Law Commons^™

Live And Learn: Live Critiquing And Student Learning, Patricia G. Montana

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

After nearly fifteen years of teaching first-year and upper-level legal writing courses and commenting on thousands of student papers, I decided to experiment with a new way of giving feedback. In a break from the traditional written feedback I had become accustomed to in the form of margin comments and a combination of line edits and end notes, I opted to live a little and learn a new practice: live critiquing. Live critiquing is essentially the process of giving students feedback on their work “live” or in-person, rather than in writing. In the most liberal approach to live critiquing, …

A Promising Beginning, Jeremiah A. Ho

Faculty Publications

When I began teaching at the University of Massachusetts in August 2012, one of my first encounters was with the newly-formed UMass Law Review. The editorial staff was wrapping up its initial preparations for publishing the inaugural volume. Now, over a year later, those nascent processes have since been refined; the inaugural year is over. We are excited to say that the UMass Law Review enters its sophomore year with this current issue, affectionately dubbed “9:1”.

The Value Of Narrative In Legal Scholarship And Teaching, Jean C. Love

Faculty Publications

Storytelling-particularly storytelling written from an "outsider's" perspective-is a new form of legal writing that appears with increasing frequency on the pages of law reviews and specialized legal journals. At the same time, critics are questioning whether storytelling deserves to be classified as a form of legal scholarship. Perhaps storytellers are to be regarded as talented and creative writers, but do they truly deserve to be called legal scholars? At first, the debate was local, arising in the context of the deliberations of appointments committees and tenure committees. Now the debate is national, and it is being conducted on the pages …

Teaching Law Students Through Individual Learning Styles, Robin A. Boyle, Rita Dunn

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Teaching can be rewarding, but it can also be frustrating when some students fail to grasp the material. Professor Robin A. Boyle of St. John’s University School of Law has been teaching Legal Research and Writing in small sections of approximately twenty to thirty students for four years. She, like many of her similarly exasperated colleagues, has repeated the same course content by using either lecture or collaborative learning, and has observed some students doing well, whereas others continued to perform poorly. Then, Dr. Rita Dunn was introduced to the law school faculty and suggested that law professors incorporate …