Legal Education Commons^™

A New Beginning, Gwen M. Lerner

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

What To Expect At The Intersection Of Law And Social Work, Jada Fehn

Faculty Scholarship

Hamline University School of Law recently launched a medical-legal partnership (MLP) with United Family Medicine (UFM), a community clinic on West Seventh Street. UFM is a nonprofit provider of primary health care that strives to meet the needs of the medically uninsured, underinsured, and underserved residents of Saint Paul. One of the main components of the partnership is a law school clinic that will provide legal assistance and educate student attorneys as part of a holistic approach to medical care.

Reducing The Stigma: The Deadly Effect Of Untreated Mental Illness And New Strategies For Changing Outcomes In Law Students, Joan Bibelhausen, Katherine M. Bender, Rachael Barrett

William Mitchell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Prepared For Practice? Developing A Comprehensive Assessment Plan For A Law School Professional Skills Program, Anthony Niedwiecki

Faculty Scholarship

With the challenges facing law schools because of declining enrollment and lower job placement rates, there has been an increased push for more practical training in law school. In fact, a number of law schools are now using the phrase "practice-ready" to promote the practical training provided to their students. Additionally, the new accreditation standards from the ABA Section on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar ("ABA Section on Legal Education") focus more on teaching students professional skills. The most significant changes to the standards require law schools to integrate learning outcomes and assessment into their curriculum, with the …

The Unfulfilled Promise Of Law Schools To Prepare Students For The Practice Of Law: An Empirical Study Demonstrating The Effectiveness Of General Law School Curriculum In Preparing Lawyers For The Practice Of Law, John Sonsteng, Leigha Lattner, Emily Parks, David Camarotto

William Mitchell Law Review

No abstract provided.

William Mitchell College Of Law's Hybrid Program For J.D. Study: Answering The Call For Innovation, Eric S. Janus, Gregory M. Duhl, Simon Canick

Faculty Scholarship

In January 2015, William Mitchell College of Law will launch the first American Bar Association (ABA)-approved, on-campus/ online J.D. program to further the college's mission: to provide accessible, experiential, rigorous training for tomorrow's lawyers. Known as the hybrid program, it will offer a legal education to talented, hard-working students who cannot access a traditional J.D. program because of location or family or work commitments. In this article, we explain the origins and pedagogical foundations of the program, as well as give an overview of the program.

The Ol’ Perfesser’S Guide For The First-Year Law Student, Douglas Heidenreich

William Mitchell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Balancing Between Two Worlds: A Dakota Woman’S Reflections On Being A Law Professor, Angelique Eaglewoman

Faculty Scholarship

There were many paths I considered as a young woman and none of them included becoming a law professor. My journey to my present life as a Dakota woman law professor is about balancing between the worlds I travel back and forth in. There is my tribal world, where I feel replenished and part of an on-going community experience stretching back to time immemorial. I feel that I am part of an unfolding history of endurance, strong Native women, and a participant in sustaining our traditional Native ways. On the other hand, there is the non-Indian world, where I often …

Beyond Skills Training, Revisited: The Clinical Education Spiral, Carolyn Grose

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Library Services For The Self-Interested Law School: Enhancing The Visibility Of Faculty Scholarship, Simon Canick

Faculty Scholarship

This article suggests a new set of filters through which to evaluate law library services, in particular those that support faculty scholarship. These filters include recent profound changes in legal education and the motivators of today’s law professors. By understanding the needs of self-interested deans and professors, libraries can fill new roles that are consistent with our core values. Libraries can also focus on dissemination and promotion of faculty work, especially through innovative open access projects.

Legal Education And Professional Skills: Myths And Misconceptions About Theory And Practice, Kate Kruse

Faculty Scholarship

Current critiques of legal education push law schools toward seemingly contradictory goals: (1) provide more practical training to a greater number of students; and (2) lower operational costs. This article addresses those who have a sincere desire to meet both goals. Although it offers a proposal for restructuring legal education, its primary focuses is on the mental and psychological barriers — the mistakes in thinking — that prevent law faculties from engaging in substantial. At the deepest level is a basic myth: that professional education can meaningfully separate theory from practice. This myth divides legal education into a series of …

Professional Learning Communities And Collaborative Teams: Tools To Jump-Start The Learning Outcomes Assessment Process, Sharon Sandeen

Faculty Scholarship

The legal community has talked for years about proposed changes to the American Bar Association's (ABA) standards for the accreditation of law schools to include some form of learning outcomes assessment (LOA).' Although it is still unclear if and when comprehensive new standards will take effect and, more importantly, when law schools will be required to fully implement LOA processes, it is never too early to help law students meet their full potential since the essential purpose of LOA is to improve student learning. Moreover, current ABA Standard 203 (Strategic Planning and Assessment) requires law schools to regularly assess their …

The Status Of Clinical Faculty In The Legal Academy: Report Of The Task Force On The Status Of Clinicians And The Legal Academy, Kate Kruse, Bryan L. Adamson, Brad Colbert, Kathy Hessler

Faculty Scholarship

In the midst of ongoing debates within the legal academy and the American Bar Association on the need for "practice-ready" law school graduates through enhanced attention to law clinics and externships and on the status of faculty teaching in those courses, this report identifies and evaluates the most appropriate modes for clinical faculty appointments. Drawing on data collected through a survey of clinical program directors and faculty, the report analyzes the five most identifiable clinical faculty models: unitary tenure track; clinical tenure track; long-term contract; short-term contract; and clinical fellowships. It determines that, despite great strides in the growth of …

Equipping Our Lawyers: Mitchell's Outcomes-Based Approach To Legal Education, Gregory M. Duhl

Faculty Scholarship

It is timely that the William Mitchell Law Review has decided to dedicate an issue to outcomes in legal education. As a long-time innovator in pedagogy, professional skills education, and experiential learning, William Mitchell has once again emerged as a leader in its outcomes-based approach to course and curricular design. Amid the current climate of uncertainty in legal education and the legal profession, and as a relative newcomer to Mitchell’s history, I believe in Mitchell’s future – tied to the past, but innovative and distinct. In this essay, I share our vision for increasing emphasis on outcomes, expanding experiential learning …

Getting Real About Legal Realism, New Legal Realism And Clinical Legal Education, Kate Kruse

Faculty Scholarship

Jerome Frank’s call for a “clinical lawyer-school” is cited so frequently in clinical scholarship that it borders on the canonical. Like many calls for reform in legal education, Frank’s plea for clinical lawyer-schools was based on a critique of the appellate case method of legal instruction. However, unlike most critiques, the legal realist critique was embedded within a jurisprudential challenge to the meaning of law itself, arising from American Legal Realism. Running through legal realist jurisprudence was a distinction between the “law in books” and the “law in action,” with the idea that law is not found primarily in statutes …

Law In The Time Of Cholera: Teaching Disaster Law As A Research Course, Neal R. Axton

Faculty Scholarship

Disaster law is fun to teach but it has a serious purpose. Emergencies will inevitably arise but how society responds to them will determine whether or not they become full-blown disasters. Training law students to adapt to dynamic situations will give them the skills they need in a world facing global warming, resource depletion, and a burgeoning population. By creating a more robust legal system, we can create a more resilient society.

Originally published in the May 2011 issue of AALL Spectrum.

Levinas, Law Schools And The Poor: They Stand Over Us, Marie Failinger

Faculty Scholarship

In the style of philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, who has written about the ethics of the Face, this essay challenges the complacency of most American law schools in response to the plight of the poor and proposes ways in which the law school curriculum, space and programs can be re-configured to bring the poor into community with legal educators and students.

The Accidental Elder Law Professor, A. Kimberley Dayton

Faculty Scholarship

This Article discusses my somewhat unusual and erratic path to becoming an Elder Law professor. My story, told more or less in chronological order, is a first-person narrative of one woman’s journey to achieve, if not academic renown, then at least personal satisfaction in the realm of the legal academy. It does not aspire to convey ponderous wisdom about the best way to teach Elder Law or the importance of scholarly productivity as a measure of one’s legitimacy. On the contrary, I hope the Article will illustrate that, in the same way the field of Elder Law has grown and …

Collaborative Lawyering: A Process For Interest-Based Negotiation, Jim Hilbert

Faculty Scholarship

This article discusses the growing popularity of interest-based negotiation among attorneys and outlines an approach for implementing interest-based negotiating more effectively. The article begins with an overview of interest-based negotiation and its evolution in legal practice. The article addresses the barriers that often stand between lawyers and the practice of interest-based negotiation and how clients, too, may contribute their own limitations to the mix. The article then discusses particular aspects of interest-based approaches and outlines a step-by-step process for implementing interest-based negotiating.

Legal Research Assessment, Simon Canick

Faculty Scholarship

Legal research instructors seek to provide their students with a working knowledge of important research tools, strategies with which to develop a rational research plan, and the skill to conduct research efficiently, among other things. A well-conceived legal research class may utilize short-answer assignments, quizzes, and scavenger hunt exercises as a means to establish a baseline of knowledge with critical sources; a series of research problems, with grading based upon students' ability to describe a coherent and logical progression; and a pathfinder or process-oriented final exam, all depending on the instructor's goals. Ultimately, the variety of available assessment tools suggests …

Roleplays As Rehearsals For “Doing The Right Thing”---Adding Practice In Professional Values To Moldovan And United States Legal Education, Ann Juergens

Faculty Scholarship

In a work world where injustice and corruption challenge lawyers daily, how might law schools better prepare students to become ethical leaders, or, at least, to practice ethically themselves? This article asserts that adding short interactive roleplays to large classes is one way for students to learn the skill and value of doing the right thing under difficult circumstances. The authors build on their experience teaching in Moldova, where they found students eager to engage in realistic roleplays, so eager that they transformed a lawyer-client interviewing exercise into an exploration of what to do when offered a bribe. If U.S. …

Flies On The Wall Or In The Ointment? Some Thoughts On The Role Of Clinical Supervisors At Initial Client Interviews, Carolyn Grose

Faculty Scholarship

This article uses the question of whether or not supervisors attend initial client interviews with their students as a lens through which to explore other questions about supervision theory, clinical pedagogy and professional responsibility. This analysis appears to create dichotomous positions concerning how students learn best and how clients are served best. The article attempts to deconstruct these dichotomies by proposing a different way to think about these issues. Grounded in theories about adult learning, critical reflection, and role assumption and modeling, the article concludes that the decision about whether to attend client interviews can be one that the supervisor …

A Home Of Its Own: The Role Of Poverty Law In Furthering Law Schools' Mission, Marie Failinger

Faculty Scholarship

This author argues that poverty advocates who are willing to carefully attend to their law school’s mission and vision, and to give careful thought to how poverty law may play an important role in achieving that vision, may win a more lasting place for poverty law in the curriculum than it has heretofore managed to achieve in most law schools. This article will argue that poverty law can be a key piece in the curriculum of law schools who define their mission, at least in part, as educating lawyers according to one of five paradigms: 1) lawyers as public citizens …

A Persistent Critique: Constructing Clients’ Stories, Carolyn Grose

Faculty Scholarship

Drawing on narrative, post-colonial, clinical and other critical theory, this article explores the role and necessity of critical reflection by lawyers in the construction of clients' stories in representation. In particular, the piece is framed by the experiences of transgender clients and their student attorneys. The piece begins by examining the "problem of representation" - the challenge of seeing and hearing clients' stories, particularly when those stories do not fit in to our understanding of how the world works. It moves on to describe first the "official stories" that govern how the legal system treats transgender people and second how …

Practicing What We Teach: The Importance Of Emotion And Community Connection In Law Work And Law Teaching, Ann Juergens

Faculty Scholarship

Personal satisfaction and fine lawyering go hand in hand. Legal education and the legal system, however, do damage to that coupling. The author suggests that lawyers and law students can thwart personal dysfunction and professional dissatisfaction if we allow ourselves to express joy and sadness. To avoid being depleted by grief and rage, which cannot nourish satisfying law work over time, the article suggests that we attend to connections with others (all others). Lawyers who connect with their own communities may have more tools for crafting solutions for clients whose problems often implicate community. As teachers, the best way to …

Foreword, Helen Meyer

William Mitchell Law Review

The William Mitchell Law Review has decided once again to dedicate one issue of this annual volume to Recent Decisions of the Minnesota Supreme Court. This issue reviews some of the court’s more important decisions from the 2003-04 term. If tradition is honored, the articles and notes you find in these pages will be thorough, well-written, and thoughtful in their analysis of each decision. This annual review is a tradition that gives our legal community a wonderful opportunity to publicly comment on the work of the court. This public testing of the court’s work is a healthy part of the …

Pilgrimage Or Exodus?: Responding To Faculty Faith Diversity At Religious Law Schools, Marie Failinger

Faculty Scholarship

Religiously affiliated law schools have, for the most part, given little thought to the integration of faculty members who are from faith communities other than their own. The article will consider the question of how religiously affiliated law schools truly include faculty members of all religious faiths in the development of mission and community in such law schools, using the lens of the religious metaphors of pilgrimage and Exodus. After presenting this typology for critiquing law school practices, the author deconstructs the very premises of the question through the metaphors of pilgrimage and Exodus. The author argues that a proper …

A Thirtieth Anniversary Tribute To The William Mitchell Law Review, Michael K. Steenson

Faculty Scholarship

Article, a tribute to the William Mitchell Law Review on its thirtieth anniversary, traces the history of the first issue of the Law Review.

Unsung Hero: The Life Of A Foot Soldier For Justice, Valerie M. Jensen

William Mitchell Law Review

Review of Frederick L. McGhee: A Life on the Color Line, 1861-1912. By Paul D. Nelson. Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2002. 234 pages. $29.95

Brown’S Legacy: Looking Back, Moving Forward, Wilhelmina M. Wright

William Mitchell Law Review

This keynote speech was delivered at the Lena O. Smith Luncheon on May 7, 2004. Lena O. Smith was the first African-American woman to practice law in Minnesota. In 1921, she graduated from Northwestern College of Law, a predecessor of William Mitchell College of Law. See generally Ann Juergens, Lena Olive Smith: A Minnesota Civil Rights Pioneer, 28 Wm. Mitchell L. Rev. 397 (2001).