Law Commons^™

The Global Clinical Revolution In Law.Pdf, Richard Wilson

Richard J. Wilson

The Accidental Crit Iii: The Unbearable Lightness Of Being ... Pedro?, Pedro A. Malavet

Pedro A. Malavet

Best Practices For Mediation Training And Regulation: Preliminary Findings, Susan S. Raines, Tim Hedeen, Ansley B. Barton

Susan Raines

This article makes recommendations as to “Best Practices” for the training of mediators in court-connected settings. The authors’ findings cover issues including the design of training programs, the importance of experiential learning through role-plays, teaching methods for adult learners, class size and length, training ethical mediators, suggested trainer qualifications, and recommended regulatory practices for administrators. Data comes primarily from an assessment of mediation training and regulation in Florida, but the findings hold insights for court-connected mediation programs throughout the United States. Additionally, the authors highlight the benefits of a collaborative assessment approach involving all stakeholder groups and facilitating smooth implementation …

A Novel Tool For Teaching Property: Starting With The Questions, Tim Iglesias

Tim Iglesias

Fifth Colonial Frontier Legal Writing Conference Drafting Statutes And Rules Pedagogy, Practice, And Politics (Foreword), Jan M. Levine

Jan M. Levine

Writing The Law Developing The ‘Citizen Lawyer’ Identity Through Legislative, Statutory, And Rule Drafting Courses, Ann L. Schiavone

Ann Schiavone

Learning From Experience: An Introduction To The Journal Of Experiential Learning, Patricia E. Salkin

Patricia E. Salkin

Commitment to experiential learning begins with the dean, yet this has not been the typical questioning in candidate interview processes. Important are indicators of past performance, examples of interpersonal skills, creativity, and knowledge of current challenges facing the profession, legal education and the individual school. Often over-looked, however, is what else the candidate brings to the table in terms of their approach to legal pedagogy, past experiences that may provide other important insights into what may subconsciously influence the candidate’s particular approach to one or more issues. It can be difficult to glean this from the typical thirty to forty-five …

Teaching Criminal Procedure: Why Socrates Would Use Youtube, Stephen E. Henderson, Joseph Thai

Stephen E Henderson

Clinical Legal Education & Access To Justice: Conflicts, Interests, & Evolution, Margaret B. Drew, Andrew P. Morriss

Andrew P. Morriss

The explosive growth in the number of law school clinics over the last 50 years began with an individual client focus as a core component. This contributed to reducing unmet legal needs in substantive areas such as landlord-tenant, family, consumer and other areas. These service clinics accomplished the dual purpose of training students in the day-to-day challenges of practice while reducing the number of unrepresented poor. In recent years, however, the trend has been to broaden the law school clinical experience beyond individual representation and preparation for law firm practice. So-called “impact” clinics typically address systemic change without significant individual …

Clinical Legal Education & Access To Justice: Conflicts, Interests, & Evolution, Margaret B. Drew, Andrew P. Morriss

Andrew P. Morriss

The explosive growth in the number of law school clinics over the last 50 years began with an individual client focus as a core component. This contributed to reducing unmet legal needs in substantive areas such as landlord-tenant, family, consumer and other areas. These service clinics accomplished the dual purpose of training students in the day-to-day challenges of practice while reducing the number of unrepresented poor. In recent years, however, the trend has been to broaden the law school clinical experience beyond individual representation and preparation for law firm practice. So-called “impact” clinics typically address systemic change without significant individual …

World Of Chaucer: Adaptation, Pedagogy, And Interdisciplinarity, Graham Barwell, Christopher Moore

Christopher L Moore Dr

Machinima is a new media practice that began with the self-directed experiments and explorations of enthusiastic gamers and hackers. Over its comparatively short history, machinima has become an accessible and vibrant participatory media, fueling a desire for creative investigation into its posibilities as an expressive and communicative medai art-form. Machinima has produced a variety of modes and genres, from the knowing anti-war humor (Starrs 2010) of the Red vs Blue series (2003-present) to the competitive action of e-sports gamebattles on Major League Gaming to the dystopic combat action of Drakortha's The DC Chronicles series (2011). While some have used machinima …

Crisis And Trigger Warnings: Reflections On Legal Education And The Social Value Of The Law, Kim D. Chanbonpin

Kim D. Chanbonpin

In the same moment that law schools are embracing neoliberal strategies in response to the economic crisis caused by declining admissions, students in the classroom have begun to agitate for advance content notices (or “trigger warnings”) to alert them to any potentially trauma-inducing course materials. For faculty who have already adopted a defensive posture in response to threats to eliminate tenure, this demand feels like an additional assault on academic freedom; one that reflects a distressing student-as-consumer mentality. From this vantage point, students are too easily cast as another group of adversaries when, in actuality, students are straw targets who …

The Trading Card Effect, Adam Epstein

Adam Epstein

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate a teaching method that I have used for the last several years and have found to be effective particularly during the challenging final weeks of the semester. I reward students with trading cards for answering questions currently during an unannounced quiz to provide positive reinforcement in an engaging way. Students ultimately form teams and receive a relevant and classic football, baseball, basketball, hockey, or other trading card that they can keep as a souvenir to the class and the course. The intent is to give something to the students directly relevant to …

A Vast Image Out Of Spiritus Mundi: The Existential Crisis Of Law Schools (Book Review), Jeremiah A. Ho

Jeremiah A. Ho

Review of Teaching Law: Justice, Politics, and the Demands of Professionalism. By Robin L. West. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. 2014. Pp. 246. Cloth, $90; paper, $32.99.

Harmonizing Current Threats: Using The Outcry For Legal Education Reforms To Take Another Look At Civil Gideon And What It Means To Be An American Lawyer, Cathryn Miller-Wilson

Cathryn A. Miller-Wilson

"Harmonizing Current Threats: Using the Outcry for Legal Education Reforms to Take Another Look at Civil Gideon and What it Means to be an American Lawyer," makes the argument that, like medical education, legal education should be seen as a public responsibility. With the extra government funding that would come from this view of legal education, Miller-Wilson proposes incorporating "teaching law firms" after law school for students to practice in various specialties before graduation, similar to a medical residency.

Harmonizing Current Threats: Using The Outcry For Legal Education Reforms To Take Another Look At Civil Gideon And What It Means To Be An American Lawyer, Cathryn Miller-Wilson

Cathryn A. Miller-Wilson

"Harmonizing Current Threats: Using the Outcry for Legal Education Reforms to Take Another Look at Civil Gideon and What it Means to be an American Lawyer," makes the argument that, like medical education, legal education should be seen as a public responsibility. With the extra government funding that would come from this view of legal education, Miller-Wilson proposes incorporating "teaching law firms" after law school for students to practice in various specialties before graduation, similar to a medical residency.

The Elephant In The Law School Assessment Room: The Role Of Student Responsibility And Motivating Our Students To Learn, Cassandra L. Hill

Cassandra L. Hill

THE ELEPHANT IN THE LAW SCHOOL ASSESSMENT ROOM:

THE ROLE OF STUDENT RESPONSIBILITY AND

MOTIVATING OUR STUDENTS TO LEARN

Cassandra L. Hill

The American Bar Association’s proposed new accreditation standards call for law schools to assess the effectiveness of their academic programs. Law schools are now doing so, quickly giving rise to an assessment movement that closely examines desired educational outcomes and professors’ efforts to attain them. But assessment has to date focused on the professor, who is just one part of the professor-student partnership. All but ignored are the contributions and motivation of the other critical component—the student.

This …

Lessons From Teaching Students To Negotiate Like A Lawyer, John Lande

John Lande

The legal education system is in a major crisis now, in part because law schools do not prepare students adequately to practice law. Law schools should do a better job of teaching negotiation, in particular, because it is a significant part of the work of virtually every practicing lawyer. This includes lawyers who handle civil and criminal matters and lawyers who do litigation as well as those who do transactional work. Negotiation is especially important because most litigated cases are settled and virtually all unstandardized transactions are negotiated. Most law school negotiation courses rely primarily or exclusively on simulations in …

Good Practice Guide (Bachelor Of Laws): Law In Broader Contexts, Alex Steel

Alex Steel

This Good Practice Guide was commissioned by the Law Associate Deans Network to support the implementation of Threshold Learning Outcome 1: Knowledge. The Threshold Learning Outcomes (TLOs) for the Bachelor of Laws were developed in 2010 as part of the Learning and Teaching Academic Standards (LTAS) Project, led by Professors Sally Kift and Mark Israel. TLO 1 states: Graduates of the Bachelor of Laws will demonstrate an understanding of a coherent body of knowledge that includes: (a) the fundamental areas of legal knowledge, the Australian legal system, and underlying principles and concepts, including international and comparative contexts, (b) the broader …

Student, Esquire?: The Practice Of Law In The Collaborative Classroom, Nantiya Ruan

Nantiya Ruan

Law faculty and non-profit lawyers are working together in a variety of partnerships to offer students exposure to “real life” clients in the first year of law school, as well as in advanced courses in substantive areas. Teachers engaged in client-centered advocacy through experiential frameworks have broken out of their isolated silos in the law school (e.g., legal writing, clinical, externship, and doctrinal) and begun to work together. To help students develop a sense of professional identity, cultivate professional values, and tap into key intrinsic motivations for lawyering, such as serving the public good, collaborative classrooms have an important role …

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 Keene

Sherri Keene

Legal writing is more than an isolated practical skill or a law school course; it is a valuable tool for broadening and deepening one’s 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 work on legal writing …

From Sex For Please To Sex For Parenthood: How The Law Manufactures Mothers, Beth A. Burkstrand-Reid

Beth A. Burkstrand-Reid

As soon as sperm enter a woman, so do law and politics, or so the decades-long disputes surrounding abortion suggest. Now, however, renewed debates surrounding contraceptives show legal and political interference with women’s sexual and reproductive autonomy may actually precede the sperm. This Article argues that, increasingly, women even thinking about having sex are defined socially and legally as “mothers.” Via this broad definition of who is a “mother," the State extends its reach into women’s decision-making throughout their reproductive lifetime. This Article argues that the State simultaneously devalues women’s choices to have sex for pleasure, which this Article calls …

When Socrates Meets Confucius: Teaching Creative And Critical Thinking Across Cultures Through Multilevel Socratic Method, Erin Ryan

Erin Ryan

The "Reason Giving" Lawyer: An Ethical, Practical, And Pedagogical Perspective, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

Whether as a matter of duty or utility, lawyers give reasons for their actions all the time. In the various venues in which legal skills must be employed, reason giving is required in some, expected in others, desired in many, and useful in most. This Essay underscores the pervasiveness of reason giving in the practice of law and the consequent necessity of lawyers developing a skill at giving reasons. This Essay examines reason giving as an innate human characteristic related directly to our need for answers and our constant yearning to understand the answer to the question “why.” It briefly …

A Cultural Lens In The Law School Classroom: A Technique To Promote A Learner-Centered Environment And To Stimulate Self-Assessment, Julie M. Spanbauer

Julie M. Spanbauer

The American Bar Association (ABA) is exerting pressure on United States law schools to improve teaching effectiveness by shifting the evaluation of student learning away from input measures to focus upon output-based assessments. Yet, many legal educators appear to be resistant to and fearful of change, in part, perhaps, due to their comfort with teaching methods such as the Socratic or case dialogue approach, which demands little accountability for teaching effectiveness and provides more time for the pursuit of the traditional goals of scholarly productivity. This method of teaching as currently utilized in law schools is also innately professor-centric performance …

Teaching The Torture Memos: 'Making Decisions Under Conditions Of Uncertainty', Clare Coleman

Clare Keefe Coleman

In the wake of the ethical lapses of lawyers evident in the 2009 financial collapse and the release of a government memo permitting the CIA to waterboard suspected terrorists, public commentators and legal theorists have joined legal education scholars to call for law schools to teach moral judgment making.

Questions of how morality should be taught are as old as Aristotle and, today, occupy thinkers from neuroscientists to legal scholars. The current discussions about teaching moral judgment to law students fall into three categories: the model of David Luban, among others, which advocates teaching judgment in the clinical context using …

Practically Grounded: Convergence Of Land Use Law Pedagogy And Best Practices, Patricia E. Salkin, John R. Nolan

Patricia E. Salkin

The changing dynamics in the field of land use and sustainable community development law demand that land use law professors rethink the way in which we prepare law students to practice law in this area. This needed paradigm shift converges with the growing momentum of the best practices movement which urges law schools to dramatically revise the curricular approach to legal education, arguing that traditional models are no longer effectively serving the goal of producing competent and fully prepared new lawyers. A perfect storm is present and a unique opportunity exists through the application of many “best practices” concepts for …

Outcomes Assessment And Legal Research Pedagogy, Vicenç Feliú, Helen Frazer

Vicenç Feliú

This article explores application of a taxonomic approach in legal research pedagogy to outcomes assessment based on Prof. Paul Callister's adaptation of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives which integrates instructional design and learning activities compatible with formative assessment during the learning process and summative assessment at its conclusion. It reviews the development of outcomes assessment initiatives by legal educators and the development of outcomes assessment standards by the American Bar Association for the accreditation of law schools.

The Law School Critique In Historical Perspective, A. Benjamin Spencer

A. Benjamin Spencer

Contemporary critiques of legal education abound. This arises from what can be described as a perfect storm: the confluence of softness in the legal employment market, the skyrocketing costs of law school, and the unwillingness of clients and law firms to continue subsidizing the further training of lawyers who failed to learn how to practice in law school. As legal jobs become more scarce and salaries stagnate, the value proposition of law school rightly is being questioned from all directions. Although numerous valid criticisms have been put forth, some seem to be untethered from a full appreciation for how the …

Terms Of Engagement: What Does All That Contract Legalese Really Mean And How Can We Better Teach It To Our Students?, Robert Aalberts, I. Scott Bogatz, Darren Prum

Darren A. Prum

Teaching the law of contracts has always been one of the most fundamental tasks that legal studies/business law professors carry out. Truly, no legally successful business transaction can be realized without a commanding knowledge of contract law. Still, most of our time in the classroom focuses on teaching the elements of a contract accompanied by illustrative appellate level cases rather than explaining and discussing what the important terms and clauses in a typical contract really mean. Knowing the important terms that appear in most contracts and how they relate to contract law can add a significant and essential dimension to …