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Full-Text Articles in Legal Education

Introducing Law Students To Transactional Practice: From Using Precedent To Closing The Deal, Ben Fernandez Apr 2024

Introducing Law Students To Transactional Practice: From Using Precedent To Closing The Deal, Ben Fernandez

UF Law Faculty Publications

My name is Ben Fernandez. I teach contract drafting at the University of Florida, Levin College of Law, and I'm going to talk about introducing students to transactional practice from using precedents to closing the deal. Basically, what I'm going to describe is things I do to supplement Tina Stark's Drafting Contracts: How and Why Lawyers Do What They Do. I'm going to give you a whole bunch of, I hope, useful, teaching ideas on how to do that.


The First Amendment And Professorial Classroom Speech, Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky Jan 2024

The First Amendment And Professorial Classroom Speech, Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky

UF Law Faculty Publications

A review of Keith E. Whittington's article, Professorial Speech, The First Amendment, and Legislative Restrictions on Classroom Discussions. 58 Wake Forest L. Rev. 463 (2023).


Holdings As Hypotheses: Teaching Contextual Understanding And Enhancing Engagement, Lisa M. De Sanctis Jan 2024

Holdings As Hypotheses: Teaching Contextual Understanding And Enhancing Engagement, Lisa M. De Sanctis

UF Law Faculty Publications

When the Pinball Wizard asked his well-timed question, he not only lit up the 1L classroom with a cacophony of opinions but also illuminated deep confusion about the meaning of, and distinctions between, “rules” and “holdings.”

The practice of both oversimplifying and conflating the parts of a judicial opinion, particularly rules and holdings, is common among law professors, law school success materials, and, to an extent, even legal writing texts. Coupled with the novice law student’s search for right answers and found meaning, 1Ls often find themselves understandably frustrated and confused. This Article argues that the resulting confusion about rules …


Women In U.S. Law Schools, 1948-2021, Elizabeth D. Katz, Kyle Rozema, Sarath Sanga Aug 2023

Women In U.S. Law Schools, 1948-2021, Elizabeth D. Katz, Kyle Rozema, Sarath Sanga

UF Law Faculty Publications

We study the progress of women’s representation and achievement in law schools. To do this, we assemble a new dataset on the number of women and men students, faculty, and deans at all ABA-approved U.S. law schools from 1948 to the present. These data enable us to study many unexplored features of women’s progress in law schools for the first time, including the process by which women initially gained access to each law school, the variance in women’s experiences across law schools, the relationship between women’s representation and student achievement, and the extent to which women disproportionally occupy interim and …


The Powerpoint Channel, Lynn M. Lopucki, William C. Whitford Jan 2022

The Powerpoint Channel, Lynn M. Lopucki, William C. Whitford

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article is the first to present a comprehensive theory and style for using PowerPoint to teach law. The theory is that presentation software adds a channel of communication that enables the use of images in combination with words. Studies have shown that combination to substantially enhance learning. The style is based on an extensive literature regarding the use of PowerPoint in teaching law and other higher education subjects as well as the author’s experimentation with PowerPoint over two decades. The Article states fourteen principles for slide or slide sequence design, provides the arguments from the literature for and against …


Integrated Learning, Integrated Faculty, Rachel Arnow-Richman Jan 2020

Integrated Learning, Integrated Faculty, Rachel Arnow-Richman

UF Law Faculty Publications

A fundamental obstacle to the success of legal education’s practice readiness movement is the “bifurcated faculty.” Most law schools continue to operate a two tiered system in which a group of elite credentialed “doctrinal” faculty enjoy the generous compensation, security, and privileges associated with tenure, while an underclass of contract faculty teach work intensive “skills” courses for lower pay and lesser status. This Essay analyzes the bifurcated faculty as a personnel practice, leveraging insights from management theory and employment discrimination scholarship to evaluate law schools as employers. It considers, first, the rise of new economy management practices that eschew static …


The Systems Approach To Teaching Business Associations, Lynn M. Lopucki, Andrew Verstein Jan 2020

The Systems Approach To Teaching Business Associations, Lynn M. Lopucki, Andrew Verstein

UF Law Faculty Publications

The systems approach applies the methods of systems analysis to law. The principal method is to describe the system, situate a problem within the system, and take system mechanics into account in solving it. The system might be the “legal system”—essentially litigation. But more often, it is a “law-related system”—one not composed of law, but one in which law plays a role. That system might be crime, the Internet, the corporation, or any other activity substantially affected by law. The analyst situates the application of law in the context of the physical system as it actually operates. In business associations, …


What Did They Know And When Did They Know It? Pretesting As A Means Setting A Baseline For Assessing Learning Outcomes, Jeffrey L. Harrison Jan 2018

What Did They Know And When Did They Know It? Pretesting As A Means Setting A Baseline For Assessing Learning Outcomes, Jeffrey L. Harrison

UF Law Faculty Publications

Are legal rules intuitive or, at least, consistent with common sense? In this study, 260 law students at five law schools who had not taken contract law, were presented with eight questions based on specific contracts cases or common contracts issues. They were asked what they felt was the fair or right answer to each question and to formulate the rule they would apply. The purposes of the study were to 1) determine whether contract law is what the untrained person believes it is or should be and 2) experiment with a strategy of pretesting to determine what topics within …


Fostering Student Authorship, Amy R. Mashburn, Sharon E. Rush Jan 2017

Fostering Student Authorship, Amy R. Mashburn, Sharon E. Rush

UF Law Faculty Publications

In this essay, we suggest that law schools may provide every student with the opportunity to become involved in the process of producing a publishable paper by establishing on-line repositories for student publications. We describe what such a program, which we call "student authorship," might look like and further explore several primary benefits that such a program would confer upon students.


Moonlighting Sonata: Conflicts, Disclosure And The Scholar/Consultant, Jeffrey L. Harrison, Amy R. Mashburn Jan 2017

Moonlighting Sonata: Conflicts, Disclosure And The Scholar/Consultant, Jeffrey L. Harrison, Amy R. Mashburn

UF Law Faculty Publications

Although the impact of conflicting interests is of constant concern to those in legal education and other fields, a recent scholarly article and an extensive analysis in the New York Times suggest the problem is more pressing than ever. In the context of legal scholarship the problem arises when a professor is, in effect, employed by two entities. Disclosure of possible conflicts is the most commonly proposed response. The article argues that disclosure is merely a risk shifting devise that does not fully address the issue of bias. It draws on comparisons with products liability and legal ethics to suggest …


Dawn Of The Discipline-Based Law Faculty, Lynn M. Lopucki Apr 2016

Dawn Of The Discipline-Based Law Faculty, Lynn M. Lopucki

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article reports on an empirical study of the prevalence of Ph.D.s on law faculties, the rate at which J.D.-Ph.D.s are being hired by those faculties, the impact of that hiring on faculties’ legal experience levels, and the likely resulting future composition of law faculties. Approximately 29% of the tenure-track faculties of the top twenty-six law schools currently hold Ph.D.s, and 67% of those schools’ entry level hires in 2014 and 2015 are J.D.-Ph.D.s. Recent hiring has separated into two tracks. On the growing J.D.-Ph.D. track, both legal experience and preparation time is declining. On the fading J.D.-only track, legal …


Teaching Compliance, D. Daniel Sokol Jan 2016

Teaching Compliance, D. Daniel Sokol

UF Law Faculty Publications

Compliance is a growing field of practice across multiple areas of law. Increasingly companies put compliance risk among the most important corporate governance issues facing them. Moreover, as “JD plus” jobs proliferate, the demand for hiring both at the entry level and for former students currently in practice who are experienced in the compliance field will continue to grow. The growth in compliance jobs comes at a time in shifting demand for legal jobs for law school graduates. Traditional law firm entry level jobs at large law firms, which were the staple of on campus recruiting before 2007, have not …


Citations, Justifications, And The Troubled State Of Legal Scholarship: An Empirical Study, Jeffrey L. Harrison, Amy R. Mashburn Jan 2015

Citations, Justifications, And The Troubled State Of Legal Scholarship: An Empirical Study, Jeffrey L. Harrison, Amy R. Mashburn

UF Law Faculty Publications

Recent pedagogical, economic and technological changes require law schools to reevaluate their resource allocations. Although typically viewed in terms of curricular changes, it is important also to focus on the very significant investment in legal scholarship and its impact. Typically this has been determined by some version of citation counting with little regard for what it means to be cited. This Article discusses why this is a deeply flawed measure of impact. Much of that discussion is based on an empirical study the authors conducted. The investigation found that citation by other authors is highly influenced by the rank of …


Disciplining Legal Scholarship, Lynn M. Lopucki Jan 2015

Disciplining Legal Scholarship, Lynn M. Lopucki

UF Law Faculty Publications

U.S. law schools are hiring large proportions of J.D.-Ph.D.s in tenure-track faculty positions in an effort to increase the quantity and quality of empirical legal scholarship. That effort is failing. The new recruits bring methods and objectives unsuited to law. They produce lower-than-predicted levels of empiricism because they compete on the basis of methodological sophistication, devote time and resources to disputes over arcane issues in statistics and methodology, prefer to collaborate with other Ph.D.s, and intimidate empiricists whose work does not require high levels of methodological sophistication. In short, Ph.D.s impose the cultures of their disciplines on legal scholarship. Importing …


Stop Me If You’Ve Heard This Before: Transitions In Teaching Legal Research, Patricia Morgan Sep 2014

Stop Me If You’Ve Heard This Before: Transitions In Teaching Legal Research, Patricia Morgan

UF Law Faculty Publications

Law schools are being called upon to produce more “practice ready” graduates. To that end, the University of Florida added a librarian-taught first-year Legal Research course to its curriculum. As a result of the course addition, there was an impact on the existing Advanced Legal Research (ALR) course. For the first time, the ALR students had already received legal research instruction. This required adjustments in this higher level course.


Teaching Llcs Through A Problem-Based Approach, Michelle M. Harner, Robert J. Rhee Jan 2014

Teaching Llcs Through A Problem-Based Approach, Michelle M. Harner, Robert J. Rhee

UF Law Faculty Publications

Case studies and case simulations can be used to teach LLCs with an eye toward training business lawyers. These tools can be used in the traditional four-credit Business Associations (BA) course to supplement traditional teaching materials with mini-case studies that accent and apply analysis of primary legal sources. Alternatively, case studies and case simulations can be the centerpiece of a specialized course on LLCs. We discuss both approaches in this short essay.


Deal Deconstructions, Case Studies, And Case Simulations: Toward Practice Readiness With New Pedagogies In Teaching Business And Transactional Law, Michelle M. Harner, Robert J. Rhee Jan 2014

Deal Deconstructions, Case Studies, And Case Simulations: Toward Practice Readiness With New Pedagogies In Teaching Business And Transactional Law, Michelle M. Harner, Robert J. Rhee

UF Law Faculty Publications

In this short commentary, we explore the use of two interrelated pedagogical methods for teaching transactional and business law. The first method is deal deconstruction, which analyzes the set of final deal documents and outcomes. This method is backward-looking, conducting a post-mortem on business transactions and analyzing the parties’ choices memorialized in the agreement against the legal and financial alternatives. The second method involves case studies and simulations, which are commonly seen in business schools. This method is forward-looking, exposing students to the uncertainties and situational contexts of doing deals and deal-related litigation. Together, these complementary methods help students understand …


Specialization In Law And Business: A Proposal For A J.D./'Mbl' Curriculum, Robert J. Rhee Oct 2013

Specialization In Law And Business: A Proposal For A J.D./'Mbl' Curriculum, Robert J. Rhee

UF Law Faculty Publications

This paper provides the specific details of how an interdisciplinary program of law and business can be structured in a three-year J.D. program. The program envisioned is a J.D./”M.B.L.”, which is distinguished from the better known J.D./M.B.A. The “M.B.L.” stands for “masters of business law,” which is simply an idea tag. The moniker can represent a program conferring a supplemental degree in law and business, or simply a specialized course of study to complete a J.D. Either way, the program is an interdisciplinary program of concentrated study in core transaction-oriented law courses and core business courses. The most effective education …


Tackling "Arithmophobia": Teaching How To Read, Understand, And Analyze Financial Statements, Paula J. Williams, Kris Anne Tobin, Eric Franklin, Robert J. Rhee Jan 2013

Tackling "Arithmophobia": Teaching How To Read, Understand, And Analyze Financial Statements, Paula J. Williams, Kris Anne Tobin, Eric Franklin, Robert J. Rhee

UF Law Faculty Publications

This discussion presents different ideas on how to teach accounting and practical finance to law students.


Employment Law Inside Out: Using The Problem Method To Teach Workplace Law, Rachel Arnow-Richman Jan 2013

Employment Law Inside Out: Using The Problem Method To Teach Workplace Law, Rachel Arnow-Richman

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article, prepared for the Saint Louis University Law Review’s 2013 Symposium on Teaching Employment & Labor Law, explores the use of the problem method in employment law instruction. Drawing on my experience teaching the basic employment law course, I suggest that those areas of the field that require transactional lawyering skills are perhaps best taught contextually through a hypothetical problem, rather than through cases. Adopting the problem method in such circumstances not only gives students a richer understanding of the law and how it operates, but also the opportunity to cultivate problem-solving skills and professional judgment, thereby advancing the …


Contract Stories: Importance Of The Contextual Approach To Law, Larry A. Dimatteo Jan 2013

Contract Stories: Importance Of The Contextual Approach To Law, Larry A. Dimatteo

UF Law Faculty Publications

How law is taught is at the center of the debate over the need to change legal education to better prepare students for a difficult and changing marketplace for legal services. This Article analyzes the benefits of using “stories” to teach law. The stories to be discussed relate to contract law: this Article asks whether they can be used to improve the method and content of teaching law. The ruminations offered on teaching contract law, however, are also relevant to teaching other core, first-year law courses.


The Influence Of Law And Economics Scholarship On Contract Law: Impressions Twenty-Five Years Later, Jeffrey L. Harrison Jan 2012

The Influence Of Law And Economics Scholarship On Contract Law: Impressions Twenty-Five Years Later, Jeffrey L. Harrison

UF Law Faculty Publications

This is an update of a work done in conjunction with a contract law conference 25 years ago. My specific assignment was to assess the impact of law and economics scholarship on contract law. I responded by conducting an empirical study of judicial citations to selected law and economics works in order to ascertain the extent to which judges seemed to be relying on the teachings of law and economics. In effect, the effort was part of a general question that concerns all law professors: Does scholarship matter? I have repeated the study with respect to the scholarship sample selected …


The Law School Firm, Bradley T. Borden, Robert J. Rhee Oct 2011

The Law School Firm, Bradley T. Borden, Robert J. Rhee

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article introduces the concept of the law school firm. The concept calls for law schools to establish affiliated law firms. The affiliation would provide opportunities for students, faculty, and attorneys to collaborate and share resources to teach, research, write, serve clients, and influence the development of law and policy. Based loosely on the medical school model, the law school firm will help bridge the gap between law schools and the practice of law.


Ethical Issues In Business And The Lawyer's Role, Robert J. Rhee, Carol Morgan, Tamar Frankel, Mark Fagan Jan 2011

Ethical Issues In Business And The Lawyer's Role, Robert J. Rhee, Carol Morgan, Tamar Frankel, Mark Fagan

UF Law Faculty Publications

The remarks by Professor Rhee "The Stand Alone Course Approach to Teaching Business Ethics," Professor Morgan "Teaching Business Ethics in Transactional Skills Courses: An Integrated Approach," and Professors Tamar Frankel and Mark Fagan "Teaching Business Ethics: A Collaborative Approach" were made at the conference on "Transactional Education: What's Next?" held at Emory University School of Law, June 4, 2010.


On Legal Education And Reform: One View Formed From Diverse Perspectives, Robert J. Rhee Jan 2011

On Legal Education And Reform: One View Formed From Diverse Perspectives, Robert J. Rhee

UF Law Faculty Publications

This article identifies two interconnected problems in legal education. First, legal education and practice are more disconnected than they should be, a reality which distinguishes law schools from other professional schools. The major flaw of legal education as the failure to produce more market-ready lawyers who have a mix of skills and knowledge to add value in a complex and challenging practice environment. Second, law school imposes large direct and opportunity costs on its students. These costs combine with the problem of a deficiency in academic training and post-graduation financing of additional training in the workplace to impose a growing …


Employment As Transaction, Rachel Arnow-Richman Jan 2009

Employment As Transaction, Rachel Arnow-Richman

UF Law Faculty Publications

This piece offers a fresh perspective on the upper-level employment law class based on the theme of employment as transaction. Like much of law school, employment law is often taught from a public advocacy perspective in which the primary role of the lawyer is to vindicate workers' rights or responsively defend managerial action. As a doctrinal matter, however, courts are showing increased attention to the role of private ordering in defining workplace rights and assessing liability, even in regulatory areas. Courts routinely examine employers' efforts to redress unlawful behavior under antidiscrimination law and consistently sanction the use of arbitration agreements …


The Madoff Scandal, Market Regulatory Failure And The Business Education Of Lawyers, Robert J. Rhee Jan 2009

The Madoff Scandal, Market Regulatory Failure And The Business Education Of Lawyers, Robert J. Rhee

UF Law Faculty Publications

This essay suggests that a deficiency in legal education is a contributing cause of the regulatory failure. The most scandalous malfeasance of this new era, the Madoff Ponzi scheme, evinces the failure of improperly trained lawyers and regulators. It also calls into question whether the prevailing regulatory philosophy of disclosure is sufficient in a complex market. This essay answers an important question underlying these considerations: What can legal education do to better train business lawyers and regulators for a market that is becoming more complex. One answer, it suggests, is a simple one: law schools should teach a little more …


Measuring The Value Of Collegiality Among Law Professors, Michael L. Seigel, Kathi Miner-Rubino Jan 2009

Measuring The Value Of Collegiality Among Law Professors, Michael L. Seigel, Kathi Miner-Rubino

UF Law Faculty Publications

This article is the last in a trilogy addressing the issue of collegiality among law In the first piece, titled On Collegiality, author Seigel defined professors' "collegiality" and suggested that most law schools have at least one, if not two or three, "affirmatively uncollegial" members of their faculty. Seigel posited that these individuals tend to interfere with the ideal functioning of their institutions by negatively affecting the well-being of their peers. Some readers of On Collegiality questioned the legitimacy of Seigel's cost-benefit analysis. Specifically, they commented that some of the factors Seigel used in his analysis could be empirically measured. …


Globalism From An African Perspective: The Training Of Lawyers For A New And Challenging Reality, Winston P. Nagan, Marcio Santos Apr 2008

Globalism From An African Perspective: The Training Of Lawyers For A New And Challenging Reality, Winston P. Nagan, Marcio Santos

UF Law Faculty Publications

This paper deals with the definition and implications of globalism generally and for African interests in particular. Its focus is on globalism as a cluster of social, economic, and political forces contesting for the controlling paradigm of international relations and international law. The article underscores the general issue of globalism's impact on the well-being of the international community. It also considers the impact of globalism on the U.N. Charter, and, in particular, the role of the United Nations in international economic order. The connections between globalism and society are considered as part of the changing character of war and political …


The Law Review Article Selection Process: Results From A National Study, Jason P. Nance, Dylan J. Steinberg Jan 2008

The Law Review Article Selection Process: Results From A National Study, Jason P. Nance, Dylan J. Steinberg

UF Law Faculty Publications

The student-edited law review has been a much criticized institution. Many commentators have expressed their belief that students are unqualified to determine which articles should be published in which journals, but these discussions have been largely based on anecdotal evidence of how journals make publication decisions. It was against that backdrop that we undertook a national survey of law reviews in an attempt to determine how student editors responsible for making publication decisions went about their task. This article compiles the results of that survey, which received 191 responses from 163 different journals. We analyzed 56 factors that influence the …