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If You Think Law Schools Teach Students To "Think Like A Lawyer"...Think Again!, Douglas Rush

Douglas Rush

Law school faculty and deans purport to teach law students to “think like a lawyer.” Indeed, this phrase has been repeated so often that it has become legal pedagogical dogma. Professor Wegner, co-author of the Carnegie Report Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law, has stated that “thinking like a lawyer” has been embraced as a ”trope of the core identity” of the legal academy. Unfortunately, whether law schools truly teach their students to “think like a lawyer” has not been previously subjected to empirical analysis.

This article is an empirical examination using logistic regression analysis of two different …

If You Think Law Schools Teach Students To "Think Like A Lawyer"...Think Again!, Douglas Rush

Douglas Rush

Law school faculty and deans purport to teach law students to “think like a lawyer.” Indeed, this phrase has been repeated so often that it has become legal pedagogical dogma. Professor Wegner, co-author of the Carnegie Report Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law, has stated that “thinking like a lawyer” has been embraced as a ”trope of the core identity” of the legal academy. Unfortunately, whether law schools truly teach their students to “think like a lawyer” has not been previously subjected to empirical analysis.

This article is an empirical examination using logistic regression analysis of two different …

‘Best Practices’: What’S The Point?, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

In a separate article - Best Practices on “Best Practices”: Legal Education and Beyond - Professor Robbins formulated a paradigm for “best practices” and applied it to the book, Best Practices for Legal Education. Professor Robbins concluded that the book did not meet any of the criteria necessary to constitute best practices and, further, that using the concept of best practices when thinking and writing about legal education is misleading and inappropriate. The primary author of the book, Roy Stuckey, responded, claiming that “best” can mean something other than best, that the difference really doesn’t matter, and that the debate …

The Impact Of Active Learning On Law School Performance, Patricia W. Hatamyar, Todd P. Sullivan

Patricia W Hatamyar

“Active learning” – where law students actively participate in the learning process, rather than passively receive information from the “sage on the stage” – has become a cornerstone of the calls for reform in legal education. But academic support programs have been using active learning techniques for a long time. The legal academy generally, not just academic support professionals, should appreciate the effectiveness of active learning in improving students’ law school performance. This article is a both a quantitative and qualitative empirical study of a comprehensive Active Learning (“AL”) program at St. Thomas University School of Law. St. Thomas runs …

These Rules Are Made To Be Broken Down: Teaching Students The Art Of Deconstructing Rules Of Law, Jeremiah A. Ho

Jeremiah A Ho

ABSTRACT

THESE RULES ARE MADE TO BE BROKEN DOWN: TEACHING STUDENTS THE ART OF DECONSTRUCTING RULES OF LAW

JEREMIAH A. HO

Despite its often contended (and oft-contentious) meanings, legal academics and educators still resort to the now-entrenched phrase,“think like a lawyer,” to describe the goal of law schools in educating their students. But even a brief deconstruction of the phrase brings its varied interpretations to light: What does it mean to “think like a lawyer”? It might easily imply an existing difference from thinking like a doctor, a banker, or a representative from another profession. But within the law, does …

Perfect Compromise Or Perfectly Compromised Tests: Law School Examinations That Mimic A Bar Examination’S Format?, Charles J. Senger

Charles J. Senger

Increased coverage, facial validity based on similarity to many bar examinations, and reduced scoring time all support combining bar examination type essay questions and Multistate Bar Examination multiple choice questions to form a typical three or four hour law school examination. Unfortunately, great care must be exercised or the resulting examination will be seriously flawed. In particular, six challenges must be met to produce a quality examination. Those six are: 1. Mismatches between the examination’s questions and scoring methods when compared to teaching, curriculum, or institutional goals; 2. Insufficient sample size; 3. Insufficient resources for drafting, pre-testing, and processing; 4. …

Outfoxed: Pierson V. Post And The Natural Law, Josh Blackman

Josh Blackman

Think back to first year property class. You are a bright-eyed 1L, and one of the first cases you read deals with hunting foxes on the beaches of Long Island, New York. The fact pattern seems obscure enough, but Pierson v. Post is the seminal case used to teach generations of law students about the acquisition of property. The interest in Pierson has recently been reinvigorated thanks to the uncovering of the original record of this case. Last year the Law and History Review dedicated an entire issue to this famous foxhunt. The holding in Pierson v. Post has been …

Educating Lawyers To Meditate? From Exercises To Epistemology To Ethics: The Contemplative Practice In Law Movement As Legal Education Reform, Rhonda V. Magee

Rhonda V Magee

This Article argues that the contemplative practice in law movement assists in answering the call for reform of legal education and the development of professional identity highlighted by the Carnegie Foundation in its "Education Lawyers" analysis and others, presenting the outlines of the pathway to effective reform so far missing from the mainstream critique. The author argues that the contemplative practices movement does much more than merely specify skills missing from traditional legal education that are crucial to effective and sustainable lawyering, including the capacity for self-reflection, emotional intelligence, and moral discernment. Going further, it suggests a new approach to …

30 Ways For First Year Law Students To Achieve Success, Jennifer Bard

Jennifer Bard

Law School is a scary and mysterious place and incoming students often have very little idea what to expect. Students eventually catch on to the difference between legal and undergraduate educations: fact-pattern analysis versus memorization of facts. This article is based on a series of presentations I made under the auspices of Texas Tech University School of Law’s Hispanic Law Student Association (HLSA), which offers a boot camp for incoming students and a second round of orientation after the first semester. This article provides practical advice from a Torts Professor and a successful third-year law student on how to succeed …

Alternative Justifications For Law School Academic Support Programs: Self-Determination Theory, Autonomy Support, And Humanizing The Law School., Louis N. Schulze Jr.

Louis N. Schulze Jr.

This Article examines alternative justifications for law school academic support programs (hereinafter “ASPs”). By “alternative,” I mean justifications not having anything to do with bar passage rates or even demonstrable increases in academic performance, per se. My thesis is two-fold. First, I argue that ASPs help humanize the law school environment. By providing a source of encouragement and assistance in an environment too often devoid of significant positive support, ASPs can leave students feeling that their law school actually cares whether they succeed. For those in academia who believe that providing a more humane law school environment is an admirable …

How To Drink From A Firehose Without Drowning, Or Online Current Awareness Made Less Difficult, Edward M. Mcclure

Edward M McClure

Once upon a time, the law changed gently; actively keeping ahead of your students was unnecessary. Now you can have up to the minute information on your desktop. In fact, now you must have up to the minute information on your desktop, because your students are following “blawgs” and subscribing to “feeds” and reading “tweets”. While you are asking that elegant Socratic question, they are reading an appellate opinion that had not been published when class began. Some of your peers – and rivals – are doing the same. No matter how unnatural they seem, we must force ourselves to …

The Good, The Law, And The Municipal Ideal - An Integrative Developmental View Of The Case Of The Speluncean Explorers And The Crisis Of Meaning In Western Jurisprudence, Sean S. Yang

Sean S Yang

For centuries, law had been understood as something sacred, transcendent, a set of righteous directives emanating from a divine authority. Less than three hundred years ago, something strange happened. A handful of humans began to think a new type of thought: they conceived the law as a self-contained system understandable on its own terms, its merit determined only by its consistency with "reason," the correctness and supremacy of which was self-evident. Less than one hundred years ago, something even stranger occurred: another handful of humans directed their attention to thought itself and began creating knowledge about knowledge, writing language about …

Teaching Negotiation To A Globally Diverse Audience: Ethics, Morality And Cultural Differences, David Allen Larson, Vanessa Seyman

David Allen Larson

"Teaching Negotiation to a Globally Diverse Audience: Ethics, Morality, and Cultural Differences" (by David Allen Larson and Vanessa Seyman) This is a short article discussing the challenges of teaching negotiation, and also the challenge of actually negotiating, in a globally diverse environment. Issues of ethics, morality and culture can surface quite quickly when teaching and negotiating in a multicultural environment. The article builds upon our recent experiences as participants in the Second Generation Global Negotiation conference held Istanbul, Turkey. The article provides examples of how cultural and language differences can impact both actual negotiations and negotiation teaching and provides suggestions …

How The Global Crime Syndicates Fuel Planet Destruction, Global Alliance

Global Alliance

since 1945 more environmental planet destruction has been fuelled and financed with ever more leveraged debt than in the previous 60 million years - it's applied terrorism against the global life support system under the protection racket of a corrupt law profession

Teaching The Ethical Values Governing Mediator Impartiality Using Short Lectures, Buzz Group Discussions, Video Clips, A Defining Features Matrix, Games, And An Exercise Based On Grievances Filed Against Florida Mediators, Paula M. Young Prof.

Paula Marie Young Prof.

Desegregating Legal Education, Peggy Cooper Davis

Georgia State University Law Review

This is a transcription of the 44th Henry J. Miller Distinguished Lecture given by Professor Peggy Cooper Davis of New York University School of Law.

Shaping Professional Knowledge: The Intended And Unintended Consequences Of Fellowship Funding In Law Schools, Cynthia Fuchs Epstein

Cynthia Epstein

The development of knowledge in any profession is determined by many factors including the cultural receptivity to new ideas within the field and in the larger society, the interests and visions of the professions’ leaders, and the availability of resources for recruitment of talent, resource development and dissemination of knowledge. This paper examines the impact of resources within the legal profession, and particularly regarding the role of resources in determining public interest career options. It draws from a larger study of the factors that facilitate and deter the choice of legal careers in the public interest. I find that fellowships …

The Why Of It: Langdell's Generation Speaks To Today's Law Sudents, David S. Dehorse

David S. DeHorse

I belive this portrayal of the Case System of Legal Study will be invaluable to every student entering law school, and most of those who have completed their 1L year. Frankly, most practicing lawyers would probably benefit by a reading. I've been told it's a "good read." Hope you'll agree.

Teaching Professional Ethics To Lawyers And Mediators Using Active Learning Techniques, Paula M. Young

Paula Marie Young Prof.

Deepening The Discourse Using The Legal Mind’S Eye: Lessons From Neuroscience And Psychology That Optimize Law School Learning, Hillary Burgess

Hillary Burgess

Research demonstrates that incorporating visual aids and exercises into learning environments improves learning with higher-order cognitive skills such as “thinking like a lawyer.” This article argues that because law school learning focuses on the highest order cognitive skills, professors optimize the learning environment by including visual aids and visual exercises.

This article begins by defining what higher order cognitive skills are by mapping common law school learning tasks onto a leading taxonomy of learning objectives. This article argues that the legal curriculum engages all six levels of learning by traditionally teaching the lowest four levels of learning and by traditionally …

Creating The Optimisitc Classroom: What Law Schools Can Learn From Explanatory Style Effects, Corie Rosen

Corie Rosen

If it is true that we are what we think, then in the law school environment, where depression is rampant, positive psychology may plan an especially important role. This article is primarily concerned with the implications that the attribution style studies and decision-making studies may have for student motivation in the law learning environment. Specifically, this paper will address optimism, the attribution style language associated with the presence of optimism in the brain, the methods for importing that language into the law school classroom, and the possible effects of such teaching.

True North: Navigating For The Transfer Of Learning In Legal Education, Tonya Kowalski

Tonya Kowalski

As lifelong learners, we all know the feelings of discomfort and bewilderment that can come from being asked to apply existing skills in a completely new situation. As legal educators, we have also experienced the frustration that comes from watching our students struggle to identify and transfer skills from one learning environment to another. For example, a first-semester law student who learns to analogize case law to a fact pattern in a legal writing problem typically will not see the deeper applications for those skills in a law school essay exam several weeks later. Similarly, when law students learn how …

Averting The Captain Vere “Veer”: Billy Budd As Melville’S Republican Response To Plato, Robert E. Atkinson

Robert E. Atkinson Jr.

This article shows how Melville’s Billy Budd, rightly one of law and literature’s most widely studied canonical texts, answers Plato’s challenge in Book X of the Republic: Show how “poets” create better citizens, especially better rulers, or banish them from the commonwealth of reasoned law. Captain Vere is a flawed but instructive version of the Republic’s philosopher-king, even as his story is precisely the sort of “poetry” that Plato should willing allow, by his own republican principles, into the ideal polity. Not surprisingly, the novella shows how law’s agents must be wise, even as their law must be philosophical, if …

Seeking The St. Thomas Effect: Law School Mission And The Formation Of Professional Identity, Jennifer Wright

Jennifer Wright

Law schools have long prided themselves on their ability to train law students to “think like lawyers”. Many law schools and faculty deny that they do or should play any role in the formation of students’ professional and moral identities. Recent events point to the high social costs imposed by lawyers and judges who demonstrate no professional allegiance beyond pleasing the client or employer and maximizing the bottom line. Our legal system and our society as a whole depend upon ethical and professional behavior on the part of our lawyers and judges. Recent studies have challenged law schools’ rejection of …

"A Great Dread Of Vulgarity": A Novel Perspective On Christopher Columbus Langdell And The Origins Of The Case Method In American Legal Education, Andrew Yaphe

Andrew Yaphe

When he introduced the case method of teaching to Harvard Law School in the 1870s, Christopher Columbus Langdell permanently changed the shape of American legal education. Despite the enormity of Langdell’s influence on legal pedagogy, we understand surprisingly little about what he intended to accomplish with his innovations. This Article offers an original interpretation of Langdell’s contributions to the way we think about the law and legal education. Reading Langdell in tandem with Gilbert Osmond, the central male character in Henry James’s 1881 novel The Portrait of a Lady, shows Langdell to be an example of a particular type of …

A Path Not Taken: Hans Kelsen's Pure Theory Of Law In The Land Of Legal Realists, D. A. Jeremy Telman

Law Faculty Publications

This Essay is a contribution to a volume on the influence of Hans Kelsen’s legal theory in over a dozen countries. The Essay offers four explanations for the failure of Kelsen’s pure theory of law to take hold in the United States. Part I covers the argument that Kelsen’s approach failed in the United States because it is inferior to H. L. A. Hart’s brand of legal positivism. Part II discusses the historical context in which Kelsen taught and published in the United States and explores both philosophical and sociological reasons why the legal academy in the United States rejected …

Legal Education In China: English Language Materials, Roderick O'Brien

International Journal of Legal Information

Modern legal education began in China late in the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), and then expanded during the period of the Republic of China from 1912. With the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, legal education entered a new and difficult period. The compilation of English language materials offered here includes a few materials relating to the Qing and Republican periods, but after 1949 only materials relating to the People’s Republic of China (mainland China). Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan all have separate legal education systems and structures, and are excluded from this compilation.

Legal Education Reform, Claudio Grossman

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Embedded Librarians: Teaching Legal Research As A Lawyering Skill, Vicenç Feliú, Helen Frazer

Vicenç Feliú

This article addresses a proposed pedagogy for teaching the lawyering skill of advanced legal research in practice environment, such as a clinic, consonant with the recommendations of the 2007 Carnegie Report, Educating Lawyers, and the 1992 ABA Taskforce on Law Schools and the Profession, Legal Education and Professional Development (the MacCrate Report). It examines how the relatively new trend of embedding librarians in practice settings, offering assistance at the point of need, could be effective in law schools. It proposes a model for teaching advanced legal research by embedding law librarians in law school clinics based on the experiment conducted …

Studying And Teaching "Law As Rhetoric": A Place To Stand, Linda L. Berger

Linda L. Berger

This article proposes that law students may find a better fit within the legal culture of argument if they are introduced to rhetorical alternatives to counter narrowly formalist and realist perspectives on how the law works and how judges decide cases. The article makes a two-part argument: first, introducing law students to rhetorical alternatives allows them to envision their role as lawyers as constructive, effective, and imaginative while grounded in law, language, and reason. Second, offering rhetorical alternatives allows law professors to enrich their own study and teaching and to develop a more nuanced understanding of the law school classroom …