Legal Education Commons^™

The Legacy Of Civil Rights And The Opportunity For Transactional Law Clinics, Lynnise E. Pantin

Lynnise E. Pantin

At the end of the historic march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously paraphrased abolitionist and Unitarian minister Theodore Parker stating, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” The implication of the phrase is that the social justice goals of the Civil Rights Movement would eventually be achieved. His prayer was that servants of justice would be rewarded in due time. In other words, that the goals of the Civil Rights Movement would be achievable at some point in the future. President Obama resurrected the phrase throughout …

Clinical Legal Education And Legal Aid - The Canadian Experience, Frederick H. Zemans, Lester Brickman

Frederick H. Zemans

Last fall CLEPR sponsored the first workshop of Canadian law schools devoted exclusively to the subject of clinical law training in Canada. The seminar was co-hosted by the McGill University and Osgoode Hall Law Schools and CLEPR, and was held at the Law School of McGill in Montreal, on November 29th and 30th, 1973. The workshop was organized and co-chaired by Professor Frederick H. Zemans of Osgoode Hall Law School and Professor Lester Brickman of the University of Toledo Law School, who are responsible for this report of the proceedings. A list of those attending is included at the conclusion …

The Hastie Fellowship Program At Forty: Still Creating Minority Law Professors, Thomas W. Mitchell

Thomas W. Mitchell

This article provides a history of and information about the structure of the William H. Hastie Fellowship Program at the University of Wisconsin Law School. This article is part of a series of articles published by the Wisconsin Law Review commemorating Professor James E. Jones Jr., emeritus professor of law at the University of Wisconsin Law School and the founder of the Hastie Fellowship Program. Forty years after this pioneering program was established, the Hastie Fellowship Program continues to represent the preeminent pipeline program that has enabled more than 30 minority lawyers to become tenure-track law professors at law schools …

Institutional Conditions Of Contemporary Legal Thought, Paulo D. Barrozo

Paulo Barrozo

No abstract provided.

Some Thoughts On A Record-Breaking 2014/15 Season For Singapore’S International Mooters, Siyuan Chen

Siyuan CHEN

Singapore has an extremely proud tradition in international moot court competitions. The famous NUS’82 team which won Singapore’s first Jessup championship comprised members who have all gone on to become Senior Counsel; one is now a High Court Judge (Steven Chong) and another, the Attorney-General (VK Rajah). Videos of championship finals featuring Singapore mooters continue to be used as training tools by universities all over the world, especially the 2001 Jessup final featuring the first and only person to have ever won the two largest moots, the Jessup and the Vis. And in that same year (2001), NUS won arguably …

Encouraging The Development Of Low Bono Law Practices, Luz E. Herrera

Luz Herrera

For decades, the discussion about access to justice has primarily focused on the ability of low–income individuals to obtain free representation by lawyers. Lawyer representation is the “gold star” of the legal profession and advocates of legal services for the poor have fought difficult battles to ensure the most disadvantaged in our country have access to these professionals. As a result, legal aid programs and pro bono services that assist the most economically disadvantaged in our country are now common in our legal service delivery system.

Despite those important efforts, only 50% of those eligible for free legal services actually …

Commentary, Critical Legal Theory In Intellectual Property And Information Law Scholarship, Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal Spring Symposium, Sonia K. Katyal, Peter Goodrich

Sonia Katyal

The very definition and scope of CLS (critical legal studies) is itself subject to debate. Some scholars characterize CLS as scholarship that employs a particular methodology—more of a “means” than an “end.” On the other hand, some scholars contend that CLS scholarship demonstrates a collective commitment to a political end goal—an emancipation of sorts —through the identification of, and resistance to, exploitative power structures that are reinforced through law and legal institutions. After a brief golden age, CLS scholarship was infamously marginalized in legal academia and its sub-disciplines. But CLS themes now appear to be making a resurgence—at least in …

The Way Of Colorinsight: Understanding Race And Law Effectively Through Mindfulness-Based Colorinsight Practices., Rhonda Magee

Rhonda V Magee

Most of us know that, despite the counsel of the current Supreme Court, colorblindness is not, by itself, an effective remedy against racism. This is so because it does not comport with our cognitive (or social) experience of the real world. Thus, legal scholars, backed by cognitive scientists, have called for a move from colorblindness to color insight -- defined as an understanding of race and its pervasive operation in our lives and in the law. This Article is the first to explore the role of research-grounded mindfulness-based contemplative practices in enhancing what may be called ColorInsight, and to suggest …

The Role Of Religiously Affiliated Law Schools In The Renewal Of American Democracy, Bruce Ledewitz

Bruce Ledewitz

Addressing Barriers To Cultural Sensibility Learning: Lesson From Social Cognition Theory, Andrea A. Curcio

Andrea A. Curcio

Understanding subconscious biases, their pervasiveness, and their impact on perceptions, interactions, and analyses, helps prepare lawyers to represent people from cultural and racial backgrounds different from their own, and to address both individual and institutional injustice. Two law student surveys suggest many students believe lawyers are less susceptible than clients to having, or acting upon, stereotypes or biases. The survey results also indicate that many students suffer from bias blind spot – i.e. they believe that while others cannot recognize when they are acting based upon stereotypical beliefs and biases, the students know when they are doing so. The survey …

Addressing Barriers To Cultural Sensibility Learning: Lesson From Social Cognition Theory, Andrea A. Curcio

Andrea A. Curcio

Understanding subconscious biases, their pervasiveness, and their impact on perceptions, interactions, and analyses, helps prepare lawyers to represent people from cultural and racial backgrounds different from their own, and to address both individual and institutional injustice. Two law student surveys suggest many students believe lawyers are less susceptible than clients to having, or acting upon, stereotypes or biases. The survey results also indicate that many students suffer from bias blind spot – i.e. they believe that while others cannot recognize when they are acting based upon stereotypical beliefs and biases, the students know when they are doing so. The survey …

Bridging The Quality Gap With Medical-Legal Partnerships, Lisa Bliss, Sylvia Caley, Robert Pettignano

Sylvia B. Caley

No abstract provided.

Community Legal Services In Perspective: The Development Of Legal Services In Canada, Frederick Zemans, Michael Herman

Frederick H. Zemans

The material deals with community legal services and specifically with the various issues that a student will encounter while working at Parkdale Community Legal Services.

Community Legal Workers At Parkdale Community Legal Services October 1977, Katie Mcgovern, Frederick H. Zemans

Frederick H. Zemans

Since its opening in September 1971, Parkdale Community Legal Services has served as both a neighbourhood law office and as Osgoode Hall Law School's first clinical training setting. Law students have been the primary deliverers of legal.services, with a growing number of staff lawyers, articling students, and practitioners supervising the student caseload. But most law students spend only one semester at Parkdale; therefore the staff lawyers and especially the community legal workers must provide continuity within the office and serve as the conduit to the Parkdale community.

Learning From And About The Numbers, Carole Silver, Louis Rocconi

Carole Silver

In this article, we enter the debate about the value of legal education, taking aim at the issue of the ways in which law schools prepare students for practice. But rather than focusing on skills training, our concern is with the approach of law schools to preparing students to understanding the context of the legal issues they will encounter, and specifically on their preparation for working with numbers, whether with regard to business, finance or information presented in statistical form generally.

Our contribution to this debate is to emphasize the importance of data in analyzing the value of law school, …

A Tale Of Three “Professions”: Search Engine Optimization, Lawyering & Law Teaching, Ray Campbell

Ray W Campbell

The question has been posed: is legal practice today a profession? This leads, naturally enough, to another question: should society treat it as one? Using the concept of ‘profession’ in different ways, some argue that one thing modern legal practice needs is a good dose of 'professionalism;' others argue that, whatever once might have been true, treating law practice as a ‘profession’ is a rum game best abandoned.

These questions matter. Law enjoys special regulatory privileges and market protections that make little sense if law has become just another form of business – a specialized form of consulting, perhaps. At …

Mindfulness, Emotions, And Mental Models: Theory That Leads To More Effective Dispute Resolution, Peter Reilly

Peter R. Reilly

This Article suggests that law students and lawyers can be introduced to, and even begin to master, some of the same transformational principles, skill sets, and behaviors that poured forth from FDR as a result of his intense physical and personal challenges. At the core of nearly all great negotiators, mediators, lawyers, and leaders is a person who has learned to connect with other people, that is, to build relationships of trust, cooperation, and collaboration. Additionally, this Article argues that where people first learn a sense of self and others through both theoretical and practical knowledge and understanding of mindfulness …

Crisis And Trigger Warnings: Reflections On Legal Education And The Social Value Of The Law, 90 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 615 (2015), Kim D. Chanbonpin

Kim D. Chanbonpin

This Essay begins by understanding the law school crisis through the framework of disaster capitalism. This framing uncovers the ways in which reformers are taking advantage of the current crisis to restructure legal education. Under the circumstances, faculty may reasonably read the contemporaneous student-led movement to require trigger warnings in the classroom as an assault on academic freedom. This reading, however, clouds the water. Part II attempts to clear the confusion by decoupling the trigger-warning movement from the broader phenomenon of law school corporatization. Trigger-warning demands might alternatively be read as a student critique of traditional law school pedagogy. Especially …

Foreword, 39 J. Marshall L. Rev. I (2006), Debra Pogrund Stark

Debra Pogrund Stark

No abstract provided.

Using A Cultural Lens In The Law School Classroom To Stimulate Self-Assessment, 48 Gonz. L. Rev. 365 (2013), Julie M. Spanbauer

Julie M. Spanbauer

The American Bar Association is exerting pressure on United States law schools to improve teaching effectiveness by shifting the evaluation of student learning away from input measures to focus upon output-based assessments. Yet, many legal educators appear to be resistant to and fearful of change, in part, perhaps, due to their comfort with teaching methods such as the Socratic or case-dialogue approach, which demands little accountability for teaching effectiveness and provides more time for the pursuit of the traditional goals of scholarly productivity. This method of teaching as currently utilized in law schools is also innately professor-centric performance art. The …

Why The Bar Examination Fails To Raise The Bar, Carol Goforth

Carol Goforth

Ferguson, The Rebellious Law Professor, And The Neoliberal University, Harold A. Mcdougall Iii

Harold A. McDougall III

Neoliberalism, a business-oriented ideology promoting corporatism, profit-seeking, and elite management, has found its way into the modern American university. As neoliberal ideology envelops university campuses, the idea of law professors as learned academicians and advisors to students as citizens in training, has given way to the concept of professors as brokers of marketable skills with students as consumers. In a legal setting, this concept pushes law students to view their education not as a means to contribute to society and the professional field, but rather as a means to make money. These developments are especially problematic for minority students and …

Teaching The Newly Essential Knowledge, Skills, And Values In A Changing World, Section E: Intercultural Effectiveness, Rhonda Magee, Mary Lynch, Robin Boyle, Antoinette Lopez

Rhonda V Magee

Chapter from the forthcoming book "Building on Best Practices: Transforming Legal Education in a Changing World" (2015). addresses the need of legal education to prepare cross-culturally competent lawyers. Outlines techniques and educational outcomes to develop law students' intercultural awareness.

Perspectives On International Students' Interest In U.S. Legal Education: Shifting Incentives And Influence, Carole Silver

Carole Silver

This article seeks to situate the shift to international students in U.S. law school SJD programs within the larger context of globalization and higher education, and was published as a comment on Gail Hupper’s article on “Educational Ambivalence: The Rise of a Foreign-Student Doctorate in Law.” Broadening the framework of analysis allows consideration of the competing factions and opportunities that explain the developing international market for legal education. In addition, this wider lens also offers insight into the incentives shaping new investments in legal (and higher) education, including Yale Law School’s new PhD in law.

What Firms Want: Investigating Globalization's Influence On The Market For Lawyers In Korea, Carole Silver, Jae-Hyup Lee, Jeeyoon Park

Carole Silver

This article addresses one of the central debates regarding globalization: how best to approach liberalizing markets in order to balance the interests of local and non-local actors and institutions. It takes the legal services market as its focus and draws on the South Korean experience as a case study. Korea recently liberalized its regulatory approach to legal services by changing both its method of producing lawyers (including initiating a graduate level law school system and drastically increasing the proportion of bar exam passers) and allowing foreign competition to directly enter its market through foreign law firms and foreign-licensed lawyers working …

Legal Education In An Era Of Globalisation And The Challenge Of Development, Muna Ndulo

Muna B Ndulo

The article examines the challenges legal education faces as a result of globalisation with specific reference to African law schools. It considers the challenges and ways of meeting them. The practice of law in a globalised world requires a body of knowledge which is both complex and interdisciplinary. It requires the acquisition of a broad range of new skills and techniques of solving legal problems. To equip lawyers with the needed skills to practise law in a globalised world will require changes in the traditional law school curriculum. It will require a curriculum which trains lawyers for the practice of …

Diversity Matters: Race, Gender And Ethnicity In Legal Education., Nancy E. Dowd, Kenneth B. Nunn, Jane E. Pendergast

Kenneth B. Nunn

This Article presents more evidence of the inequality that persists in legal education for students. Based on a survey of University of Florida law students conducted in 2001, this study reaffirms the existence of differential experience and an inegalitarian culture in legal education. However, it also demonstrates the importance of diversity and the recognition by a significant majority of students of the value of race and gender pluralism. These competing findings provide a clear guide to the future direction of legal education.

Diversity Matters: Race, Gender And Ethnicity In Legal Education., Nancy E. Dowd, Kenneth B. Nunn, Jane E. Pendergast

Nancy Dowd

This Article presents more evidence of the inequality that persists in legal education for students. Based on a survey of University of Florida law students conducted in 2001, this study reaffirms the existence of differential experience and an inegalitarian culture in legal education. However, it also demonstrates the importance of diversity and the recognition by a significant majority of students of the value of race and gender pluralism. These competing findings provide a clear guide to the future direction of legal education.

A Person's A Person: Children's Rights In Children's Literature, Jonathan Todres, Sarah Higinbotham

Jonathan Todres

Although the Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history, children’s rights are still seen in many circles as novel and quaint ideas but not serious legal theory. The reality, however, is that the realization of children’s rights is vital not only for childhood but for individuals’ entire lives. Similarly, although the books children read and have read to them are a central part of their childhood experience, so too has children’s literature been ignored as a rights-bearing discourse and a means of civic socialization. We argue that children’s literature, like …

Finding Our Voices, Teaching Our Truth: Reflections On Legal Pedagogy And Asian American Identity, Natsu Taylor Saito

Natsu Taylor Saito

No abstract provided.