Law Commons^™

Good-Bye Christopher Columbus Langdell?, K.K. Duvivier

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

The call of this Article was to take "A Prospective Look" at Environmental and Natural Resources Law for the next 40 years with a special focus on law school teaching. Daunted by the hubris involved in prognosticating so far into the future, this piece more modestly explores three areas in which law school teaching is currently changing: I. Methods of Presentation; II. Use of Skills Exercises; and III. Influence of Digital Technologies and the Internet. To add an empirical component, the author canvassed AALS members about pedagogies they used both in class and outside of classroom time, as well as …

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

Faculty Publications

This article reports my observations from teaching those courses and offers suggestions for future efforts to improve legal education. My experience supports the (1) focus on negotiation in a wide range of situations in addition to the final resolution of disputes and transactions, (2) addition of "ordinary legal negotiation" to the two traditional theories of negotiation, and (3) use of multi-stage simulations in addition to traditional single-stage simulations. These approaches were critical in providing students with a more realistic understanding of negotiation. This article also describes experiments with other teaching techniques in my courses.

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

UF Law Faculty Publications

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 …

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

Scholarly Works

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 …

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

Scholarly Works

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 — …

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 …

Remedies: A Guide For The Perplexed, Doug Rendleman

Scholarly Articles

Remedies is one of a law student’s most practical courses. Remedies students and their professors learn to work with their eyes on the question at the end of litigation: what can the court do for the successful plaintiff? Remedies develops students’ professional identities and broadens their professional horizons by reorganizing their analysis of procedure, torts, contracts, and property around choosing and measuring relief - compensatory damages, punitive damages, an injunction, specific performance, disgorgement, and restitution. This article discusses the law-school course in Remedies - the content of the Remedies course, the Remedies classroom experience, and Remedies outside the classroom through …

Illuminating Innumeracy, Lisa Milot

Scholarly Works

Everyone knows that lawyers are bad at math. Many fields of law, though — from explicitly number-focused practices like tax law and bankruptcy, to the less obviously numerical fields of family law and criminal defense — require interaction with, and sophisticated understandings of, numbers. To the extent that lawyers really are bad at math, why is that case? And what, if anything, should be done about it?

In this Article, I show the ways in which our acceptance of innumeracy harms our ability to practice and think about the law. On a practical level, we miscalculate numbers, oversimplify formulas, and, …

Teaching Westlawnext: Next Steps For Teachers Of Legal Research, Ronald E. Wheeler

Faculty Scholarship

As a follow up to his earlier piece titled "Does WestlawNext Really Change Everything: The Implications of WestlawNext on Legal Research," Professor Wheeler here explores strategies for teaching students to effectively research using the WestlawNext legal research platform. He focuses on challenging law librarians and other teachers of legal research to embrace change, to innovate and to devise research exercises that highlight both the advantages and the alleged pitfalls of WestlawNext. In particular, Professor Wheeler discusses source selection, filters, addressing the volume of results, esoteric content, and Boolean searching.

Can And Should Human Rights Themes Impact Decision-Making In A Law School? Reflections From The U.S. Perspective, Nora V. Demleitner

Scholarly Articles

Human rights (HR) issues, which often reveal themselves from a comparative perspective, are not categorized as such in law schools though they lie beneath fundamental structural decisions. Institutional funding and access directly impact educational, social, economic – and racial -- equality. Curriculum development and coverage – in doctrinal courses and so-called "clinics"– require reflection upon the amount of resources expanded on the teaching of human rights, the connections made between human rights and related subject areas, the restriction of human rights discourse to specific courses. Student affairs regularly deal with human rights questions ranging from religious to disability accommodations. The …

125 Years Of Law Books, 1888-2013, Keith Ann Stiverson

125th Anniversary Materials

No abstract provided.

U.S. Antitrust: From Shot In The Dark To Global Leadership, David J. Gerber

125th Anniversary Materials

No abstract provided.

What's A Telegram?, Henry H. Perritt Jr.

125th Anniversary Materials

No abstract provided.

Peer Review Across The Curriculum, Patricia G. Montana

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In 2007, two very influential institutes published reports that challenged legal educators to reconsider how they design courses, deliver instruction, assess their students’ learning and explore new ways to prepare students for the profession of law. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching published its report, Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law (“Carnegie Report”), and the Clinical Legal Education Association published its study, Best Practices for Legal Education (“Best Practices Report”) (collectively, the “Reports”). Both Reports came to the same conclusion: law schools must devote more attention and resources to helping students develop the professional skills …

There Is No Santa Claus: The Challenge Of Teaching The Next Generation Of Civil Rights Lawyers In A ‘Post-Racial’ Society, Deborah N. Archer

Articles & Chapters

This essay takes a fresh look at the scholarship on the practice of cross-cultural and client-centered lawyering. The current scholarship explores methods of training law students to be mindful of the ways that cultural differences can impact legal representation. However, this scholarship has not addressed how to equip students to address issues of racial discrimination in light of the post-racial lens through which many view these problems. Legal educators must examine how law students’ beliefs regarding the current relevance of race in America affects their ability to represent clients who believe they are victims of racial discrimination.

The essay charts …

Beyond Skills Training, Revisited: The Clinical Education Spiral, Carolyn Grose

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Financial Retrenchment And Institutional Entrenchment: Will Legal Education Respond, Explode, Or Just Wait It Out?, Ian Weinstein

Faculty Scholarship

Both markets and ideas have turned against the American legal profession. Legal hiring has contracted, and law school enrollments are decreasing. The business models of big law and legal education are under pressure, current levels of student indebtedness seem unsustainable, and a hero has yet to emerge from our fragmented regulatory structures. In the realm of ideas, the information revolution has sparked deep critiques of structured knowledge and expertise, opening the roles of the law and the university in society to reexamination. We are less enamored of the scholar-lawyer and gaze with longing at technocrats. I hope that clinical law …

Next Phase Pedagogy Reform For The Twenty-First Century Legal Education: Delivering Competent Lawyers For A Consumer-Driven Market, Ann Marie Cavazos

Journal Publications

The underpinnings for law school training has or, I submit, soon will be, outstripped by real world requirements dictated by the demands of the legal profession marketplace. This Article is designed to add to the discourse relating to the question of what law schools supply and what law practice requires-a paradigm shift in the methodology of implementing legal education. The Article begins by reporting on the state of the law school process and how it has evolved from an apprenticeship, replete with on-the-job training, to an intellectual exercise that is somewhat removed from the requirements for becoming competent legal professionals. …

Preparing "Main Street" Lawyers: Practicing Without Big Firm Experience, Lisa Reel Schmidt, Steve Garland, Robert Statchen

Faculty Scholarship

This Article is the transcript of a panel presented at Emory’s Third Biennial Conference on Transactional Education. The panelists advance two premises: First, that law schools need to teach transactional skills because many students will either focus on transactional law or practice general law where transactional skills are necessary; and second, that some of the transactional skills the schools teach should be specific to main street lawyering because a number of students will be main street lawyers. The panelists explain how the transactional skills necessary for main street lawyering differ from skills needed in litigation and big law firms. They …

The Lawyer's Toolbox: Teaching Students About Risk Allocation, Dana Malkus, Scott Stevenson, Eric J. Gouvin, Usha Rodriques

Faculty Scholarship

This Article is the transcript of a panel presented at Emory’s Third Biennial Conference on Transactional Education. The panel focuses on techniques for teaching risk allocation as part of transactional skills classes. The panelists describe their approaches to teaching risk allocation, from syllabus design to final evaluations. How can a professor help students to understand the basic concepts of risk, the role risk plays in business and legal decisions, and how they can help clients manage risk. The techniques for teaching risk allocation include hypotheticals, visual aids, and hands-on assignments. The panelists each take their students down a different path …

Motions In Motion: Teaching Advanced Legal Writing Through Collaboration, Elizabeth Shaver, Sarah Morath, Richard Strong

Akron Law Faculty Publications

Legal education is at a crossroads. Practitioners, academics, and students agree that more experiential learning opportunities are needed in law school.

In 2007, the Carnegie Foundation report, Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law (Carnegie Report), called for law schools to provide apprentice experiences to better prepare prospective attorneys for the world of practice. That same year, the Best Practices in Legal Education advocated for “experiential education” and “encourage[d] law school[s] to expand its use.” More recently, in August 2011, the American Bar Association adopted a resolution sponsored by the New York Bar Association summoning law schools to “focus …

Motions In Motions: Teaching Advanced Legal Writing Through Collaboration, Sarah J. Morath, Elizabeth Shaver, Richard Strong

Akron Law Faculty Publications

Legal education is at a crossroads. Practitioners, academics, and students agree that more experiential learning opportunities are needed in law school.

In 2007, the Carnegie Foundation report, Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law (Carnegie Report), called for law schools to provide apprentice experiences to better prepare prospective attorneys for the world of practice. That same year, the Best Practices in Legal Education advocated for “experiential education” and “encourage[d] law school[s] to expand its use.” More recently, in August 2011, the American Bar Association adopted a resolution sponsored by the New York Bar Association summoning law schools to “focus …

Motions In Motion: Teaching Advanced Legal Writing Through Collaboration, Richard Strong, Elizabeth Shaver, Sarah Morath

Akron Law Faculty Publications

Legal education is at a crossroads. Practitioners, academics, and students agree that more experiential learning opportunities are needed in law school.

In 2007, the Carnegie Foundation report, Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law (Carnegie Report), called for law schools to provide apprentice experiences to better prepare prospective attorneys for the world of practice. That same year, the Best Practices in Legal Education advocated for “experiential education” and “encourage[d] law school[s] to expand its use.” More recently, in August 2011, the American Bar Association adopted a resolution sponsored by the New York Bar Association summoning law schools to “focus …

Teaching Remedies As Problem-Solving: Keeping It Real, Tracy A. Thomas

Akron Law Faculty Publications

I began teaching Remedies as a problem-solving course over a decade ago. I was then in my third year of teaching and found that the Remedies course just wasn’t clicking. The students, mostly third-years, were bored with the Socratic method and seemingly resistant to the demands of this important course. My teaching grew more cumbersome as I waded deeper into the mire of the complexities of a transsubstantive field. Remedies class felt like a slog in the mud for all of us. After just a few years with the course, I thought there had to be a better way. I …

Professionalism And The New Normal, Philip J. Weiser

Publications

No abstract provided.

Cat, Cause, And Kant, Richard J. Peltz-Steele

Faculty Publications

These are precarious times in which to launch a new law school and a new law review. Yet here we are. The University of Massachusetts is now in its first year of operation with provisional ABA accreditation. This text is a foreword to the first general-interest issue of the University of Massachusetts Law Review. Now marks an appropriate time to take stock of what these institutions mean to accomplish in our unsettled legal world.