Legal Education Commons^™

Law School Culture And The Lost Art Of Collaboration: Why Don't Law Professors Play Well With Others, Michael I. Meyerson

All Faculty Scholarship

I have an Erdős number. Specifically, I have an Erdős number of 5. For the uninitiated, the concept of an “Erdős number” was created by mathematicians to describe how many “degrees of separation” an author of an article is from the great mathematician Paul Erdős. If you coauthored a paper with Erdős, you have an Erdős number of 1. If you coauthor a paper with someone with an Erdős number of 1, you have earned an Erdős number of 2. Coauthoring a paper with someone with an Erdős number of 2 gives you an Erdős number of 3, and so …

Learning Critical Legal Theory Across The Curriculum: An Innovative Course In Applied Feminism, Michele E. Gilman

All Faculty Scholarship

In law schools, we are so accustomed to a single professor teaching each substantive class that we rarely question this method of teaching. Imagine instead a class taught by fourteen professors, each of whom teaches for one week to share their substantive expertise through the lens of critical legal theory. At the University of Baltimore School of Law, we offer such a course, entitled Special Topics in Applied Feminism. Throughout the semester, students are exposed to feminist legal perspectives on a wide range of substantive topics, including tax law, international law, immigration law, employment law, and many others.

The course …

Teaching Social Justice Lawyering: Systematically Including Community Legal Education In Law School Clinics, Margaret Martin Barry, A. Rachel Camp, Margaret E. Johnson, Catherine F. Klein, Lisa V. Martin

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There is a body of literature on clinical legal theory that urges a focus in clinics beyond the single client to an explicit teaching of social justice lawyering. This Article adds to this emerging body of work by discussing the valuable role community legal education plays as a vehicle for teaching skills and values essential to single client representation and social justice lawyering. The Article examines the theoretical underpinnings of clinical legal education, community organizing and community education and how they influenced the authors’ design and implementation of community legal education within their clinics. It then discusses two projects designed …

Lrw Program Design: A Manifesto For The Future, Eric Easton

All Faculty Scholarship

All of us have, at one time or another, had occasion to consider, or reconsider, our program model. The trigger may have been a new dean; the prospect of a sabbatical inspection; a budget crisis or financial windfall; a faculty champion or saboteur; some-thing we learned at a Legal Writing Institute (LWI) or Association of Legal Writing Directors conference; or merely the cycle of bureaucratic reorganization. Those reconsiderations have led to a great diversity of Legal Research and Writing (LRW) program models: two-, three-, four-, and all-semester programs; adjunct-, contract-, and tenure-track staffing; and directors, co-directors, and no directors. Reconsiderations …

An Experiment In Integrating Critical Theory And Clinical Education, Margaret E. Johnson

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Critical theory is important in live-client clinical teaching as a means to achieve the pedagogical goals of clinical education. Feminist legal theory, critical race theory, and poverty law theory serve as useful frameworks to enable students to deconstruct assumptions they, persons within institutions, and broader society make about the students' clients and their lives. Critical theory highlights the importance of looking for both the "obvious and non-obvious relationships of domination." Thus, critical theory informs students of the presence and importance of alternative voices that challenge the dominant discourse. When student attorneys ignore or are unaware of such voices, other voices …

The Rule Of Law In The Reform Of Legal Education: Teaching The Legal Mind In Japanese Law Schools, James Maxeiner

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• a. The Rule of Law is at the heart of the present legal reform.
• b. There is an international consensus about basic elements of the Rule of Law.
• c. Legal methods are central to the Rule of Law. But different legal methods are used to realize the Rule of Law.
• d. Teaching legal methods, i.e., teaching to think like a lawyer, is at the heart of that which is professional in legal education.
• e. The present legal reform invites Japanese law schools to teach legal methods.

The Incredible Shrinking Law School, Phillip J. Closius

All Faculty Scholarship

The University of Toledo College of Law faculty and administration performed a task that may be unprecedented in modern American legal education. During a series of luncheon meetings we focused on the topic of enrollment--what size student body should we have given the realities of our market and the pedagogical goals we wish to achieve. We analyzed this issue without either an extensive reliance on our revenue stream or the risk of losing resources if we admitted fewer students. Since we administer both a full- and part-time (mainly evening) program, we also discussed our obligation to serve our metropolitan community …

Constructions Of Client Competence And Theories Of Practice, Robert Rubinson

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An entrenched stereotype about the elderly is that they inevitably experience a progressive decline in cognitive function - what the Article calls the "idea of decrement." The vast majority of elderly, however, do not experience declining competence for most or all of their lives. Nevertheless, attorneys interpret much of what elderly clients say and do as the product of cognitive impairment, and sometimes even the elderly themselves construct stories about the world and their circumstances in line with the idea of decrement. These attitudes and social constructions, interacting in complex ways, can distort the ability of attorneys to represent elderly …

Mad Dogs And Englishmen: Pierson V. Post [A Ditty Dedicated To Freshman Law Students, Confused On The Merits], Kenneth Lasson

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Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the mid-day sun. They bark, they pant, they rave and rant, but most of all they run. A monkey's uncle might have tea or sip some lemonade. Why, even donkeys (turkeys, too) seek shelter in the shade. But mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the mid-day sun.