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Full-Text Articles in Law
Using Appellate Clinics To Focus On Legal Writing Skills, Timothy Pinto
Using Appellate Clinics To Focus On Legal Writing Skills, Timothy Pinto
Articles
Five years ago, I went to lunch with a colleague. I was teaching a legal writing course to 1L students, and he taught in a clinic in which 2L and 3L students were required to write short motions and briefs. Several of his students had taken my writing class as 1Ls, and he had a question for me. "What the heck are you teaching these students?" he asked as we sat down. He explained that several of his students were struggling with preparing simple motions. They were not laying out facts clearly. They were not identifying key legal rules. In …
The Downside Of Requiring Additional Experiential Courses In Law School, Douglas A. Kahn
The Downside Of Requiring Additional Experiential Courses In Law School, Douglas A. Kahn
Articles
In recent years, the bar has expressed dissatisfaction with what is considered by some to be inadequate preparation of law students to begin practicing law immediately after graduation. There are several reasons why this has become a matter of concern for the legal profession. The profession itself has undergone significant changes. Although there are a few exceptions, most law firms no longer wish to spend time training their young associates or allowing them much time to develop the skills they need. First, clients are unwilling to pay for the time a young lawyer spends in acquiring needed skills. Second, the …
Transactional Drafting: Using Law Firm Marketing Materials As A Research Resource For Teaching Drafting, Edward R. Becker
Transactional Drafting: Using Law Firm Marketing Materials As A Research Resource For Teaching Drafting, Edward R. Becker
Articles
Since I started teaching drafting, I would like to think that I have continued to learn some lessons about teaching both the substance and the skills of transactional drafting. One of those lessons that I am going to be talking about today is one that I stumbled across by happy accident rather than one that I consciously sought. Specifically, I want to talk about and highlight the ways that law students can use law firm marketing materials to increase their understanding of both drafting and lawyering skills in law school and, hopefully, in practice.
Learning From The Unique And Common Challenges: Clinical Legal Education In Jordan, Nisreen Mahasneh, Kimberly A. Thomas
Learning From The Unique And Common Challenges: Clinical Legal Education In Jordan, Nisreen Mahasneh, Kimberly A. Thomas
Articles
Legal education worldwide is undergoing scrutiny for its failure to graduate students who have the problem-solving abilities, skills, and professional values necessary for the legal profession.1 Additionally, law schools at universities in the Middle East have found themselves in an unsettled environment, where greater demands for practical education are exacerbated by several factors such as high levels of youth unemployment. More specifically, in Jordan there is a pressing need for universities to respond to this criticism and to accommodate new or different methods of legal education. Clinical legal education is one such method.3 We use the term "clinical legal education" …
On American Legal Education Reform In Japanese Legal Education, Carl E. Schneider
On American Legal Education Reform In Japanese Legal Education, Carl E. Schneider
Articles
The one hundredth anniversary of the Kyoto University Faculty of Law is the kind of splendid occasion when, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes remarked, a distinguished institution "becomes conscious of itself and its meaning." I can hardly express my pleasure at being invited to join in your celebration; but I must express my fear that I can add little to it. When Dean Tanaka kindly invited me, I should probably have declined, for I, a foreigner, can hardly know enough about an institution so central to the life of its country and its profession to speak of it and its …
Essay: Recent Trends In American Legal Education, Paul D. Reingold
Essay: Recent Trends In American Legal Education, Paul D. Reingold
Articles
An American law professor in Japan has much more to learn than to teach. A foreigner like me - who comes to Japan on short notice, with no knowledge of Japanese culture and institutions, and with no Japanese language skills - sets himself a formidable task. Happily, the courtesy of my hosts, the patience of my colleagues, and the devotion of my students, have made for a delightful visit. I thank all of you. You asked me to talk about American legal education. As you surely know, the system of legal education in the U.S. is very different from the …
The Role Of Clinical Programs In Legal Education, Suellyn Scarnecchia
The Role Of Clinical Programs In Legal Education, Suellyn Scarnecchia
Articles
In clinic, students get a glance at the lawyer they will be someday. They gain confidence that, indeed, they will be a "good" lawyer. They understand the context in which their classroom learning will be applied. In short, they are able to integrate their law school experience.
Why Hard Cases Make Good (Clinical) Law, Paul D. Reingold
Why Hard Cases Make Good (Clinical) Law, Paul D. Reingold
Articles
In 1992, when the University of California's Hastings College of Law decided to offer a live-client clinic for the first time, its newly hired director had to make several decisions about what form the program should take.1 The first question for the director was whether the clinic should be a single-issue specialty clinic or a general clinic that would represent clients across several areas of the law. The second question, and the one that will be the focus of this essay, was whether the program should restrict its caseload to "easy" routine cases or also accept non-routine, less controllable litigation. …
The Rhythms Of Hope And Disappointment In The Language Of Judging (St. John's University School Of Law: Rededication Symposia), James Boyd White
The Rhythms Of Hope And Disappointment In The Language Of Judging (St. John's University School Of Law: Rededication Symposia), James Boyd White
Articles
I want to talk today about a certain aspect or dimension of the language of judging. From one point of view the quality I mean can be seen as a kind of idealism inherent in legal language; from another, as a kind of fundamental hypocrisy; from still another, as a simultaneously tragic and comic element in legal life.
Harry Edward's Nostalgia, Paul D. Reingold
Harry Edward's Nostalgia, Paul D. Reingold
Articles
Until fairly recently, the work of people who thought and wrote about the law in its broadest cultural sense, and the work of those who thought and wrote about the law as it was practiced, did not intersect very much. The broad cultural issues tended to be the province of philosophers or political theorists or other academic social critics, while traditional legal scholarship - as it appeared in law school journals - remained firmly rooted in lawyers' questions. This is not to suggest that legal academics wrote nothing but practice manuals, but it is true that until the last twenty …
Letter To Judge Harry Edwards, James J. White
Letter To Judge Harry Edwards, James J. White
Articles
Dear Harry: I write to second your statements concerning the disjunction between legal education and the legal profession and also to quibble with you. By examining the faculty, the curriculum, and the research agenda at Michigan, your school and mine, I hope to illustrate the ways in which you are right and to suggest other ways in which you and your clerk informants may be too pessimistic.
The Scholar As Advocate, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
The Scholar As Advocate, Rebecca S. Eisenberg
Articles
Academic freedom in this country has been so closely identified with faculty autonomy that the two terms are often used interchangeably, especially by faculty members who are resisting restraints on their freedom to do as they please. While there may be some dispute as to whether or how far academic freedom protects the autonomy of universities or of students, the autonomy of faculty members seems to lie close to the core of the traditional American conception of academic freedom. As elaborated by the American Association of University Professors, this conception of academic freedom calls for protecting individual faculty members from …
The Moral Responsibility Of Law Schools, Terrance Sandalow
The Moral Responsibility Of Law Schools, Terrance Sandalow
Articles
The subject I have been asked to address, the moral responsibility of-law schools, is perplexing, less because answers to the implicit question are uncertain than because the meaning of the question is unclear. Our ideas about moral responsibility have been formed in reference to individuals. They presuppose the existence of distinctively human characteristics such as understanding and will. What, then, can be meant by the moral responsibility of "law schools," institutions that, just because they are not human, necessarily lack these capacities?
The Law Teacher--His Functions And Responsibilities, Harry B. Hutchins
The Law Teacher--His Functions And Responsibilities, Harry B. Hutchins
Articles
The notion that the teaching of the law is quite as much a profession as is the practice of it, and that it demands an intellectual equipment of a high order, is probably gaining ground. It is fully recognized by those who understand what systematic legal education, as carried on to-day in our leading law schools, really is. But as yet the majority of laymen, and very many lawyers, probably most lawyers who were educated under the old regime as well as most of those who have come to the bar through the law office, fail to appreciate the full …