Law Commons^™

Why I Don’T Teach Administrative Law (And Perhaps Why I Should?), Allan C. Hutchinson

Allan C. Hutchinson

This Commentary reflects upon the challenges of teaching Administrative Law today. Drawing upon the author’s own career trajectory and his commitment to a critical account of law and adjudication, the article seeks to question the foundations of both administrative law and critical theory. It offers no comprehensive or cogent plan as to what to do, but insists upon the relevance and importance of combining both legal theory and legal doctrine in a convincing pedagogical approach.

The Quintessential Law Library And Librarian In A Digital Era, Femi Cadmus

Femi Cadmus

Libraries, like most institutions and industries today, are faced with disruptive technologies that challenge their relevancy in a digital era. As a result, erstwhile notions and nostalgia associated with the quintessential library and librarian are changing rapidly. This is a compelling era to reimagine the library, retaining essential traditions alongside the new technologies, which facilitate the preservation, discoverability, accessibility, and delivery of information. It is also an opportunity for libraries to respond creatively and innovatively to change. The quintessential law library and librarian cannot only survive but can also thrive in the digital era by continuing to demonstrate value through …

Is The Internet Rotting Oklahoma Law?, Lee Peoples

Lee Peoples

No abstract provided.

Annual Report Of The Indiana University Maurer School Of Law Digital Repository, 2015/16, Richard Vaughan

Richard Vaughan

A brief annual report documenting the use and growth of the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Jerome Hall Law Library, Digital Repository. Includes lists of the most downloaded documents and attached Excel spreadsheets of data.

The Movement For Open Access Law, Michael W. Carroll

Michael W. Carroll

My claim in this contribution to this important symposium is that the law and legal scholarship should be freely available on the Internet, and copyright law and licensing should facilitate achievement of this goal. This claim reflects the combined aims of those who support the movement for open access law. This nascent movement is a natural extension of the well-developed movement for free access to primary legal materials and the equally well-developed open access movement, which seeks to make all scholarly journal articles freely available on the Internet. Legal scholars have only general familiarity with the first movement and very …

Assisting Law Students With Disabilities In The 21st Century, David Jaffe

David Jaffe

No abstract provided.

Welcome Remarks And Keynote, Claudio Grossman, Laurel Terry

Claudio M. Grossman

Opening Remarks

• Dean Claudio Grossman, American University Washington College of Law

Setting the Stage: Globalization and the Legal Profession

• Laurel Terry, Harvey A. Feldman Distinguished Faculty Scholar and Professor of Law, Penn State Dickinson School of Law

Reaching Backward And Stretching Forward: Teaching For Transfer In Law School Clinics, Shaun Archer, James Parry Eyster, James J. Kelly Jr., Tonya Kowalski, Colleen F. Shanahan

James J. Kelly Jr.

In thinking about education, teachers may spend more time considering what to teach than how to teach. Unfortunately, traditional teaching techniques have limited effectiveness in their ability to help students retain and apply the knowledge either in later classes or in their professional work. What, then, is the value of our teaching efforts if students are unable to transfer the ideas and skills they have learned to later situations?

Teaching for transfer is important to the authors of this article, four clinical professors and one psychologist. The purpose of this article is to provide an introduction to some of the …

Retaining Color, Veronica Root

Veronica Root

It is no secret that large law firms are struggling in their efforts to retain attorneys of color. This is despite two decades of aggressive tracking of demographic rates, mandates from clients to improve demographic diversity, and the implementation of a variety of diversity efforts within large law firms. In part, law firm retention efforts are stymied by the reality that elite large law firms require some level of attrition to function properly under the predominant business model. This reality, however, does not explain why firms have more difficulty retaining attorneys of color — in particular black and Hispanic attorneys …

The State Of Legal Research Education: A Survey Of First-Year Legal Research Programs, Or “Why Johnny And Jane Cannot Research”, Caroline L. Osborne

Caroline L. Osborne

None available.

Training Lawyer-Entrepreneurs, Luz E. Herrera

Luz Herrera

The Great Recession has caused many new attorneys to question their decisions to go to law school. The highly publicized decline in employment opportunities for lawyers has called into question the value of obtaining a law degree. The tightening of the economy has diminished the availability of entry-level jobs for law graduates across employment sectors. Large law firms are laying-off lawyers, bringing in smaller first year associate classes, hiring more contract and experienced lateral attorneys. Government entities and public interest organizations have suffered furloughs, and hiring freezes, and are relying more on volunteers than on new employees to get the …

Encouraging The Development Of Low Bono Law Practices, Luz E. Herrera

Luz Herrera

For decades, the discussion about access to justice has primarily focused on the ability of low–income individuals to obtain free representation by lawyers. Lawyer representation is the “gold star” of the legal profession and advocates of legal services for the poor have fought difficult battles to ensure the most disadvantaged in our country have access to these professionals. As a result, legal aid programs and pro bono services that assist the most economically disadvantaged in our country are now common in our legal service delivery system.

Despite those important efforts, only 50% of those eligible for free legal services actually …

Educating Main Street Lawyers, Luz E. Herrera

Luz Herrera

Discussion about the value of a law degree has focused on the financial success of lawyers. Both defenders and critics of the existing legal education model largely ignore the implications that the cost of legal education and high lawyer fees have on access to justice. While a lawyer’s ability to make a decent living must be addressed when determining the value of a legal education, we fail to take into account the fact that there are millions of individuals in the U.S. who cannot find a lawyer to represent them when they need one. For advocates who believe that our …

Launching The Los Angeles Incubator Consortium, Laura Dym Cohen, Luz E. Herrera, William T. Tanner

Luz Herrera

This Article offers a snapshot of the initial two-month development process of a new law firm incubator program-the Los Angeles Incubator Consortium (LAIC). LAIC is a collaborative project of Pepperdine University School of Law, Southwestern Law School, and UCLA School of Law that was launched in collaboration with the Los Angeles Law Library and various local legal aid providers through seed funding from the California Commission on Access to Justice.14 Part II discusses the leadership role of California's Commission on Access to Justice in promoting incubators as models to increase the availability of affordable legal services for the modest-means population. …

Challenging A Tradition Of Exclusion: The History Of An Unheard Story At Harvard Law School, Luz E. Herrera

Luz Herrera

In a series of lectures at Harvard University, Professors Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres posited that people of color are the "miner's canary" in American society. Guinier and Torres argue that pursuing color blindness policies is dangerous because it ignores racial differences that affect every aspect of our society. According to Guinier and Torres, like the miner's canary that uses a call of distress to warn the miner of the hazardous atmosphere in the mine, the critiques people of color offer our institutions are warning signals to alert us to the presence of more systemic problems. Instead of relegating the …

Ube-Shopping: An Unintended Consequence Of Portability?, Suzanne Darrow Kleinhaus

Suzanne Darrow Kleinhaus

Preparing for the Uniform Bar Examination (UBE) may require more than just learning the law; it also means learning in which jurisdiction you should take it. While there is not much that is new about the UBE’s individual components – the Multistate Essay Examination (MEE), the Multistate Performance Test (MPT) and the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE) – what is new is that where you take the UBE may make the difference between passing and failing. This is possible because of the convergence of bar exam test practices of “portability,” “relative grading,” and “scaling” of scores. By adopting the UBE, jurisdictions …

The Accidental Clinician And The Experienced Director: A Conversation On The Value Of Externships, Marjorie A. Silver, Mary Jo Eyster

Marjorie A. Silver

In the summer of 2010, Mary Jo Eyster and Marjorie Silver conversed, via email, about the ways in which externship programs add unique value to the student’s education, separate and apart from their cost-effectiveness as compared to the in-house clinic. The result is this paper, a dialogue between a stand-up teacher who chose to teach the externship seminar and a seasoned clinician. Mary Jo and Marjorie agree that the well-designed, well-executed program should drive the design, teaching and administration of externships and their accompanying seminars. They share the goals that each of them privilege in the programs they have designed, …

A Transformational Melancholy: One Law Professor's Journey Through Depression, Marjorie A. Silver

Marjorie A. Silver

In the fall 2007 issue of the Journal of Legal Education, Professor James Jones shared his deeply personal, remarkable, ongoing, story of living, struggling and succeeding as a law professor with bipolar disorder (James T.R. Jones, Walking the Tightrope of Bipolar Disorder: The Secret Life of a Law Professor, 57 J. LEGAL ED. 349 (2007). His essay ended with an invitation to other members of the legal academy to contact him or Professor Elyn Saks, author of an extraordinary memoir about her life with schizophrenia, (ELYN R. SAKS, THE CENTER CANNOT HOLD (2007)) if interested in forming a confidential support …

Transforming Justice, Lawyers And The Practice Of Law, Marjorie A. Silver

Marjorie A. Silver

This is the Preface and Introduction to Transforming Justice, Lawyers and the Practice of Law, an anthology of writings by participants in the Project for Integrating Spirituality, Law and Politics (PISLAP) and others actively engaged in transforming law, legal education and social justice. It showcases the abundant ways in which lawyers, judges, law professors and others are employing more communitarian, peaceful and healing ways to resolve conflicts, plan legal relationships and achieve justice. It is written for lawyers, law professors, law students and others who share similar goals and are eager to learn new ways to practice law and create …

Wake The Nation: Law Student Insights Into The New Jerusalem, Thomas L. Shaffer, Anthony J. Fejfar

Thomas L. Shaffer

No abstract provided.

Four Issues In The Accreditation Of Law Schools, Thomas L. Shaffer

Thomas L. Shaffer

No abstract provided.

Legal Knowledge For Our Times: Rethinking Legal Knowledge And Legal Education, Ruth Buchanan, Marilyn Maccrimmon, Wes Pue

Ruth Buchanan

The essays gathered for this symposium reflect a number of overlapping concerns about contemporary legal knowledge and education. Though they are considerably diverse in focus and subject-matter, ranging from admissions to films to "marketing" of law faculties, each of these articles addresses aspects of legal education, the construction of legal knowledge and the character of what Ian Duncanson calls "the law discipline." Educational practice, knowledge and disciplinarity are thoroughly inter-related. The contributors to this volume are all acutely aware that, as educators and researchers, we both: participate in the construction of legal knowledge (for the readers of learned journals, for …

The Jurisprudential Cab Ride: A Socratic Dialogue, Daniel A. Farber

Daniel A Farber

No abstract provided.

Finding The Middle Ground In Collection Development: How Academic Law Libraries Can Shape Their Collections In Response To The Call For More Practice-Oriented Legal Education, Leslie A. Street, Amanda M. Runyon

Leslie Street

To examine how academic law libraries can respond to the call for more practice-oriented legal education, the authors compared trends in collection management decisions regarding secondary sources at academic and law firm libraries along with law firm librarians’ perceptions of law school legal research training of new associates.

The Changing Market For Criminal Law Casebooks, Jens David Ohlin

Jens David Ohlin

In the following Review, I analyze the leading criminal law casebooks on the market and describe the ways in which they do — and do not — respond to the needs of criminal law teachers. At least part of the issue is the changing nature of law teaching — what actually happens in the classroom has changed in the last three decades. Moreover, there may be less uniformity in classroom practice than in the past; in other words, what works in one law school might not work in another, due in part to the changing profile of law students, as …

The Changing Market For Criminal Law Casebooks, Jens David Ohlin

Jens David Ohlin

In the following Review, I analyze the leading criminal law casebooks on the market and describe the ways in which they do — and do not — respond to the needs of criminal law teachers. At least part of the issue is the changing nature of law teaching — what actually happens in the classroom has changed in the last three decades. Moreover, there may be less uniformity in classroom practice than in the past; in other words, what works in one law school might not work in another, due in part to the changing profile of law students, as …

Addressing Access To Justice Through New Legal Service Providers: Opportunities And Challenges, Alice Woolley, Trevor C. W. Farrow

Trevor C. W. Farrow

Most informed observers of the Canadian and American legal systems accept the existence of a significant crisis in access to justice. One possible solution is to permit paralegals, notaries or other licensed individuals with training more limited than that enjoyed by a licensed attorney to practice in certain areas of law. This paper supports these developments, arguing for a regulated and incremental introduction of new legal service providers into the legal services market. It considers the appropriate training and scope of practice for new legal service providers, and some of the associated opportunities and challenges.

Gilligan's Travels, Joan M. Shaughnessy

Joan M. Shaughnessy

Not available.

User Surveys: Libraries Ask, "Hey, How Am I Doing?", Dwight B. King

Dwight B. King

Mr. King offers suggestions on how to create and use surveys effectively to assess the quality of a library.

User Surveys: Libraries Ask, "Hey, How Am I Doing?", Dwight B. King

Dwight B. King

Mr. King offers suggestions on how to create and use surveys effectively to assess the quality of a library.