Law Commons^™

Product Concept To Complete Business Plan In Three Months In An Ug Course For Business + Engineering Students, Paul Swamidass, Nels Madsen, P.K. Raju, Jackie Dipofi

Paul Swamidass

sophomores/juniors work in multi-disciplinary teams to conceive and select a technology-intensive product, develop a project schedule, conduct market research and survey, complete product engineering/design, make manufacturing/sourcing decisions, estimate demand for five years, develop production/sourcing capacity, estimate investment needed and 5-yr cash flow as part of a business plan in 3 months; the business plan presentation is judged by a panel. The course is called Introduction to Business and Engineering but it is a holistic Technology Ventures course that prepares engineering and business students to partner together in bringing a technology-intensive product to the market. This course can be easily adopted …

The Moral Of The Story: The Power Of Narrative To Inspire And Sustain Scholarship, Amy Vorenberg

Amy Vorenberg

Abstract The Moral of the Story: The Power of Narrative to Inspire and Sustain Scholarship Professor Amy Vorenberg This essay describes the power of story as a tool to inspire scholarship. We think of stories as a means to bring life to legal cases in a way that grounds them and makes them visceral and comprehensible. We use storytelling to teach our students – showing how the emotive power of a story can persuade. However, stories can also serve a different function. In my search for a way to inspire my own writing, I discovered that a good story could …

Teaching Negotiation To A Globally Diverse Audience: Ethics, Morality And Cultural Differences, David Allen Larson, Vanessa Seyman

David Allen Larson

"Teaching Negotiation to a Globally Diverse Audience: Ethics, Morality, and Cultural Differences" (by David Allen Larson and Vanessa Seyman) This is a short article discussing the challenges of teaching negotiation, and also the challenge of actually negotiating, in a globally diverse environment. Issues of ethics, morality and culture can surface quite quickly when teaching and negotiating in a multicultural environment. The article builds upon our recent experiences as participants in the Second Generation Global Negotiation conference held Istanbul, Turkey. The article provides examples of how cultural and language differences can impact both actual negotiations and negotiation teaching and provides suggestions …

Deepening The Discourse Using The Legal Mind’S Eye: Lessons From Neuroscience And Psychology That Optimize Law School Learning, Hillary Burgess

Hillary Burgess

Research demonstrates that incorporating visual aids and exercises into learning environments improves learning with higher-order cognitive skills such as “thinking like a lawyer.” This article argues that because law school learning focuses on the highest order cognitive skills, professors optimize the learning environment by including visual aids and visual exercises.

This article begins by defining what higher order cognitive skills are by mapping common law school learning tasks onto a leading taxonomy of learning objectives. This article argues that the legal curriculum engages all six levels of learning by traditionally teaching the lowest four levels of learning and by traditionally …

Practice Writing: Do Writing Programs Really Teach Practical Skills?, Amy Vorenberg

Amy Vorenberg

Abstract Practice Writing: Responding to the Needs of the Bench and Bar in First Year Teaching. This article is the result of several surveys of law schools, lawyers and judges as well as interviews with judges, all aimed at examining whether first year writing programs are preparing students adequately for the real world of practice. Our conclusion is that students are not prepared for the expectations of writing in practice and that first year writing programs should be re-designed to better serve students. While legal writing programs have improved, our research demonstrates that programs should consider reviewing and changing the …

The Other Side Of The Story: Using Graphic Organizers As Cognitive Learning Tools To Teach Students To Construct Effective Counter-Analysis (Forthcoming 2010), Lisa T. Mcelroy, Christine N. Coughlin

Christine Nero Coughlin

In law school, it is critical for students to look at issues from both sides, whether in responding to a law school exam hypothetical or in writing predictive memorandum assignments. In teaching students to engage in thoughtful legal analysis, therefore, professors should provide strategies to help students address counter-analysis as a critical component of the analysis. Developing a method for effectively teaching counter-analysis is important because good lawyering requires complex analysis that recognizes the subtleties of the situation being analyzed.

This article begins by defining counter-analysis generally and using social science and educational psychology theory to explain why the process …