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Research Across The Curriculum: Using Cognitive Science To Answer The Call For Better Legal Research Instruction, Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

The American Bar Association (ABA), law students, and employers are demanding that law schools do better when teaching legal research. Academic critics are demanding that law professors begin to apply the lessons from the science of learning to improve student outcomes. The practice of law is changing.

Yet, the data shows that law schools are not changing their legal research curriculum to respond to the need of their students or to address the ABA’s mandate. This stagnation comes at the same time as an explosion in legal information and a decrease in technical research skills among incoming students. This article …

Normalizing Struggle, Catherine Martin Christopher

Arkansas Law Review

A person who is effective in law school, on the bar exam, and in practice utilizes the same set of skills in each of those scenarios: close, critical reading; synthesis of multiple sources of law into a coherent rule or schema; appreciation of both the big picture and the fine details of a set of rules of law; analysis of a factual scenario for facts that meet or fail a legal test; assessment of the validity and strength of counterarguments; and, of course, clear, concise, thorough, organized communication. Because all these skills are useful from the first day of law …