Law Commons^™

Inside The Master's Gates: Resources And Tools To Dismantle Racism And Sexism In Higher Education, Susan Ayres

Faculty Scholarship

The spring of 2020 saw waves of protest as police killed people of color. After George Floyd’s death, protests erupted in over 140 cities. The systemic racism exhibited by these killings has been uncontrollable, hopeless, and endless. Our country is facing a national crisis. In response to the police killings, businesses, schools, and communities held diversity workshops across the nation, and businesses and organizations posted antiracism statements. Legislators and City Councils introduced bills and orders to defund police and to limit qualified immunity. As schools prepared for the fall semester, teachers considered ways to incorporate antiracism materials into the curriculum. …

Unsafe At Any Campus: Don't Let Colleges Become The Next Cruise Ships, Nursing Homes, And Food Processing Plants, Peter H. Huang, Debra S. Austin

Publications

The decision to educate our students via in-person or online learning environments while COVID-19 is unrestrained is a false choice, when the clear path to achieve our chief objective safely, the education of our students, can be done online. Our decision-making should be guided by the overriding principle that people matter more than money. We recognize that lost tuition revenue if students delay or defer education is an institutional concern, but we posit that many students and parents would prefer a safer online alternative to riskier in-person options, especially as we get closer to fall, and American death tolls rise. …

The Future Of Law Schools: Covid-19, Technology, And Social Justice, Christian Sundquist

Articles

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare not only the social and racial inequities in society, but also the pedagogical and access to justice inequities embedded in the traditional legal curriculum. The need to re-envision the future of legal education existed well before the current pandemic, spurred by the shifting nature of legal practice as well as demographic and technological change. This article examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on legal education, and posits that the combined forces of the pandemic, social justice awareness and technological disruption will forever transform the future of both legal education and practice.

Distance Legal Education: Lessons From The *Virtual* Classroom, Jacqueline D. Lipton

Articles

Abstract

In the 2018-2019 revision of the American Bar Association (ABA) Standards and Rules of Procedure for Approval of Law Schools, the ABA further relaxed the requirements relating to distance education in J.D. programs. However, outside of a handful of schools that have received permission to teach J.D. courses almost entirely online, most experiments in distance legal education have occurred in post-graduate (i.e. post-J.D.) programs: LL.M. degrees, and various graduate certificates and Master’s degrees in law-related subjects. These programs can be taught completely online without requiring special ABA permission.

This essay reflects on the author’s experiences over a number of …

Externships As A Vehicle For Teaching Access To Justice, Spring Miller

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

As a relatively new externship instructor, I spend a lot of time thinking about externships – what they mean for our students, what they add to the clinical curriculum and law school curriculum more broadly, and how best to conceptualize and make the most of these courses that constitute one of the most prevalent forms of experiential legal education.

Thanks to the work of experienced externship instructors and scholars, there are now a number of resources and articles exploring externships’ promise in promoting student learning with regard to lawyering skills and professional development. I have relied on many of these …

End Of The Racial Age: Reflections On The Changing Racial And Ethnic Ancestry Of Blacks On Affirmative Action, Kevin D. Brown

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Post-Graduate Legal Training: The Case For Tax-Exempt Programs, Philip Hackney, Adam Chodorow

Articles

The challenging job market for recent law school graduates has highlighted a fact well known to those familiar with legal education: A significant gap exists between what students learn in law school and what they need to be practice-ready lawyers. Legal employers historically assumed the task of providing real-world training, but they have become much less willing to do so. At the same time, a large numbers of Americans – and not just those living at or below the poverty line – are simply unable to afford lawyers. In this Article, we argue that post-graduate legal training, similar to post-graduate …

Leading New Lawyers: Leadership And Legal Education, Michael J. Madison

Articles

Lawyers may become leaders, but leaders also may become lawyers. The path to leadership can begin in law school. This short essay describes a leadership development course developed and implemented at a law school over the last four years.

Law Schools And The Legal Profession: A Way Forward, Peter A. Joy

Akron Law Review

This essay proceeds in four parts. Part II briefly examines the disengagement of law schools from the legal profession both in much of the scholarship produced and through courses required for graduation. Part III analyzes why some state bar regulators are imposing admission requirements in response to law schools failing to prepare students better for the practice of law. Part IV discusses the types of bar admission requirements being considered. Finally, in Part V, I argue that rather than being reactive and resistant to change, law schools should be forward looking and incorporate changes that will not only better prepare …

Crisis And Trigger Warnings: Reflections On Legal Education And The Social Value Of The Law, Kim D. Chanbonpin

Kim D. Chanbonpin

In the same moment that law schools are embracing neoliberal strategies in response to the economic crisis caused by declining admissions, students in the classroom have begun to agitate for advance content notices (or “trigger warnings”) to alert them to any potentially trauma-inducing course materials. For faculty who have already adopted a defensive posture in response to threats to eliminate tenure, this demand feels like an additional assault on academic freedom; one that reflects a distressing student-as-consumer mentality. From this vantage point, students are too easily cast as another group of adversaries when, in actuality, students are straw targets who …

Law Schools And Technology: Where We Are And Where We Are Heading, Michele R. Pistone

Michele R. Pistone

1. For many years, the question of how to use technology to teach the law has been a minor concern of the legal academy. That era of general indifference to developments in learning technologies is now coming to an end. There are many reasons for the change. Law schools are facing such a host of difficulties— declining enrollments, declining job prospects for graduates, reduced public funding, and understandable concerns about cost and debt—that sometimes it seems the only debate is over whether the situation is best described as a “tsunami” or “a perfect storm.” Against this backdrop, technology offers the …

Crisis And Trigger Warnings: Reflections On Legal Education And The Social Value Of The Law, Kim D. Chanbonpin

Chicago-Kent Law Review

In the same moment that law schools are embracing neoliberal strategies in response to the economic crisis caused by declining admissions, students in the classroom have begun to agitate for advance content notices (or “trigger warnings”) to alert them to any potentially trauma-inducing course materials. For faculty who have already adopted a defensive posture in response to threats to eliminate tenure, this demand feels like an additional assault on academic freedom; one that reflects a distressing student-as-consumer mentality. From this vantage point, students are too easily cast as another group of adversaries when, in actuality, students are straw targets who …

Plyler Students At Work: The Case For Granting Law Licenses To Undocumented Immigrants, Lindy Stevens

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

The Mismatch Myth In U.S. Higher Education: A Synthesis Of The Empirical Evidence At The Law School And Undergraduate Levels, William C. Kidder, Richard O. Lempert

Book Chapters

Opponents of affirmative action in higher education commonly cite two principles to justify their opposition. One is that admissions to institutions of higher education should be based on "merit," which is often treated by critics of affirmative action as consisting of little more than test score results and high school or undergraduate grades. The second is the legal and moral imperative of not making consequential decisions based on race. We shall not address these principles except to note that others have shown that they do not make the case against affirmative action (Carbado & Harris 2008, Shultz & Zedeck 2011, …

Foreword Snx 2014: Challenges To Justice Education: South-North Perspectives, Sheila I. Velez Martinez

Articles

“Towards an Education for Justice: South North Perspectives” was the theme of the XI LatCrit South North Exchange on Theory, Culture and Law, convened at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia in 2014. Scholars, students and activists from more than 10 countries encompassing the Global South and Global North engaged in a critical and animated exchange on the changing space of legal studies and how this change can be stirred towards acknowledging the need to integrate a concern for justice as part of legal education. The premise of the Conference was that the dominant model of legal education, …

Women Of Color In Legal Education: Challenging The Presumption Of Incompetence, Carmen G. Gonzalez

Carmen G. Gonzalez

Female law professors of color have become the canaries in the academic mine whose plight is an early warning of the dangers that threaten legal education and the future of the legal profession. As legal education is restructured in response to declining enrollments, tenure itself is coming under fire, and downsizing and hiring freezes are becoming more common. Female law professors of color, who tend to be concentrated at middle- and lower-tier law schools, are particularly vulnerable. But this vulnerability may foreshadow the predicament of all but the most elite law faculty if academic employment becomes increasingly precarious. This article …

A Proposal To The Aba: Integrating Legal Writing And Experiential Learning Into A Required, Six-Semester Curriculum That Trains Students In Core Competencies, 'Soft Skills,' And Real-World Judgment, Adam Lamparello, Charles E. Maclean

Adam Lamparello

Experiential learning is not the answer to the problems facing legal education. Simulations, externships, and clinics are vital aspects of a real-world legal education, but they cannot alone produce competent graduates. The better approach is to create a required, six-semester experiential legal writing curriculum where students draft and re-draft the most common litigation documents and engage in simulations, including client interviews, mediation, depositions, settlement negotiations, and oral arguments in the order that they would in actual practice. In so doing, law schools can provide the time and context within which students can truly learn to think like lawyers, do what …

Beg, Borrow, Or Steal: Ten Lessons Law Schools Can Learn From Other Educational Programs In Evaluating Their Curriculums, Debra Curtis

Faculty Scholarship

INDISPUTABLY, LAW SCHOOLS are under attack.' Because of concerns about the legal field and legal education's responsibility in the crisis of new graduates without jobs, law schools are clamoring to respond by seeking and working toward curriculum change. Generally, higher education institutions acknowledge a "responsibility to endeavour to prepare graduates who are able to manage and respond effectively to change and its inherent demands challenges and tensions." However, there are questions about law schools' ability to do just that. There have been many years of repeated criticisms of the case method and active discussions regarding curriculum reform.

The First Thing We Do, Jorge R. Roig

Jorge R Roig

Cooperation In Legal Education And Legal Reform, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

This contribution to the symposium Special Report on Kosovo After the ICJ Opinion focuses on legal education and its role in the legal reform necessary to any state that is transitioning to a new system of government. It does so by considering first the importance of legal education as a U.S. export to transition countries. This necessarily requires a reciprocal consideration of the importance to U.S. law schools of considering the external, international effect of implementing changes in the traditional structure of U.S. legal education, and about how teaching methods both distinguish differing legal systems and require cross-system consideration of …

A Strategy For Teaching Objectivity To The Domestic Relations Student: Utilizing Psychodrama To Explore Attorney Empathy Toward Improving Family Law Outcomes, Bruce L. Beverly

Bruce L. Beverly

The basic domestic relations law course is often taught by the casebook method, with little reference to actual underlying human drama. In order to produce effective advocates, it is necessary for student to be brought out of the sterile case recitation model and into a role where the student experiences, in a controlled and directed fashion, some of the hardships faced by the players in a family law case. This article proposes that, in line with new emphasis on experiential learning and alternate learning styles, one might employ a psychodramatic approach to teaching the domestic relations course, in order to …

Thinking Like Thinkers: Is The Art And Discipline Of An "Attitude Of Suspended Conclusion" Lost On Lawyers?, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

In his 1910 book, How We Think, John Dewey proclaimed that “the most important factor in the training of good mental habits consists in acquainting the attitude of suspended conclusion. . .” This Article explores that insight and describes its meaning and significance in the enterprise of thinking generally and its importance in law school education specifically. It posits that the law would be best served if lawyers think like thinkers and adopt an attitude of suspended conclusion in their problem solving affairs. Only when conclusion is suspended is there space for the exploration of the subject at hand. The …

Beyond Chalk And Talk: The Law Classroom Of The Future, Oren R. Griffin, Karen J. Sneddon

Articles, Chapters in Books and Other Contributions to Scholarly Works

Law schools are rethinking the traditional Langdellian classroom as they construct the law classroom of the future. Although the reform of legal education has long been heralded, law schools are now on the cusp of actual change. Carnegie's Educating Lawyers and the Clinical Legal Education Association's Best Practices for Legal Education are promoting a rethinking of the law classroom. Also encouraging the examination of legal education are changes in the incoming student population, such as the influx of students from the Millennial Generation; technological innovations; and shifting realities and economics of law practice, such as the increased focus on efficiency …

Online, Distance Legal Education As An Agent Of Social Change, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

New York Law School (NYLS) created its online, distance learning mental disability law program in an effort to provide education in an area of the law that remains hidden in most law school curricula. Since 2000, it has offered its mental disability law courses in an online, distance learning format to its own students, to law students from other US-based law schools, to mental health professionals, to students in all the allied mental health professions and in the fields of criminology and criminal justice, and to activists and advocates (including members of the psychiatric survivor movement). It has offered the …

Accreditation Reconsidered, Judith C. Areen

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Higher education is one of the most successful sectors in the nation at a time when much of the economy is struggling. Its quality has been buoyed by a long tradition of investment, both public and private, and by a healthy degree of autonomy from governmental control. America’s three governance innovations, citizen governing boards, shared governance, and accreditation, also have encouraged both quality and institutional autonomy in higher education.

Accreditation has been a particularly important contributor to the institutional diversity and vitality of American colleges and universities. Most nations have a ministry of education that oversees institutions of higher education. …

True North: Navigating For The Transfer Of Learning In Legal Education, Tonya Kowalski

Seattle University Law Review

As lifelong learners, we all know the feelings of discomfort and bewilderment that can come from being asked to apply existing skills in a completely new situation. As legal educators, we have also experienced the frustration that comes from watching our students struggle to identify and transfer skills from one learning environment to another. For example, a first-semester law student who learns to analogize case law to a fact pattern in a legal writing problem typically will not see the deeper applications for those skills in a law school essay exam several weeks later. Similarly, when law students learn how …

Promoting The Rule Of Law: Cooperation And Competition In The Eu-Us Relationship, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

Both the United States and the European Union fund programs designed to develop the rule of law in transition countries. Despite significant expenditures in this area, however, neither has developed either a clear definition of what is meant by the rule of law or a catalogue of programs that can result in coordination of rule of law efforts. This article is the result of a presentation at a May 2010 policy conference at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, at which U.S. and EU government officials, scholars, and practitioners discussed the concept of rule of law and efforts to …

The Bologna Process And Its Impact In Europe: It's So Much More Than Degree Changes, Laurel S. Terry

Laurel S. Terry

The Bologna Process is a massive, multi-year project designed to create the European Higher Education Area by the year 2010. It began approximately ten years ago when four European Union (EU) countries signed a relatively vague declaration. It has now grown to forty-six countries, including all of the EU Member States and nineteen non-EU countries. The Bologna Process countries have agreed on ten action lines for restructuring European higher education. These action lines are nothing short of revolutionary - they address everything from adoption of a three-cycle degree system (e.g., bachelor-master's-doctorate degrees), European-wide quality assurance efforts, mobility of higher education …

Lawyering Across Multiple Legal Orders – Rethinking Legal Education In Comparative And International Law, Katharina Pistor

Faculty Scholarship

I appreciate the opportunity to briefly introduce a new course Columbia Law School is offering to first year students for the first time this spring semester. The course, which I will be co-teaching with my colleague George Bermann, is called "Lawyering in Multiple Legal Orders." The title reflects the basic "philosophy" of the course, namely that legal practitioners today will invariably work in more than one legal order. This notion is not unfamiliar to lawyers practicing in federal systems, such as the United States. By the end of the first semester students have a basic understanding of the federalist system …

Clients Don't Take Sabbaticals: The Indispensable In-House Clinic And The Teaching Of Empathy, Philip Genty

Faculty Scholarship

After almost 12 years in law teaching, I approached my first sabbatical with a single goal: to free myself from cases. At that time my clinic clients were primarily parents who were involved in family court proceedings in which they were trying to preserve their parental rights and get their children out of the foster care system. Such cases are emotionally draining for both the client and the lawyer. Thus, while I welcomed the chance to have a semester off from teaching and attending faculty and committee meetings, I felt that I needed a break from the demands of lawyering …