Law Commons^™

Pass The Salt: Problem-Resolution Lawyering Across The Twenty-First Century Law Curriculum, Kris Franklin, F. Peter Phillips

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

Attorneys work with clients to resolve problems. Legal education can help prepare law graduates to do that work. As an added bonus, doing so would in turn help law students understand and retain the subjects they study. Law professors who teach alternative dispute resolution, lawyering skills, clinics, and sometimes traditional doctrinal courses, have all called for greater inclusion of dispute resolution in the law school curriculum. Some have urged the introduction of specific courses to prepare contemporary law students to work as problem resolvers. This Article builds on these and other calls for reform, but urges a genuine reconceptualization of …

Everything I Know About Teaching Was Reinforced By Auditing Remote Kindergarten, Allie Robbins

FIU Law Review

As a tenure-track faculty member, I am always focused on the trifecta of tenure—scholarship, service, and teaching. The pressure to publish and present is constant and unending. Service requires countless hours in committee meetings and doing the work of faculty governance. Being a faculty member focused on academic and bar support requires spending a significant amount of time meeting one-on-one with students and providing written feedback. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, several new stressors were also added to this already-overwhelming workload ­–a constantly changing and elongated bar prep period, the need to create new asynchronous class components and assessments for …

Critical Interviewing, Laila L. Hlass, Lindsay M. Harris

Utah Law Review

Critical lawyering—also at times called rebellious, community, and movement lawyering—attempts to further social justice alongside impacted communities. While much has been written about the contours of this form of lawyering and case examples illustrating core principles, little has been written about the mechanics of teaching critical lawyering skills. This Article seeks to expand critical lawyering theory, and in doing so, provide an example of a pedagogical approach to teaching what we term “critical interviewing.” Critical interviewing means using an intersectional lens to collaborate with clients, communities, interviewing partners, and interpreters in a legal interview. Critical interviewers identify and take into …

Take Note: Teaching Law Students To Be Responsible Stewards Of Technology, Kristen E. Murray

Catholic University Law Review

The modern lawyer cannot practice without some deployment of technology; practical and ethical obligations have made technological proficiency part of what it means to be practice-ready. These obligations complicate the question of what constitutes best practices in law school.

Today’s law schools are filled with students who are digital natives who don’t necessarily leverage technology in maximally efficient ways, and faculty who span multiple generations, with varying amounts of skepticism about modern technology. Students are expected to use technology to read, prepare for class, take notes, and study for and take final exams. Professors might use technology to teach or …

Re-Envisioning Law Student Scholarship, Emily Zimmerman

Catholic University Law Review

This Article recommends that we think more intentionally about how law students’ engagement in scholarship can promote their professional development. In so doing, we should recognize that legal scholarship plays a different role for law students than it does for law professors. Rather than trying to replicate law professors’ relationship with scholarship, the pedagogy of law student scholarship should focus more intentionally on the value of scholarship for law students—most of whom will not become law professors.

This Article suggests that much of the value of scholarship for law students lies in process, rather than product. Rather than thinking …

Combating Professional Error In Bankruptcy Analysis Through The Design And Use Of Decision Trees In Clinical Pedagogy, Timothy R. Tarvin

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

This Article will address the positive impact of using the decision tree model in four parts. Part I will provide a historical overview of the evolution of legal education and the profession’s call for more experiential education, both generally and specifically, through clinical training and the use of technology. This Section will provide context and argue that the use of decision trees in the clinical setting is the natural culmination of the legal academy’s goals of teaching analytical skills, preparing graduates for practice, and incorporating new technology into the practice of law.

Part II will describe the legal malpractice …

Cardozo, The Canon And Some Critical Thoughts About Pedagogy, Deborah W. Post

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Prescription For Teaching The Law Of Reasonable Religious And Disability Accommodation, Kerri Lynn Stone

Marquette Benefits and Social Welfare Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Religiously Affiliated Law Schools In The Renewal Of American Democracy, Bruce Ledewitz

University of Massachusetts Law Review

American Democracy has broken down. This crisis was on dramatic display in the 2016 Presidential Campaign. Americans are resentful, distrustful and pessimistic. We find it easy to blame “the other side” for the deadlock, mendacity and irresponsibility in American public life. By virtue of their public role, American law schools have an obligation to address the breakdown in order to understand and try to ameliorate it. That task is currently unfulfilled by law schools individually and collectively. They are distracted by marketing and pedagogy. Religious law schools, which retain the traits of normative discourse, mission, Truth and tragic limit to …

The Legal Academy Under Erasure, Richard E. Redding

Catholic University Law Review

We hear much about the “crisis” in legal education: steep declines in law school enrollments and graduates unprepared for practice who cannot find jobs. Proposals to address the crisis enjoy wide support and are poised to dramatically change the landscape of legal education. These reforms are harmful to law students and the legal profession, placing the legal academy “under erasure,” as Jacques Derrida would say. They erase the academic nature of law school by: (1) reorienting it from an academically-grounded legal education towards vocational training, (2) requiring just two years of study for the J.D. degree, (3) allowing graduates of …

Defining Experiential Legal Education, David I.C. Thomson

Journal of Experiential Learning

No abstract provided.

Crisis And Trigger Warnings: Reflections On Legal Education And The Social Value Of The Law, Kim D. Chanbonpin

Chicago-Kent Law Review

In the same moment that law schools are embracing neoliberal strategies in response to the economic crisis caused by declining admissions, students in the classroom have begun to agitate for advance content notices (or “trigger warnings”) to alert them to any potentially trauma-inducing course materials. For faculty who have already adopted a defensive posture in response to threats to eliminate tenure, this demand feels like an additional assault on academic freedom; one that reflects a distressing student-as-consumer mentality. From this vantage point, students are too easily cast as another group of adversaries when, in actuality, students are straw targets who …

Addressing Barriers To Cultural Sensibility Learning: Lessons From Social Cognition Theory, Andrea A. Curcio

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Getting Students Psyched: Using Psychology To Encourage Classroom Participation, Marybeth Herald

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Using Principles From Cognitive Behavioral Therapy To Reduce Nervousness In Oral Argument Or Moot Court, Larry Cunningham

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Emotionally Attentive Lawyer: Balancing The Rule Of Law With The Realities Of Human Behavior, Randall Kiser

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Teaching Emotional Intelligence To Law Students: Three Keys To Mastery, William S. Blatt

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Using A Communication Perspective To Teach Relational Lawyering, Susan L. Brooks

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Redefining Attention (And Revamping The Legal Profession?) For The Digital Generation, Lauren A. Newell

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Psychology And Lawyering: Coalescing The Field, Jean R. Sternlight

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Liberating Sexual Harassment Law, Lua Kamál Yuille

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Sexual harassment law and the proposed solutions to that paradigm’s deficiencies teach a disheartening and peculiar lesson to women and gender performance minorities: “You may be disadvantaged at work because of your gender or your gender performance nonconformity. Discrimination against you is okay.” This albatross has inexplicably burdened sexual harassment law for the more than thirty-five years since it emerged as a redressable form of unlawful discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This Article coherently explains the reason for it. It makes a simple claim: Sexual harassment law has failed to eradicate workplace gender discrimination, …

Learning From Experience: An Introduction To The Journal Of Experiential Learning, Patricia E. Salkin

Journal of Experiential Learning

Commitment to experiential learning begins with the dean, yet this has not been the typical questioning in candidate interview processes. Important are indicators of past performance, examples of interpersonal skills, creativity, and knowledge of current challenges facing the profession, legal education and the individual school. Often over-looked, however, is what else the candidate brings to the table in terms of their approach to legal pedagogy, past experiences that may provide other important insights into what may subconsciously influence the candidate’s particular approach to one or more issues. It can be difficult to glean this from the typical thirty to forty-five …

Harmonizing Current Threats: Using The Outcry For Legal Education Reforms To Take Another Look At Civil Gideon And What It Means To Be An American Lawyer, Cathryn Miller-Wilson

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

"Harmonizing Current Threats: Using the Outcry for Legal Education Reforms to Take Another Look at Civil Gideon and What it Means to be an American Lawyer," makes the argument that, like medical education, legal education should be seen as a public responsibility. With the extra government funding that would come from this view of legal education, Miller-Wilson proposes incorporating "teaching law firms" after law school for students to practice in various specialties before graduation, similar to a medical residency.

A Heretical View Of Teaching: A Contrarian Looks At Teaching, The Carnegie Report, And Best Practices, Gary Shaw

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Getting Real About Legal Realism, New Legal Realism, And Clinical Legal Education, Katherine R. Kruse

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Practice-Based Learning: Emphasizing Practice And Offering Critical Perspectives On The Dangers Of “Co-Op”Tation, Brooke K. Baker

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Peer Editing: A Comprehensive Pedagogical Approach To Maximize Assessment Opportunities, Integrate Collaborative Learning, And Achieve Desired Outcomes, Cassandra L. Hill

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Inside The Law School Classroom: Toward A New Legal Realist Pedagogy, Elizabeth Mertz

Vanderbilt Law Review

In recent years, the legal academy has been experiencing a strong renewed interest in empirical legal research. Referred to by various analysts as a "new legal realism" or as "empirical legal studies," this restored focus on the social sciences in many ways echoes an earlier era of legal realism in American law, with some important differences.' . . .

This Article combines these two themes: empirical research on law and careful examination of legal education. It reports on an empirical study of legal education, which I have been conducting under the auspices of the American Bar Foundation (a research institute …

A Primer On Learning Styles: Reaching Every Student, M.H. Sam Jacobson

Seattle University Law Review

Many authors and researchers have written extensively about learning styles, but the literature can be daunting to the uninitiated. This article establishes a framework that will put the literature into perspective, will allow professors to evaluate what is meant by "learning syle," and will give them guidance for how to be more effective teachers both in the classroom and out. Part I discusses how knowledge of learning styles will help professors achieve their pedagogical goals. Part II discusses the personal characteristics that contribute to learning style. Finally, Part III applies the learning styles to the learning cycle and discusses how …