Law Commons^™

Unsafe At Any Campus: Don't Let Colleges Become The Next Cruise Ships, Nursing Homes, And Food Processing Plants, Peter H. Huang, Debra S. Austin

Publications

The decision to educate our students via in-person or online learning environments while COVID-19 is unrestrained is a false choice, when the clear path to achieve our chief objective safely, the education of our students, can be done online. Our decision-making should be guided by the overriding principle that people matter more than money. We recognize that lost tuition revenue if students delay or defer education is an institutional concern, but we posit that many students and parents would prefer a safer online alternative to riskier in-person options, especially as we get closer to fall, and American death tolls rise. …

From The Courtroom To The Classroom: How A Litigator Became A Transactional Drafting Professor, Amy Bauer

Publications

No abstract provided.

Two Pedagogies In Search Of Synergy, Lisa Schultz, Susan Nevelow Mart

Publications

Anyone who has taught a first-year legal research course understands the dilemma: How do we weave research skills into the writing program without sacrificing the quality or quantity of either discipline? In fact, it is difficult and time consuming to interweave any serious legal research instruction into a first-year writing course. What the students need to know is not just how to do a little case law research or how to find a statute: they need to also know how to formulate a research plan, how to evaluate a database, what kind of search works in different information environments, and …

Adventures In Higher Education, Happiness, And Mindfulness, Peter H. Huang

Publications

This Article recounts my unique adventures in higher education, including being a Princeton University freshman mathematics major at age 14, Harvard University applied mathematics graduate student at age 17, economics and finance faculty at multiple schools, first-year law student at the University of Chicago, second- and third-year law student at Stanford University, and law faculty at multiple schools. This Article also candidly discusses my experiences as student and professor and openly shares how I achieved sustainable happiness by practicing mindfulness to reduce fears, rumination, and worry in facing adversity, disappointment, and setbacks. This Article analyzes why law schools should teach …

Is Legal Scholarship Worth Its Cost?, Paul Campos

Publications

No abstract provided.

Can Practicing Mindfulness Improve Lawyer Decision-Making, Ethics, And Leadership?, Peter H. Huang

Publications

Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of mindfulness-based stress reduction, defines mindfulness as paying attention in a curious, deliberate, kind, and non-judgmental way to life as it unfolds each moment. Psychologist Ellen Langer defines mindfulness as a flexible state of mind actively engaging in the present, noticing new things, and being sensitive to context. Langer differentiates mindfulness from mindlessness, which she defines as acting based upon past behavior instead of the present and being stuck in a fixed, solitary perspective, oblivious to alternative multiple viewpoints. Something called mindfulness is currently very fashionable and has been so for some time now in American …

Law Schools And Learning Outcomes: Developing A Coherent, Cohesive, And Comprehensive Law School Curriculum, Anthony S. Niedwiecki

Publications

This Article will detail a process that law schools can use to comply with the ABA Standards requiring schools develop their learning outcomes for the entire institution, academic programs, and courses. At the same time, this process can be used as a roadmap for curricular review and planning. As an example, this Article will use the steps that The John Marshall Law School took to review and change its professional skills curriculum. Part I will outline the accreditation requirements for developing and publishing learning outcomes. Part 11 of the Article will provide an overview of the process of curricular planning …

What Predicts Law Student Success? A Longitudinal Study Correlating Law Student Applicant Data And Law School Outcomes, Alexia Brunet Marks, Scott A. Moss

Publications

Despite the rise of “big data” empiricism, law school admission remains heavily impressionistic; admission decisions rely on anecdotes about recent students, idiosyncratic preferences for certain majors or jobs, or mainly the Law School Admission Test (LSAT). Yet no predictors are well-validated and studies of the LSAT or other factors fail to control for other factors. The lack of evidence for what actually predicts law school success is especially surprising since, after the 2010s downturn, law schools now compete for fewer applicants. We fill this gap with a two-school, 1,400-student, 2005--2011 longitudinal study. We coded nondigitized applicant data and used multivariate …

Practicing Practical Wisdom, Deborah J. Cantrell, Kenneth Sharpe

Publications

Wisdom is not an innate character trait; no one automatically is wise; wisdom is learned and acquired. More importantly, one can learn and acquire wisdom intentionally and skillfully — one can practice it. And, if the practice is structured in particular ways, the practice will improve one’s capacities to act with wisdom. This article clarifies theoretical muddiness and pedagogical imprecision by bringing together two important and robust strands of legal ethics literature. The first strand focuses on what the appropriate role of a lawyer is in a just society, while the second focuses on how a lawyer learns to be, …

Returning To The Basics: Rethinking The Meaning Of “Practice” In Law School, Reichi Lee

Publications

Legal education is in crisis and everyone is talking about it. When the economy took a nosedive, legal jobs were no long-er handed out on a silver platter and law firms began to balk at the expense of training lawyers. You can’t surf the internet without reading yet another blogger’s lament on ‘what law school does not teach you’ or why one ‘should not go to law school.’ Those forces, coupled with the sky-rocketing costs of legal education, have even the United States President (himself a former law professor) suggesting that law school should be shortened to two years. In …

Beyond The Fakultas' Four Walls: Linking Education, Practice, And The Legal Profession, Stephen A. Rosenbaum

Publications

More than fifty years after the first post-colonial Southeast Asian regional conference on legal education, commentators and educators do not necessarily agree on the appropriate curricular balance between theory, doctrine, and practice, or what role the government should play in directing the orientation of legal studies and careers in Indonesia’s law schools. The author argues in favor of legal education that is rich in experiential learning and integrates the involvement of practitioners and doctrinal faculty. This objective may be a relatively new reality in Indonesia, but also one that needs revitalization in other Southeast Asian nations and beyond. This article …

Law Schools’ Untapped Resources: Using Advocacy Professors To Achieve Real Change In Legal Education, Wes R. Porter

Publications

If the current law school model is dilapidated, then the remodel requires more than a face-lift; it requires real structural and architectural changes. Legal education (finally) must cater to the needs of students. By most accounts, that means teaching students the knowledge, skills, and values required to serve clients and solve problems. However, to reinvent legal education in a meaningful way, law schools must involve and elevate their former second-class citizens on the faculty: advocacy professors, clinicians, and legal writing instructors. These faculty members already teach, and have long taught, in the way that would represent real change in law …

Future Of The Legal Profession, Rachel A. Van Cleave

Publications

Many books and articles in the last few years describe a "profession in crisis" with no shortage of demons to blame: many equity partners in large law firms pursuing ever increasing profits, tenured law professors sitting on big salaries with no incentive to change how they teach, accrediting institutions imposing expensive regulation on law schools, and the examples of finger-pointing continue. In the words of YouTube sensation Kid President, "I think we all need a pep talk."

Viewpoint: Happier Law Students, One Client At A Time, Susan Rutberg

Publications

It's not your parents' legal education anymore. To lawyers who came of age in days of yore, legal education today would be almost unrecognizable. True, students still learn how to analyze appellate opinions, and at some schools, still survive the socratic method. But at Golden Gate University and an increasing number of other schools, legal education consists of multiple opportunities to intertwine theory and practice; build oral and written communication skills, learn the values of the profession and shape professional identity, both in and beyond the classroom.

Practice Perfect, Rachel A. Van Cleave

Publications

Institutions of higher education and law schools in particular are currently addressing new questions about the value and form of the education they offer, due, in part, to economic reality, practical necessity, and public scrutiny. Changes in the nature of the legal profession and the market, the cost of legal education, and most recently the purpose of the third year of law school, have each been at the center of professional conversations, public debate and media stories about reform.

Like my colleagues at other law schools, I am certainly involved with these critical conversations. I am also working with GGU …

Professor Mort Cohen: An Advocate Professor's Journey, Leeor Neta

Publications

Professor Mort Cohen has taught at GGU Law for 30 years. In addition to teaching, Cohen has taken on pro bono cases as an advocate, most recently in service of the elderly and mentally ill. In 2012, Cohen successfully represented two individuals and the California Association of Mental Health Patients Rights Advocates in K.G. Et al v. Meredith as a Marin County Public Guardian. In an unprecedented, unanimous decision, a three-judge panel in The California Court of Appeal, First District stated that patients could not be treated with mind-altering drugs without their informed consent. It further stated that the County …

Self-Congratulation And Scholarship, Paul Campos

Publications

Professor Jay Silver’s criticism of the reform proposals put forward in Brian Tamanaha’s book Failing Law Schools displays some characteristic weaknesses of American legal academic culture. These weaknesses include a tendency to make bold assertions about the value of legal scholarship and the effectiveness of law school pedagogy, while at the same time providing no support for these assertions beyond a willingness to repeat self-congratulatory platitudes about who professors are and what we do. The high costs for our students of the current scholarly expectations at American law schools are clear. What is not clear is whether those costs are …

Professionalism And The New Normal, Philip J. Weiser

Publications

No abstract provided.

Clinique Togo: Changing Legal Practice In One African Nation In Six Days, Stephen A. Rosenbaum

Publications

In this essay, the author looks at the role of the short-term rule of law consultant in a developing country. The setting is Togo in francophone Africa and the State Department's mandate for the consultant is to help establish a pro bono indigent legal aid program with participation by the national bar association and the country's principal law school — in one week's time. Using the device of a daily journal, the author describes (1) the background for the visit, (2) the series of exchanges with his hosts from the US Embassy, bar association and Université de Lomé, (3) the …

Teaching For Lifelong Learning: Improving The Metacognitive Skills Of Law Students Through More Effective Formative Assessment Techniques, Anthony S. Niedwiecki

Publications

Part II of this article focuses on the need to prepare law students to be expert learners because they will be constant learners in the practice of law. Part III details the concept of metacognition and its role in preparing students to be self-regulated learners. It discusses the components of metacognition, its role in law school, and the current push to include better metacognitive training in law school. Part IV details how formative assessment can be better utilized in improving the metacognitive skills of students. Specifically, it explains the best practices of formative assessment and how professors can adjust their …

Tiger Cub Strikes Back: Memoirs Of An Ex-Child Prodigy About Legal Education And Parenting, Peter H. Huang

Publications

I am a Chinese American who at 14 enrolled at Princeton and at 17 began my applied mathematics Ph.D. at Harvard. I was a first-year law student at the University of Chicago before transferring to Stanford, preferring the latter's pedagogical culture. This Article offers a complementary account to Amy Chua's parenting memoir. The Article discusses how mainstream legal education and tiger parenting are similar and how they can be improved by fostering life-long learning about character strengths, emotions, and ethics. I also recount how a senior professor at the University of Pennsylvania law school claimed to have gamed the U.S. …

The Crisis Of The American Law School, Paul Campos

Publications

The economist Herbert Stein once remarked that if something cannot go on forever, it will stop. Over the past four decades, the cost of legal education in America has seemed to belie this aphorism: it has gone up relentlessly. Private law school tuition increased by a factor of four in real, inflation-adjusted terms between 1971 and 2011, while resident tuition at public law schools has nearly quadrupled in real terms over just the past two decades. Meanwhile, for more than thirty years, the percentage of the American economy devoted to legal services has been shrinking. In 1978 the legal sector …

The Carnegie Effect: Elevating Practical Training Over Liberal Education In Curricular Reform, Mark Yates

Publications

The Carnegie Foundation issued its book-length report, Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law (Carnegie Report) in 2007. Although there have been numerous responses to it, relatively few have engaged it with any degree of critical analysis. Law schools across the country have enthusiastically mentioned the Carnegie Report in connection with curricular changes intended to “prepare” students, in the words of the Report, for the practice of law. Mostly these changes amount to adding clinical options or even clinical requirements, adding units to legal writing programs, and updating professional responsibility courses. Very few, if any law schools, however, have …

A Primer For Teaching Law As An Adjunct Professor, Rachel A. Van Cleave

Publications

After practicing law and perhaps specializing in a particular area for several years, you cannot help but think, "I wish they had taught me [blank] in law school." You start to wonder whether you could teach a class at a local law school. Here are some tips for pursuing such an endeavor.

So You Want To Teach Law, Rachel A. Van Cleave

Publications

After practicing law and perhaps specializing in a particular area for several years, you cannot help but think, "I wish they had taught me [blank] in law school." You start to wonder whether you could teach a class at a local law school. Here are some tips for pursuing such an endeavor.

Spam Jurisprudence, Air Law, And The Rank Anxiety Of Nothing Happening (A Report On The State Of The Art), Pierre Schlag

Publications

In 1969, I saw The Endless Summer. It was a surfer movie about two guys (Robert and Mike) who traveled the world in search of the perfect wave. High art -- it was not. Plus the plot was thin. And it's for sure, there weren't enough girls. But there was one line which, for my generation, will go down as one of the all-time great movie lines ever. And always it was a line delivered by some local to Robert and Mike, the surfer dudes, as they arrived on the scene of yet another dispiritingly becalmed ocean. And every …

The Anxiety Of The Law Student At The Socratic Impasse - An Essay On Reductionism In Legal Education, Pierre Schlag

Publications

No abstract provided.

Keeping An Eye On The Golden Snitch: Implications Of The Interdisciplinary Approach In The Fourth Generation Of Natural Resources Law Casebooks, Sarah Krakoff

Publications

No abstract provided.

Professor Homer Clark: "Just Do It!", David H. Getches

Publications

No abstract provided.

Lawyers And Learning: A Metacognitive Approach To Legal Education, Anthony S. Niedwiecki

Publications

This article will detail the concept of metacognition, how current law school teaching does not teach metacognitive skills, and how legal educators can incorporate metacognitive learning into the law school curriculum to help students better transfer knowledge and skills to the practice of law. Teaching metacognitive skills to law students should focus on explaining learning theory and modeling appropriate planning, monitoring, and evaluating techniques across the curriculum. Part II of this article details how law schools have been slow to integrate and apply learning theory to the law school classroom. Part III details the theory behind metacognition and how it …