Law Commons^™

Legal Writing And Academic Support: Timing Is Everything, Dionne L. Koller

Faculty Scholarship

The conventional wisdom is that legal writing and academic support go hand-in-hand. Most law schools assume that struggling students can be reliably identified for academic support through their first-year legal writing course, and that first-year legal writing instructors can fairly easily and effectively provide this support. Indeed, this is the prevailing view in current academic support and legal writing scholarship. Professor Koller's article challenges the conventional wisdom and instead points out several issues that should be considered if a law school relies on the first-year legal writing course as a component of, or in lieu of, an academic support program. …

Law Student Admissions And Ethics - Rethinking Character And Fitness Inquiries, Susan Saab Fortney

Faculty Scholarship

This article expands on the use and recommended methods of including criminal background inquiries on law school applications. Part I of this article begins with an introduction to the ethics issues arising in connection with the admission of law students. Part II focuses on different purposes served by criminal background questions on the law school admission application, including screening applicants’ fitness to practice law. Part III considers the various ways law schools handle applicants’ nondisclosure and expands on the benefits of a modified amnesty program. Part IV explores how criminal background inquiries differ in depth, spanning from questions asking about …

The Dangers Of The Ivory Tower: The Obligation Of Law Professors To Engage In The Practice Of Law, Amy B. Cohen

Faculty Scholarship

This Article considers whether law professors have a professional obligation to keep current with the practice of law by actually engaging in such practice on some limited or occasional basis.

The Author proposes that, at a minimum, law professors should be encouraged, if not required, to stay connected to the world of practice. Law professors could spend a sabbatical in practice, engage in some outside work while teaching, or simply observe, study, or communicate regularly with those who are actively engaged in the practice of law. If seen as a form of class preparation or as an nspiration for scholarship, …

Learning Business Law By Doing It: Real Transactions In Law School Clinics, Eric J. Gouvin

Faculty Scholarship

This Article discusses the business clinic movement and how legal educators view them as being an excellent vehicle for inculcating the values and practices that business lawyers hold dear. Business clinics may help students better appreciate the challenges of business lawyering, which they sometimes misunderstand as merely a forms practice. The Author believes that by putting students in the middle of real transactions, they gain a deeper understanding of the subtleties of making a transaction come together.

Tributes To Professor Alan Hornstein, David S. Bogen, Karen H. Rothenberg, William L. Reynolds, Howard S. Chasanow, P. Michael Nagle

Faculty Scholarship

Tributes to Professor Alan Hornstein upon his retirement from the University of Maryland School of Law.

Tributes To Professor Alice Brumbaugh, Alan D. Hornstein, Abraham Dash, Frederic N. Smalkin, Lynne A. Battaglia, Karen H. Rothenberg, David S. Bogen

Faculty Scholarship

Tributes to Professor Alice Brumbaugh upon her retirement from the University of Maryland School of Law.

Setting The Record Straight: Maryland's First Black Women Law Graduates, Taunya Lovell Banks

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Pilgrimage Or Exodus?: Responding To Faculty Faith Diversity At Religious Law Schools, Marie Failinger

Faculty Scholarship

Religiously affiliated law schools have, for the most part, given little thought to the integration of faculty members who are from faith communities other than their own. The article will consider the question of how religiously affiliated law schools truly include faculty members of all religious faiths in the development of mission and community in such law schools, using the lens of the religious metaphors of pilgrimage and Exodus. After presenting this typology for critiquing law school practices, the author deconstructs the very premises of the question through the metaphors of pilgrimage and Exodus. The author argues that a proper …

A Thirtieth Anniversary Tribute To The William Mitchell Law Review, Michael K. Steenson

Faculty Scholarship

Article, a tribute to the William Mitchell Law Review on its thirtieth anniversary, traces the history of the first issue of the Law Review.

Who Gets In? The Quest For Diversity After Grutter, Frank H. Wu

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

An Alternative Model To United States Bar Examinations: The South African Community Service Experience In Licensing Attorneys, Peggy Maisel

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the system of educating and licensing attorneys in South Africa to determine whether that country’s experience can provide guidance to jurisdictions in the United States that are considering proposals to reduce or eliminate the importance of bar examinations. The analysis set out here is supplemented by a companion article, providing a first-hand account of the South African system by Ms. Thuli Mhlungu, who was educated and sought admission to the bar during the last years of apartheid and the early years of the new democratic regime.

Examining the situation in South Africa makes particular sense because South …

Making Workshops Work, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

The internal faculty workshop is a staple of the modern law school environment. It serves both social and intellectual functions within the faculty community. Socially, workshops are among the few occasions when large numbers of faculty assemble in the same room to do anything other than argue about appointments or the academic calendar. They are also often the primary-or even the only-way in which faculty learn what their colleagues in different fields are doing.' Intellectually, workshops are intended to improve the work product of the presenters and to sharpen or expand the thinking of the audience members.

Deaning's Seven Deadly Sins And Seven Deanly Virtues, Steven R. Smith

Faculty Scholarship

Deans sin. There are the petty offenses: the occasional missed reception, the student's name forgotten, or the parliamentary gaff at a faculty meeting. These are generally forgiven and dismissed before the next graduation.

There are, however, the more serious decanal transgressions that are not so easily forgiven or forgotten. The worst of these are

The Seven Deadly Sins of Deaning are Deception, Revenge, Narcissism, Pessimism, Taciturnity, Disloyalty and Aimlessness. The "opposite" evils are noted in italics at the end of each section.