Law Commons^™

Golden Gate University's 14 New Year's Resolutions For Law Schools In 2014, Wes R. Porter

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New Year's resolution-making isn't just for people, but should be a requirement for higher education, particularly law schools, according to Professor Wes Porter, Director of Golden Gate University's Law Litigation Center. "Law schools that continually embrace fresh teaching techniques graduate the smartest students possible," says Professor Porter. To help law schools kick-start 2014, he offers 14 New Year's Resolutions for Law Schools.

Your Career: A Path To Scholarship, Rachel A. Van Cleave

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Golden Gate Dean Rachel Van Cleave interviews Professor Benedetta Faedi Duramy about her journey through academia.

Viewpoint: Coming Together, Crafting Solutions, Rachel A. Van Cleave

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I have previously called for greater collaboration among a broad variety of lawyers to address the critical issues facing legal education and the legal profession. Private lawyers, government attorneys, public interest lawyers, legal educators, and even law school regulators must come together at the table for the betterment of the profession. Last week, two conferences made some initial and very positive strides in this direction. The NALP Foundation and West LegalEdcenter held a one-day forum, Tomorrow's Law Practice: A Forum on the Market, Demand and Opportunities for Lawyers; and the Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers Initiative held its annual conference entitled, Connecting …

Value(S) Of Lawyers, Rachel A. Van Cleave

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Top concerns facing legal educators and the legal profession today are the cost and quality of a legal education and the job market for graduates. President Barack Obama's comments in August about whether law school should be shortened to two years have generated healthy discussions about the trifecta we are grappling with: cost, quality and employment. These are critical issues. However, it is important not to lose sight of both the value of the legal profession as well as our fundamental values as lawyers and what model might best support these.

Law Schools’ Untapped Resources: Using Advocacy Professors To Achieve Real Change In Legal Education, Wes R. Porter

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If the current law school model is dilapidated, then the remodel requires more than a face-lift; it requires real structural and architectural changes. Legal education (finally) must cater to the needs of students. By most accounts, that means teaching students the knowledge, skills, and values required to serve clients and solve problems. However, to reinvent legal education in a meaningful way, law schools must involve and elevate their former second-class citizens on the faculty: advocacy professors, clinicians, and legal writing instructors. These faculty members already teach, and have long taught, in the way that would represent real change in law …

Tweeting - For Better Case Analysis, Wes R. Porter

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Teaching case analysis is always a challenge. The skill of case analysis is critical for our courses and mock trial teams - and for a career in litigation. While jury addresses, witness examinations, and motions in limine involve case analysis, we miss something when this skill is not isolated from other parts of trial presentation. We sought to better segregate the skill of case analysis and diagnose related issues independently. We focused more on case analysis in our advocacy curriculum and created a consistent, written requirement (expectation) to segregate the the skill of case analysis.

Future Of The Legal Profession, Rachel A. Van Cleave

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Many books and articles in the last few years describe a "profession in crisis" with no shortage of demons to blame: many equity partners in large law firms pursuing ever increasing profits, tenured law professors sitting on big salaries with no incentive to change how they teach, accrediting institutions imposing expensive regulation on law schools, and the examples of finger-pointing continue. In the words of YouTube sensation Kid President, "I think we all need a pep talk."

Viewpoint: Happier Law Students, One Client At A Time, Susan Rutberg

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It's not your parents' legal education anymore. To lawyers who came of age in days of yore, legal education today would be almost unrecognizable. True, students still learn how to analyze appellate opinions, and at some schools, still survive the socratic method. But at Golden Gate University and an increasing number of other schools, legal education consists of multiple opportunities to intertwine theory and practice; build oral and written communication skills, learn the values of the profession and shape professional identity, both in and beyond the classroom.

Practice Perfect, Rachel A. Van Cleave

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Institutions of higher education and law schools in particular are currently addressing new questions about the value and form of the education they offer, due, in part, to economic reality, practical necessity, and public scrutiny. Changes in the nature of the legal profession and the market, the cost of legal education, and most recently the purpose of the third year of law school, have each been at the center of professional conversations, public debate and media stories about reform.

Like my colleagues at other law schools, I am certainly involved with these critical conversations. I am also working with GGU …

Professor William Gallagher: The Practice Of Intellectual Property Law - In The Classroom, Lisa Lomba

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In recent years there has been a lot of buzz in legal education about the need for law schools to produce more “practice ready” graduates. GGU Law has long prided itself on providing rigorous, practical legal education, and Professor William Gallagher’s course, IP Litigation: Trademark and Copyright, is at the forefront of this tradition.

Professor Mort Cohen: An Advocate Professor's Journey, Leeor Neta

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Professor Mort Cohen has taught at GGU Law for 30 years. In addition to teaching, Cohen has taken on pro bono cases as an advocate, most recently in service of the elderly and mentally ill. In 2012, Cohen successfully represented two individuals and the California Association of Mental Health Patients Rights Advocates in K.G. Et al v. Meredith as a Marin County Public Guardian. In an unprecedented, unanimous decision, a three-judge panel in The California Court of Appeal, First District stated that patients could not be treated with mind-altering drugs without their informed consent. It further stated that the County …

Build On Your Law School Success, Angela Dalfen, Leeor Neta

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Much — perhaps too much — has been written about the skills one needs to obtain a legal job. From our point of view as administrators on either end of the law school experience, it is clear that many of the attributes sought by law school admissions committees are akin to those sought by prospective employers. We counsel students and attorneys to consider how the "soft skills" they relied on to gain entry to law school will serve them equally well as job seekers.

Professionalism And The New Normal, Philip J. Weiser

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No abstract provided.

Self-Congratulation And Scholarship, Paul Campos

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Professor Jay Silver’s criticism of the reform proposals put forward in Brian Tamanaha’s book Failing Law Schools displays some characteristic weaknesses of American legal academic culture. These weaknesses include a tendency to make bold assertions about the value of legal scholarship and the effectiveness of law school pedagogy, while at the same time providing no support for these assertions beyond a willingness to repeat self-congratulatory platitudes about who professors are and what we do. The high costs for our students of the current scholarly expectations at American law schools are clear. What is not clear is whether those costs are …

Panel Discussion Iii: Recognizing And Addressing Immigration Concerns In The Criminal Process, Violeta Chapin, Dan Kesselbrenner, Christina Kleiser

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No abstract provided.

Foreword: Public Constitutional Literacy; A Conversation, Melissa Hart

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No abstract provided.

Hero For The People, Hero For The Land And Water: Reflections On The Enduring Contributions Of David Getches, Charles Wilkinson

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No abstract provided.

The Missing Link: Making Research Easier With Linked Citations, Nick Harrell

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No abstract provided.

Considering Class: College Access And Diversity, Matthew N. Gaertner, Melissa Hart

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Each time that the continued legality of race-conscious affirmative action is threatened, colleges and universities must confront the possibility of dramatically changing their admissions policies. Fisher v. University of Texas, which the Supreme Court will hear this year, presents just such a moment. In previous years when affirmative action has been outlawed by ballot initiative in specific states or when the Court has seemed poised to reject it entirely, there have been calls for replacing race-conscious admissions with class-based affirmative action. Supporters of race-conscious affirmative action have typically criticized the class-based alternative as ineffective at maintaining racial diversity. This …

Bad Briefs, Bad Law, Bad Markets: Documenting The Poor Quality Of Plaintiffs' Briefs, Its Impact On The Law, And The Market Failure It Reflects, Scott A. Moss

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For a major field, employment discrimination suffers surprisingly low-quality plaintiffs' lawyering. This Article details a study of several hundred summary judgment briefs, finding as follows: (1) the vast majority of plaintiffs' briefs omit available caselaw rebutting key defense arguments, many falling far below basic professional standards with incoherent writing or no meaningful research; (2) low-quality briefs lose at over double the rate of good briefs; and (3) bad briefs skew caselaw evolution, because even controlling for win-loss rate, bad plaintiffs' briefs far more often yield decisions crediting debatable defenses. These findings are puzzling. In a major legal service market, how …