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Full-Text Articles in Legal Profession

Learning From And About The Numbers, Carole Silver, Louis Rocconi Sep 2015

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 Aug 2015

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 …


Why The Bar Examination Fails To Raise The Bar, Carol Goforth Feb 2015

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

Carol Goforth

This article considers whether the current bar examination format achieves its stated objectives of protecting the public by testing minimum competency to practice law. After discussing the nature of the current bar examinations offered in the United States, the article looks at the skills associated with legal practice, and evaluates whether the bar examination is assisting in the process of insuring proper legal training for lawyers or hindering it.


Perspectives On International Students' Interest In U.S. Legal Education: Shifting Incentives And Influence, Carole Silver Dec 2014

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 Dec 2014

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 …


Globalization And The Monopoly Of Aba-Approved Law Schools: Missed Opportunities Or Dodged Bullets?, Carole Silver Dec 2013

Globalization And The Monopoly Of Aba-Approved Law Schools: Missed Opportunities Or Dodged Bullets?, Carole Silver

Carole Silver

As the market for lawyers and for law itself has responded to global forces, legal education also is becoming accustomed to working within a global context. U.S. law schools routinely look beyond the country’s borders to attract new students and opportunities. As with law firms and business generally, it no longer is sufficient to be domestic only; in order to gain prestige and to effectively compete in the U.S. market, schools must have a credible claim to being globally connected, if not global themselves. But despite the reorientation of law schools toward globalization, the regulatory regime in which U.S. law …


The First Thing We Do, Jorge R. Roig Dec 2013

The First Thing We Do, Jorge R. Roig

Jorge R Roig

There is currently a concerted effort to dumb down America. In the midst of this, the American Bar Association’s Council of the Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar recently agreed to propose that tenure for law professors be eliminated as a requirement for accreditation of law schools. This article analyzes the arguments for and against tenure in legal academia, and concludes that the main proposed justifications for eliminating tenure are highly questionable, at best. A lawyer is more than a legal technocrat. Lawyers are policy makers and public defenders. They are prosecutors and activists. And the development …


When Socrates Meets Confucius: Teaching Creative And Critical Thinking Across Cultures Through Multilevel Socratic Method, Erin Ryan Dec 2012

When Socrates Meets Confucius: Teaching Creative And Critical Thinking Across Cultures Through Multilevel Socratic Method, Erin Ryan

Erin Ryan

This article presents a case study of adapting the Socratic Method, popularized in American law schools, to teach critical thinking skills underemphasized in Chinese universities and group competency skills underemphasized at U.S. institutions. As we propose it here, Multilevel Socratic teaching integrates various levels of individual, small group, and full class critical inquiry, offering distinct pedagogical benefits in Eastern and Western cultural contexts where they separately fall short. After exploring foundational cultural differences underlying the two educational approaches, the article reviews the goals, methods, successes, and challenges encountered in the development of an adapted “Multilevel Socratic” method, concluding with recommendations …


Teaching Transactional Skills In Partnership With The Bar, Carl J. Circo Dec 2010

Teaching Transactional Skills In Partnership With The Bar, Carl J. Circo

Carl J. Circo

For several years, business and transactional lawyers have increased the pressure on law schools to produce more practice-ready graduates. This article explores the practical skills reform movement with two goals in mind. First, it seeks to articulate and reconcile some of the fundamental differences in the perspectives of the practicing bar and the legal academy. Second, it highlights the special challenges and opportunities involved in making legal education more effective for students who will practice business and transactional law. In addition to reviewing recent literature from the bar and the academy on the practical skills gap, the article also reports …