Law Commons^™

The Futures Of Law, Lawyers, And Law Schools: A Dialogue, Benjamin H. Barton, Sameer M. Ashar, Michael J. Madison, Rachel F. Moran

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On April 19 and 20, 2023, Professors Bernard Hibbitts and Richard Weisberg convened a conference at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law titled “Disarmed, Distracted, Disconnected, and Distressed: Modern Legal Education and the Unmaking of American Lawyers.” Four speakers concluded the event with a spirited conversation about themes expressed during the proceedings. Distilling a lively two days, they asked: what are the most critical challenges now facing US legal education and, by extension, lawyers and the communities they serve? Their agreements and disagreements were striking, so much so that Professors Hibbitts and Weisberg invited those four to extend their …

The Case For (And Against) Aba Regulation Of Non-J.D. Programs, Benjamin H. Barton

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American law schools have pulled out of what looked like a death spiral. From 2008-18 job placement and bar passage cratered and applications and JD enrolment followed. Some law schools found themselves trapped between Scylla and Charybdis – if they did not loosen admissions, they would not have the funds to keep the doors open. But if they loosened admissions too much bar passage and placement suffered, prompting a possible closure via disaccreditation by the ABA (or the DOE).

There are (broadly speaking) two models of profitable higher education in the United States. The first is the old school, classic …

Deflect, Delay, Deny: A Case Study Of Segregation By Law School Faculty, Briana Rosenbaum

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Many histories of school desegregation litigation center on the natural protagonists, such as the lawyers and plaintiffs who fought the status quo. Little attention is paid to the role that individual faculty members played in the perpetuation of segregated legal education. When the antagonists in the historiographies do appear, it is usually as anonymous individuals and groups. Thus, “the Board of Regents” refused to change its policy and “the University” denied a person’s application.

But recently discovered and rarely accessed historic documents provide proof of the direct role that some law school faculty members played in the perpetuation of segregation. …

A Proposal For The Adoption Of Research-Based Interventions By Instructors For Law School Research Classes In American Law Schools, Nathan A. Preuss

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This paper identifies educational motivation issues in the law student population; particularly in required legal research courses. The author summarizes two relevant psychological theories widely applied in educational contexts: expectancy-value theory and attributional theory. Intervention methods to reduce or eliminate these motivational problems are suggested.

Where Do We Go From Here?, George Kuney, Joan Macleod Heminway, Howard E. Katz

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No abstract provided.

Law Student Motivation, Satisfaction, And Well-Being: The Value Of A Leadership And Professional Development Curriculum, Douglas A. Blaze

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No abstract provided.

Critical Theory And Clinical Stance, Wendy A. Bach

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Clinicians, unlike their peers in the legal academy, are embedded in their clients’ experiences of the legal system. Because of their location in the academy, “they have the potential to transform the study of law into the study of a culture that deploys law for various purposes,” in the words of Phyllis Goldfarb. In this short essay, we highlight a thread of clinical scholarship which we identify as growing from clinicians’ unique and embedded stance. We seek to convince, using a few examples of clinical scholarship, that our collective critical stance has yielded, over the last several decades, a growing …

Training Leaders The Very Best Way We Can, Douglas A. Blaze, George Lewis

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No abstract provided.

Fresh Approaches To Teaching Transactional Drafting, Joan Macleod Heminway, Richard K. Neumann Jr., Katherine M. Koops

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No abstract provided.

Teaching The Newly Essential Knowledge, Skills, And Values In A Changing World, Paula Schaefer, Lisa Bliss, Robin A. Boyle, Sylvia B. Caley, Deborah L. Rhode

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This chapter of Building on Best Practices: Transforming Legal Education in a Changing World has contributions from many authors:

• Section A, Professional Identity Formation, includes:
  • Teaching Knowledge, Skills, and Values of Professional Identity Formation, by Larry O. Natt Gantt, II & Benjamin V. Madison III,
  • Integrating Professionalism into Doctrinally-Focused Courses, by Paula Schaefer,
  • Learning Professional Responsibility, by Clark D. Cunningham, and
  • Teaching Leadership, by Deborah L. Rhode.
• Section B, Pro Bono as a Professional Value, is by Cynthia F. Adcock, Eden E. Harrington, Elizabeth Kane, Susan Schechter, David S. Udell & Eliza Vorenberg.
• Section C, The Relational Skills of the …

The Doctrine Of Legal Writing - Book Review Of Linda H. Edwards's Readings In Persuasion: Briefs That Changed The World, Lucille Jewel

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In legal education, the word “doctrinal” is most often used to refer to courses such as Contracts, Torts, Property, and Criminal Procedure. Doctrinal has long been used as a descriptive adjective, but also as a word of exclusion. We often hear that legal writing courses are not substantive and not as significant as doctrinal courses. Linda Edwards’s new book, Readings in Persuasion: Briefs that Changed the World, persuasively challenges this view.

This paper evaluates what we mean when we use the term doctrinal in a legal education context and considers six powerful descriptors for the doctrine of legal writing, all …

Teaching Transactional Skills Using Real Clients From Clinic To Classroom, Brian Krumm, Shelley Dunck

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No abstract provided.

Addressing Shortfalls In Traditional Legal Education: Ut's Concentrations And Capstones And Waller Lansden's Schola2juris Program, George Kuney, Joseph Watson

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Law school’s traditional educational model needs to be revamped. The traditional law firm’s summer associate model needs restructuring. Some might say they are both broken. Across the country, educators, and commentators are talking about legal education reforms and leading law firms are confronting how to improve the age-old mechanism for recruiting law students.

In the recent past, the legal employment landscape provided no incentive for law firms to question their traditional recruiting practices. The traditional law-firm recruitment model — the summer-associate program — is often little more than a glorified summer camp for some of the most highly educated — …

Tales Of A Fourth Tier Nothing, A Response To Brian Tamanaha's Failing Law Schools, Lucille Jewel

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This is a paper written in response to Professor Brian Tamanaha’s Failing Law Schools. Much of the book is laudable for highlighting the serious structural, policy, and moral issues confronting legal education today. However, I disagree with several of Professor Tamanaha’s ideas for reforming our system. In this paper, I write from the perspective of a tenured legal writing professor teaching at a for-profit fourth tier school, in fact, one of the schools that Tamanaha repeatedly implies are the problem and not the solution for the legal education crisis.

Part One addresses the idea, which dates back to 1921, that …

A Case Study In Transactional Centers And Certificate/Concentration Programs: From Program Design To Student Experience, The Clayton Center For Entrepreneurial Law, Brian Krumm, Joan Macleod Heminway, Michael J. Higdon

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No abstract provided.

Teaching Business Associations Law In The Evolving New Market Economy, Joan Macleod Heminway

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Over the past ten years, the doctrinal rules governing business associations have become more complex (with, e.g., the addition of significant federal law on corporate governance and corporate finance and the recent enactment of social enterprise forms of entity). Moreover, a number of us have added experiential learning to the business associations course (or another similarly titled foundational course on business entity law) and have increased the number and types of assessment tools used in our business associations pedagogy. This has made the task of teaching business associations somewhat overwhelming.

Law faculty respond to the challenges of teaching introductory business …

Preparing The Transactional Lawyer: From Doctrine To Practice, George Kuney

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No abstract provided.

Teaching Antitrust After The Financial Crisis, Maurice Stucke

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No abstract provided.

Teaching Contract Drafting Using Real Contracts, Brian Krumm, Sharon Pocock, Shelley Dunck

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No abstract provided.

Innovative Transactional Pedagogies, Joan Macleod Heminway

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Our law schools are embracing in a more powerful way innovative transactional pedagogies that address not only theory, policy, and doctrine, but also legal skills. This transcribed panel discussion explores three of these pedagogies – teaching corporate finance as advanced contract drafting, teaching numeracy, and teaching substance and skill in contract drafting through the use of in-office meetings and analytical memos – and describes how they are being implemented in law teaching. The panel was part of the “Transactional Education: What’s Next?” conference hosted by the Emory University School of Law’s Center for Transactional Law and Practice on June 4-5, …

Clinical Legal Education At A Generational Crossroads, Dean Rivkin

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Clinical legal education is at a crossroads. With studies like the Macrate Report, Carnegie Foundation Report “Educating Lawyers,” and Best Practices for Legal Education there is greater focus on experiential learning. Consequently, clinics are at an inflection point regarding their future. Three distinct generations will determine the path forward: Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials. Each generation brings a different set of preferences, biases, perspectives and strengths to the table. Given the changes in legal academia, what will the future hold for clinical legal education?

The following are four essays by clinicians from the three generations. They each relay their …

Pedagogic Techniques: Multi-Disciplinary Courses, Annotated Document Review, Collaborative Work & Large Groups, George Kuney

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No abstract provided.

Is There A Correlation Between Law Professor Publication Counts, Law Review Citation Counts, And Teaching Evaluations? An Empirical Study, Benjamin H. Barton

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This empirical study attempts to answer an age-old debate in legal academia: whether scholarly productivity helps or hurts teaching. The study is of an unprecedented size and scope. It covers every tenured or tenure-track faculty member at 19 American law schools, a total of 623 professors. The study gathers four years of teaching evaluation data (calendar years 2000-03) and correlates these data against five different measures of research productivity/scholarly influence.

The results are counter-intuitive: there is either no correlation or a slight positive correlation between teaching effectiveness and any of the five measures of research productivity. Given the breadth of …

Educating Workers About Labor Rights And Global Wrongs Through Documentary Film, Fran Ansley

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No abstract provided.

From Simon Cowell To Tim Gunn: What Reality Television Can Teach Us About How To Critique Our Students' Work Effectively, Michael J. Higdon

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In an effort to illustrate and inform what makes for more effective critique of students' legal writing, this essay analogizes the various critiquing techniques currently taking place on the popular reality programs American Idol and Project Runway to the critiquing techniques used by legal writing professors.

Caught In (Or On) The Web: A Review Of Course Management Systems For Legal Education, Joan Macleod Heminway

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Like other teaching innovations, course management software has been somewhat slow to take hold in legal education. Yet, as law teachers, we cannot deny that our current students are children of a technological age that centers on electronic communication. Although there is a lack of empirical evidence strongly supporting the pedagogic case for the use of technology in law teaching, some of us in the law academy have ventured forth with the use of teaching technologies on the theory that the current demographics of the law student population demand our interaction with students on this basis.

Course management systems are …

Going On-Line With Justice Pedagogy: Four Ways Of Looking At A Web Site, Fran Ansley

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No abstract provided.

Law Student Field Projects In Community Law, Fran Ansley

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An online teaching and learning portfolio.

Inclusive Teaching Methods Across The Curriculum: Academic Resource And Law Teachers Tie A Knot At The Aals, Fran Ansley

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In September 1996, Laurie Zimet, Director of the Academic Support Program at the University of California at Hastings College of the Law, proposed to the rest of us – four law professors and two other academic support teachers – that we plan the Academic Support Section presentation at the 1997 Association of American Law Schools Annual Conference. Our panel topic, “Inclusive Teaching Methods Across the Curriculum,” would draw deeply from our common passion for the subject and from our diverse experiences in innovative pedagogy. But could seven of us, three of us speaking one dialect of legal education (academic support …

Researching For Democracy And Democratizing Research, Fran Ansley

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No abstract provided.