Law Commons^™

The 'Other' Market, Cody Jacobs

Faculty Scholarship

The hiring market for tenure-track non–legal writing positions is a world unto itself with its own lingo (i.e., “meat market” and “FAR form”), its own unwritten rules (i.e., “Do not have two first-year courses in your preferred teaching package.”), and carefully calibrated expectations for candidates and schools with respect to the process and timing of hiring. These norms and expectations are disseminated to the participants in this market through a relatively well-established set of feeder fellowships, visiting assistant professor programs, elite law schools, blogs, and academic literature on the subject.

But there is another market that goes on every year …

Practice And Fitness Making Writing Perfection More Nearly Attainable, Heather Ridenour, David Spratt

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Can't Get There From Here: Recalculate Into Better Legal Writing, Heather Ridenour

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

The Integrated Law School Curriculum, Adam Lamparello

Adam Lamparello

In January 2014, the American Bar Association’s Task Force on the Future of Legal Education stated that “[a]n evolution is taking place in legal practice and legal education needs to evolve with it.” To this end, the Task Force recommended that the law school curriculum “needs to shift still further toward developing the competencies and professionalism required of people who will deliver services to clients.” In fact, the Task Force emphasized that “[a] graduate’s having some set of competencies in the delivery of law and related services, and not just some body of knowledge, is an essential outcome …

Law Schools And Learning Outcomes: Developing A Coherent, Cohesive, And Comprehensive Law School Curriculum, Anthony S. Niedwiecki

Anthony S. Niedwiecki

No abstract provided.

The High Price Of Poverty: A Study Of How The Majority Of Current Court System Procedures For Collecting Court Costs And Fees, As Well As Fines, Have Failed To Adhere To Established Precedent And The Constitutional Guarantees They Advocate., Trevor J. Calligan

Trevor J Calligan

No abstract provided.

Embracing Change In International Program Planning: Strategies For Financing International Programs In Times Of Economic Turbulence, Diane Penneys Edelman, Toni Jaeger-Fine

Diane Penneys Edelman

Embracing Change in International Program Planning: Strategies for Financing International Programs in Times of Economic Turbulence Law schools are being compelled to examine their ability to begin and continue international programs, and to market programs aggressively to keep them viable. Should a law school start a new program at this time? Should a law school discontinue any programs, or offset losses in programs with gains from other programs? Presentation will encourage an open discussion of strategies for developing or continuing economically feasible programs in these difficult times. Presenters: Diane Penneys Edelman, Director of International Programs, Villanova University School of Law …

A Government Of Laws Not Of Precedents 1776-1876: The Google Challenge To Common Law Myth, James Maxeiner

James R Maxeiner

Conventional wisdom holds that the United States is a common law country of precedents where, until the 20th century (the “Age of Statutes”), statutes had little role. Digitization by Google and others of previously hard to find legal works of the 19th century challenges this common law myth. At the Centennial in 1876 Americans celebrated that “The great fact in the progress of American jurisprudence … is its tendency towards organic statute law and towards the systematizing of law; in other words, towards written constitutions and codification.” This article tests the claim of the Centennial Writers of 1876 and finds …

Spirals And Schemas: How Integrated Law School Courses Create Higher-Order Thinkers And Problem Solvers, Jennifer Spreng

Jennifer E Spreng

As legal educators continue to shift focus to preparing students for practice, they should put integrated first-year courses and curricula into the top tier of potential reform vehicles. Integration refers to the extent to which a course or curriculum blurs disciplinary boundaries as well as boundaries between doctrine and authentic learning activities. Integrated courses promote active, deep learning that facilitate orderly knowledge construction and reveal more connections between vital legal concepts. The authenticity of integrated courses improves students’ retention and transfer of knowledge. Such accessible, interconnected knowledge in such a vital learning environment is like intellectual rocket fuel to law …

Whose Article Is It Anyway? Student Editors And The Law Review Process, Josephine R. Potuto

Josephine R Potuto

Law professors publish in law reviews, not peer-reviewed journals. They are edited by law students. The editing process can be both irritating and exasperating. From experiences lived and those shared by colleagues across the country, I provide concrete examples of where law student editors go wrong, and also explain why.

Legal Writing - What's Next? Real-World, Persuasion Pedagogy From Day One—It’S Not What You Offer; It’S What You Require – Part Ii (In A Three-Part Series), Adam Lamparello, Charles Maclean

Adam Lamparello

This essay (part two of a three-part series) strives to begin a collaborative discussion with legal writing, clinical, and doctrinal faculty about what “change” in legal education should mean. In Part I, the authors rolled out a blueprint for transformative change in legal writing pedagogy, which includes: (1) more required skills courses that mirror the actual practice of law; (2) a three-year program that includes up to four writing credits in every semester; and (3) increased collaboration between legal writing professors and doctrinal faculty. In this essay, we get more specific, and propose a three-year legal writing curriculum that builds …

The Evolution Of The Digital Millennium Copyright Act; Changing Interpretations Of The Dmca And Future Implications For Copyright Holders, Hillary A. Henderson

Hillary A Henderson

Copyright law rewards an artificial monopoly to individual authors for their creations. This reward is based on the belief that, by granting authors the exclusive right to reproduce their works, they receive an incentive and means to create, which in turn advances the welfare of the general public by “promoting the progress of science and useful arts.” Copyright protection subsists . . . in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or …

Continuing Legal Education A Year In Review: Analysis And Recommendations, Shaun Jamison

Shaun Jamison

Continuing legal education (CLE or MCLE) is one way to help lawyers stay current with substantive law, skills, and prepare for potentially dramatic and fast moving changes to the practice of law. This paper examines one year of continuing legal education approved for credit in Minnesota. While Minnesota attorneys enjoy access to over 10,000 CLE courses in a variety of timely topics, there are opportunities to improve. In order to best address the rapid and dramatic change in the legal field, a more favorable regulation of law office management CLEs is required. More flexible regulation and partnerships between CLE providers, …

Synaptic Plasticity In Neurological Deficit As A Form Of Indemnification: The Utility Of Analogical Thinking, Madeleine Schachter, Madeleine Schachter

Madeleine Schachter

The need for creative problem-solving is as infinite as are the ways in which to engage in it. This article posits that one useful, albeit not flawless, mechanism in which to seek scientific advancements is through the use of analogical thinking. The technique has been invoked in virtually all disciplines, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. The utility of thinking by analogy lies, paradoxically, in its capacity to conceptualize a solution or a viable avenue of further inquiry as much as in its capacity to expose flaws in the analogical concept hypothesized. As such, it is an important means of stimulating …

One Small Step For Legal Writing, One Giant Leap For Legal Education: Making The Case For More Writing Opportunities In The "Practice-Ready" Law School Curriculum, Sherri Lee Keene

Sherri Keene

Legal writing is more than an isolated practical skill or a law school course; it is a valuable tool for broadening and deepening law students’ and new attorneys’ knowledge and understanding of the law. If experienced legal professionals, both professors and practitioners alike, take a hard look back at their careers, many will no doubt remember how their work on significant legal writing projects advanced their own knowledge of the law and enhanced their professional competence. Legal writing practice helps the writer to gain expertise in a number of ways: first, the act of writing itself promotes learning; second, close …

Is There Life After Laptops? Further Thoughts On The Effects Of Unplugging A Uniquely "Wired-In" Generation, Eric A. Degroff

Eric A DeGroff

The Millennial Generation is the most technologically savvy age group ever to enter the legal academy. Many, however, enter law school with learning styles and other traits that make a legal education challenging. Though research suggests that accommodating student learning styles may enhance the educational experience generally, there is mounting evidence that accommodating student preferences for technology in the classroom may be counterproductive in some ways. This article summarizes that evidence, discusses the results of the author's two-year experiment with a no-laptop policy in his first-year doctrinal course, and suggests that such a policy may be well received by most …

Student, Esquire?: The Practice Of Law In The Collaborative Classroom, Nantiya Ruan

Nantiya Ruan

Law faculty and non-profit lawyers are working together in a variety of partnerships to offer students exposure to “real life” clients in the first year of law school, as well as in advanced courses in substantive areas. Teachers engaged in client-centered advocacy through experiential frameworks have broken out of their isolated silos in the law school (e.g., legal writing, clinical, externship, and doctrinal) and begun to work together. To help students develop a sense of professional identity, cultivate professional values, and tap into key intrinsic motivations for lawyering, such as serving the public good, collaborative classrooms have an important role …

Playing To The Audience, David Spratt

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

A Strategy For Teaching Objectivity To The Domestic Relations Student: Utilizing Psychodrama To Explore Attorney Empathy Toward Improving Family Law Outcomes, Bruce L. Beverly

Bruce L. Beverly

The basic domestic relations law course is often taught by the casebook method, with little reference to actual underlying human drama. In order to produce effective advocates, it is necessary for student to be brought out of the sterile case recitation model and into a role where the student experiences, in a controlled and directed fashion, some of the hardships faced by the players in a family law case. This article proposes that, in line with new emphasis on experiential learning and alternate learning styles, one might employ a psychodramatic approach to teaching the domestic relations course, in order to …

Emerging Models For Alternatives To Marriage, Sanford N. Katz

Sanford N. Katz

Perhaps one of the most important changes in family law in the past thirty years has been the inclusion of certain kinds of friendships in the range of relationships from which rights and responsibilities can flow. Domestic partnership laws, a phenomenon of the 1990s, may be seen as a natural development from the judicial recognition of contract cohabitation and the legislative and judicial response to same-sex couples who, unable to meet statutory requirements for marriage, have sought official recognition of their relationships. This essay discusses an aspect of certain kinds of domestic partnership laws-their formal requirements and the extent to …

"I See And I Remember; I Do And Understand": Teaching Fundamental Structure In Legal Writing Through The Use Of Samples, Judith B. Tracy

Judith B. Tracy

A first-year legal reasoning and writing curriculum is designed to introduce students to the analytical skills and organizational tools needed for the preparation of effective objective and then persuasive documents. This article describes how to use samples to enable students to self-identify a general, logical structure for a document, considering its content, its audience and purpose, and the realities of legal practice.

Feeling At Home: Law, Cognitive Science, And Narrative, Lea B. Vaughn

Lea B Vaughn

What is the “how and why” of law’s affinity for narrative? In order to explain why the use of stories is such an effective teaching and presentation strategy in the law, this paper will consider theories and accounts from cognitive as well as evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, and, briefly, cultural anthropology. This account seeks to address “how” narrative helps us learn and use the law as well as “why” we are so compelled to use stories in teaching and in practice.

Brain science, simplified here, suggests that the first task is to “grab” someone’s attention. Emotionally charged events are more likely …

Sometimes Putting Pen To Paper Is Tougher Than It Seems, Heather Ridenour, David Spratt

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Writer's Block: The "Ins And Outs" Of Good Legal Writing, Part One, David Spratt

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

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 …

Grooming Good Legal Writers Through Tailored, Constructive Feedback, David Spratt

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

The Past, Presence, And Future Of Legal Writing Scholarship: Rhetoric, Voice, And Community, Linda L. Berger

Linda L. Berger

This Article welcomes a new generation of legal writing scholars. In the first generation, legal writing professors debated whether they should be engaged in legal scholarship at all. In the second generation, assuming that they should be engaged in scholarship, legal writing professors discerned and defined different genres of and topics for the scholarship in which some or all of us were or should be engaged. In this Article, we map the contours of a third generation of legal writing scholarship—one that integrates the elements of our professional lives and engages more effectively with our professional communities. The core of …

Why Punctuation Matters; Part One, David Spratt

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

A Complete Property Right Amendment, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

The trend of the eminent domain reform and "Kelo plus" initiatives is toward a comprehensive Constitutional property right incorporating the elements of level of review, nature of government action, and extent of compensation. This article contains a draft amendment which reflects these concerns.

Form And Substance: Standards For Promotion And Retention Of Legal Writing Faculty On Clinical Tenure Track, Melissa H. Weresh

ExpressO

This article compares standards for promotion and retention of legal writing faculty on a clinical tenure track. The article provides a brief history of legal writing professionals and examines specific employment criteria such as teaching, service, and scholarship. The article makes recommendations regarding those criteria based upon an assessment of institutional realities and the historical development of the profession.