Law Commons^™

Preface, Journal Of Law Reform

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This collection of essays is offered not as a .finished product but as part of an on-going discussion among faculty, between faculty and students, and between Michigan faculty and others concerned with legal education. It is our hope that this collection will convey to students that faculty members take seriously their responsibility to provide a comprehensive, quality legal education, to individual faculty members that other faculty are thinking about similar issues, and to faculty at other schools that several ideas about legal education are being explored by Michigan faculty members.

Fairness In Teaching Advocacy, Charles W. Joiner

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The questions I address are these: Is fairness related to advocacy? Is fairness a concept that law teachers should address in their teaching, in particular in courses involving advocacy? By "courses involving advocacy" I mean courses that teach both law and practice techniques involving the direct protection of the rights of clients, particularly in the courts-for example, civil and criminal procedure and evidence.

Why Would Law Students Benefit From Studying Economics?, Michelle J. White

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Why would law students benefit from studying economics? Three reasons come to mind. First, knowing some economics should enable students to understand more fully the issues encountered in a variety of areas of the law. Second, in a variety of areas of the law, economic analysis constitutes a central component of the legal arguments made in prosecuting and defending the case. Third, many law students will become involved in policy-making, whether because they end up working in the executive branch of government or because they become legislators, lobbyists, or legislative staff.

In the following sections, I treat each of the …

Doctrine In A Vacuum: Reflections On What A Law School Ought (And Ought Not) To Be, James Boyd White

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Although this paper will reach a wider audience, in it I mean mainly to address the students and faculty of the University of Michigan Law School. It is meant to be part of a conversation in which members of this community talk to each other about the life they share.

I have written elsewhere about the expectations-the fears and hopes-that one can appropriately bring to law school. In this paper I speak to those who are immersed in ·the process of legal education, on one side of the podium or the other, and wish to say something of what I …

Mediation And Negotiation: Learning To Deal With Psychological Responses, Andrew S. Watson

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In this essay I analyze some of the emotional events that occur during mediation and negotiation; the analysis may help us understand many of the problems that arise during the development and application of these legal practice skills. Following the analysis I present a few suggestions about how this teaching might best be accomplished.

Is Thinking Like A Lawyer Enough?, Sallyanne Payton

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Every year that I attend meetings of the Law School's Committee of Visitors I ask members of the committee how the school might improve the training that we give to our graduates. Every year until this one the lawyers who have responded to this question have given a standard answer: the young lawyers are smart, they say, smarter in many respects than their seniors, but they don't know how to write well. This response usually leads to a discussion of the proper place of skills training in the law school curriculum; lawyers and professors engage in a little jousting over …