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The Role Of Practice In Legal Education, Richard J. Wilson

Working Papers

This document is one of several general reports presented at the 18th International Congress on Comparative Law, held in Washington, DC in July 2010. The report covers the topic of The Role of Practice in Legal Education, and includes the text of the general report, as well as the original questionnaire to national reporters and two charts, one on general law school organization and one on how practice is taught in the legal academy. The report synthesizes information received from the reporting countries - Australia, Belgium, Canada (Quebec Province), Czech Republic, England and Wales, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, …

Educating Lawyers With A Global Vision, Phoebe A. Haddon

Maryland Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

Teaching Public Citizen Lawyering: From Aspiration To Inspiration, Mae Quinn

Journal Articles

A longtime social justice activist and clinical professor, Douglas Colbert,2 recently sought information from colleagues across the country3 for the second part of an important project examining a lawyer’s ethical obligation to engage in pro bono work during a time of crisis, such as the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina or 9/11.4 He sent out surveys to learn which schools actually taught the Preamble to the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct in ethics or other courses.5 As Professor Colbert’s letter explained, the Preamble states: “A lawyer, as a member of the legal profession, is a representative of clients, an officer …

The Potential Contribution Of Adr To An Integrated Curriculum: Preparing Law Students For Real World Lawyering, John M. Lande, Jean R. Sternlight

Faculty Publications

This Article briefly reviews the long history of critiques of legal education that highlight the failure to adequately prepare students for what they will and should do as attorneys. It takes a sober look at the hurdles reformers face when trying to make significant curricular changes and proposes a modest menu of reforms that interested faculty and law schools can largely achieve without investing substantial additional resources.This Article emphasizes the special contributions that alternative dispute resolution (ADR) can provide to legal education more generally. ADR instruction is an important corrective to a curriculum that routinely conveys the erroneous implication that …

The Journey Toward Excellence In Clinical Legal Education: Developing, Utilizing And Evaluating Methodologies For Determining And Assessing The Effectiveness Of Student Learning Outcomes, Ann Marie Cavazos

Journal Publications

This Article proposes pedagogy and methodology for the assessment of student learning outcomes in a Model Clinic Program, intended to accomplish the clinic's goal of preparing students for the practice of law. The Clinic Model emphasizes apprenticeship methodology and assessment pedagogy to ensure that students are learning and developing the legal skill sets that they are expected to learn. In this Article, the Author will depict the Clinic Model in the present tense to illustrate a working, not just a theoretical, model.

The Pedagogy Of "Yes We Can": Teaching Reformative Legal Justice In The Age Of Obama, Leroy Pernell

Journal Publications

These brief comments, delivered as part of the 5th Annual Fred Gray Sr. Civil Rights Symposium, Faulkner University, Thomas Goode Jones School of Law October 21, 2009, do not challenge whether law schools and the profession sufficiently make the case for public service and commitment to societal good; admittedly most existing standards and curricula do. Rather, these comments address the opportunity for legal education to tap, and expand on, a heightened psychological and emotional commitment that might be engendered in law students following the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States.

Clinical Legal Education At A Generational Crossroads: Shades Of Gray, Karla M. Mckanders

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Clinical legal education is at a crossroads. With studies like the Macrate Report, Carnegie Foundation Report “Educating Lawyers,” and Best Practices for Legal Education there is greater focus on experiential learning. Consequently, clinics are at an inflection point regarding their future. Three distinct generations will determine the path forward: Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials. Each generation brings a different set of preferences, biases, perspectives and strengths to the table. Given the changes in legal academia, what will the future hold for clinical legal education?

The following are four essays by clinicians from the three generations. They each relay their …

The Potential Contribution Of Adr To An Integrated Curriculum: Preparing Law Students For Real World Lawyering, Jean R. Sternlight

Scholarly Works

This Article briefly reviews the long history of critiques of legal education that highlight the failure to adequately prepare students for what they will and should do as attorneys. It takes a sober look at the hurdles reformers face when trying to make significant curricular changes and proposes a modest menu of reforms that interested faculty and law schools can largely achieve without investing substantial additional resources. This Article emphasizes the special contributions that alternative dispute resolution (ADR) can provide to legal education more generally. ADR instruction is an important corrective to a curriculum that routinely conveys the erroneous implication …

What We Don't Know Can Hurt Us: The Need For Empirical Research In Regulating Lawyers And Legal Services In The Global Economy, Carole Silver

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Special Introduction: October 2010, Lauren K. Robel

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Transnational Legal Practice 2009, Carole Silver, Laurel S. Terry, Ellyn S. Rosen

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article identifies some of the most important U.S. and international developments in transnational legal practice and provides citations for further research. The article begins by briefly reviewing the impact of the recession on legal services. The second section focuses on international developments. It identifies some of the ongoing efforts to implement the 2007 U.K. Legal Services Act, including the issuance of the influential Hunt and Smedley reports. It also provides information about law reform initiatives in France, Scotland and Korea. This section of the article also provides information about Canadian and Australian developments regarding admission of foreign applicants and …

Journeys To 20th Street: The Inner City As Critical Pedagogical Space For Legal Education, Sarah Buhler

Dalhousie Law Journal

This essay draws on critical geographical theories to propose that the location of clinical legal education programs in inner city space can affect the production of professional identities and ideologies oflaw students. It anchors its analysis in an examination of the clinical law program at the University of Saskatchewan College of Law, where students work at a poverty law clinic in Saskatoon's inner city. The paper first turns to a critical examination of law school space, which can function to promote dominant notions about law and legal practice. The author cautions that ifnot navigated attentively, thejourney to inner city space …

Liberalization And The Development Of Legal Education Policy In East Africa: A Case Study Of Uganda, Pamela Tibihikirra-Kalyegira

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes the liberalization of legal education and training in East Africa. It explores avenues for developing a legal education policy that addresses various problems with regard to the quality of law graduates and of legal services in the market place currently available given the large number of law graduates entering the professional field each year.

The legal systems in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda to a large extent follow the Common Law theories and practices of English Law. The three countries also share a history in the establishment of law schools and they face similar problems and challenges with …

Foundational Competencies: Innovation In Legal Education, David E. Van Zandt

Faculty Working Papers

Spurred by a rapidly changing legal environment and a desire to differentiate and maximize the success of our graduates, Northwestern Law recently completed a major strategic planning initiative resulting in a revolutionary report entitled Plan 2008: Preparing Great Leaders for the Changing World. Plan 2008 is the most recent installment of a long-term process to enhance our student quality and programs. The new initiatives build upon a strategic plan that we have been refining since its implementation in 1998. Under the prior plan, we introduced the evaluative admissions interview and work-experience policy for applicants.1 We also added a number of …

Recalibrating The Moral Compass: Expanding "Thinking Like A Lawyer" Into "Thinking Like A Leader", Karen H. Rothenberg

Faculty Scholarship

This essay was prepared for the Leadership in Legal Education Symposium IX.

Pedagogic Techniques: Multi-Disciplinary Courses, Annotated Document Review, Collaborative Work & Large Groups, George Kuney

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Law And Learning In An Era Of Globalization, Harry W. Arthurs

Comparative Research in Law & Political Economy

This paper explores the ways in which globalization, as a dominant influence on political economy, makes its presence felt on legal education and research. In particular, it questions whether law schools have maintained agency in the choice to embrace globalization in their curricula, scholarship and general orientation or whether law schools have been forced to bend to the realities of the global economy. While neo-liberal “globalization of the mind” has shifted assumptions about the project of law and entrenched a “new normal” in legal education and scholarship, the McGill curriculum – based on so-called transsystemic legal education – offers the …

Brazilian Legal Education: Curricular Reform That Goes Further Without Going Beyond, Roberto Fragale Filho

Comparative Research in Law & Political Economy

Brazilian legal education is engaged since 1994 in a long and inconclusive process of curriculum reform in which the Brazilian Bar Association (Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil) has been one of its greatest players. The transformations undertaken in legal education in the last two decades, were buoyed by three things: (a) the redemocratization of the country, completed in 1988 with the promulgation of the new Constitution, (b) the expansion of higher education, which resulted in a amount of more than half of a million law students, and (c) the protection of interests of the lawyers’ corporation, even though it has …

Global Anti‐Corruption Regimes: Why Law Schools May Want To Take A Multi‐Jurisdiction Approach, D. Alison Von Rosenvinge

Comparative Research in Law & Political Economy

The legal fight against bribery and corruption has evolved from the solitary effort of the United States with its Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) to a global legal endeavor. Corporations are frequently engaged in transnational deals that require them to understand their obligations under a web of anti-corruption regulations with penalties ranging from fines in the tens of millions of dollars to life imprisonment. Although the market for legal services has changed to match client needs, the curriculum at most U.S. law schools has not. This paper explores the relationship between transnational business and legal services and legal education in …

Western Europe: Last Holdout In The Worldwide Acceptance Of Clinical Legal Education, Richard J. Wilson

Comparative Research in Law & Political Economy

Clinical legal education has achieved widespread acceptance throughout the world, growing by leaps and bounds during recent decades in countries like Russia and China, and expanding rapidly in other areas of Eastern Europe, Latin America and Africa. It is, arguably, the most significant innovation in legal education since the “invention” of the Socratic-case method in the United States, at the turn of the 20th Century. There is, however, one geographic area where the philosophy and methodology of clinical legal education has been resisted. That area is Continental Western Europe (the UK has something of a tradition of clinics, though stunted). …

The Five Lessons I Learned Through Clinical Education, Nadia Chiesa

Comparative Research in Law & Political Economy

Legal education has long been criticized for failing to prepare students for the realities of the practice of law. This article explores how clinical legal education programmes, offered at many Canadian law schools, may respond to this criticism and provide an alternative to traditional legal education. Through a reflection on the experience of working as a student at a community legal aid clinic, the author offers a student's perspective on the challenges and rewards of pursuing this type of legal education and discusses how clinical legal education may better equip law students for their future career.

Externships: A Signature Pedagogy For The Apprenticeship Of Professional Identity And Purpose, Kelly S. Terry

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Against Practice, Anthony V. Alfieri

Articles

No abstract provided.

Teaching Business Lawyering In Law Schools: A Candid Assessment Of The Challenges And Some Suggestions For Moving Ahead, Eric J. Gouvin

Faculty Scholarship

As a result of several recent studies and changes in the ABA's Standards for Approval of Law Schools, legal education is paying more attention to skills training for law students. The need to bring the skills and values of business lawyers into the classroom has never been greater, yet there remains a real risk that "skills training" may be skewed in favor of litgation skills, with little emphasis given to transactional practice. This Article assesses some of the obstacles that stand in the way of effective integration of transactional skills into the law school curriculum and offers some concrete suggestions …

Between Diffusion And Distinctiveness In Globalization: U.S. Law Firms Go Glocal, Carole Silver, Nicole De Bruin Phelan, Mikaela Rabinowitz

Articles by Maurer Faculty

There is widespread agreement that law firms have embraced globalization, but what this means and why it matters are subjects still cloaked with uncertainty. Do law firms follow the models and processes of globalization characteristic of other businesses? Or are law firms forced to take a different approach because of the nature of law and its basis in a particular national system? In this article, we consider these questions as they apply to U.S. law firms, and offer a new lens to interpret the role of globalization in the activities of law firms and their lawyers. We use data relating …

The Clinical Year, Stephen J. Ellmann

Articles & Chapters

This article makes the case for the value – and the feasibility, under current accreditation and related rules governing law schools - of a clinical rotation for law students, modeled on the rotations that are a key part of medical school education. The “clinical year,” which would engage students in almost full-time practice/study for their third year of law school, could be a significant step in building the complete apprenticeship that the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has urged. It would also rely to a large extent on the supervision, and teaching, that adjunct law school faculty – …

Law School And The Making Of The Student Into A Lawyer: Transformation Of First Year Law Students In The National University Of Singapore, Seow Hon Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This paper examines the impact of legal education and law school on the student's moral development and conception of professional identity, through an empirical study of first year law students of the Class of 2010 at the National University of Singapore. The project aims to increase consciousness of how law school remakes students and develops the moral and professional identity of future lawyers, and to facilitate a dialogue that reshapes legal education to achieve its aims. Given that legal education in Singapore is similar to that in other law schools in common law jurisdictions, the analysis is, with allowances for …

Rethinking The Legal Reform Agenda: Will Raising The Standards For Bar Admission Promote Or Undermine Democracy, Human Rights, And Rule Of Law?, Samuel J. Levine, Russell G. Pearce

Scholarly Works

This Article offers a critique of, and alternative to, the American Bar Association's efforts, supported by the United States government, to promote the requirement of a college education in law as prerequisite for becoming a lawyer in developing countries. Using the examples of China, which currently has a far more open system for becoming a legal services provider, and South Africa, which already has a system consistent with the goals of the ABA, the Article argues that more stringent education requirements actually undermine democracy, human rights, and rule of law. In China, where the most significant advocates for human rights …

From The Editors, Mark Tushnet, Carrie Menkel Meadow

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Cravath By The Sea: Recruitment In The Large Halifax Law Firm, 1900-1955, Jeffrey Haylock

Dalhousie Law Journal

The traditional view is that regularized, meritocratic hiring in Canadian law firms had to wait until the 1960s, with the rise in importance of Ontario university law schools. There was, however, more regional variation than this view allows. After an overview of the rise of large firms in the U.S. and Canada, and of the modern hiring strategies (the "Cravath system") that developed in New York in the early twentieth century, the author considers whether Halifax firms were employing these strategies between 1900 and 1955. Nepotistic hiring continued unabated; however, the three large firms of the period recruited young students …