Law Commons^™

The Law School Firm, Bradley T. Borden, Robert J. Rhee

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

On The Leiter Side: Developing A Universal Assessment Tool For Measuring Scholarly Output By Law Professors And Ranking Law Schools, Robert E. Steinbuch

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Looking Through The Class And What Alice Found There : A Frustrated Analysis Of Law School Admissions Policies And Practices, Robert E. Steinbuch

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Racing Towards Colorblindness: Stereotype Threat And The Myth Of Meritocracy, Jonathan Feingold

Faculty Scholarship

Education law and policy debates often focus on whether college and graduate school admissions offices should take race into account. Those who advocate for a strictly merits-based regime emphasize the importance of colorblindness. The call for colorblind admissions relies on the assumption that our current admissions criteria are fair measures, which accurately capture talent and ability. Recent social science research into standardized testing suggests that this is not the case.

Part I of this Article explores the psychological phenomenon of stereotype threat. Stereotype threat has been shown to detrimentally impact the performance of individuals from negatively stereotyped groups when performing …

Improving Legal Education By Improving Casebooks: Fourteen Things Casebooks Can Do To Produce Better And More Learning, Michael Hunter Schwartz

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Integrating "Alternative" Dispute Resolution Into Bankruptcy: As Simple (And Pure) As Motherhood And Apple Pie?, Nancy A. Welsh

Faculty Scholarship

Today, there can be little doubt that “alternative” dispute resolution is anything but alternative. Nonetheless, many judges, lawyers (and law students) do not truly understand the dispute resolution processes that are available and how they should be used. In the shadow of the current economic crisis, this lack of knowledge is likely to have negative consequences, particularly in those areas of practice such as bankruptcy and foreclosure in which clients, lawyers, regulators, and courts work under pressure, often with inadequate time and financial resources to permit careful analysis of procedural options. Potential negative effects can include: (1) impairment of a …

Interdisciplinary Transactional Courses, Eric J. Gouvin, Robert Statchen, Anthony J. Luppino, William Kell

Faculty Scholarship

This Article represents a panel presentation on interdisciplinary work in law school transactional courses. The Authors’ focus is on the Small Business Clinic at Western New England University School of Law. Topics covered are: interdisciplinary work and the classroom, professional liability and competency issues in rendering services through a clinic, culture class issues, ethical dilemmas, delivering professional products to the client, and co-curricular opportunities.

Renaissance Or Retrenchment: Legal Education At A Crossroads, Lauren Carasik

Faculty Scholarship

This Article begins to synthesize the literature criticizing the current state of legal education with the scholarship proposing solutions, and argues that whatever review is undertaken must be expansive, with a careful and critical look at how each piece supports the endeavor. None of the ideas discussed, taken alone, are novel, as scholarship abounds on all of the topics. Considered together, the analysis suggests that a comprehensive and holistic approach to reform is necessary. In essence, the goal is to catalyze a wholesale reconsideration of the very foundation of legal education. Many of the seemingly disparate themes comprise a Gordian …

Getting Real About Legal Realism, New Legal Realism And Clinical Legal Education, Kate Kruse

Faculty Scholarship

Jerome Frank’s call for a “clinical lawyer-school” is cited so frequently in clinical scholarship that it borders on the canonical. Like many calls for reform in legal education, Frank’s plea for clinical lawyer-schools was based on a critique of the appellate case method of legal instruction. However, unlike most critiques, the legal realist critique was embedded within a jurisprudential challenge to the meaning of law itself, arising from American Legal Realism. Running through legal realist jurisprudence was a distinction between the “law in books” and the “law in action,” with the idea that law is not found primarily in statutes …

Upper-Level Courses: Three Exemplars, Eric J. Gouvin, Mark Fagan, Tamar Frankel, Kathy Z. Heller

Faculty Scholarship

This Article presents three exemplars of upper-level law school classes, and is divided into three parts. Part I discusses "Securitization and Asset-Backed Securities"; Part II discusses "Using Transactions to Teach Secured Transactions"; and Part III discusses "Teaching Deals Through a Focus on the Entertainment Industry."

Teaching Admiralty Popularly, Robert M. Jarvis

Faculty Scholarship

Robert Jarvis, Teaching Admiralty Popularly, 55 Saint Louis University Law Journal 541 (2011).

Bridging Gaps And Blurring Lines: Integrating Analysis, Writing, Doctrine, And Theory, Susan J. Hankin

Faculty Scholarship

This article is an outgrowth of the author’s participation in a July 29, 2009 panel presentation, “Change in Legal Education: Practical Skills,” at the Symposium, YES WE CArNegie: Change in Legal Education after the Carnegie Report. The article responds to the Carnegie Report’s call to “bridge the gap between analytical and practical knowledge” by presenting two models for integrating skills with doctrine in the first-year curriculum. The first model, built into the curriculum at the University of Maryland School of Law, involves teaching the first semester Legal Analysis & Writing course by pairing it with another required first-semester course, Torts, …

On Legal Education And Reform: One View Formed From Diverse Perspectives, Robert J. Rhee

Faculty Scholarship

This article identifies two interconnected problems in legal education. First, legal education and practice are more disconnected than they should be, a reality which distinguishes law schools from other professional schools. The major flaw of legal education as the failure to produce more market-ready lawyers who have a mix of skills and knowledge to add value in a complex and challenging practice environment. Second, law school imposes large direct and opportunity costs on its students. These costs combine with the problem of a deficiency in academic training and post-graduation financing of additional training in the workplace to impose a growing …

Back To The Future In Law Schools, William L. Reynolds

Faculty Scholarship

This paper first argues for the maintenance of the traditional first-year curriculum. It does so in the context of an examination of what most lawyers do in practice and, therefore, what most lawyers should know. This portion includes a defense of the Socratic Method. The paper then addresses contemporary concerns about legal education, including the devaluation of courses in the private law curriculum, and considers why legal academics are not interested in private law.

Ethical Issues In Business And The Lawyer's Role, Robert J. Rhee, Carol Morgan, Tamar Frankel, Mark Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Law School Firm, Bradley T. Borden, Robert J. Rhee

Faculty Scholarship

This Article introduces the concept of the law school firm. The concept calls for law schools to establish affiliated law firms. The affiliation would provide opportunities for students, faculty, and attorneys to collaborate and share resources to teach, research, write, serve clients, and influence the development of law and policy. Based loosely on the medical school model, the law school firm will help bridge the gap between law schools and the practice of law.

Clinical Professors' Professional Responsibility: Preparing Law Students To Embrace Pro Bono, Douglas L. Colbert

Faculty Scholarship

This article begins by examining the current crisis in the U.S. legal system where approximately three out of four low- and middle-income litigants are denied access to counsel's representation when faced with the loss of essential rights - -a home, child custody, liberty and deportation - - and where most lawyers decline to fulfill their ethical responsibility of pro bono service to those who cannot afford private counsel. The article traces the evolving ethical standards of a lawyer's professional responsibility that today views every attorney as a public citizen having a special responsibility to the quality of justice.

The author …

The New Rules For Law Schools, Barbara S. Gontrum

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Law In The Time Of Cholera: Teaching Disaster Law As A Research Course, Neal R. Axton

Faculty Scholarship

Disaster law is fun to teach but it has a serious purpose. Emergencies will inevitably arise but how society responds to them will determine whether or not they become full-blown disasters. Training law students to adapt to dynamic situations will give them the skills they need in a world facing global warming, resource depletion, and a burgeoning population. By creating a more robust legal system, we can create a more resilient society.

Originally published in the May 2011 issue of AALL Spectrum.

The Dogs That Did Not Bark: The Silence Of The Legal Academy During World War Ii, Sarah H. Ludington

Faculty Scholarship

During World War II, the legal academy was virtually uncritical of the government’s conduct of the war, despite some obvious domestic abuses of civil rights, such as the internment of Japanese-Americans. This silence has largely been ignored in the literature about the history of legal education. This Article argues that there are many strands of causation for this silence. On an obvious level, World War II was a popular war fought against a fascist threat, and left-leaning academics generally supported the war. On a less obvious level, law school enrollment plummeted during the war, and the numbers of full-time law …

Defining International Law Librarianship In An Age Of Multiplicity, Knowledge, And Open Access To Law, Richard A. Danner

Faculty Scholarship

Many law librarians are experts in international law and legal research. The concept of ‘international law librarianship’, however, encompasses something more than a field of study in which a group of experts practise their profession. In the broader sense, the idea suggests a common calling, similar interests, and goals shared by librarians with a range of specialties beyond international law, working in all types of law libraries. What commonalities create and sustain the concept of international law librarianship? This paper suggests that they can be found in: law librarians’ common need to respond to the ‘multiplicity’ of information sources facing …

The Consumer Indebtedness Crisis: Law School Clinics As Laboratories For Generating Effective Legal Responses, Peggy Maisel

Faculty Scholarship

For the legal system to operate effectively, it must address problems arising from the absence of needed laws, or, if enacted, of laws that have been drafted poorly or are not being implemented in a fair and just manner. Since law schools are generally part of a larger university community, they are uniquely placed to serve as laboratories to find solutions to such problems, perhaps nowhere more so than in their legal clinics. The latter have in fact often played the role of legal innovators, but their contributions to the law and therefore to society at large have been little …

Teaching Contracts From A Transactional Perspective, Michael Hunter Schwartz

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Durham Statement Two Years Later: Open Access In The Law School Journal Environment, Richard A. Danner, Kelly Leong, Wayne V. Miller

Faculty Scholarship

The Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship, drafted by a group of academic law library directors, was promulgated in February 2009. It calls for two things: (1) open access publication of law school–published journals; and (2) an end to print publication of law journals, coupled with a commitment to keeping the electronic versions available in “stable, open, digital formats.” The two years since the Statement was issued have seen increased publication of law journals in openly available electronic formats, but little movement toward all-electronic publication. This article discusses the issues raised by the Durham Statement, the current state …

Keynote Discussion: Just Exactly What Does A Transactional Lawyer Do?, William J. Carney, Ronald J. Gilson, George W. Dent

Faculty Scholarship

Panel discussion from the Center for Transactional Law and Practice at Emory University School of Law’s second biennial Transactional Law Conference, “Transactional Education: What's Next?” (June 2010).

Shouting "Fire!" In A Theater And Vilifying Corn Dealers, Vincent A. Blasi

Faculty Scholarship

Five years ago, Fred Schauer published an article with the intriguing title: "Do Cases Make Bad Law?" Playing off Holmes' observation that "[g]reat cases like hard cases make bad law," Schauer explored the possibility, as he put it, that "it is not just great cases and hard cases that make bad law, but simply the deciding of cases that makes bad law.” His concern, confirmed and deepened by his characteristically balanced inquiry, was that general principles forged in the resolution of specific legal disputes can suffer by virtue of that provenance. Because such principles by definition are meant to carry …

Harry Kalven, Jr., Vincent A. Blasi

Faculty Scholarship

The first week of law school is for most students an intimidating experience. Everyone is so serious. My first week was leavened considerably by Harry Kalven. A group of students and Kalven were watching the seventh game of the 1964 World Series in the student lounge of the University of Chicago Law School. The broadcast was interrupted by a news bulletin: Nikita Khrushchev had just been deposed. Viewers were treated to several minutes of political and diplomatic analysis, with correspondents around the globe speculating on what this might mean for East-West relations. One of my classmates, an amateur Kremlinologist …

A Foxy Hedgehog: The Consistent Perceptions Of Carol Rose, Jedediah Purdy

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Challenges Of Developing Cross-Cultural Legal Ethics Education, Professional Development, And Guidance For The Legal Professions, Philip Genty

Faculty Scholarship

The broad goal of this paper is to describe the need, and provide a framework, for engaging in cross-cultural conversations among lawyers, law teachers, and others, who are using legal ethics as a vehicle for improving the legal professions and the delivery of legal services. All legal cultures struggle with the question of how to educate students and lawyers to be ethical professionals and how to regulate the legal profession effectively. The purpose of the cross-cultural conversations discussed in this paper would be to develop principles of legal ethics education, professional development, and regulation of the legal professions that can …

Cultivating Justice For The Working Poor: Clinical Representation Of Unemployment Claimants, Colleen F. Shanahan

Faculty Scholarship

The combination of current economic conditions and recent changes in the United States' welfare system makes representation of unemployment insurance claimants by clinic students a timely learning opportunity. While unemployment insurance claimants often share similarities with student attorneys, they are unable to access justice as easily as student attorneys, and as a result, face the risk of severe poverty. Clinical representation of unemployment claimants is a rich opportunity for students to experience making a difference for a client, and to understand the issues of poverty and justice that these clients experience along the way. These cases reveal that larger lessons …