Law Commons^™

Bad Therapy: Conceptualizing The Teaching Of “Thinking Like A Lawyer” As Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Chelsea Baldwin

St. Mary's Law Journal

Law students and lawyers experience mental illness and substance abuse at higher rates than the general population and other learned professions. This is bad for an individual’s wellbeing as well as their clients and society because mental illness and substance abuse increases stress which in turn decreases effective decision-making and judgment, and in worst case scenarios leads to attrition as individuals choose death by suicide which has cascading social and economic impacts. This Article identifies practices in legal education that likely combine in a causal mechanism, although not a sole cause, to the higher rates of mental illness and substance …

Distraction Or Necessity: A Post-Pandemic Examination Of Digital Devices In The Law School Classroom, Marcia Goldsmith, Karen Sanner

Saint Louis University Law Journal

Digital devices are a constant presence in the law school classroom; however, faculty members and students report mixed feelings about the role of digital devices in the classroom learning experience. While data suggests that use of digital devices has a deleterious effect on acquiring and retaining information, digital device usage is sometimes helpful and often necessary to facilitate learning in the modern law school classroom.

This article draws upon ideas from Professor James M. Lang in his book Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus and What You Can Do About (Hatchette Book Group Inc. 1st ed. 2020), identifies the reasons that …

The Next Required Law School Course: History Of America’S Foundings, Kevin Frazier

St. Mary's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Lawyer’S Law School And The Metropolis: Two Law Schools’ Missions, Carlos R. Rosende

St. Mary's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Assessment Of 2019 George R. Farmer Jr. Law Library Strategy Map, Caroline L. Osborne

Law Library Annual Reports and Assessments

No abstract provided.

In Response To Professor, Please Help Me Pass The Bar Exam, Jaylin K. Johnson

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Cultivating Versatility: The Multiple Foundations Of The Law School’S Public Mission, David Sandomierski

Dalhousie Law Journal

Law schools should aspire to cultivate versatility. To accomplish this goal, the salient features of the law school should reflect three foundational intellectual pillars: a commitment to the rule of law and legal rationality, an emphasis on multiple legal process, and an appreciation for legal pluralism. Complementing these symbolically “vertical” pillars on which the law school’s activity rests are three transversal virtues that operate “horizontally” to brace the foundations. These include a commitment to critique, context, and diversity. Ultimately, legal educators should concern themselves with how they can best prepare their students for a wide range of contributions to society …

Build A Career That Aligns With Your Passions, Ashley A. Ahlbrand

Articles by Maurer Faculty

When I was wrapping up my final semester of law school, I was fretting about what I would do next. The job market for new attorneys had tanked, less than half of my classmates had job offers lined up, I had no connections of my own that I could work, and worse, I still didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. Expressing my anxiety to our school’s Westlaw rep at the time, she asked me to reflect on my favorite parts of law school. That was easy: I loved any class where I could write a …

An Empirical Analysis Of Clinical Legal Education At Middle Age, Robert R. Kuehn

Scholarship@WashULaw

This article provides the first comprehensive empirical analysis of clinical legal education’s development and growth over the past fifty years. By analyzing dozens of surveys and reports on aspects of clinical legal education, including unique data developed by the authors, and comparing the results over time, this article presents a factual picture of clinical legal education’s progression from early adulthood to today’s middle age.

This article seeks to inform the present and help legal educators shape the future role of law clinic and field placement courses in the preparation of law students for the practice of law. It provides an …

Antiracist Lawyering In Practice Begins With The Practice Of Teaching And Learning Antiracism In Law School, Danielle M. Conway

Utah Law Review

I was honored by the invitation to deliver the 2021 Lee E. Teitelbaum keynote address. Dean Teitelbaum was a gentleman and a titan for justice. I am confident the antiracism work ongoing at the S.J. Quinney College of Law would have deeply resonated with him, especially knowing the challenges we are currently facing within and outside of legal education, the legal academy, and the legal profession. I am fortified in this work by Dean Elizabeth Kronk Warner’s commitment to antiracism and associated diversity, equity, and inclusion work. Finally, I applaud the students who serve on the Utah Law Review for …

Organized For Service: The Hicks Classification System And The Evolution Of Law School Curriculum, John L. Moreland

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article traces the origins and development of the Hicks Classification System, an in-house organizational scheme used by the Yale Law Library from the late 1930s to the 1990s. It explores the relationship between the Hicks Classification System and the changing pedagogical methods of the law school curriculum during the early part of the 20th century. It provides a brief biographical sketch of Frederick C. Hicks, creator of the scheme, the need for a legal classification system, a detailed analysis of Hicks’s scheme, its finding aids, and a discussion of the inherent cultural biases in the system.

Doing Law School Wrong: Case Teaching And An Integrated Legal Practice Method, Gregory J. Marsden, Soledad Atienza

Saint Louis University Law Journal

Since its inception, the Langdellian case method has been used to teach legal analysis and reasoning to generations of U.S. law students. For nearly as long, business school faculty have used their own version of the case method to teach management decision-making. In law school, a “case” is an appellate court decision, which students must analyze in preparation for Socratic questioning. To business students, a “case” is a narrative problem they must solve before debating and defending their solutions in a moderated classroom discussion.

This Article asserts that neither of these two methods are optimal to prepare students for bar …

Antiracist Lawyering In Practice Begins With The Practice Of Teaching And Learning Antiracism In Law School, Danielle M. Conway

Faculty Scholarly Works

I was honored by the invitation to deliver the 2021 Lee E. Teitelbaum keynote address. Dean Teitelbaum was a gentleman and a titan for justice. I am confident the antiracism work ongoing at the S.J. Quinney College of Law would have deeply resonated with him, especially knowing the challenges we are currently facing within and outside of legal education, the legal academy, and the legal profession. I am fortified in this work by Dean Elizabeth Kronk Warner’s commitment to antiracism and associated diversity, equity, and inclusion work. Finally, I applaud the students who serve on the Utah Law Review for …

“Safe Spaces” And “Brave Spaces”: The Case For Creating Law School Classrooms That Are Both, Laura P. Graham

University of Miami Law Review

Over the past decade, the subject of “safe spaces” on college and university campuses has received much press. As originally conceived, the term “safe space” refers to an environment—often a physical space—in which “everyone feels comfortable expressing themselves and participating fully, without fear of attack, ridicule, or denial of experience.” And while this original conception may not seem controversial, the meaning of “safe spaces” as applied to higher education classrooms is a subject of ongoing vigorous debate. On one side of the debate are those who believe that safe spaces foster learning by making it possible for students to be …

How The Shift To Pass/Fail Grading In Law School Affects Student Learning, Delara Jamshidi

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

In the Spring of 2020, law schools across North America rapidly shifted to pass/fail grading in response to the COVID-19 global pandemic. To help answer what the impact of this shift was on student learning, we analyzed a large dataset of approximately 2,000 survey responses from faculty and students. We tested two hypotheses, our findings were consistent with the hypothesis that learning outcomes improved under a pass/fail grading system. Many students talked about how the shift helped them learn in a deep and meaningful way.

Loving It To Pieces: Eu Law In Us Legal Academia, Revisited, Daniela Caruso

Faculty Scholarship

The Editors of the Special Issue have kindly invited me to update earlier reflections on the state of EU law in US legal academia. For a variety of reasons, it is important to me not to mislead the reader with the false promise of some kind of summa. What follows is my own perception of a complicated landscape, which I shall sketch lightly here in the hop of prompting other scholars of EU Law to report on their own US experience.

The Way To Barbara Armstrong, First Tenure-Track Law Professor In An Accredited Us Law School, Susan Carle

Contributions to Books

This is the third volume in a trilogy on gender issues in legal occupations. An overview of Women in the World ’ s Legal Professions (Schultz and Shaw 2003) was followed by Gender and Judging (Schultz and Shaw 2013), finally to be completed by this study on women teachers of law. All three books have been published by Hart Publishing, to whom we are grateful for their unceasing support over so many years. Our thanks also go to the International Institute for the Sociology of Law for facilitating the inclusion of all three volumes in their O ñ ati Socio-Legal …

If You Can’T Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em (Virtually): Institutionally Managing Law Students As Consumers In A Covid World, Debra M. Vollweiler

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.

Adaptable Design: Building Multi-Modal Content For Flexible Law School Teaching, Agnieszka Mcpeak

Saint Louis University Law Journal

This essay discusses ways to build course content that can easily toggle between face-to-face and online modes of instruction. It is meant as a quick, practical guide for law professors faced with challenging teaching circumstances due to COVID-19 and campus closures, but with long-term applicability as law schools continue to expand online and hybrid course offerings. This idea for “adaptable design” is based largely on my own experience moving face-to-face courses online. I try to avoid delving too much into technical definitions and pedagogical theory, instead focusing on personal experience and examples. Although COVID-19 has created an immediate need for …

Now Is Not The Time For Another Law School Lecture: An Andragogical Approach To Virtual Learning For Legal Education, Charletta A. Fortson

Saint Louis University Law Journal

COVID-19 forced nearly every institution of higher learning, as well as others, to quickly pivot from a traditional face-to-face teaching model to an online teaching model. While some institutions had technology in place to quickly adapt, most institutions were not prepared. Even where the technology infrastructure was in place, the faculty were not readily prepared to adapt their teaching style to this online model. Given these challenges, many professors chose the path of least resistance and chose to conduct those lectures just as they always had but just in an online format. However, now was not the time for another …

Inclusivity In Admissions And Retention Of Diverse Students: Leadership Determines Dei Success, Danielle M. Conway, Bekah Saidman-Krauss, Rebecca Schreiber

Faculty Scholarly Works

Penn State Dickinson Law has been leading with an Antiracist admissions philosophy and corresponding plans for implementation before the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Arguably, this approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)was not identified explicitly as a vision priority for the law school until July 2019, when Dickinson Law welcomed Danielle M. Conway as the first Black Dean and first woman Dean in the law school’s 186-year history. Dean Conway outlined four vision priorities to accomplish within her first five years at Dickinson Law. Vision priority number two calls upon the law school’s administrators to move the needle substantially on …

On Being First, On Being Only, On Being Seen, On Charting A Way Forward, Veronica Root Martinez

Journal Articles

This Essay reflects upon my professional experiences as a Black woman both at Notre Dame and beyond. It argues that it is important for students to have demographically diverse professors within their educational environments. It calls for the Notre Dame Law School community to continue to create a diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture.

How Distinctive Should Catholic Law Schools Be?, Robert K. Vischer

Journal of Catholic Legal Studies

(Excerpt)

I was a teenager in the 1980s, and I was raised in evangelical Christian circles through which I was encouraged to listen to “Christian” rock music, not secular, which sometimes gave rise to some casuistic line drawing:

• Does U2 count as Christian? Yes, because of that line in Sunday Bloody Sunday about the victory Jesus won!

• How about Bob Dylan? Yes, but only during his three-album “born again” period!

• Amy Grant? Definitely, but even after she crossed over into the secular Top 40?

• Does the song need to mention Jesus? What if it mentions Jesus …

Reflections On A Light Unseen, Vincent Rougeau

Journal of Catholic Legal Studies

(Excerpt)

I am very pleased to have an opportunity to offer some reflections on the manuscript for A Light Unseen by Professors John Breen and Lee Strang. It is an extraordinarily comprehensive look at the history of Catholic law schools in the United States. That aspect of the work alone makes it an important contribution to the scholarship on Catholic higher education in this country, and I am sure it will become an essential resource for scholars and educators across a wide range of fields. Nevertheless, A Light Unseen is much more than a history. It also raises a critical …

2019-20 Survey Of Applied Legal Education, Robert R. Kuehn, Margaret Reuter, David A. Santacroce

Faculty Works

This report presents the results of the 2019-20 Center for the Study of Applied Legal Education (CSALE) Survey of Applied Legal Education. The survey was composed of two parts – a Master Survey directed to ABA accredited U.S. law schools and a Sub-Survey distributed to each person teaching in a law clinic or field placement course. Ninety-five percent of law schools and over 1,300 clinical teachers participated in the survey. The results provide valuable insight into clinical programs and law clinic and field placement courses in areas such as design, capacity, administration, funding, and pedagogy, and into the role and …

Teaching Information Privacy Law, Joseph A. Tomain

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Teaching information privacy law is exciting and challenging because of the fast pace of technological and legal development and because "information privacy law" sprawls across a vast array of disparate areas of substantive law that do not automatically connect. This Essay provides one approach to teaching this fascinating, doctrinally diverse, and rapidly moving area of law. Through the framework of ten key course themes, this pedagogical approach seeks to help students find a common thread that connects these various areas of law into a cohesive whole. This framework provides a way to think about not only privacy law, but also …

How Covid-19 Rekindled The Spirit Of Teaching, Nayha Acharya

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The abrupt end to our classes in the middle of March 2020 due to the Covid-19 situation reignited in me the real sense of what it means to be a teacher. It brought me out of the superficial notion, where being a law professor just means being someone who has students who will listen to me talk about the law, and into the deeper sense - that being a teacher involves a very special human relationship. This transition arose in me, I believe, because the Covid-19 situation forced me to slow down and sit still for a while, and that …

The 2019-20 Survey Of Applied Legal Education, Robert R. Kuehn, Margaret Reuter, David A. Santacroce

Scholarship@WashULaw

This report presents the results of the 2019-20 Center for the Study of Applied Legal Education (CSALE) Survey of Applied Legal Education. The survey was composed of two parts – a Master Survey directed to ABA accredited U.S. law schools and a Sub-Survey distributed to each person teaching in a law clinic or field placement course. Ninety-five percent of law schools and over 1,300 clinical teachers participated in the survey. The results provide valuable insight into clinical programs and law clinic and field placement courses in areas such as design, capacity, administration, funding, and pedagogy, and into the role and …

A Reflection Of My Law School Experience, Melissa A. Trinos

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

A Reflection Of My Law School Experience, Sasha Tinis

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.