Law Commons^™

Introducing Marijuana Law Into The Legal Writing Curriculum, Howard Bromberg, Mark K. Osbeck

Articles

Interest in marijuana law continues to grow, due in large part to the complicated and rapidly evolving landscape of marijuana laws in the United States. Nearly every day, newspapers report on new or proposed legislation and the legal controversies that have arisen with regard to this evolving landscape. There are now several marijuana-law blogs on the Internet, Congress is considering sweeping legislation that would essentially grant significant deference to the individual states, and public opinion continues to move in favor of increased legalization. For the last two years, Newsweek magazine has published special editions devoted exclusively to marijuana law and …

Book Review. Rethinking The Law School: Education, Research, Outreach And Governance By Carel Stolker, Ashley A. Ahlbrand

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Peggy Radin, Mentor Extraordinaire, R. Anthony Reese

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

I write to celebrate Peggy Radin’s contributions to the legal academy in her role as a mentor. I know that others will speak to her significant scholarly achievements and important contributions across several fields. I want to pay tribute to the substantial time and energy that Peggy has devoted over the course of her career to mentoring students and young academics. I was extremely fortunate to have had a handful of mentors who helped me become a law professor. (I am also extremely fortunate that some of those mentors became generous senior colleagues who occasionally continue to help me navigate …

Helping A Lawyer To Understand What It Means To Think Like An Architect, Kevin Emerson Collins

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Professor Radin unquestionably influenced legal academia through her ideas, arguments, and scholarship. With that said, my tribute is decidedly personal. To me, Professor Radin was the mentor and role model that I sorely needed when I was figuring out what being a legal academic could mean for me.

The Seventh Letter And The Socratic Method, Sherman J. Clark

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat

Law teachers use the phrase “Socratic method” loosely to refer to various methods of questioning students in class rather than merely lecturing to them. The merits of such teaching have been the subject of spirited and even bitter debate. It can be perceived as not only inefficient but also unnecessarily combative—even potentially abusive. Although it is clear that some critics are excoriating the least defensible versions of what has been called the Socratic method, I do not attempt to canvas or adjudicate that debate in this brief essay. Rather, I hope to add to the conversation by looking to a …

Trending @ Rwulaw: Judge William E. Smith's Post: Rwu Law & The Federal Courts: A Unique Partnership, William E. Smith

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

Foreword: Reflections On Our Founding, Guy-Uriel Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Law Journals have been under heavy criticism for as long as we can remember. The criticisms come from all quarters, including judges, law professors, and even commentators at large. In an address at the Fourth Circuit Judicial Conference almost a decade ago, for example, Chief Justice Roberts complained about the “disconnect between the academy and the profession.” More pointedly, he continued, “[p]ick up a copy of any law review that you see, and the first article is likely to be, you know, the influence of Immanuel Kant on evidentiary approaches in 18th Century Bulgaria, or something, which I’m sure was …

The Zombie Lawyer Apocalypse, Peter H. Huang, Corie Rosen Felder

Pepperdine Law Review

This article uses a popular cultural framework to address the near-epidemic levels of depression, decision-making errors, and professional dissatisfaction that studies document are prevalent among many law students and lawyers today. Zombies present an apt metaphor for understanding and contextualizing the ills now common in the American legal and legal education systems. To explore that metaphor and its import, this article will first establish the contours of the zombie literature and will apply that literature to the existing state of legal education and legal practice — ultimately describing a state that we believe can only be termed “the Zombie Lawyer …

My Last Lecture: More Unsolicited Advice For Future And Current Lawyers, John M. Lande

Journal of Dispute Resolution

For quite a while, I have been writing and teaching to prepare students realistically for legal practice. This article distills my thinking into a concise presentation. I wrote this article primarily for law students as they contemplate their careers, but I hope it will be of value to lawyers as well. Hopefully, it will whet your appetite to pursue these ideas more deeply by reading some of the sources cited in the footnotes.

Think Like A Businessperson: Using Business School Cases To Create Strategic Corporate Lawyers​., Alicia J. Davis

Articles

For the past twenty-five years, my academic and professional pursuits have straddled the line between business and law. I majored in business administration in college and then worked as an analyst in the Corporate Finance department at a bulge bracket Wall Street firm. After completing a JD/MBA, I returned to investment banking with a focus on middle-market mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and subsequently practiced law with a focus on private equity and M&A. Finally, in 2004, I found my current home as a corporate law professor. In my courses, which include Mergers & Acquisitions, Enterprise Organization, and Investor Protection, I …

100+, University Of Michigan Law School

Miscellaneous Law School History & Publications

100+ facts about the University of Michigan Law School and Ann Arbor, Michigan for the 2015-2016 academic year.

Lsac Data Reveals That Black/White Multiracials Outscore All Blacks On Lsat By Wide Margins, Kevin D. Brown

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Foundations: Curriculum & Faculty, University Of Michigan Law School

Miscellaneous Law School History & Publications

Michigan Law Faculty are the best of the best. As you look through these pages, you will see some of their accomplishments: They serve as senior advisers to policymakers and governments around the world, they argue important cases in courts of every level, and they produce superb research that addresses society's greatest problems.

Our faculty also take teaching very seriously. They are dedicated to using their research and experience to help create a curriculum that will challenge and transform you. Michigan Law's rich curriculum features foundational courses that evolve with the needs of the profession, a wide array of upper-level …

90th Henry M. Campbell Moot Court Competition Final Round, University Of Michigan Law School

Event Materials

Program for the final round of the 2015 Campbell Moot Court Competition.

At Play In The Field Of Law: Symbolic Capital And Foreign Attorneys In Ll.M. Programs, Jan Hoffman French

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

The article under consideration in this symposium issue, “Foreign Attorneys in U.S. LL.M. Programs: Who’s In, Who’s Out, and Who They Are,” by Mindie Lazarus-Black and Julie Globokar, comes at a critical moment for law schools, especially those below the top tier. Many schools are reducing class size, offering unprecedented financial aid and scholarship packages, and entering a general retrenchment mode. This most recent crisis in law school applications and enrollment (applications are down at some schools by over 30 percent) has led to an increase in the popularity of Master of Laws (LL.M.) programs for foreign attorneys. The steep …

This Is Your Brain On Law School: The Impact Of Fear-Based Narratives On Law Students, Abigail A. Patthoff

Utah Law Review

Law students regularly top the charts as among the most dissatisfied, demoralized, and depressed of graduate-student populations. As their teachers, we cannot ignore the palpable presence of this stress in our classrooms—unchecked, it stifles learning, encourages counterproductive behavior, and promotes illness.

By more thoughtfully using cautionary tales, we can actively manage one source of law student anxiety. Although reining in cautionary tales will certainly not be a panacea to law student distress, elimination of all law student anxiety is neither a realistic nor a desirable goal. Fear-based stress, in moderation, can compel students to overcome challenges they never thought possible; …

Psychology And Effective Lawyering: Insights For Legal Educators, Jean R. Sternlight, Jennifer K. Robbennolt

Scholarly Works

Psychology-the science of how people think, feel and behave-has a great deal to teach about a range of core competencies related to working with people and making good decisions. For example, psychologists have conducted extensive research into perception, memory, communication, individual and group decision-making, conflict, goal setting and planning, self-assessment, motivation, "grit," and many other matters that are central to effective lawyering. This research has much to contribute to an understanding of the work of lawyers and can be effectively incorporated into how we teach law students to practice law.

From Students To Colleagues: The Legal Writing Classroom Can Create Conscientious & Empathetic Practitioners, Rachel H. Smith

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

As we teach legal writing to new law students, we want them to learn to be good writers, good researchers, and good counselors and advocates. But I also want each of my students to learn about being a good colleague—to develop a professional identity that depends on being conscientious, empathetic, and collegial. The legal writing course has a special role in exposing students to the significance of these qualities, which makes it the most important course in the first year of law school.

Towards A Pedagogy Of Diversity In Legal Education, Faisal Bhabha

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

There is resounding consensus that diversity in legal education is a priority. Yet, North American law schools continue to be criticized for failing to reflect the diversity of the society that they are training lawyers to serve. This article is a project of conceptual reorientation against a backdrop of critical scholarship and empirical evidence. Parts I and II examine the past twenty years of diversity promotion in legal education, concluding that, while several advances have been made, especially in increasing numerical representation of diverse groups in law schools, the promise of meaningful diversity remains unfulfilled. Part III suggests that reforms …

Implementing Effective Education In Specific Contexts, Ruth Anne Robbins, Amy E. Sloan, Kristen Konrad Robbins-Tiscione

All Faculty Scholarship

This chapter of Building on Best Practices: Transforming Legal Education in a Changing World includes contributions from many authors:

• Section A, The Socratic Method, is by Elizabeth G. Porter
• Section B, Analysis, Research, and Communication in Skills-Focused Courses, is by Ruth Anne Robbins, Amy Sloan & Kristen K. Tiscione
• Section C, Use of Technology in Teaching, is by Michele Pistone and Warren Binford
• Section D, Law Libraries and Legal Education, is by Jonathan Franklin
• Section E, Cross-Border Teaching and Collaboration, is by Kimberly D. Ambrose, William H. D. Fernholz, Catherine F. Klein, Dana Raigrodski, Stephen A. Rosenbaum & Leah Wortham …

Helping Law Students Get The Help They Need: An Analysis Of Data Regarding Law Students' Reluctance To Seek Help And Policy Recommendations For A Variety Of Stakeholders, David Jaffe, Jerome M. Organ, Katherine Bender

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This article summarizes some specific results from the Survey of Law Student Well-Being, which the authors administered as a voluntary and confidential web-based survey at 15 diverse law schools in the United States from February 2014 to May 2014.

This is the first survey to assess alcohol and drug use among law students since 1991 and is the first ever to assess prescription drug use/misuse, mental health issues, and help-seeking attitudes. The primary goals of collecting and analyzing the responses from the Survey of Law Student Well-Being were to better understand:

1) alcohol and drug use among law students,

2) …

Fostering A Respect For Our Students, Our Specialty, And The Legal Profession: Introducing Ethics And Professionalism Into The Legal Writing Curriculum, Melissa H. Weresh

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

"I See And I Remember; I Do And Understand": Teaching Fundamental Structure In Legal Writing Through The Use Of Samples, Judith B. Tracy

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Students As (Re)Visionaries: Or, Revision, Revision, Revision, Susan M. Taylor

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Dean's Desk: Partnerships Prep Students For Indiana Legal Careers, Austen L. Parrish

Austen Parrish (2014-2022)

As one of the top public law schools in the nation, we attract students from all over the United States – and the world – who understand the advantages of an IU education. As the state’s flagship law school, however, we also have an enduring commitment to educating Indiana’s best and brightest and encouraging them to stay in the state and contribute to its growth. Taken together, these three programs will go a long way toward advancing a strong commitment that goes back to our founding in 1842 as one of the oldest law schools in the nation and the …

Joseph Sax, A Human Kaleidoscope, Zygmunt Plater

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

Probably more than any other person most of us will ever have the opportunity of knowing, Joe Sax was kaleidoscopic in the way he projected his mind and lived his life as a scholar, teacher, and citizen seer. Shifting his analytical gaze from challenging context to challenging context, he repeatedly threw rich new patterns of perceptive light, thoughts broad and deep, onto a remarkable range of puzzles. Joe’s ability to think broadly and deeply influenced and reshaped the way that his students, friends, colleagues, and readers understood the intricacies, beauty, and challenges of the world around them. Others in this …

The Legacy Of Professor Joe Sax, Fred Krupp

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

I grew up as the environmental movement did, in the 1960s and 1970s. In college at Yale, engineering professor Charlie Walker became my mentor and taught me that there are practical solutions for almost all environmental problems. This hopeful point of view inspired me to devote myself to the subject, first as an academic pursuit. As I neared graduation and was trying to decide on a path, Professor Walker handed me a book: Defending the Environment by Joseph Sax.1 That book was visionary in its description of private citizens’ ability to protect and defend the environment through the legal system. …

In The Mind's Eye: Visual Lessons For Law Students, Brian A. Glassman

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This article shows how to use works of art to demonstrate essential components of effective legal writing. Part I discusses the learning theory under pinning the use of visual lessons. Part II describes the lessons themselves. Part III explains the benefits--both direct and indirect--that result from using visual lessons to teach law and summarizes student responses to the use of these lessons in first-year legal writing. The conclusion suggests ways in which this technique might be extended and adapted to teach not only legal writing but also other law school courses.

Families Matter: Recommendations To Improve Outcomes For Children And Families In Court, Barbara A. Babb, Gloria Danziger

All Faculty Scholarship

The Families Matter initiative was designed as a major, multi-year undertaking to develop legal practice methods and approaches to reduce the destructive consequences of the family legal process. The initiative was intended to respond to the need for deep and meaningful reform of the family law process.

Convened in June 2010 by the University of Baltimore School of Law Sayra and Neil Meyerhoff Center for Families, Children and the Courts (CFCC), the Families Matter Symposium brought together an interdisciplinary group of family law experts for two days at the University of Baltimore to identify problems regarding the practice of family …

Erasing Boundaries: Inter-School Collaboration And Its Pedagogical Opportunities, David I. C. Thomson, Ian Gallacher, Amy R. Stein, Robin Boyle

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Experiential learning is all the rage in legal education today. And yet, educators throughout history have known that involving students in their learning and exposing them to practical applications of what they are learning increases student engagement and retention. But legal education is coming to this way of thinking somewhat late. This article, based on a presentation that the authors gave at the AALS conference in New York in January of 2014, suggests that technology opens up new possibilities for law schools by allowing students from different schools to participate in complex inter-school simulations that can, if carefully prepared, teach …