Law Commons^™

Implementing A First-Year Research Assessment, Savanna L. Nolan

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University of Baltimore Law librarians do not have a formal role in teaching legal research, but are frequent guest lecturers and recognized research experts. As such, we volunteered to administer UB's first summative assessment in accordance with the recent implementation of ABA Standard 314. This poster shows the steps taken to design, execute, and grade this legal research assessment, as well as how we reported the results to stakeholders.

The assessment had an objective true/false and multiple-choice section, and a subjective essay question. The librarians selected objective questions considering the core legal research competencies identified by RIPS-SIS following the MacCrate …

New Wine In Old Wineskins: Metaphor And Legal Research, Amy E. Sloan, Colin Starger

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We construct our conceptual world using metaphors. Yet sometimes our concepts are flawed and our metaphors do damage. This Article examines a set of metaphors currently doing damage in law – those for legal research. It shows that while technology has radically altered the material world of legal research, our dominant metaphors have remained static, and thus, become outmoded. Conceptualizing today’s reality using old metaphors fails; it is like pouring new wine in old wineskins. To address this problem, this Article first surfaces unwarranted assumptions buried in the metaphors we use when talking about research and then proposes new metaphors …

Book Review: Academic Law Library Director Perspectives: Case Studies And Insights, Adeen Postar

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No abstract provided.

Analysis, Research, And Communication In Skills-Focused Courses, Ruth Anne Robbins, Amy E. Sloan, Kristen Konrad Tiscione

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Since the Carnegie Report and Best Practices for Legal Education were published, a new focus has emerged on building students’ traditional foundational skills through increased opportunities for experiential education, including legal research and writing instruction. Although the Carnegie Report explored legal writing pedagogy in some detail, Best Practices devoted little attention to how foundational analytical, research, and writing skills are or should be taught with specificity, which provided the impetus for more extended treatment here. This section identifies some “better practices” being used and urges adoption of best practices.

In skills-focused courses, legal analysis, research, and writing should be taught …

The 95 Theses: Legal Research In The Internet Age, Amy E. Sloan

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No abstract provided.

Law School Culture And The Lost Art Of Collaboration: Why Don't Law Professors Play Well With Others, Michael I. Meyerson

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I have an Erdős number. Specifically, I have an Erdős number of 5. For the uninitiated, the concept of an “Erdős number” was created by mathematicians to describe how many “degrees of separation” an author of an article is from the great mathematician Paul Erdős. If you coauthored a paper with Erdős, you have an Erdős number of 1. If you coauthor a paper with someone with an Erdős number of 1, you have earned an Erdős number of 2. Coauthoring a paper with someone with an Erdős number of 2 gives you an Erdős number of 3, and so …

Maryland Practice Materials: A Selective Annotated Bibliography, Adeen Postar, Khelani Clay

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This chapter is intended to cover Maryland Law in its entire complexity and for the most part is intended for current use by practitioners. Whenever possible, it includes references to online sources of material, including LexisNexis, Westlaw, and authoritative sites available on the Internet. We have not included references to WestlawNext as many Maryland specific materials have not been included there as this project was concluding in November 2011.

Government Internet Resources: Federal, State And Local, David E. Matchen Jr.

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This presentation discusses the basic outlines of federal legal research as well as state and local legal research. Discussion of state and local legal research is limited to Maryland, but many states have comparable systems.

Compelling Orthodoxy: Myth And Mystique In The Marketing Of Legal Education, Kenneth Lasson

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This article seeks to demonstrate the negative effects of law schools’ preoccupations with enhancing their image and marketing strategy, especially as they are reflected in both scholarship and academic freedom.

Briefing Cases: Session On Copyright Law, Lynn Mclain

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This handout contains the decision from Walt Disney Productions v. Air Pirates, 581 F.2d 751 (1978), suggested elements for how to brief a case in general, and an example brief for the Air Pirates case.

The Dog That Didn't Bark: Stealth Procedures And The Erosion Of Stare Decisis In The Federal Courts Of Appeals, Amy E. Sloan

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Informal en banc review is a procedural expedient that nine of the thirteen federal circuits use to circumvent the requirements of formal en banc review. Panels invoke informal en banc review to take actions normally reserved for the full court sitting en banc. The circuits that use informal en banc review say the procedure is to be used rarely. In practice, however, the frequency of informal en banc review is significant when compared with formal en banc review. Informal en banc review is more efficient than formal en banc review, but the efficiency benefits come at a price. Informal en …

Step Right Up: Using Consumer Decision Making Theory To Teach Research Process In The Electronic Age, Amy E. Sloan

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The legal academy has framed legal research as a professional skill, and much research pedagogy centers around replicating a controlled professional environment to allow students to learn how to do research by simulating legal practice. Although this is a valid way to conceptualize research, it is not the only way. Another way to conceptualize research is as a consumer transaction. Legal information is, in many ways, a product that information providers market to lawyers and students, as the promotions and contests that LexisNexis and Westlaw sponsor demonstrate. Once legal information is understood as a product, the process of research can …

More Than Just Law School: Global Perspectives On The Place Of The Practical In Legal Education, James Maxeiner

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Foreign experiences remind us that legal education is not just law school. They inform us that we should seek for ways not just to integrate theoretical and practical teaching, but to assure that our students or our graduates get real experience with practice. The assumption that law schools are the exclusive place for preparation for the profession of law is bad for students, bad for bar, bad for law schools, bad for the legal system and bad for society. We should look to see what we can do best and should encourage other institutions to do what they can do …

Policy And Methods: Choices For Legislatures, James Maxeiner

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The legal methods through which one adopts and implements policy decisions profoundly affect the compatibility of policy implementation with democratic legitimacy and legal certainty of the rule of law. Indeed, the choice of legal methods can be as important as the formulation of the policy itself. While a good choice of methods will not heal a bad policy, it can help assure that a less-than-perfect choice of policy can be more forcefully realized than otherwise, it can also help improve the policy choices made and help protect democratic legitimacy and the rule of law. While deficiencies in legislation or in …

Integrating Practical Training And Professional Legal Education: Three Questions For Three Systems, James Maxeiner

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This address deals with integrating theory and practice in practical professional training in US, German and Japanese systems of legal education.

Exorcising The Exercised: A Response To Professor Gordon, Kenneth Lasson

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I have always welcomed honest criticism of my work, as I hope other scholars do of theirs. If Robert W. Gordon's lengthy review of my book, Trembling in the Ivory Tower: Excesses in the Pursuit of Truth and Tenure, were the launching pad for a thoughtful essay on postmodern critical legal studies, I would not feel compelled to respond. Unfortunately, despite (and perhaps because of) Gordon's considerable notoriety as a CLS theorist, his disagreement with what I perceive to be the primary ills of the modern academy seriously misreads both the substance and satire of my book. More troubling still …

Two Rules For Better Writing, Amy E. Sloan

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No abstract provided.

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

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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. …

Are Your Click-Wrap Agreements Valid?—Internet Contracting In The Global Electronic Age: Comparative Perspectives For Taiwan, James Maxeiner

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Addresses the issue of standard terms in click-wrap and shrink-wrap licenses generally and in some detail how the laws of Taiwan, Germany, the European Union, the United States and Japan.

American Law Schools As A Model For Japanese Legal Education? A Preliminary Question From A Comparative Perspective, James Maxeiner

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Law faculties in Japan are asking whether and how they should remake themselves to become law schools. One basic issue has been framed in terms of whether such programs should be professional or general. One Japanese scholar put it pointedly: "[a] major issue of the proposed reform is whether Japan should adopt an American model law school, i.e., professional education at the graduate level, while essentially doing away with the traditional Japanese method of teaching law at university." American law schools are seen as having as their fundamental goal "to provide the training and education required for becoming an effective …

The Professional In Legal Education: Foreign Perspectives, James Maxeiner

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Japan is about to change its system of legal education. In April 2004 Japan will introduce law schools. Law schools are to occupy an intermediary place between the present undergraduate faculties of law and the national Legal Training and Research Institute. The law faculties are to continue to offer general undergraduate education in law, while the law schools in combination with the national Institute are to provide professional legal education. A principal goal of the change is to produce more lawyers. Law schools are charged with providing "practical education especially for fostering legal professionals." But just what is professional legal …

Book Review: Limits Of Law, Prerogatives Of Power: Interventionism After Kosovo, By Michael J. Glennon, Charles Tiefer

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The author reviews Michael Glennon's Limits of Law, Prerogatives of Power: Interventionism After Kosovo, discussing Glennon's approach to NATO's 1999 bombing to stop the Milosevic regime's ethnic cleansing of Kosovo in the face of the UN Charter's absolute ban on states using force except in self-defense. Finding Glennon's study at once provocative and readable, the author emphasizes the strength of Glennon's core point - the inability for the Kosovo campaign to be reconciled with the UN charter - but points to the dangers of using one instance (Kosovo) to prove bad law.

Introduction To Erasing Lines: Integrating The Law School Curriculum, Amy E. Sloan

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Our goal at this conference is to begin the process of erasing the often artificial lines that presently exist between "doctrinal" and "skills" courses, between education focused on the acquisition of knowledge and education focused on the practical application of that knowledge. The lines that have been drawn are more a matter of perception than reality. If we were to deconstruct the pedagogical goals in both of these types of courses, we would find that they have as many similarities as they have differences.

Business Lawyer, Woman Warrior: An Allegory Of Feminine And Masculine Theories, Barbara Ann White

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The first part of this essay is a discourse on how two of the last half century’s most influential contributions to legal thinking: Law and Economics Jurisprudence and Feminist Legal Theory, whose adherents are normally adversaries, can function synergistically to create a greater analytic power. Using business law issues as an example - historically law and economics’ terrain but recently explored by feminism - I comment on how each can unravel different knots but each standing alone leave other conundrums unresolved.

Expanding on the feminist concept of “masculine thinking,” I discuss how, just as law and economics’ analytic style (i.e., …

Teaching First-Year Civil Procedure And Other Introductory Courses By The Problem Method, Stephen J. Shapiro

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I have been teaching the first-year course in Civil Procedure for twenty years, first for five years at Ohio Northern University, and for the last fifteen years at the University of Baltimore, where I also teach a required second-year course in Evidence. When I first started teaching Civil Procedure, I used a fairly typical case method. I was never very happy with this approach for teaching a course in which one of my major goals was getting the students to learn to read, interpret and apply the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (“Federal Rules”). Gradually, I began to develop sets …

Controversial Speakers On Campus: Liberties, Limitations, And Common-Sense Guidelines, Kenneth Lasson

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"Veritas vos liberabit," chanted the scholastics of yesteryear. The "truth will set you free," echo their latter-day counterparts in the academy, intoning the mantra reverentially but with increasingly more hope than confidence, more faith than conviction.... The real world of the academy, of course, is not quite that wonderful, nor nearly as bad as many would suggest. The ironies become palpable, however, when those self-same institutions, which almost universally view themselves as bastions of free speech, instead stifle debate that is perceived as politically incorrect or otherwise embarrassing. Academic administrators naturally shy away from conflict and contention. They shun controversy. …

Creating Effective Legal Research Exercises, Amy E. Sloan

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No abstract provided.

The Tintinnabulation Of Bell's Letters, Kenneth Lasson

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It is easy to admire Derrick Bell for the passion of his principles, and to empathize with the pain he feels for his people. Those same emotions, however, are so often conveyed with such rhetorical acrimony that his considerable merits as a role model - as well as his standing as an impartial scholar engaged in objective and well-reasoned analysis - have come to be substantially diminished. Nevertheless Bell's letters have a disturbing resonance, a tintinnabulation that gives many people of good will second thoughts about the quest for equality in America.

Professor Bell certainly has a right to his …

Litigation In The U.S. And In The Civil Law System: What Can We Learn From Each Other?, James Maxeiner

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Discusses the lack of American interest in learning about foreign civil procedure. Considers points where America might benefit from foreign experiences. Suggests significant differences in procedure can be attributed to emphasis on day-in-court thinking over reasoned decision thinking.

On Letters & Law Reviews: A Jaded Rejoinder, Kenneth Lasson

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I've been asked to comment upon Professor Jensen's essay, and I'm left with wearily wondering why's. Why did Jensen write this piece in the first place? Why was I asked to address it? Why did I so quickly say yes?

Let me respond.