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What Will (Or Might?) Law School Look Like This Fall?: Teaching In The Midst Of A Pandemic, Ted Becker

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January 2020 marked the start of a new semester for Michigan law schools. There was little reason to suspect it wouldn’t be a semester like any other: for 3Ls, the start of the stretch run to graduation; for 1Ls, a chance to begin anew after the stress of their first set of law school final exams; for law school faculty, administrators, and staff, a return to the excitement and activity of crowded hallways and classrooms after the brief interlude of winter break. Classes began and proceeded as normal.

Transferability: Helping Students And Attorneys Apply What They Already Know To New Situations (Part 1), Edward R. Becker

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Every fall, I work with my first year law students to begin developing their legal writing skills. They work hard learning how to analyze cases objectively, predict how a court might resolve a dispute, and convey their assessments to an experienced attorney. Their improvement from September to December is noticeable. They have only one semester of law school behind them and still have much to learn, but they’re on their way…In the second semester, we begin focusing on advocacy. The first assignment asks students to draft a pretrial brief. When I review the drafts, I’m struck by how many problems …

Collaboration With Doctrinal Faculty To Introduce Creac, Beth Hirschfelder Wilensky

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When legal writing professors introduce CREAC (or IRAC, TREAT, etc.), our examples necessarily use some area of substantive law to demonstrate how the pieces of legal analysis fit together. And when we ask students to try drafting a CREAC analysis, they also have to learn the relevant substantive law first. Students might be asked to analyze whether a worker is an employee or independent contractor or whether the elements of a tort claim are satisfied. But that means that students need to learn the relevant substantive doctrine while they are also grappling with the basics of CREAC. In the language …

What We Still Don't Know About What Persuades Judges – And Some Ways We Might Find Out, Edward R. Becker

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Over 25 years ago, in his foreword to the first volume of Legal Writing, Chris Rideout nailed it: legal writing as actually practiced by lawyers and judges needs to improve, “[b]ut more fundamental inquiry into legal writing...is needed as well.” The intervening decades have seen many laudable efforts on the latter front, as our collective scholarly discipline, then in its infancy, has matured. But one particular question that Rideout identified remains largely unaddressed by our discipline, although recent developments suggest a welcome increase in attention to the topic. Specifically, Rideout explained that our field did not know as much as …

Resurrecting (And Modernizing) The Research Treasure Hunt, Nancy E. Vettorello

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First-year associates will spend forty-five percent of their time on legal research; second- and third-year associates will spend thirty percent. And unfortunately, employers find their associates’ research skills lacking. This is not a new complaint. Employers have been complaining for more than a hundred years that recent law graduates cannot research well. None of this is lost on those who teach legal research, who have long debated the best way to do so. Techniques for teaching research have changed over time, and methods once thought appropriate were sometimes later disfavored. Changes were driven both by pedagogy and by the ever-changing …

Preparing For Service: A Template For 21st Century Legal Education, Michael J. Madison

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Legal educators today grapple with the changing dynamics of legal employment markets; the evolution of technologies and business models driving changes to the legal profession; and the economics of operating – and attending – a law school. Accrediting organizations and practitioners pressure law schools to prepare new lawyers both to be ready to practice and to be ready for an ever-fluid career path. From the standpoint of law schools in general and any one law school in particular, constraints and limitations surround us. Adaptation through innovation is the order of the day.

How, when, and in what direction should innovation …

Accelerating The Growth Of The Next Generation Of Innovators, Dana Thompson

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In a recent study on the best practices of business incubators that contribute to the success of startups, one of the best practices asserted is to include a business lawyer on the advisory board of business incubators, who may suggest necessary legal issues for startups to address and connect the incubator startups with legal assistance. Although many college and university incubators may have access to experienced attorneys who are able to provide advice, and who are able to represent student-led ventures, most do not have access to a university law clinic established to provide pro bono, direct legal representation and …

Learning From The Unique And Common Challenges: Clinical Legal Education In Jordan, Nisreen Mahasneh, Kimberly A. Thomas

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Legal education worldwide is undergoing scrutiny for its failure to graduate students who have the problem-solving abilities, skills, and professional values necessary for the legal profession.1 Additionally, law schools at universities in the Middle East have found themselves in an unsettled environment, where greater demands for practical education are exacerbated by several factors such as high levels of youth unemployment. More specifically, in Jordan there is a pressing need for universities to respond to this criticism and to accommodate new or different methods of legal education. Clinical legal education is one such method.3 We use the term "clinical legal education" …

What Is "Good Legal Writing" And Why Does It Matter?, Mark Osbeck

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Law schools face increasing pressure to improve instruction in practice-oriented skills. One of the most important of these skills is legal writing. The existing literature on legal writing contains various rules and suggestions as to how legal writers can improve their writing skills. Yet it lacks an adequate theoretical account of the fundamental nature of good legal writing. As a result, legal writers are left without a solid conceptual framework to ground the individual rules and suggestions. This Article attempts to fill the theoretical void in the literature by offering a systematic analysis of what it is for a legal …

If I Had A Hammer: Can Shepardizing, Synthesis, And Other Tools Of Legal Writing Help Build Hope For Law Students?, Edward R. Becker

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Are lawyers mechanics? In 1920, photographer Lewis Hines took a striking photo of a powerhouse mechanic sure-handedly wielding a large wrench to tighten bolts on a steam pump. This picture may bring to mind many things, but I suspect that many legal writing professors in our (past or present) incarnations as practicing attorneys would not look at this image and think, "My job is a lot like that." Similarly, I assume that many of our students do not think of a lawyer's role in this way. Indeed, many of our students might have chosen to pursue a career in law …

The Real Impact Of Eliminating Affirmative Action In American Law Schools: An Empirical Critique Of Richard Sander's Study, David L. Chambers, Timothy T. Clydesdale, William C. Kidder, Richard O. Lempert

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In 1970, there were about 4000 African American lawyers in the United States. Today there are more than 40,000. The great majority of the 40,000 have attended schools that were once nearly all-white, and most were the beneficiaries of affirmative action in their admission to law school. American law schools and the American bar can justly take pride in the achievements of affirmative action: the training of tens of thousands of African American (as well as Latino, Asian American, and Native American) practitioners, community leaders, judges, and law professors; the integration of the American bar; the services that minority attorneys …

Essay: Recent Trends In American Legal Education, Paul D. Reingold

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An American law professor in Japan has much more to learn than to teach. A foreigner like me - who comes to Japan on short notice, with no knowledge of Japanese culture and institutions, and with no Japanese language skills - sets himself a formidable task. Happily, the courtesy of my hosts, the patience of my colleagues, and the devotion of my students, have made for a delightful visit. I thank all of you. You asked me to talk about American legal education. As you surely know, the system of legal education in the U.S. is very different from the …

Michigan's Minority Graduates In Practice: Answers To Methodological Queries, Richard O. Lempert, David L. Chambers, Terry K. Adams

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Before making a few remarks in response to those who commented on our article (Lempert, Chambers, and Adams 2000), we would like to express our gratitude to the editors of Law and Social Inquiry for securing these commentaries and to the people who wrote them. The comments both highlight the potential uses to which our research and similar studies may be put and give us the opportunity to address methodological concerns and questions that other readers of our article may share with those who commented on it. The responses to our work are of two types. Professors Nelson, Payne, and …

The Cutting Edge Of Poster Law, Michael A. Heller

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Students place tens of thousands of posters around law schools each year in staircases, on walls, and on bulletin boards. Rarely, however, do formal disputes about postering arise. Students know how far to go-and go no farther despite numerous avenues for postering deviance: blizzarding, megasigns, commercial or scurrilous signs. What is the history of poster law? What are its norms and rules, privileges and procedures? Is poster law effident? Is it just?

Doing Well And Doing Good: The Careers Of Minority And White Graduates Of The University Of Michigan Law School, David L. Chambers, Richard O. Lempert, Terry K. Adams

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Of the more than 1,000 law students attending the University of Michigan Law School in the spring of 1965, only one was African American. The Law School faculty, in response, decided to develop a program to attract more African American students. One element of this program was the authorization of a deliberately race-conscious admissiosn process. By the mid-1970s, at least 25 African American students were represented in each graduating class. By the late 1970s, Latino and Native American students were included in the program as well. Over the nearly three decades between 1970 and 1998, the admissions efforts and goals …

Kevin E. Kennedy, Joseph Vining

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Our first encounter was on one of Kevin's many triumphant days during law school. Kevin, then a second year student, had advanced to the final round of the Campbell Competition, the moot court competition in which students brief and argue a case as if before the United States Supreme Court. I was one of the five "justices" who heard the case. The others were the dean and three distinguished appellate judges. Four students presented oral arguments and all were fine, but, Kevin's, the "Justices" agreed, was simply of a different order. Archibald Cox, when Solicitor General of the United States, …

The Moral Responsibility Of Law Schools, Terrance Sandalow

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The subject I have been asked to address, the moral responsibility of-law schools, is perplexing, less because answers to the implicit question are uncertain than because the meaning of the question is unclear. Our ideas about moral responsibility have been formed in reference to individuals. They presuppose the existence of distinctively human characteristics such as understanding and will. What, then, can be meant by the moral responsibility of "law schools," institutions that, just because they are not human, necessarily lack these capacities?

The Basic Course—A Mild Dissent, Whitmore Gray

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Perhaps it is unusual to start a discussion of a topic with a dissent from the assumption underlying its choice, but I think that in the present case this may be justified. The present topic was no doubt selected because for many years teachers have viewed the course in "comparative law" as a basic course, leading subsequently to specialized courses or research in various subject matters or geographical areas. In fact, the other two speakers on this afternoon's program, Professors Rudolf Schlesinger of Cornell and Arthur von Mehren of Harvard, are both on record in the form of their casebooks …

Legal Education In The Soviet Union And Eastern Europe, Whitmore Gray

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The following notes are based on interviews with law professors, law students and lawyers during a brief trip in 1970 to Moscow, Budapest and Prague. On previous visits in 1959 and 1965 the writer had visited law schools in Kiev, Baku, Tbilisi, Alma Ata, Leningrad, Prague and Warsaw, and had sat in on lectures, recitation sections, and examinations.1 In looking this time for changes, the writer was particularly interested in whether there was some reflection there of the general student malaise which the United States has been experiencing, manifested in American law schools in student pressure for "relevant" courses and …

The Lawyer As A Negotiator: An Adventure In Understanding And Teaching The Art Of Negotiation, James J. White

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In the fall of 1965 we enlisted experience as a teacher in an experimental seminar called "The Lawyer as a Negotiator." We gave the students experience not by simulation but by making them negotiate with one another for their grades in the course. In this as in many other "experience" courses the teaching supplement consisted of readings and of classroom participation by the students and teachers. However the supplement differed from the standard trials and appeals or legal writing course in that a psychiatrist was a full partner in the teaching and in the discussion and analysis of the student …

The Law School Of The University Of Michigan: 1859 - 1959, Elizabeth Gaspar Brown

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On October 3, 1959, the law school of the University of Michigan will have completed a hundred years of functioning existence. A century earlier, on October 3, 1859, James Valentine Campbell delivered an address On the Study of the Law at the Presbyterian Church in Ann Arbor, officially opening the law department.

The Future Of Michigan's Law School, Henry M. Bates

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An article penned by Dean Bates in anticipation of the opening of the Law School's Lawyers' Club buildings in the following year. Bates does not mention by name the "distinguished alumnus of the University" whose "vision has developed the best-conceived and most effective plan in the history of the legal profession and the interests which it serves." A general narrative "travelogue" of the Law School in 1924.

Teaching Of International Law To Law Students, Edwin D. Dickinson

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A point to be noted at the outset, in any discussion of the teaching of international law to law students, is the relatively unimportant place which the subject occupies in the law student's program of study. The students in our law schools are tolerant of the interest which others manifest in international law. Indeed they are themselves greatly interested. They concede freely that it occupies an important place in the general scheme of things. But most of them feel that professional students cannot afford the time for even an introductory course. It results that courses in international law included in …

The Department Of Law And The State, Henry M. Bates

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We are living in a period of extraordinary unrest. The spirit of criticism is prevalent, and no belief or creed, no institution is exempt from this questioning spirit of the time. Among social institutions perhaps none is being more relentlessly subjected to attack than the law as administered in our courts and practiced by our lawyers. It is true that much of the criticism leveled at legal institutions is unreasonable and is based upon ignorance or prejudice, but there remains a residuum of complaint which is well founded. In the very nature of things law and its administration always have …

The Art Of Legal Practice, Edson R. Sunderland

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In one respect the law is the most perplexing subject with which a man can deal. It shifts and changes so rapidly that only a nimble and diligent student can keep abreast of it. One is likely to wake up any morning and find that the legislature has repealed a good part of what he knows, and he is in constant danger of having his most carefully formed opinions completely upset by a new decision of the Supreme Court. These violent changes are not due to any new discoveries, such as constantly enliven the scientific world, but merely to the …

The Four Year Course In The Department Of Law, Henry M. Bates

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The present year has witnessed the final step in the establishment of the new entrance requirement to the Law Department which was undertaken by the Faculty and Regents several years ago. This, in effect, provides that every student in the Law Department from now on shall have had at least one year in the Literary Department, or its equivalent elsewhere, and places the course of the Law Department practically upon the four year basis of the other schools in the University.

The Art Of Legal Practice, Edson R. Sunderland

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In one respect the law is the most perplexing subject with which a man can deal. It shifts and changes so rapidly that only a nimble and diligent student can keep abreast of it. One is likely to wake up any morning and find that the legislature has repealed a good part of what he knows, and he is in constant danger of having his most carefully formed opinions completely upset by a new decision of the Supreme Court. These violent changes are not due to any new discoveries, such as constantly enliven the scientific world, but merely to the …

The Law Teacher--His Functions And Responsibilities, Harry B. Hutchins

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The notion that the teaching of the law is quite as much a profession as is the practice of it, and that it demands an intellectual equipment of a high order, is probably gaining ground. It is fully recognized by those who understand what systematic legal education, as carried on to-day in our leading law schools, really is. But as yet the majority of laymen, and very many lawyers, probably most lawyers who were educated under the old regime as well as most of those who have come to the bar through the law office, fail to appreciate the full …

Legal Education In The United States, Horace Lafayette Wilgus

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The origin of law schools is lost in antiquity. It is probable there were advocates in Babylonia,1 and schools for the education of judges and scribes (perhaps the ancestral lawyers) in Egypt,2 more than 2000 years B.C. The Civil Code of Deuteronomy was published 621 B.C.,3 and soon afterward schools of the prophets were formed for its study.4 When Ezra left Babylon for Jerusalem (485 B.C.) he "set his heart * * * to teach in Jerusalem statutes and judgments,"5 and the ruins of his school could be seen by the law students at Husal, 500 years later.6 It is …

Humanistic, And Particularly Classical, Studies As A Preparation For The Law, Harry B. Hutchins

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Aside from the elementary branches, no particular subject is absolutely essential as a basis for the study and practice of the law. In this respect the law occupies a place somewhat different from that of the other learned professions. The student and practitioner of medicine must of necessity get a substantial scientific foundation for his professional work. This for him is an absolutely essential prerequisite. For the professional courses in engineering a special and definite scientific preparation must be made; without it nothing but the most ordinary work in engineering can be accomplished. And it is probable that for theology, …