Legal Education Commons^™

Friend Or Foe? Lexis Artificial Intelligence (Ai) In Legal Writing, Karin Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Artificial Intelligence (AI) programs in the law are becoming more popular, moving from downloadable forms, to generating and critiquing contracts and handbooks, and even generating text. Lexis has two major research products that appeal especially to first-year students. The first product is Brief Analysis, which analyzes documents and provides suggestions for additional research. Brief Analysis is more appropriately used to expand research for briefs, motions, and other types of persuasive writing, but could be used to review research and citations for objective memos. The second product is a downloadable add-on that enables research to be done side-by-side with the writing …

The Power Of Vulnerability In Promoting A Sense Of Belonging: The Perspective Of A First-Generation American, Karin Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

It is my intention that students teach each other through really getting to know one another and finding commonality in each other’s experiences. Most of us live in a social bubble, partially because we feel vulnerable in worlds where we perceive that we do not belong. By sharing vulnerabilities, we are able to expand our world to not only understand our commonalities, but to get a new view of what we thought was inalterable. By sharing my own experience as an out-sider, I am better able to encourage students to consider more deeply the opinions of others and to learn …

Is Law A Discipline? Forays Into Academic Culture, Gene R. Shreve

Cleveland State Law Review

This Article explores academic culture. It addresses the reluctance in academic circles to accord law the full stature of a discipline. It forms doubts that have been raised into a series of four criticisms. Each attacks an academic feature of law, inviting the question: Is law different from the rest of the university in a way damaging its stature as an academic discipline? The Article concludes that, upon careful examination of each criticism, none establishes a difference between law and other disciplines capable of damaging law’s stature.

Professional Identity Formation Through Pro Bono Revealed Through Conversation Analysis, Linda F. Smith

Cleveland State Law Review

Law school is supposed to teach legal analysis and lawyering skills as well as mold law students’ professional identities. Pro bono work provides an opportunity for law students to use their legal knowledge and skills and to develop their identities as emerging legal professionals. As important as both pro bono work and identity formation are, there has been very little research regarding how pro bono contributes to students’ identity formation. This Article utilizes a data set of over forty student-client consultations at a pro bono brief advice project that have been recorded and transcribed. It uses conversation analysis to study …

Allowing Autistic Academics The Freedom To Be Autistic: The Ada And A Neurodiverse Future In Pennsylvania And Beyond, Brandon Stump

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This Article focuses on those Autistics who have the ability, in terms of intellect credential, and measurable skill, to enter the workplace. In particular, this Article addresses Autistics who are academics and teach at the collegiate level, specifically in the American legal classroom. I have chosen a narrow subset of a broad community to make a targeted argument for employment protection which can help expand the law for the entire Autistic community. While we are different than neurotypically developed persons, "[m]any with [Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)] have a high attention to detail and the ability to sustain intense concentration in …

The Holy Grail? Designing And Teaching An Integrated Doctrine And Drafting Course, Claire C. Robinson May

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

I’ve long considered teaching doctrine and skills together in a single course to be the holy grail of legal education. If we could do so successfully, we might make significant strides in providing a legal education that better prepares our students to be practicing lawyers. In spring 2016, my colleague Professor April Cherry and I took the plunge and collaboratively offered a course titled Estates and Trusts: Doctrine and Drafting at our institution, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. This essay describes our experience and lessons learned pursuing the holy grail.

A Quartet Of Essays On Scholarship, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

Regardless of academic rhetoric, universities are powerful institutional systems that are as doctrinaire and hidebound in their behavior as any other institution whose beneficiaries are seeking to protect vested interests or simply defend that with which they are most familiar and on which their training is based and reputations sustained. This is consistent with Keynes’ conclusion that most university faculty are little more than “academic scribblers” who live their lives content to operate within the safe confines of the ideas and reward system in which they were initially indoctrinated and from which they extract benefits. While the ideal of the …

How To Have An Effective Student Conference, Karin Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

No abstract provided.

A Trilogy Of Essays On Scholarship, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

At the beginning it is helpful to realize that the five versions of the scholarly ideal produce different forms of intellectual work with distinct goals and motivations. The scholar engaging in such activity can vary dramatically in terms of what the individual is seeking to achieve through his or her research output and actions that might be taken related to the findings reflected in that product. Similarly, there is a diverse set of targets at which the work is directed. These targets include communicating ideas and knowledge to other scholars who are invested in a specific sub-discipline. They also include …

Angst, Technology, And Innovation In The Classroom: Improving Focus For Students Growing Up In A Digital Age, Karin Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Many professors in legal education have noticed increased angst in students, who fear that well-paying jobs are scarce. Often, that angst is manifested in the classroom. Some educators blame the phenomenon on the distractions of technology—but more specifically, the author finds that technology has brought all of our stressors to the fore, affecting concentration and the ability to absorb information. This article addresses the extent to which technology has changed the ways that people navigate the world within the span of only a few generations, and how the author continues to adjust her teaching techniques in her technology-oriented classroom in …

In The Mind's Eye: Visual Lessons For Law Students, Brian A. Glassman

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This article shows how to use works of art to demonstrate essential components of effective legal writing. Part I discusses the learning theory under pinning the use of visual lessons. Part II describes the lessons themselves. Part III explains the benefits--both direct and indirect--that result from using visual lessons to teach law and summarizes student responses to the use of these lessons in first-year legal writing. The conclusion suggests ways in which this technique might be extended and adapted to teach not only legal writing but also other law school courses.

The Aging Of The American Law Professoriate, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

A recent (rather tasteless) article argued: “Professors approaching 70 … have an ethical obligation to step back and think seriously about quitting. If they do remain on the job, they should at least openly acknowledge they’re doing it mostly for themselves.” In “The Forever Professors: Academics Who Don’t Retire Are Greedy, Selfish, and Bad For Students”, the insensitive author added: “the number of professors 65 and older more than doubled between 2000 and 2011.” The author’s most intellectually savage comments were that: “faculty who delay retirement harm students, who in most cases would benefit from being taught by someone younger …

A Third Semester Of Lrw: Why Teaching Transactional Skills And Problems Is Now Essential To The Legal Writing Curriculum, Karin Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

The article advocates including drafting and transactional courses in Legal Writing programs to better prepare students for practice. The article also advocates teaching various upper level skills courses so that students learn "soft skills," such as dealing with clients and understanding their personal legal needs.

Using Visuals To Enhance Student Learning, Karin Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Professor Karen Mika describes how visuals can enhance student learning.

Teaching Persuasion And Critical Thinking Using The State Of The Union Address, Claire May

Law Faculty Contributions to Books

No abstract provided.

Before You Log-On: Incorporating The Free Web In Your Legal Research Strategy, Lauren M. Collins

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

In 2006, the American Bar Association (ABA) published its Legal Technology Survey Report, which included a volume on Online Research. In the report, attorneys responded that 91% are conducting at least some of their research online. Though 39% report that they start their research using a fee-based service like Westlaw or Lexis, the report shows that even those who start their research with a fee-based resource eventually get it right-87% of attorneys report using some free online resources at some point over the course of a research project.

What's In A Name? A Gen Xer And Gen Yer Explore What It Means To Be Members Of Their Generations In The Workplace, Lauren M. Collins, Elizabeth A. Yates

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

In the NextGen Librarian's Survival Guide by Rachel Singer Gordon, the author cites several reasons this time is different than times before in librarianship. Those that are most relevant to law librarianship include:

• Flattening workplace hierarchies and participative management increase the input of newer librarians in workplace decision making

• New technologies require changing skills that affect attitudes toward the integration of those technologies into our daily work

• Outside pressures, such as the prevalence of the Internet, impose a need for librarians to continually prove our relevance and improve relations with younger patrons

• The much talked about …

Review: Voices Of American Law: Us Supreme Court Cases Meet The 21st Century, Lauren M. Collins

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Review of documentary series Voices of American Law (Thomas B. Metzloff & Sarah Wood, producers)

Creating Online Tutorials: Five Lessons Learned, Lauren M. Collins

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

In the fall of 2005, two librarians, a legal research and writing program director, and an instructional technologist at Wayne State University received a grant to create online tutorials introducing novices to the basics of legal research. Tutorials were planned on subjects that the library and the legal research and writing program had traditionally covered jointly via library workshops, coordinated with classroom instruction for first-year law students. Since the mission of the law library is to support campus-wide activity and to assist members of the general public with legal research needs, the content of the tutorials was designed to serve …

Transactional Law In The Required Legal Writing Curriculum: An Empirical Study Of The Forgotten Future Business Lawyer, Louis N. Schulze Jr.

Cleveland State Law Review

This Article will examine whether the expansion of required LRW courses into the realm of transactional drafting is justifiable. Part II will assess the need for required transactional drafting instruction by showing, empirically, that many students lack a disposition towards litigation or have an affirmative inclination towards non-litigation work. This Part includes both a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the issue: It includes a survey of nearly one-thousand first-year law students nationwide and a set of questions and responses from a number of law students who self-identified as future transactional lawyers but who were members of traditional litigation-centric LRW courses. …

A Chilling Of Discourse, David R. Barnhizer

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

I argue that the key consequence of the collectives of multicultural, postmodernists, radical feminists, critical race activists, sexuality advocates and others working for radical change is not only the politicization of knowledge in what is after all a realm of politics we call law, but the incoherence of knowledge and the loss of the quality and integrity of our pursuit of knowledge through scholarship. One result is that much of the scholarship and teaching found in the humane and political or noncumulative disciplines such as law are forms of self-interested propaganda in which honesty is muted or excluded and truth-seeking …

On Defining Academic Scholarship, Stephen J. Werber

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

In 1970, I left the world of a litigation attorney and joined that of academia. One of the first survival lessons that I learned was that, in order to gain tenure and ultimately achieve the pinnacle of full professor, I had to establish myself as a scholar. This, I learned, meant that I had to publish. Perusal of the Personnel Policies of our University, which are similar to those of many others, indicated that a key to a successful career was that I produce "an outstanding record as a scholar." The closest definition to the term in the personnel policies …

On Legal Writing, Albert P. Blaustein

Cleveland State Law Review

Virtually all legal writing is atrocious! This is true about (a) statutes and administrative regulations; (b) judicial opinions and agency rulings; (c) trial papers and appellate briefs; (d) office memoranda and opinion letters; (e) annotations and digest paragraphs; and (f) law treatises and legal articles. It is even true (especially true?) about articles on legal writing. This is a serious matter. For the ramifications of bad legal writing are very costly-in time, in money and, indeed, in the very quality of life. Working to improve legal writing is no frivolous exercise.