Digital Commons Network^™

Innovate, Collaborate & Serve: Louisiana’S “Lift” – A Legal Incubator And Accelerator Program Startup Guide, Amy Duncan

Journal of Experiential Learning

No abstract provided.

The Legal Academy Under Erasure, Richard E. Redding

Catholic University Law Review

We hear much about the “crisis” in legal education: steep declines in law school enrollments and graduates unprepared for practice who cannot find jobs. Proposals to address the crisis enjoy wide support and are poised to dramatically change the landscape of legal education. These reforms are harmful to law students and the legal profession, placing the legal academy “under erasure,” as Jacques Derrida would say. They erase the academic nature of law school by: (1) reorienting it from an academically-grounded legal education towards vocational training, (2) requiring just two years of study for the J.D. degree, (3) allowing graduates of …

The Next Move In Legal Education Is Ours…., Luke Bierman

Journal of Experiential Learning

No abstract provided.

Portals To Practice: A Multidimensional Approach To Integrating Experiential Education Into The Traditional Law School Curriculum, Myra Berman

Journal of Experiential Learning

No abstract provided.

Think Like A Businessperson: Using Business School Cases To Create Strategic Corporate Lawyers​., Alicia J. Davis

Articles

For the past twenty-five years, my academic and professional pursuits have straddled the line between business and law. I majored in business administration in college and then worked as an analyst in the Corporate Finance department at a bulge bracket Wall Street firm. After completing a JD/MBA, I returned to investment banking with a focus on middle-market mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and subsequently practiced law with a focus on private equity and M&A. Finally, in 2004, I found my current home as a corporate law professor. In my courses, which include Mergers & Acquisitions, Enterprise Organization, and Investor Protection, I …

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

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Internprofessional Education, Patricia E. Roberts

Faculty Articles

As legal educators consider how to improve the outcomes of legal education, maximizing the knowledge, skills, and values taught during the law school experience, consideration should be given to increasing interprofessional learning opportunities in the curricula. As Best Practices for Legal Education suggested, the creative thinking necessary for effective problem-solving includes an understanding of interprofessional dimensions of practice, but interprofessional opportunities are still the exception rather than the norm in legal education. Interprofessional legal education intentionally asks law students to blend the knowledge, skills, and values of two or more professions in order to address complex legal problems. Placing students …

The Practice Value Of Experiential Legal Education: An Examination Of Enrollment Patterns, Course Intensity, And Career Relevance, Margaret E. Reuter, Joanne M. Ingham

Faculty Works

How will law schools meet the challenge of expanding their education in lawyering skills as demanded from critics and now required by the ABA? This article examines the details of the experiential coursework (clinic, field placement, and skills courses) of 2,142 attorneys. It reveals that experiential courses have not been comparably pursued or valued by former law students as they headed to careers in different settings and types of law practice. Public interest lawyers took many of these types of courses, at intensive levels, and valued them highly. In marked contrast, corporate lawyers in large firms took far fewer. When …

The Practice Value Of Experiential Legal Education: An Examination Of Enrollment Patterns, Course Intensity, And Career Relevance, Margaret Reuter, Joanne M. Ingham

Articles & Chapters

How will law schools meet the challenge of expanding their education in lawyering skills as demanded from critics and now required by the ABA? This article examines the details of the experiential coursework (clinic, field placement, and skills courses) of 2,142 attorneys. It reveals that experiential courses have not been comparably pursued or valued by former law students as they headed to careers in different settings and types of law practice. Public interest lawyers took many of these types of courses, at intensive levels, and valued them highly. In marked contrast, corporate lawyers in large firms took far fewer. When …

The Holmes School Of Law: A Proposal To Reform Legal Education Through Realism, Robert Rubinson

All Faculty Scholarship

This article proposes the formation of a new law school, the Holmes School of Law. The curriculum of the Holmes School would draw upon legal realism, particularly as articulated by Oliver Wendell Holmes. The proposed curriculum would focus on educating students about "law in fact"—how law is actually experienced. It rejects the idea that legal education should be about reading cases written by judges who not only bring their own biases and cultural understandings to their role, but who also ignore law as experienced, which, in the end, is what law is. This disconnect is especially troubling because virtually all …

Technology And Client Communications: Preparing Law Students And New Lawyers To Make Choices That Comply With The Ethical Duties Of Confidentiality, Competence, And Communication, Kristin J. Hazelwood

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

That the use of technology has radically changed the legal profession is beyond dispute. Through technology, lawyers can now represent clients in faraway states and countries, and they can represent even local clients through a “virtual law office.” Gone are the times in which the lawyer’s choices for communicating with clients primarily involve preparing formal business letters to convey advice, holding in-person client meetings in the office, or conducting telephone calls with clients on landlines from the confines of the lawyer’s office. Not only do lawyers have choices about how to communicate with their clients, but they also frequently choose …

And Now A Crisis In Legal Education, James E. Moliterno

Scholarly Articles

The current crisis in legal education coincides with a crisis in the practice of law. Law practice has changed as a result of technology, globalization, and economic pressures. The market for legal education's product, law graduates, have diminished. Law schools cannot remain the same in this environment. Except for a very small number of elite schools, those that do not adjust are at serious risk of failing.

An economic change has taken place against a system in which mostly corporate clients willingly paid for the training of beginners at major law firms. Law firms could absorb those costs if partners …

Experiential Education And Our Divided Campuses, Margaret E. Reuter, Joanne M. Ingham

Faculty Works

The Carnegie education masters, legal employers, and the ABA have appealed for more experiential teaching in law schools. The time is now; every school will soon have to provide at least 6 credits of clinic, field placement, and skills courses for each of their students according to the ABA’s most recent amendments to the Standards for Approval of Law Schools. Many educators and commentators proclaim the successes of the experiential courses to date, and assume that our current offerings just have to be expanded to accommodate the influx of students. However examination of the nature of the experiential coursework of …

Clinical Collaborations: Going Global To Advance Social Entrepreneurship, Deborah Burand, Susan R. Jones, Jonathan Ng, Alicia E. Plerhoples

Articles

In the summer of 2012, transactional law clinics from three U.S. law schools: George Washington University; Georgetown University; and the University of Michigan launched a collaboration to serve a common client — Ashoka, a global nonprofit organization that supports close to 3,000 social entrepreneurs across 76 countries. While clinic collaborations within universities happen occasionally, clinic collaborations across universities are unusual. This essay focuses on the motivations, operations, lessons, and next steps of this cross-university, clinical collaboration aimed at advancing social entrepreneurship globally. Specifically, this essay examines why the collaboration was launched, how the collaboration is structured, what the collaboration offers …

The Teaching Of Law Practice Management And Technology In Law Schools: A New Paradigm, Richard S. Granat, Stephanie Kimbro

Chicago-Kent Law Review

The teaching of law practice management in law schools is becoming more critical for our profession. Employment with a traditional law firm used to provide the training and mentorship necessary to practice law. As a result of fewer employment prospects with traditional law firms, law students are now faced with the prospect of entering into law practice without this critical training and knowledge base soon after they become members of the bar.

Additionally, the Internet and information technology is transforming the practice of law and, as a result, the management of law firms is also being transformed. Lawyers must understand …

Developing An E-Curriculum: Reflections On The Future Of Legal Education And On The Importance Of Digital Expertise, Oliver Goodenough

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Legal education is in the midst of significant change, where much of how and what we have taught is under scrutiny. As we reform our curriculums in this moment of change, we should be guided by considerations of value added, values added, economic sustainability. It is no longer enough for our programs to target bar passage, doctrinal coverage, a shared language of argument, and skills and perspectives, important as these may be. Practice in the foreseeable future requires us to add new knowledge and competencies. Law and technology is an area that is ripe for expansion, with the possibility of …

Law Schools As Knowledge Centers In The Digital Age, Vern R. Walker, A.J. Durwin, Philip H. Hwang, Keith Langlais, Mycroft Boyd

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This article explores what it would mean for law schools to be “knowledge centers” in the digital age, and to have this as a central mission. It describes the activities of legal knowledge centers as: (1) focusing on solving real legal problems in society outside of the academy; (2) evaluating the problem-solving effectiveness of the legal knowledge being developed; (3) re-conceptualizing the structures used to represent legal knowledge, the processes through which legal knowledge is created, and the methods used to apply that knowledge; and (4) disseminating legal knowledge in ways that assist its implementation. The Article uses as extended …

Vol. 63, March 27, 2013, University Of Michigan Law School

Res Gestae

• Teaching Gone Wrong • Letter from the Editor • Detroit: Mid-Size Market • Goodbye, Ma'am Prez Och! • Moran & Friedman's Guide to SCOTUS • RG Mailbag • Halberstam: Squirrel Fan • Debt WIZard • Phid Style Dinners • New LSSS Lunch Series • Mr. Wolverine Letters • Law Student Comics • Photos of Stuff that Happened this year!

Prospective Student Information Booklet (2012-13), Florida State University College Of Law

Prospective Student Information Booklets

Booklet containing curriculum and course information for future law students.

Teaching Social Justice, Expanding Access To Justice: An Introduction, Jackie Gardina, Ngai Pindell

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

"Teaching Social Justice, Expanding Access to Justice: An Introduction" provides an introduction to the publications in this issue focusing on the need for a change in legal education to promote the moral and ethical obligation of providing affordable and accessible legal services. The article introduces this issues' publications which all support the underlying theme of providing social justice to the underprivileged by making legal services accessible or reforming legal education to promote a new generation of attorneys with an underlying passion for fostering affordable and accessible public service.

Reforming Legal Education To Prepare Law Students Optimally For Real-World Practice, John M. Lande

Faculty Publications

This article synthesizes major points in the October 2012 symposium of the University of Missouri School of Law Center for the Study of Dispute Resolution, entitled "Overcoming Barriers in Preparing Law Students for Real-World Practice." There is a growing consensus that American law schools need to do a better job of preparing students to practice law. Teaching students to think like a lawyer is still necessary but it is not sufficient for students to act like a lawyer soon after they graduate.

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

Articles

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 …

Transactional Drafting: Using Law Firm Marketing Materials As A Research Resource For Teaching Drafting, Edward R. Becker

Articles

Since I started teaching drafting, I would like to think that I have continued to learn some lessons about teaching both the substance and the skills of transactional drafting. One of those lessons that I am going to be talking about today is one that I stumbled across by happy accident rather than one that I consciously sought. Specifically, I want to talk about and highlight the ways that law students can use law firm marketing materials to increase their understanding of both drafting and lawyering skills in law school and, hopefully, in practice.

The Crisis Of The American Law School, Paul Campos

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The economist Herbert Stein once remarked that if something cannot go on forever, it will stop. Over the past four decades, the cost of legal education in America has seemed to belie this aphorism: it has gone up relentlessly. Private law school tuition increased by a factor of four in real, inflation-adjusted terms between 1971 and 2011, while resident tuition at public law schools has nearly quadrupled in real terms over just the past two decades. Meanwhile, for more than thirty years, the percentage of the American economy devoted to legal services has been shrinking. In 1978 the legal sector …

The Crisis In Legal Education: Dabbling In Disaster Planning, Kyle P. Mcentee, Patrick J. Lynch, Derek M. Tokaz

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The legal education crisis has already struck for many recent law school graduates, signaling potential disaster for law schools already struggling with their own economic challenges. Law schools have high fixed costs caused by competition between schools, the unchecked expansion of federal loan programs, a widely exploited information asymmetry about graduate employment outcomes, and a lack of financial discipline masquerading as innovation. As a result, tuition is up, jobs are down, and skepticism of the value of a J.D. has never been higher. If these trends do not reverse course, droves of students will continue to graduate with debt that …

Prospective Student Information Booklet (2011-12), Florida State University College Of Law

Prospective Student Information Booklets

Booklet containing curriculum and course information for future law students.

Student Intellectual Property Issues On The Entrepreneurial Campus, Bryce C. Pilz

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

This article examines issues that are more frequently arising for universities concerning intellectual property in student inventions. It seeks to identify the issue, explain the underlying law, identify actual and proposed solutions to these issues, and explain the legal ramifications of these potential solutions.

Externship Demographics Across Two Decades With Lessons For Future Surveys, J.P. "Sandy" Ogilvy, Sudeb Basu

Scholarly Articles

Sudeb Basu (J.D., Catholic University, 2011) and Professor J.P. “Sandy” Ogilvy (Catholic University) report on the results of a 2007-2009 national survey of externship programs at American law schools and compare many of the data points to previous surveys of externship programs, the 2007-2008 CSALE survey, and some ABA/LSAC data, to chart the growth and increasing sophistication and complexity of the pedagogy associated with legal externships. Some of the data discussed include limits on the number of externship credits or externship courses, student involvement in externships, the distribution of credits awarded for externship courses, the average number of hours of …

Equipping Our Lawyers: Mitchell's Outcomes-Based Approach To Legal Education, Gregory M. Duhl

Faculty Scholarship

It is timely that the William Mitchell Law Review has decided to dedicate an issue to outcomes in legal education. As a long-time innovator in pedagogy, professional skills education, and experiential learning, William Mitchell has once again emerged as a leader in its outcomes-based approach to course and curricular design. Amid the current climate of uncertainty in legal education and the legal profession, and as a relative newcomer to Mitchell’s history, I believe in Mitchell’s future – tied to the past, but innovative and distinct. In this essay, I share our vision for increasing emphasis on outcomes, expanding experiential learning …

The Service-Learning Model In The Law School Curriculum, Laurie Morin, Susan Waysdorf

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.