Law Commons^™

Teaching Critical Use Of Legal Research Technology, Jennifer E. Chapman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Feminist Legal History And Legal Pedagogy, Paula A. Monopoli

Faculty Scholarship

Women are mere trace elements in the traditional law school curriculum. They exist only on the margins of the canonical cases. Built on masculine norms, traditional modes of legal pedagogy involve appellate cases that overwhelmingly involve men as judges and advocates. The resulting silence signals that women are not makers of law—especially constitutional law. Teaching students critical modes of analysis like feminist legal theory and critical race feminism matters. But unmoored from feminist legal history, such critical theory is incomplete and far less persuasive. This Essay focuses on feminist legal history as foundational if students are to understand the implications …

Teaching Professional Responsibility Through Theater, Michael Millemann, Elliott Rauh, Robert Bowie Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

This article is about ethics-focused, law school courses, co-taught with a theater director, in which students wrote, produced and performed in plays. The plays were about four men who, separately, were wrongfully convicted, spent decades in prison, and finally were released and exonerated, formally (two) or informally (two).

The common themes in these miscarriages of justice were that 1) unethical conduct of prosecutors (especially failures to disclose exculpatory evidence) and of defense counsel (especially incompetent representation) undermined the Rule of Law and produced wrongful convictions, and 2) conversely, that the ethical conduct of post-conviction lawyers and law students helped to …

Teaching Justice-Connectivity, Michael Pinard

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay conveys the importance of building in law students the foundation to recognize the various systems, institutions, and conditions that often crash into the lives of their clients, as well as the residents of the communities that are just outside law schools’ doors. It does so through proposing a teaching model that I call Justice-Connectivity. This model aims for students to understand and be humbled by the ways in which different institutions, systems, and strands of law converge upon, oppress, isolate, and shun individuals, families, and communities. The ultimate teaching lesson is that individuals, families, and communities are often …

Digging Them Out Alive, Michael Millemann, Rebecca Bowman Rivas, Elizabeth Smith

Faculty Scholarship

From 2013-2018, we taught a collection of interrelated law and social work clinical courses, which we call “the Unger clinic.” This clinic was part of a major, multi-year criminal justice project, led by the Maryland Office of the Public Defender. The clinic and project responded to a need created by a 2012 Maryland Court of Appeals decision, Unger v. State. It, as later clarified, required that all Maryland prisoners who were convicted by juries before 1981—237 older, long-incarcerated prisoners—be given new trials. This was because prior to 1981 Maryland judges in criminal trials were required to instruct the jury …

Preparing Law Students In The Wake Of #Metoo, Paula A. Monopoli

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Scholarship Of Resonance In An Era Of Discord, Frank A. Pasquale

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Helping Our Students Reach Their Full Potential: The Insidious Consequences Of Stereotype Threat, Russell A. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Law And Economics: Contemporary Approaches, Martha T. Mccluskey, Frank A. Pasquale, Jennifer Taub

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Market Myth And Pay Disparity In Legal Academia, Paula A. Monopoli

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Legal Education In Transition: Trends And Their Implications, Michael A. Millemann, Sheldon Krantz

Faculty Scholarship

This is a pivotal moment in legal education. Revisions in American Bar Association accreditation standards, approved in August 2014, impose new requirements, including practice-based requirements, on law schools. Other external regulators and critics are pushing for significant changes too. For example, the California bar licensing body is proposing to add a practice-based, experiential requirement to its licensing requirements, and the New York Court of Appeals, New York’s highest court, is giving third-year, second semester students the opportunity to practice full-time in indigent legal services programs and projects. Unbeknown to many, there have been significant recent changes in legal education that …

Are We There Yet? Aligning The Expectations And Realities Of Gaining Competency In Legal Writing, Sherri Lee Keene

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Assessing Experiential Learning, Jobs And All: A Response To The Three Professors, Robert J. Condlin

Faculty Scholarship

Does clinical practice experience improve a law student’s chances of getting a legal job? If not, would it, if employers were given better information about that experience? And if not, are there other reasons to justify a law school’s decision to fund a clinical program? The answer to the first two questions is almost certainly no. For many reasons—the uneven and situation-driven nature of clinical practice experience, the Delphic quality of practice evaluations, the availability of more effective in-house training options, and the like—most private law firms prefer to trust conventional academic credentials more than practice experience in deciding whom …

Synergy And Tradition: The Unity Of Research, Service, And Teaching In Legal Education, Frank A. Pasquale

Faculty Scholarship

Most non-profit law schools generate public goods of enormous value: important research, service to disadvantaged communities, and instruction that both educates students about present legal practice and encourages them to improve it. Each of these missions informs and enriches the others. However, technocratic management practices menace law schools’ traditional missions of balancing theory and practice, advocacy and scholarly reflection, study of and service to communities. This article defends the unity and complementarity of law schools’ research, service, and teaching roles. (For those short on time, the chart on pages 45-46 encapsulates the conflicting critiques of law schools which this article …

One Small Step For Legal Writing, One Giant Leap For Legal Education: Making The Case For More Writing Opportunities In The "Practice-Ready" Law School Curriculum, Sherri Lee Keene

Faculty Scholarship

Legal writing is more than an isolated practical skill or a law school course; it is a valuable tool for broadening and deepening law students’ and new attorneys’ knowledge and understanding of the law. If experienced legal professionals, both professors and practitioners alike, take a hard look back at their careers, many will no doubt remember how their work on significant legal writing projects advanced their own knowledge of the law and enhanced their professional competence. Legal writing practice helps the writer to gain expertise in a number of ways: first, the act of writing itself promotes learning; second, close …

"Practice Ready Graduates": A Millennialist Fantasy, Robert J. Condlin

Faculty Scholarship

The sky is falling on legal education say the pundits, and preparing “practice ready” graduates is one of the best strategies for surviving the fallout. This is a millennialist version of the argument for clinical legal education that dominated discussion in the law schools in the 1960s and 1970s. The circumstances are different now, as are the people calling for reform, but the two movements are alike in one respect: both view skills training as legal education’s primary purpose. Everything else is a frolic and detour, and a fatal frolic and detour in hard times such as the present.

No …

Contemporary Trusts And Estates - An Experiential Approach, Jerome Borison, Naomi R. Cahn, Susan N. Gary, Paula A. Monopoli

Faculty Scholarship

In this essay in a special issue dedicated to teaching trusts and estates, the co-authors of Contemporary Trusts & Estates: An Experiential Approach (2d. ed. Aspen 2014) reflect on how the teaching of trusts and estates can integrate policy, practice, doctrine, and centuries of tradition. They describe the genesis of their problem-based casebook and the influence of the Carnegie Report on their choice of pedagogic framework. Each of the co-authors embraced the fundamental principles advocated by the Carnegie Report, which counsels that legal education should integrate “theoretical and practical legal knowledge and professional identity.” This essay goes on to outline …

Infusing Technology Skills Into The Law School Curriculum, Simon Canick

Faculty Scholarship

Legal education has never considered technological proficiency to be a key outcome. Law professors may debate the merits of audiovisual teaching tools: do they work when they should?; do they facilitate learning objectives or are they just toys?; whom should they call when something breaks?; and so on. Teachers use course management sites like TWEN and Blackboard to share information and manage basic course functions. Many fear that laptops and other devices distract students in class, and some institute outright bans. Among many law teachers, technology is warily accepted, but only for the purpose of achieving traditional educational objectives.

What …

The Status Gap: Female Faculty In The Legal Academy, Paula A. Monopoli

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Deal Deconstructions, Case Studies, And Case Simulations: Toward Practice Readiness With New Pedagogies In Teaching Business And Transactional Law, Michelle M. Harner, Robert J. Rhee

Faculty Scholarship

In this short commentary, we explore the use of two interrelated pedagogical methods for teaching transactional and business law. The first method is deal deconstruction, which analyzes the set of final deal documents and outcomes. This method is backward-looking, conducting a post-mortem on business transactions and analyzing the parties’ choices memorialized in the agreement against the legal and financial alternatives. The second method involves case studies and simulations, which are commonly seen in business schools. This method is forward-looking, exposing students to the uncertainties and situational contexts of doing deals and deal-related litigation. Together, these complementary methods help students understand …

Justadvice: Studying Law In Snapshots, Brenda Bratton Blom, Leigh Maddox

Faculty Scholarship

Access to legal services continues to be a critical need in the United States. Clinical programs in law schools are part of responding to the demand for these services, but often face the challenge of filling gaps left by larger programs serving the poor or responding to unique legal needs. JustAdvice was designed to provide limited advice to a broad range of people with legal needs, unbundling those services where possible. The story of the development, implementation and transformation of the program into a teaching, triage and referral system that importantly links multiple organizations and services is the core of …

Specialization In Law And Business: A Proposal For A J.D./"Mbl" Curriculum, Robert J. Rhee

Faculty Scholarship

This paper provides the specific details of how an interdisciplinary program of law and business can be structured in a three-year J.D. program. The program envisioned is a J.D./”M.B.L.”, which is distinguished from the better known J.D./M.B.A. The “M.B.L.” stands for “masters of business law,” which is simply an idea tag. The moniker can represent a program conferring a supplemental degree in law and business, or simply a specialized course of study to complete a J.D. Either way, the program is an interdisciplinary program of concentrated study in core transaction-oriented law courses and core business courses. The most effective education …

Tackling "Arithmophobia": Teaching How To Read, Understand, And Analyze Financial Statements, Paula J. Williams, Kris Anne Tobin, Eric Franklin, Robert J. Rhee

Faculty Scholarship

This discussion presents different ideas on how to teach accounting and practical finance to law students.

Transcription Of 2013 Chapman Law Review Symposium: "The Future Of Law, Business, And Legal Education: How To Prepare Students To Meet Corporate Needs", Leo E. Strine Jr., Bradley Borden, Robert J. Rhee, Tania King, Lee Cheng

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Library Services For The Self-Interested Law School: Enhancing The Visibility Of Faculty Scholarship, Simon Canick

Faculty Scholarship

This article suggests a new set of filters through which to evaluate law library services, in particular those that support faculty scholarship. Factors include profound changes in legal education, and motivators of today’s law professors. Understanding the needs of self-interested deans and professors, libraries can fill new roles that are consistent with our core values. In particular we can focus on dissemination and promotion of faculty work, especially through innovative open access projects.

What's On First?: Organizing The Casebook And Molding The Mind, Donald G. Gifford, Joseph L. Kroart Iii, Brian Jones, Cheryl Cortemeglia

Faculty Scholarship

This study empirically tests the proposition that law students adopt different conceptions of the judge’s role in adjudication based on whether they first study intentional torts, negligence, or strict liability. The authors conducted an anonymous survey of more than 450 students enrolled in eight law schools at the beginning, mid-point, and end of the first semester of law school. The students were prompted to indicate to what extent they believed the judge’s role to be one of rule application and, conversely, to what extent it was one of considering social, economic, and ideological factors. The survey found that while all …

Why Environmental Law Clinics?, Adam Babich, Jane F. Barrett

Faculty Scholarship

The law clinic has become an increasingly important part of legal education, giving students the opportunity to learn practical skills as well as to internalize core legal values. Pedagogical concerns preclude clinics from letting fear of criticism drive decisions about how they represent clients. The legal profession's idealistic aspirations pose challenges, and political attacks have answered clinicians' efforts to live up to these aspirations. An error underlies such attacks, however: holding lawyers responsible for their clients' legal positions despite the profession's duty to ensure that such positions get a fair hearing.

Critical Review Examination System (Cres) Computer Assisted Student Self-Critique Of Essay Question Answers, David S. Bogen

Faculty Scholarship

This paper discusses the Critical Review Exam System [CRES] developed by Alan Tyree in Australia in which the computer poses a question requiring an essay answer. After the student answer has been "submitted," the computer asks the student a number of simple yes/no questions about the submitted answer. In effect, students mark their own answer. The "critical review" questions may be arranged in a tree structure, thus facilitating the use of questions which have no "right" answer.

Cres Programs For Legal Education, David S. Bogen, Eric Sherbine

Faculty Scholarship

Students complain that they do not get enough feedback on their progress through the year. Faculty members complain that students cannot write, although they often mean that students cannot analyze in writing. But mid-semester examinations are a pain to grade and often do not cover enough material to challenge students in recognizing the issues. Multiple choice examinations are weak choices for issue spotting, time consuming to construct, and offer no opportunity for writing. Most forms of examination grading do not really help the student understand exactly what they should be doing. Sample answers alone may or may not be read, …

Gender And The Crisis In Legal Education: Remaking The Academy In Our Image, Paula A. Monopoli

Faculty Scholarship

American legal education is in the grip of what some have called an “existential crisis.” The New York Times proclaims the death of the current system of legal education. This is attributed, in part, to the incentivizing of faculty to produce increasingly abstract scholarship and the costs this imposes on pedagogy and the mentoring of students. At the same time, despite women graduating from law schools in significant numbers since the 1980s, they continue to lag behind in the most prestigious positions in academia—tenured, full professorships: From academic year 1998-99 to academic year 2007-08, the percentage of women full professors …