Legal Profession Commons^™

The Integrated Law School Curriculum, Adam Lamparello

Adam Lamparello

In January 2014, the American Bar Association’s Task Force on the Future of Legal Education stated that “[a]n evolution is taking place in legal practice and legal education needs to evolve with it.” To this end, the Task Force recommended that the law school curriculum “needs to shift still further toward developing the competencies and professionalism required of people who will deliver services to clients.” In fact, the Task Force emphasized that “[a] graduate’s having some set of competencies in the delivery of law and related services, and not just some body of knowledge, is an essential outcome …

Igniting The Conversation: Embracing Legal Literacy As The Heart Of The Profession, Laura J. Ax-Fultz

Faculty Scholarly Works

Law librarians are experts in instruction, databases, scholarship, and more. This broad expertise has exacerbated an identity crisis in the profession. The author argues that law librarians must develop a core identity, such as legal literacy, to navigate an ever-changing legal landscape that questions the future necessity of law librarians.

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, …

The Moral Lawyer And The Machiavellian Nature Of Law Practice, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

In Western culture the name Niccolo Machiavelli has become Machiavellianism, a pejorative signifying the willingness to do anything to achieve desired ends. American lawyers do have limits, however, and are expected to operate according to an ethical code that is at least intended to prevent the worst abuses. The effectiveness of this ethical code has often been questioned, as have the questionable efforts of the organized bar to enforce its rules, but on the surface it differentiates law practice from hand-to-hand combat and military struggles. Even though I have sometimes used the concepts of the warrior lawyer, the general and …

Newsroom: A Master's In Law For Non-Lawyers, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Toward A Writing-Centered Legal Education, Adam Lamparello

Res Gestae

The future of legal education—and experiential learning—should be grounded in a curriculum that requires students to take writing courses throughout law school. Additionally, the curriculum should be one that collapses the distinction between doctrinal, legal writing, and clinical faculty, as well as merges analytical, practical, and clinical instruction into a real world curriculum.

The justification for a writing-intensive program of legal education is driven by the reality that persuasive writing ability is among the most important skills a lawyer must possess and a skill that many lawyers and judges claim graduates lack. Part of the problem is that law schools …

The Call For Lawyers Committed To Social Justice To Champion Accessible Legal Services Through Innovative Legal Education, George Critchlow, Brooks Holland, Olympia Duhart

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

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 …

Do Law School Outcomes Follow The Legal Myth Of Thirds?: An Analysis Of The After The J.D. Study, Michael W. Raphael, Tanesha A. Thomas

Graduate Student Publications and Research

The legal myth of thirds is the belief that each graduating class of law students can be divided into thirds where the top third end up becoming law professors, the middle third become judges and the bottom third become lawyers. Such discourse is indicative of a meritocratic society and a 2014 survey done at a small New England law school found that 36.9% of respondents (N=92) have indeed heard that this was the case. The authors feel that the mere existence of such a rumor suggests that there is concern regarding intra-professional stratification. Using data from the American Bar Foundation’s …

Legal Education In North Carolina: A Report For Potential Students, Lawmakers, And The Public, William D. Henderson, Andrew P. Morriss

Andrew P. Morriss

No abstract provided.

Legal Education In North Carolina: A Report For Potential Students, Lawmakers, And The Public, William D. Henderson, Andrew P. Morriss

Andrew P. Morriss

No abstract provided.

Law Schools And The Legal Profession: A Way Forward, Peter A. Joy

Akron Law Review

This essay proceeds in four parts. Part II briefly examines the disengagement of law schools from the legal profession both in much of the scholarship produced and through courses required for graduation. Part III analyzes why some state bar regulators are imposing admission requirements in response to law schools failing to prepare students better for the practice of law. Part IV discusses the types of bar admission requirements being considered. Finally, in Part V, I argue that rather than being reactive and resistant to change, law schools should be forward looking and incorporate changes that will not only better prepare …

Efficient Collaboration: How To Build Pathways Between Silos, Model Behavior Ideal For Professional Identity Formation, And Create Complex Experiential Modules All While Having Fun, Christine Cerniglia Brown

Journal of Experiential Learning

No abstract provided.

Defining Experiential Legal Education, David I.C. Thomson

Journal of Experiential Learning

No abstract provided.

The End Of Law Schools, Ray W. Campbell

Ray W Campbell

What would legal education look like if it were designed from the ground up for a world in which legal services have undergone profound and irreversible change? Law schools as we know them are doomed. They continue to offer an educational model originally designed to prepare lawyers to practice in common law courts of a bygone era. That model fails to prepare lawyers for today’s highly specialized practices, and it fails to provide targeted training for the emerging legal services fields other than traditional lawyering.

This article proposes a new ideology of legal education to meet the needs of modern …

"Practice Ready Graduates": A Millennialist Fantasy, Robert J. Condlin

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Plyler Students At Work: The Case For Granting Law Licenses To Undocumented Immigrants, Lindy Stevens

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

The End Of Law Schools, Ray Worthy Campbell

Ray W Campbell

Law schools as we know them are doomed. They continue to offer an educational model originally designed to prepare lawyers to practice in common law courts of a bygone era. That model fails to prepare lawyers for today’s highly specialized practices, and it fails to provide targeted training for the emerging legal services fields other than traditional lawyering.

This article proposes a new ideology of legal education to meet the needs of modern society. Unlike other reform proposals, it looks not to tweaking the training of traditional lawyers, but to rethinking legal education in light of a changing legal services …

Foreword—Establishing A Firm Foundation For The Small Law Practice, Eric J. Gouvin

Faculty Scholarship

On March 26, 2014, the Western New England Law Review sponsored a symposium entitled "Firm Foundations: Managing the Small Firm and Individual Practitioner." The symposium presentations provided perspectives on the often-overlooked world of small firm practice.

A few influential books about the state of legal education and the future of the legal profession prompted public outcry from bar associations across the country to weigh in on the perceived problems of American legal education. The debate has resulted in some real changes in law school programs.

Legal education is in the midst of major changes. For decades, law schools have been …

Teaching And Assessing Professional Communication Skills In Law School, Denitsa R. Mavrova Heinrich

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Answering The Call: Flipping The Classroom To Prepare Practice-Ready Attorneys, Alex Berrio Matamoros

Alex Berrio Matamoros

In the rough and changing landscape of the legal job market, legal employers have called on law schools to prepare “practice ready” attorneys — newly minted members of the bar with better honed practical skills than the first year lawyers of the past. The increasing emphasis on legal skills sheds light on an interesting paradox within legal education; in legal skills courses, those that best lend themselves to active learning experiences, instructors frequently fill valuable classroom time with passive lectures to convey the related theory and best practices. Recently, several legal skills instructors have adopted a flipped classroom model to …

Apps, Artificial Intelligence, And Androids: Beyond Schumpeter’S “Creative Destruction” To “Destructive Destruction” David Barnhizer, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

The analysis offered here is not a Neo-Luddite rage against “the machine”. As with the oft-stated reproach about paranoia, there sometimes really are situations in which people are “out to get you”. In our current situation the threat is not from people but from the convergence of a set of technological innovations that are and will increasingly have an enormous impact on the nature of work, economic and social inequality and the existence of the middle classes that are so vital to the durability of Western democracy. The fact is that developed nations’ economies such as found in Western Europe …

The Moral Lawyer And The Machiavellian Nature Of Law Practice, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

In Western culture the name Niccolo Machiavelli has become Machiavellianism, a pejorative signifying the willingness to do anything to achieve desired ends. American lawyers do have limits, however, and are expected to operate according to an ethical code that is at least intended to prevent the worst abuses. The effectiveness of this ethical code has often been questioned, as have the questionable efforts of the organized bar to enforce its rules, but on the surface it differentiates law practice from hand-to-hand combat and military struggles. Even though I have sometimes used the concepts of the warrior lawyer, the general and …

Legal Education In Transition: Trends And Their Implications, Michael A. Millemann, Sheldon Krantz

Faculty Scholarship

This is a pivotal moment in legal education. Revisions in American Bar Association accreditation standards, approved in August 2014, impose new requirements, including practice-based requirements, on law schools. Other external regulators and critics are pushing for significant changes too. For example, the California bar licensing body is proposing to add a practice-based, experiential requirement to its licensing requirements, and the New York Court of Appeals, New York’s highest court, is giving third-year, second semester students the opportunity to practice full-time in indigent legal services programs and projects. Unbeknown to many, there have been significant recent changes in legal education that …

Law School Based Incubators And Access To Justice – Perspectives From Deans, Patricia E. Salkin, Ellen Suni, Niels Schaumann, Mary Lu Bilek

Journal of Experiential Learning

At the end of February 2015, law professors, law deans, incubator staff and attorneys, and self-selected others gathered at California Western School of Law for the Second Annual Conference on Law School Incubators and Residency Programs. The incubators that are the subject of this article tend to focus on transition to law practice and access to justice, and some are also working to incorporate technology for the practice of law as a means of enhancing access to justice. As more law schools decide to host, sponsor or offer an incubator, and following our panel discussion at the February 2015 incubator …

Enigma: A Variation On The Theme Of Legal Writing’S Place In Contemporary Legal Education, Ian Gallacher

College of Law - Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

At Play In The Field Of Law: Symbolic Capital And Foreign Attorneys In Ll.M. Programs, Jan Hoffman French

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

In this Comment, I would like to pick up a thread of the authors' analysis and, in so doing, shift the emphasis a bit. That thread relates to their use of Pierre Bourdieu's theoretical conceptualizations of "field" and "forms of capital." In their analysis of admissions essays submitted by foreign-lawyer applicants, Lazarus-Black and Globokar consider how the discursive genre of the admissions essay orients itself to the powerladen structures that constitute the particular field within which the essay is playing, or to which it is addressed.8 They also use the Bourdieusian concepts of "cultural and linguistic capital" in relation to …

Notes Toward An Understanding Of The U.S. Market In Foreign Ll.M. Students: From The British Empire And The Inns Of Court To The U.S. Ll.M., Bryant G. Garth

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Mindie Lazarus-Black and Julie Globokar's article on "Foreign Attorneys in U.S. LL.M. Programs: Who's In, Who's Out, and Who They Are" uses interviews, LL.M. student observations, and actual admissions committee documents from one Midwest and one East Coast law school to confirm the tremendous growth of those programs over the past two decades in the United States and indicate who makes the journey to the United States; how foreign LL.M. candidates pitch themselves to admissions committees; how those admissions committees evaluate candidates; and what candidates expect from LL.M. programs. The voices that come through are quite compelling. We now know …

Immigrant Lawyers And The Changing Face Of The U.S. Legal Profession, Ethan Michelson

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

In this Comment, I extend Lazarus-Black and Globokar's analysis further downstream to consider the stakes for the U.S. legal profession as a whole. Gatekeepers to LL.M. programs are doing far more than determining individual fates and collectively shaping the future of U.S. legal education. I will demonstrate in this Comment that their work helps shape-in concrete, measurable ways-the demographic composition of the U.S. legal profession. In so doing, I will contribute to the emerging field of legal demography, which refers to the study of lawyers through the analysis of data not collected for this specific purpose.

The Metaculture Of Law School Admissions: A Commentary On Lazarus-Black And Globokar, Bonnie Urciuoli

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

What does it mean for law school applicants to become, as Mindie Lazarus-Black and Julie Globokar put it, "what the ranking[s] count[]"? What does it mean for foreign applicants to develop responses to the application process by writing essays in certain ways, to project themselves (again as Lazarus-Black and Globokar put it) as "commodified persona[s]"? The application process analyzed by Lazarus-Black and Globokar exemplifies what Greg Urban calls metaculture: cultural forms that point actors toward recognizing and understanding what they do as exemplifying a particular cultural pattern. Metaculture is the mechanism by which culture is reproduced, moving through time and …