Law Commons^™

Access To Justice And Technology Clinics: A 4% Solution (With Andrew P. Medeiros) (Symposium), Ronald W. Staudt

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Introduction, Justice, Lawyering And Legal Education In The Digital Age (Symposium Editor With M. Lauritsen), Ronald W. Staudt

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Chinese Women In Legal Education, Xiaonan Liu

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This paper examines the history and development of women entering legal education in China. Based on a survey, interviews, and archival research, this paper attempts to analyze Chinese women's current status in legal education and reaches the conclusion that although women have made significant gains in legal education, they are still facing gender discrimination and bias in the legal sector. The paper also looks into the reasons why women have in the past belonged to "the other" in the legal area, and whether there is any conflict between legal characteristics" and "feminine characteristics." It attempts to break the constraint caused …

Clark Kerr And Me: The Future Of The Public Law School, Rachel Morán

Indiana Law Journal

Jerome Hall Lecture, delivered on March 21, 2012, Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Bloomington, Indiana

It Was The Best Of Practice, It Was The Worst Of Practice: Moving Successfully From The Courtroom To The Classroom, Sherri Lee Keene

Sherri Keene

This article discusses some of the challenges that experienced attorneys encounter when they move from practice to academia and recommends ways for new professors to bring professional knowledge successfully into classroom teaching.

One Small Step For Legal Writing, One Giant Leap For Legal Education: Making The Case For More Writing Opportunities In The "Practice-Ready" Law School Curriculum, Sherri Lee Keene

Sherri Keene

Legal writing is more than an isolated practical skill or a law school course; it is a valuable tool for broadening and deepening law students’ and new attorneys’ knowledge and understanding of the law. If experienced legal professionals, both professors and practitioners alike, take a hard look back at their careers, many will no doubt remember how their work on significant legal writing projects advanced their own knowledge of the law and enhanced their professional competence. Legal writing practice helps the writer to gain expertise in a number of ways: first, the act of writing itself promotes learning; second, close …

Legislador Platónico, Jose Luis Sardon

Jose Luis Sardon

Mejora de universidades requiere no eliminar libre competencia y derechos de propiedad establecidos en 1996 sino restituir los confiscados en 1969.

Will The Income-Based Repayment Program Enable Law Schools To Continue To Provide "Harvard-Style" Legal Education?, Greg Crespi

Greg Crespi

Legal education provided in the prevailing “Harvard-style” now costs students on average between $160,000 and $250,000 for their three years of study, the precise amount depending on the law school attended, the alternative employment opportunities foregone, and the amount of scholarship assistance provided. However, the median starting salary for full-time, entry-level legal positions has declined in recent years to only $60,000/year, and upwards of 45% of recent law graduates are now unable to obtain full-time legal employment, and this dismal employment situation is unlikely to significantly improve over the next few years. While the attractive job opportunities still available to …

Is There Life After Laptops? Further Thoughts On The Effects Of Unplugging A Uniquely "Wired-In" Generation, Eric A. Degroff

Eric A DeGroff

The Millennial Generation is the most technologically savvy age group ever to enter the legal academy. Many, however, enter law school with learning styles and other traits that make a legal education challenging. Though research suggests that accommodating student learning styles may enhance the educational experience generally, there is mounting evidence that accommodating student preferences for technology in the classroom may be counterproductive in some ways. This article summarizes that evidence, discusses the results of the author's two-year experiment with a no-laptop policy in his first-year doctrinal course, and suggests that such a policy may be well received by most …

Teaching Business Law Through An Entrepreneurial Lens, Michelle M. Harner

Michelle M. Harner

The legal market has changed. Although change creates uncertainty and fear, it also can create opportunity. This essay explores the opportunity for innovation in the business law curriculum, and the role of simulation to help create more practice-aware new lawyers.

Legal Education In Disruption: The Headwinds And Tailwinds Of Technology, Jon M. Garon

Jon M. Garon

By harnessing improvements on communications and computational systems, law firms are producing a revolution in the practice of law. Self-help legal manuals have transformed into sophisticated interactive software; predictive coding can empower clients to receive sophisticated legal advice from a machine; socially mediated portals select among potential lawyers and assess the quality of the advice given; and virtual law firms threaten to distintermediate the grand edifices of twentieth century Big Law. These changes may profoundly restructure the legal practice, undermining the business model for many solo and small firm practices.

This paper focuses on the implications of these profound disruptive …

The First Day Of Criminal Law: Forgetting Everything You Thought You Already Knew, Kami Chavis Simmons

Faculty Publications

Whether from the media or the seemingly endless rotation of Law and Order episodes, many students enter law school with a great deal of knowledge about important concepts that dominate Criminal Law, including murder, manslaughter, conspiracy, self-defense, or insanity. This familiarity with criminal law presents a dual challenge for students and professors alike. First, as future lawyers, they must force themselves to think critically about these familiar topics, and despite their basic knowledge of the criminal justice system, students quickly learn that there is much more to criminal law than meets the eye. Second, part of this critical analysis requires …

Social Change Requires Civic Infrastructure, Harold A. Mcdougall Iii

School of Law Faculty Publications

Article explores how civil society might become sufficiently organized to hold business accountable beyond consumer choice, and government beyond merely voting.

Making And Teaching “Real” Family Law: A Celebration Of The Scholarship And Service Of Professor Margo Melli, Jalae Ulicki

Jalae Ulicki

No abstract provided.

A Dialogue On Jordanian Legal Education, George Critchlow, Nisreen Mahasneh

George Critchlow

This a readable article about the need for legal education reform in Jordan. It grew out of the experiences, discussions, and shared interests of the co-authors – a Jordanian female law professor and an American male law professor who have worked with the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI) and Jordanian law faculties to develop strategies for strengthening legal education in Jordan. The article is unusual in that it is presented as a dialogue in order to identify and reflect the authors’ different professional and cultural perspectives. The text is supported by citation to authority in conventional …

The Elephant In The Law School Assessment Room: The Role Of Student Responsibility And Motivating Our Students To Learn, Cassandra L. Hill

Cassandra L. Hill

THE ELEPHANT IN THE LAW SCHOOL ASSESSMENT ROOM:

THE ROLE OF STUDENT RESPONSIBILITY AND

MOTIVATING OUR STUDENTS TO LEARN

Cassandra L. Hill

The American Bar Association’s proposed new accreditation standards call for law schools to assess the effectiveness of their academic programs. Law schools are now doing so, quickly giving rise to an assessment movement that closely examines desired educational outcomes and professors’ efforts to attain them. But assessment has to date focused on the professor, who is just one part of the professor-student partnership. All but ignored are the contributions and motivation of the other critical component—the student.

This …

Lessons From Teaching Students To Negotiate Like A Lawyer, John Lande

John Lande

The legal education system is in a major crisis now, in part because law schools do not prepare students adequately to practice law. Law schools should do a better job of teaching negotiation, in particular, because it is a significant part of the work of virtually every practicing lawyer. This includes lawyers who handle civil and criminal matters and lawyers who do litigation as well as those who do transactional work. Negotiation is especially important because most litigated cases are settled and virtually all unstandardized transactions are negotiated. Most law school negotiation courses rely primarily or exclusively on simulations in …

Justice For All, Patricia Kay Oliver

Pepperdine Law Review

Fourteen years into her career at a top U.S. law firm, no one would have imagined that Patricia K. Oliver would walk away from her private practice to return to the world of her poverty-filled childhood in Compton. But in 2011, she left her practice to serve as the President and Executive Director of Christian Legal Aid of Los Angeles (CLA-LA). This is the story of her journey, which she was honored to share at the Pepperdine Law Review's The Lawyer of the Future symposium.

A Blueprint For Change, William D. Henderson

Pepperdine Law Review

This Article discusses the financial viability of law schools in the face of massive structural changes now occurring within the legal industry. It then offers a blueprint for change - a realistic way for law schools to retool themselves in an attempt to provide our students with high quality professional employment in a rapidly changing world. Because no institution can instantaneously reinvent itself, a key element of Professor Henderson's proposal is the 12% solution: approximately 12% of faculty members take the lead on building a competency-based curriculum that is designed to accelerate the development of valuable skills and behaviors prized …

The Future Of Legal Education Reform, James E. Moliterno

Pepperdine Law Review

As a historical matter, the legal profession obstinately resists change. Its ponderous, backward-looking and self-preservationist characteristics are embodied in the ABA's Ethics 20/20 Commission, which endeavors to protect, preserve, and maintain. But the profession suffers from such thinking. It must look forward; grow more attuned to outside events and trends; and become a player in how change is assimilated into established ways, and how established ways are replaced by more effective ones. Law schools require reform. The academic focus bears little relation to the reality of practice. Graduates must better able to contribute to clients of law firms and to …

Legal Education: Rethinking The Problem, Reimagining The Reforms, Deborah L. Rhode

Pepperdine Law Review

Whether or not law schools are in a crisis, it is certainly true that legal education currently faces a number of significant challenges. The fundamental problem is a lack of consensus over what the problem is. Legal educators and regulators are developing well-intended but inadequate responses to the symptoms, not the causes of law school woes. In addition to identifying the problem, this Article discusses potential reforms. Financial issues represent a significant source of much of the current criticisms face by law schools today. Tuition rates have increased at a pace far outstripping the steep hikes seen at universities as …

How To Make Rules For Lawyers: The Professional Responsibility Of The Legal Profession, Stephen Gillers

Pepperdine Law Review

When considering the professional responsibilities of American lawyers, two questions often arise: (1) whether a particular rule strikes the right balance among the multiple interests it purports to reconcile and (2) whether in a particular circumstance a lawyer's or law firm's behavior complied with the governing rules. This article explores a third question. What is the responsibility of the profession itself when, through its various institutions and especially bar associations, it asks courts, lawmakers, or agencies to adopt particular rules governing the conduct of lawyers? Rather than exploring the discussing the conduct of individual lawyers or the correctness of any …

Louis D. Brandeis And The Lawyer Advocacy System, Robert F. Cochran Jr.

Pepperdine Law Review

The law practice of Louis Brandeis serves as an appropriate vehicle for examining both the history of the legal profession in the United States and the role of lawyers as philanthropists. Brandeis was one of America's most successful and innovative lawyers at the turn of the twentieth century, and serves as a role model for lawyers in his dedication to public service. Brandeis, of course, is best known for his work as a Justice on the United States Supreme Court; however, he is less well known for his work as a lawyer-though he practiced law for 40 years before he …

Founding Legal Education In America, Paul D. Carrington

Pepperdine Law Review

Thomas Jefferson is rightly recognized as the author of the Declaration of Independence, but less well known to the public is the role of his professional mentor and close friend George Wythe, who assisted in drafting the Declaration and served as both a law professor and Chancellor. Among Wythe's mentees were future President James Monroe, John Marshall, Henry Clay, and many others who played a role in shaping the Nation. This symposium paper explores the foundations of American legal education in the antebellum era, a short account of which confirms that the Founders understood that a republic needs experienced lawyers …

The Lawyer Of The Future, Deanell Reece Tacha

Pepperdine Law Review

This piece introduces the Pepperdine Law Review symposium issue for Volume 40, publishing articles derived from the April 20, 2012 The Lawyer of the Future: Exploring the Impact of Past and Present Lawyers and the Lessons They Provide for Future Generations symposium, which explored the role of the lawyer in American society-past, present, and future.

Virginia Bar Exam, February 2013, Section 1

Virginia Bar Exam Archive

No abstract provided.

Virginia Bar Exam, February 2013, Section 2

Virginia Bar Exam Archive

No abstract provided.

Reimagining Merit As Achievement, Aaron N. Taylor

AARON N TAYLOR

Higher education plays a central role in the apportionment of opportunities within the American meritocracy. Unfortunately, narrow conceptions of merit limit the extent to which higher education broadens racial and socioeconomic opportunity. This article proposes an admissions framework that transcends these limited notions of merit. This “Achievement Framework” would reward applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds who have achieved beyond what could have reasonably been expected. Neither race nor ethnicity is considered as part of the framework; however, its nuanced and contextual structure would ensure that racial and ethnic diversity is encouraged in ways that traditional class-conscious preferences do not. The overarching …

Reflections On Team Production In Professional Schools And The Workplace, Robert J. Rhee

Robert Rhee

No abstract provided.

Four Ways To Fix Law School, Vincent Rougeau

Vincent D. Rougeau

No abstract provided.