Law Commons^™

‘Best Practices’: What’S The Point?, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

In a separate article - Best Practices on “Best Practices”: Legal Education and Beyond - Professor Robbins formulated a paradigm for “best practices” and applied it to the book, Best Practices for Legal Education. Professor Robbins concluded that the book did not meet any of the criteria necessary to constitute best practices and, further, that using the concept of best practices when thinking and writing about legal education is misleading and inappropriate. The primary author of the book, Roy Stuckey, responded, claiming that “best” can mean something other than best, that the difference really doesn’t matter, and that the debate …

Best Practices On ‘Best Practices’: Legal Education And Beyond, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

“Best practices” has become one of the most common research and development techniques in the United States and throughout the international community. Originally employed in industry, the concept sought to identify superior means to achieve a goal through “benchmarking,” thereby allowing companies to obtain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. In recent decades, the use of best practices has become widely popularized, and is frequently utilized in the areas of administrative regulation, corporate governance, and academia. As the term has grown in popularity, however, so too has room for its abuse. In many instances, the term has been invoked to …

‘Best Practices’: What’S The Point?, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

In a separate article - Best Practices on “Best Practices”: Legal Education and Beyond - Professor Robbins formulated a paradigm for “best practices” and applied it to the book, Best Practices for Legal Education. Professor Robbins concluded that the book did not meet any of the criteria necessary to constitute best practices and, further, that using the concept of best practices when thinking and writing about legal education is misleading and inappropriate. The primary author of the book, Roy Stuckey, responded, claiming that “best” can mean something other than best, that the difference really doesn’t matter, and that the debate …

The Impact Of Active Learning On Law School Performance, Patricia W. Hatamyar, Todd P. Sullivan

Patricia W Hatamyar

“Active learning” – where law students actively participate in the learning process, rather than passively receive information from the “sage on the stage” – has become a cornerstone of the calls for reform in legal education. But academic support programs have been using active learning techniques for a long time. The legal academy generally, not just academic support professionals, should appreciate the effectiveness of active learning in improving students’ law school performance. This article is a both a quantitative and qualitative empirical study of a comprehensive Active Learning (“AL”) program at St. Thomas University School of Law. St. Thomas runs …

Educating Lawyers To Meditate? From Exercises To Epistemology To Ethics: The Contemplative Practice In Law Movement As Legal Education Reform, Rhonda V. Magee

Rhonda V Magee

This Article argues that the contemplative practice in law movement assists in answering the call for reform of legal education and the development of professional identity highlighted by the Carnegie Foundation in its "Education Lawyers" analysis and others, presenting the outlines of the pathway to effective reform so far missing from the mainstream critique. The author argues that the contemplative practices movement does much more than merely specify skills missing from traditional legal education that are crucial to effective and sustainable lawyering, including the capacity for self-reflection, emotional intelligence, and moral discernment. Going further, it suggests a new approach to …

30 Ways For First Year Law Students To Achieve Success, Jennifer Bard

Jennifer Bard

Law School is a scary and mysterious place and incoming students often have very little idea what to expect. Students eventually catch on to the difference between legal and undergraduate educations: fact-pattern analysis versus memorization of facts. This article is based on a series of presentations I made under the auspices of Texas Tech University School of Law’s Hispanic Law Student Association (HLSA), which offers a boot camp for incoming students and a second round of orientation after the first semester. This article provides practical advice from a Torts Professor and a successful third-year law student on how to succeed …

Assessing Ourselves: Confirming Assumptions And Improving Student Learning By Efficiently And Fearlessly Assessing Student Learning Outcomes., Lori Roberts

Lori A Roberts

The American Bar Association’s (ABA) proposed accreditation standards for law schools that would require faculty to not only assess individual student performance, but also to assess themselves as legal educators to ensure they are meeting their institutions’ goals of student learning, have stirred a debate among legal educators regarding the justification for assessment and a scramble to figure out how to comply. This article contends that assessment is justified as an ABA accreditation standard given the history of questionable quality and unaccountability in post secondary education, and the increasing reliance on accreditation as a form of consumer protection. Furthermore, cognitive …

Peer Editing: A Comprehensive Pedagogical Approach To Maximize Assessment Opportunities, Integrate Collaborative Learning, And Achieve Desired Outcomes, Cassandra Hill

Cassandra L. Hill

This Article examines an underused teaching strategy—collaborative peer editing—through the lens of student learning outcomes and assessment measures. The American Bar Association (“ABA”) recently proposed sweeping changes to law school accreditation standards that focus less on input measures, such as the school’s facility, faculty size and budget, and more on output measures, such as the school’s bar passage and employment rates. This shift will require law schools—and law professors—to articulate student learning goals and assess their achievement. To do so, law professors must find efficient techniques to assess students’ performance. Peer editing presents such an opportunity.

This Article shows how …

Teaching The Ethical Values Governing Mediator Impartiality Using Short Lectures, Buzz Group Discussions, Video Clips, A Defining Features Matrix, Games, And An Exercise Based On Grievances Filed Against Florida Mediators, Paula M. Young Prof.

Paula Marie Young Prof.

Attendee Discussion: How Should Legal Educators And Law Schools Respond To These Changes?, Michael Kelly, Robert Rhee, Gillian Hadfield, Jeanne Charn, William Henderson, Clark Cunningham

Robert Rhee

Michael Kelly. "The Gaping Hole in American Legal Education." Major changes that have occurred in law during the last three decades (such as intense competition and phenomenal increases in compensation in the private sector, and consolidation in law practices of all kinds) have been driven by tightly managed and strongly focused practice organizations. But understanding how organizations function is not part of law school curricula or pedagogy or the agenda of those who would reform legal education. Equipping law students for a career in law in the 21st Century now requires understanding organizations, whether lawyers represent them, oppose them or …

The Why Of It: Langdell's Generation Speaks To Today's Law Sudents, David S. Dehorse

David S. DeHorse

I belive this portrayal of the Case System of Legal Study will be invaluable to every student entering law school, and most of those who have completed their 1L year. Frankly, most practicing lawyers would probably benefit by a reading. I've been told it's a "good read." Hope you'll agree.

Teaching Professional Ethics To Lawyers And Mediators Using Active Learning Techniques, Paula M. Young

Paula Marie Young Prof.

Why Students Aren’T Learning?: Using Assessments To Measure, Rogelio Lasso

Rogelio A. Lasso

Although assessments have a greater influence on law student learning and performance, law schools currently do a very poor job at insuring that faculty use assessments to improve student learning and performance. This article seeks to (a) encourage law teachers and law schools to use assessments to improve student learning; (b) encourage students to become pro-active in demanding that professors use assessments to help them perform better in school and the bar exam; (c) provide a set of best practices for using assessments to improve student performance; and (d) furnish examples of various forms of assessments.

In theory, the primary …

David Hoffman: Life, Letters And Lectures At The University Of Maryland 1821-1837, Bill Sleeman

Bill Sleeman

David Hoffman was a prominent pioneer in the establishment of university-based legal education. He helped to found the University of Maryland Law School in 1816 and was its first professor. His A Course of Legal Study (1817) and Legal Outlines (1829) played a critical role in the development of law school curricula and provided guidance to hundreds of antebellum law students and attorneys.

Carnegie's Missing Step: Prescribing Lawyer Retraining, In Reid Mortensen, Et Al., Lawrence Hellman

Lawrence K. Hellman

No abstract provided.

Legal Writing And Other Lawyering Skills, Nancy Schultz, Louis Sirico

Nancy Schultz

No abstract provided.

Professionalism Videos, Mary Ann Robinson, Alison Kehner

Mary Ann Robinson

A series of short filmed vignettes to be used to teach law students about concepts of professionalism. They are intended to be used to help our students realize that their careers as lawyers commence in law school, and that they must begin to adopt and emulate standards of professionalism in law school that they will carry with them when they become legal professionals. Choices made now not only impact their professional reputations, but also establish patterns that can serve them for the better or for the worse in practice.

Lessons From The Field: First Impressions From Second Generation Negotiation Teaching, Kenneth Fox, Manon Schonewille, Esra Çuhadar-Gürkaynak

Kenneth H Fox

In May, 2008, an international group of 50 negotiation scholars and teachers met in Rome, Italy, to launch a four year project to rethink negotiation theory and pedagogy. From its inception, the Rethinking Negotiation Teaching project (NT 2.0 project) has had two primary goals: to significantly advance our understanding of the negotiation process in all its complexity; and to improve how we teach others about negotiation. The first year of this four-year project focused on generating new ideas and approaches to negotiation scholarship and teaching. Some of this scholarship was published in the book Rethinking Negotiation Teaching and some in …

Making Effective Use Of Practitioners' Briefs In The Law School Curriculum, Anna Hemingway

Anna P. Hemingway

Reweaving The Fabric Of Society: Restorative Justice In The United States, Kenneth Fox

Kenneth H Fox

This article provides an overview of restorative justice practices in the United States. It offers a brief history of the field, articulates its underlying values, and describes its primary forms of practice. The purpose of this article is to introduce readers to an emerging and important way to re-think how citizens relate to one another and to the “state” when crime occurs.

It's All About The People: Creating A "Community Of Memory" In Civil Procedure Ii, Part One, Jennifer E. Spreng

Jennifer E Spreng

In Fall 2008, a nascent classroom community emerged among my Civil Procedure students, teaching assistants and I. That term’s adventure eventually became the vital “past” for the fully formed community that would knit students of future classes together as one.

The genesis of this early classroom community was my ideal of “the good lawyer” as the small-firm or small-jurisdiction practitioner I had known as a seven-year solo practitioner in a town of 50,000 people. That ideal was a combination of “the rhythms of the law” that run throughout the specialties; a more respectful and less stratified model of professionalism, and …

The Psychology Of Hope: Legal Educators Must Strengthen Students' "Waypower" To Succeed, Cassandra L. Hill

Cassandra L. Hill

The power of hopeful thinking is often undervalued. According to C.R. Snyder, the father of hope theory, hope reflects a mental set in which we have the willpower to move toward a goal and the “waypower” or mental capacity to devise effective methods, plans, or paths to reach that goal. Both the willpower to succeed and the waypower to solve problems are required to have a truly hopeful attitude. Applying this formula to legal education, if law students lack either the willpower or the waypower for their goals, they cannot have high hope to succeed. And hope is a key …

Experimenting On Law Students: Why Imposing No Ethical Constraints On Educational Research Using Law Students Is A Bad Idea And Proposed Ethical Guidelines, Scott Devito

Scott DeVito

An Educational Partnership Model For Establishing, Structuring, And Implementing A Successful Corporate Counsel Externship, Carl J. Circo

Carl J. Circo

Law 00117 Administrative Law 3rd Edition, Anne Louise Schillmoller

Anne Schillmoller

Robin Creyke and John McMillan suggest that ‘the broad purpose of administrative law is to safeguard the rights and interests of people and corporations in their dealings with government agencies.’ Just as important, however, is the role played by administrative law in engendering sound decision-making and decision making processes. In this sense, administrative law is not just about placing controls on government action, nor safeguarding the rights of individuals in their dealings with the State, but it also provides the means by which good and accountable government administration is facilitated. The oversight of administrative action by courts and tribunals, together …

Affective, Effective Feedback, Paula J. Manning

Paula J Manning

No abstract provided.

Law School & The Web Of Group Affiliation: Socializing, Socialization, & Social Network Site Use Among Law Students, Eric M. Fink

Eric M Fink

Online social network sites (“SNS”) have emerged as a significant socio-technical phenomenon in the past several years. Scholars from various disciplines have examined these sites to develop a better understanding of their social significance and implications from a variety of perspectives. Within the burgeoning field of SNS studies, one strand of work focuses on the place of SNSs in students’ educational experiences and the potential pedagogical applications of SNSs. However, the SNS phenomenon generally, and its educational/pedagogical significance in particular, have received scant attention from legal scholars. This article examines the place of SNSs within the contemporary law school experience, …

The Oft-Ignored Mr. Turton: The Role Of District Collector In A Passage To India, Allen P. Mendenhall

Allen Mendenhall

E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India presents Brahman Hindu jurisprudence as an alternative to British rule of law, a utilitarian jurisprudence that hinges on mercantilism, central planning, and imperialism. Building on John Hasnas’s critiques of rule of law and Murray Rothbard’s critiques of Benthamite utilitarianism, this essay argues that Forster’s depictions of Brahman Hindu in the novel endorse polycentric legal systems. Mr. Turton is the local district collector whose job is to pander to both British and Indian interests; positioned as such, Turton is a site for critique and comparison. Forster uses Turton to show that Brahman Hindu jurisprudence is …

Education For The Law: Reflective Education For The Law, Filippa M. Anzalone

Filippa Marullo Anzalone

No abstract provided.

The Past, Presence, And Future Of Legal Writing Scholarship: Rhetoric, Voice, And Community, Linda L. Berger

Linda L. Berger

This Article welcomes a new generation of legal writing scholars. In the first generation, legal writing professors debated whether they should be engaged in legal scholarship at all. In the second generation, assuming that they should be engaged in scholarship, legal writing professors discerned and defined different genres of and topics for the scholarship in which some or all of us were or should be engaged. In this Article, we map the contours of a third generation of legal writing scholarship—one that integrates the elements of our professional lives and engages more effectively with our professional communities. The core of …