to practice. This means that the majority of students commencing a law degree intend to become a solicitor or barrister. Few first-year students, however, are aware of the processes surrounding admission to the profession. They are unaware that merely completing an LLB degree does not a solicitor make. Prospective law students often do not realise that the degree needs to be supplemented by practical legal training (PLT). Beyond that, having satisfied these two academic …

Experiential Education And Our Divided Campuses, Margaret E. Reuter, Joanne M. Ingham

Faculty Works

The Carnegie education masters, legal employers, and the ABA have appealed for more experiential teaching in law schools. The time is now; every school will soon have to provide at least 6 credits of clinic, field placement, and skills courses for each of their students according to the ABA’s most recent amendments to the Standards for Approval of Law Schools. Many educators and commentators proclaim the successes of the experiential courses to date, and assume that our current offerings just have to be expanded to accommodate the influx of students. However examination of the nature of the experiential coursework of …