Law Commons^™

Training Tomorrow's Lawyers: What Empirical Research Can Tell Us About The Effect Of Law School Pedagogy On Law Student Learning Styles, Eric A. Degroff

Eric A DeGroff

ABSTRACT

Training Tomorrow’s Lawyers: What Empirical Research Can Tell Us About the Effect of Law School Pedagogy on Law Student Learning Styles

Though the legal academy is a relative newcomer to the field, questions concerning law school pedagogy and law student learning styles have gained increasing traction among legal scholars in recent years. This article reports on the results of empirical research concerning the effects of the law school experience and of disparate pedagogical approaches on law student learning styles.

In what appears to be the first research of its kind in a law school context, the article reports the …

The Uc-Irvine Experiment: Will It Be Effective At Teaching Contract Law?, Greg Crespi

Greg Crespi

The new law school at the University of California, Irvine is attempting to implement an innovative vision of top-tier legal education that focuses upon preparing students for the practice of law, and which emphasizes skills-based and experiential training. As part of that effort the school has restructured the traditional first-year law school curriculum so that several of the courses each focus on particular analytical methods, specifically common law analysis, statutory analysis, procedural analysis, constitutional analysis, and international legal analysis, rather than on a particular subject matter such as contracts, torts, etc. While there are some advantages to this new approach, …

Hitting The Wall As A Legal Writer, Elizabeth Fajans

Elizabeth Fajans

This article tries to answer a question students frequently ask, but which I often find hard to answer, namely, how they can move from a “B+” or “A-” on a paper to an “A.” Papers at the “B” level or lower have clearly identifiable faults: they lack thoroughness, misstate authority, draw imperfect analogies, make implausible arguments, or contain organizational, grammatical, or citation errors. In contrast, a “B+” or “A-“ paper may make none of these errors; they just lack a certain something, some value-added factor not captured by standard rubrics. Not only are the value-added factors harder to identify and …

Escaping The Appellate Litigation Straitjacket: Incorporating An Alternative Dispute Resolution Simulation Into A First-Year Legal Writing Class, Mary Dunnewold, Mary Trevor

Mary L Dunnewold

This article discusses the incorporation of a mediation exercise into the first semester of a legal research and writing course. At the author’s institution, we have been including this exercise in our curriculum for sixteen years. In the article, we first briefly review the historical underpinnings for incorporating ADR into non-ADR law school classes. We then examine the current pedagogical theories supporting such incorporation. We next discuss why the exercise fits well within the LRW curriculum. Finally, we address the nuts-and-bolts of the exercise and offer our observations and conclusions about the exercise, including discussion of student feedback obtained through …

Book Review Of Current Issues In Constitutional Litigation: A Context And Practice Casebook (Carolina Academic Press 2011), Christy Whitfield

Sarah E. Ricks

This is a book review of Current Issues in Constitutional Litigation: A Context & Practice Casebook (Carolina Academic Press 2011). My perspective is unique because I have worked with and watched this casebook evolve – I was assigned an early draft of the casebook as a law school student taking a constitutional litigation course, I worked as a research assistant on a later version of the casebook, and now, several years later, I have viewed the final result of the casebook as a practicing attorney. As a former law clerk and now as an attorney advisor in the beginning years …

Alternative Justifications For Academic Support Ii: How “Academic Support Across The Curriculum” Helps Meet The Goals Of The Carnegie Report And Best Practices, Louis N. Schulze Jr.

Louis N. Schulze Jr.

In the wake of two momentous critiques of legal education, popularly known as the “Carnegie Report” and “Best Practices,” law schools are reconsidering certain basic assumptions about how we educate future lawyers. Even the most forward-thinking reformers, however, struggle with the details of how to implement many of the recommendations of those reports. Providing more formative assessment, for instance, is a laudable objective but one that has serious ramifications in terms of resource expenditures. This article seeks to provide a remedy for many of these struggles: “Academic Support Across the Curriculum.” This piece argues that the reconceptualization of an under-leveraged …

Performance Isn’T Everything: The Importance Of Conceptual Competence In Outcome Assessment Of Experiential Learning, Stefan H. Krieger

Stefan H Krieger

The ABA is on the brink of a seismic shift in its law school accreditation standards. The new standards would require law schools to identify, pursue and assess goals for student learning outcomes. This change in focus has been heavily influenced by the Carnegie Report’s recommendations for reform of American legal education. This report has been hailed in numerous law review articles but has been subject to little critical analysis. This article scrutinizes—and ultimately rejects—the recommendations of the Carnegie Report for outcomes and assessment in the area of experiential education. The Carnegie Report argues that practical education should focus on …

Social Capital Benefits Of Peer Mentoring Relationships In Law School, Meera E. Deo, Kimberly A. Griffin

Meera E Deo

Scholars have addressed the rigors of law school and suggest mentorship may help students better navigate their educational environments. However, literature largely addresses the role of faculty mentors, less often considering peer mentors in the law school context. This study explores first year law students’ motivation in forming peer mentoring relationships and the roles peer mentors play in students’ lives. Analyses of survey and focus group data collected from 203 first-year law students at 11 institutions reveal that the majority rely on peer support, forming formal, informal, and “organizational” peer mentoring relationships. Relationship formation is motivated by students’ acknowledged need …

Reinvigorating The 1l Curriculum: Sequenced "Writing Across The Curriculum" Assignments As The Foundation For Producing Practice-Ready Law Graduates, Alice M. Noble-Allgire, Suzanne J. Schmitz

Alice M. Noble-Allgire

Study after study lists written legal analysis as one of the most critical skills of a lawyer; yet it is often under-developed in the traditional law school curriculum. This article describes an integrative, sequenced “Writing Across the Curriculum” (WAC) program to help first-year law students master legal analysis and writing by systematically developing these skills though writing assignments in doctrinal courses, thereby enhancing the instruction that students receive in the Lawyering Skills course. The article discusses the key components of the program --- writing assignments sequenced to build skills incrementally from simple to complex; prompt and consistent feedback based upon …

Expanding Pro Bono's Role In Legal Education, Margaret M. Cordray

Margaret M Cordray

As an increasing number of Americans are unable to afford an attorney to help with urgent legal problems, they are left to navigate a complex legal system on their own. In the effort to motivate more attorneys to provide desperately needed pro bono services, law schools must play a greater role in introducing students to the value and importance of pro bono work. This article contends that by implementing a program which offers students meaningful pro bono work that is both educational and easily accessible, law schools can involve more students in pro bono activities. The article also offers an …

Reinvigorating The 1l Curriculum: Sequenced Awriting Across The Curriculum@ Assignments As The Foundation For Producing Practice-Ready Law Graduates, Alice M. Noble-Allgire, Suzanne J. Schmitz

Alice M. Noble-Allgire

This article describes an integrative, sequenced “Writing Across the Curriculum” (WAC) program to help first-year law students master legal analysis and writing by systematically developing these skills though writing assignments in doctrinal courses, thereby enhancing the instruction that students receive in the Lawyering Skills course. The article discusses the key components of the program --- writing assignments sequenced to build skills incrementally from simple to complex; prompt and consistent feedback based upon a competency model; and transparency in setting forth the professor’s expectations, both in advance of the exercise and in the feedback --- and assesses some of the benefits …

Come A Little Closer So That I Can See You My Pretty: The Use And Limits Of Fiction Point Of View Techniques In Appellate Briefs, Cathren Page

Cathren Page

Come a Little Closer so That I Can See You my Pretty, The Use and Limits of Fiction Point of Techniques in Appellate Briefs began when I was struggling to explain point of view to my students in Appellate Advocacy. They represented a fictional criminal defendant whose bag was searched when the police were executing a premises warrant at his friend’s house. My students scrunched up their faces when I tried to explain why they should not start their facts with the friend’s crime that spurred the search. The crime happened first in time, so to them it came first. …

Electronic Discovery: Sanctioning Spoliation With An Adverse Inference Instruction, Robert A. Weninger

Robert A Weninger

This article discusses the spoliation of ESI (electronically stored evidence) in a completely non-technical way. It focuses on the law governing sanctions and not on computer technology.

Professor Richard L. Marcus, the Special Reporter to the Civil Rules Advisory Committee and a primary drafter of the 2006 amendments addressing the discovery of ESI, reviewed my article and was enthusiastic about it. The article is particularly timely because the Advisory Committee is presently considering whether to propose further amendments to address problems created by the disparate positions taken by federal courts on issues concerning sanctions for spoliation.

Courts divide over the …

Teaching Law With Online Role-Playing Simulations, Ira Nathenson

Ira Steven Nathenson

This document contains materials prepared for the summer 2011 conference of the Institute for Law Teaching and Learning held at New York Law School. The concise materials include: a listing of useful online tools; documentation for a miniature simulation; suggested components of an "associate" case file; methodology for formative and summative evaluation; and a sample scoresheet incorporating all ten MacCrate skills. A summary of the presentation is provided below: Live websites provide a dynamic “sandbox” for role-playing simulations that cast students as “lawyers” acting for fictional clients. Such simulations, initially crafted for a Cyberlaw class, can also be used in …

Re-Conceptualizing The Law Of Nuisance Through A Theory Of Economic Captivity, George P. Smith

George P Smith

Re-conceptualizing the Law of Nuisance through a Theory of Economic Captivity

George P. Smith, II

Matthew Saunig

Abstract:

Generally, the fact that a plaintiff comes to a nuisance is not a per se defense to a nuisance action. This defense is viewed in many jurisdictions as but a factor in determining whether a defendant’s conduct is an unreasonable interference with use and enjoyment of a neighbor’s property. In principle, two other affirmative defenses are—although not often allowed in practice by the courts—found in contributory negligence and assumption of the risk.

This Article seeks to develop a theory of economic captivity …

A Better Beginning: Why And How To Help Novice Legal Writers Build A Solid Foundation By Shifting Their Focus From Product To Process, Miriam E. Felsenburg, Laura P. Graham

Miriam E Felsenburg

Several years ago, we set out to discover why early legal writing is so difficult for many beginning law students and what we can do to make it easier. In a prior article, we described several key factors that contributed to student overconfidence and illustrated how this overconfidence impeded students’ progress in both early legal analysis and early legal writing. In this follow-up article, we suggest strategies for better orienting students to law school learning and better managing their goals for legal writing at the beginning of the first-year course.The legal writing classroom is usually the place where students are …

Bridging The Law School Learning Gap Through Universal Design, Jennifer Ryan

Jennifer Ryan

Bridging the Law School Learning Gap through Universal Design

By Jennifer Jolly-Ryan

Abstract

Universal Design was first applied by architects to make buildings more accessible and useable to people with disabilities. Taken a step further into the law school classroom, Universal Design offers law professors an exciting opportunity to bridge the law school learning gap and accommodate a greater variety of law students. A good Universal Design of instruction in the law school classroom benefits not only student with disabilities, but other diverse groups including part-time law students, ESL law students, and law students with diverse learning styles.

Designing law …

Teaching Like Lawyers: What Empirical Research Can Tell Us About The Effect Of Law School Pedagogy On Law Student Learning Styles, Eric A. Degroff

Eric A DeGroff

Though the legal academy is a relative newcomer to the field, questions concerning law school pedagogy and law student learning styles have gained increasing traction among legal scholars in recent years. This article reports the results of empirical research concerning the effects of the law school experience and of disparate pedagogical approaches on law student learning styles.

In what appears to be the first research of its kind in a law school context, the article reports the results of a longitudinal assessment of law student learning styles, and documents a statistically significant shift in learning styles among first-year students over …

The Promise Of Grutter: Diverse Interactions At The University Of Michigan Law School, Meera E. Deo

Meera E Deo

In Grutter v. Bollinger, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld affirmative action at the University of Michigan Law School on the grounds of educational diversity. Yet, the Court’s assumption that admitting diverse students into law school would result in improved race relations, livelier classroom conversations, and better professional outcomes for students has never been empirically tested. This article relies on survey and focus group data collected at the University of Michigan Law School campus itself in March 2010 to examine whether and how diversity affects learning. Data analysis makes clear that there are sufficient numbers of students of color on campus …

The Ugly Ducking Comes Of Age: The Promise Of Full-Time Field Placements, Robert A. Parker, Sue Schechter

Robert A. Parker

This article locates field placement offerings within a landscape of legal education that is being transformed by incisive critiques, new regulations, advances in technology, and harsh economic conditions. Drawing upon our combined experience of over 15 years working with students enrolled in full-time field placements and with faculties who define the parameters of field placement programs, we offer a description of the advantages of these programs, innovative options for implementation, and some traps for the unwary. The heart of our article is a discussion of the results of our comprehensive survey of all 200 ABA approved law schools. The information …

Helping Ideas Have Consequences: Political And Intellectual Investment In The Unitary Executive Theory, 1981-2000, Amanda L. Hollis-Brusky

Amanda Hollis-Brusky

This article explains the remarkable frequency with which the Unitary Executive Theory (UET) was used in the George W. Bush Justice Department (2001-2008) as legal justification for Executive branch action. It shows how this seemingly sudden turn in Executive branch interpretation was actually the result of a series of long-term political investments by key conservative and libertarian actors who worked to develop the intellectual underpinnings of the UET first within the Reagan and George H. W. Bush Justice Departments and then within the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy. Specifically, it draws on interview data and other ethnographic evidence …

Sea Change: The Seismic Shift In The Legal Profession And How Legal Writing Professors Will Keep Legal Education Afloat In Its Wake, Kirsten A. Dauphinais

Kirsten A Dauphinais

2010 found us in the midst of what commentators have called "The Great Recession" and the effects on the legal profession have been profound. Law firms have lost their immunity to recession and industry leaders are concluding that the recession has and will continue to have an enduring impact on the profession, including extensive layoffs, salary decreases, hiring freezes, firm closures, and even deaths. Many observers have predicted that these changes may prove to be permanent, not only because of the magnitude of the economic downturn, but also because the present predicament is only an acceleration of the decline of …

The Method And The Message, Corie Rosen

Corie Rosen

This paper proposes a new framework for understanding some of the sources of law student depression. Primarily, this article argues that a possible source of law student distress is the institutional encouragement of a fixed, or entity theory of intelligence, which is communicated to students through various forms of ability praise. This article will establish the methods by which that ability praise is communicated and will go on to suggest that the entity theory of intelligence, as fostered through ability praise, can be examined through the lens of the literature of Positive Psychology. This article will argue that the fixed-mindset …

The Promise Of Grutter: Diverse Interactions At The University Of Michigan Law School, Meera E. Deo

Meera E Deo

In Grutter v. Bollinger, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld affirmative action at the University of Michigan Law School on the grounds of educational diversity. Yet, the Court’s assumption that admitting diverse students into law school would result in improved race relations, livelier classroom conversations, and better professional outcomes for students has never been empirically tested. This article relies on survey and focus group data collected at the University of Michigan Law School campus itself in March 2010 to examine whether and how diversity affects learning. Data analysis makes clear that there are sufficient numbers of students of color on campus …

Fixing Students' Fixed Mindsets: Paving The Way To Meaningful Assessment, Carrie Sperling

Carrie Sperling

Soon every law school in the country will be turning its attention to the important topic of assessment. Responding to a new ABA guideline, schools will be tackling the difficult task of defining, refining, and creating more assessment opportunities for their students. The guideline’s purpose is to improve student learning through more assessment, but nothing in the ABA proposal changes the fact that many of our students fail to react adaptively to feedback. Instead, many students will become hostile, defensive, or despondent and will, therefore, not further develop their competencies.

With the American Bar Association putting emphasis on formative assessment …

Fixing Students' Fixed Mindsets: Paving The Way For Meaningful Assessment, Carrie Sperling

Carrie Sperling

Soon every law school in the country will be turning its attention to the important topic of assessment. Responding to a new ABA guideline, schools will be tackling the difficult task of defining, refining, and creating more assessment opportunities for their students. The guideline’s purpose is to improve student learning through more assessment, but nothing in the ABA proposal changes the fact that many of our students fail to react adaptively to feedback. Instead, many students will become hostile, defensive, or despondent, and will therefore not further develop their competencies.

With the American Bar Association putting emphasis on formative assessment …

Fixing Students' Fixed Mindsets: Paving The Way For Meaningful Assessment, Carrie Sperling

Carrie Sperling

Soon every law school in the country will be turning its attention to the important topic of assessment. Responding to a new ABA guideline, schools will be tackling the difficult task of defining, refining, and creating more assessment opportunities for their students. The guideline’s purpose is to improve student learning through more assessment, but nothing in the ABA proposal changes the fact that many of our students fail to react adaptively to feedback. Instead, many students will become hostile, defensive, or despondent, and will therefore not further develop their competencies.

With the American Bar Association putting emphasis on formative assessment …

The "Plus One" Clinic: Adding (Political) Value To The Clinical Experience By Representing Landlords Alongside Tenants, Raja Raghunath

Raja Raghunath

This article proposes a novel clinical methodology for teaching “political” values, which it defines as values that are not encompassed by the Rules of Professional Conduct, but extend beyond personal morality, and include the values that fall under the Carnegie Report’s “third apprenticeship” of professional education. Under the “plus one” approach, a clinic with an existing docket of eviction defense representation would add to that docket at least one case representing a landlord seeking to evict a tenant, and a clinic representing workers in wage or employment discrimination claims would add at least one case representing an employer defending one …

"Reputation, Reputation, Reputation": Fred Rodell, Felix Frankfurter, And The Reproduction Of Hierarchy In The Unlikeliest Of Places, Andrew Yaphe

Andrew Yaphe

If he is remembered at all, Fred Rodell is thought of as a marginal legal realist who spent his time irreverently mocking legal academia and the legal profession. Save for the “marginal” part, this description would be accepted even by Rodell’s admirers. But, as this Article shows, there is more to Rodell than witticisms. Rodell’s humor conceals a radical critique of elite legal education that prefigures the better-known critique put forth decades later by Duncan Kennedy. For Rodell, the institutions of elite legal education work to inculcate careerism and servility. And, for Rodell, the prime exemplar of the baleful influence …

Reinventing The 1l Curriculum: Sequenced "Writing Across The Curriculum" Assignments As The Foundation For Producing Practice-Ready Law Graduates, Alice M. Noble-Allgire, Suzanne J. Schmitz

Alice M. Noble-Allgire

This article describes an integrative, sequenced “Writing Across the Curriculum” (WAC) program to help first-year law students master legal analysis and writing by systematically developing these skills though writing assignments in doctrinal courses, thereby enhancing the instruction that students receive in the Lawyering Skills course. The article discusses the key components of the program --- writing assignments sequenced to build skills incrementally from simple to complex; prompt and consistent feedback based upon a competency model; and transparency in setting forth the professor’s expectations, both in advance of the exercise and in the feedback --- and assesses some of the benefits …