Law Commons^™

Learning From And About The Numbers, Carole Silver, Louis Rocconi

Carole Silver

In this article, we enter the debate about the value of legal education, taking aim at the issue of the ways in which law schools prepare students for practice. But rather than focusing on skills training, our concern is with the approach of law schools to preparing students to understanding the context of the legal issues they will encounter, and specifically on their preparation for working with numbers, whether with regard to business, finance or information presented in statistical form generally.

Our contribution to this debate is to emphasize the importance of data in analyzing the value of law school, …

Perspectives On International Students' Interest In U.S. Legal Education: Shifting Incentives And Influence, Carole Silver

Carole Silver

This article seeks to situate the shift to international students in U.S. law school SJD programs within the larger context of globalization and higher education, and was published as a comment on Gail Hupper’s article on “Educational Ambivalence: The Rise of a Foreign-Student Doctorate in Law.” Broadening the framework of analysis allows consideration of the competing factions and opportunities that explain the developing international market for legal education. In addition, this wider lens also offers insight into the incentives shaping new investments in legal (and higher) education, including Yale Law School’s new PhD in law.

What Firms Want: Investigating Globalization's Influence On The Market For Lawyers In Korea, Carole Silver, Jae-Hyup Lee, Jeeyoon Park

Carole Silver

This article addresses one of the central debates regarding globalization: how best to approach liberalizing markets in order to balance the interests of local and non-local actors and institutions. It takes the legal services market as its focus and draws on the South Korean experience as a case study. Korea recently liberalized its regulatory approach to legal services by changing both its method of producing lawyers (including initiating a graduate level law school system and drastically increasing the proportion of bar exam passers) and allowing foreign competition to directly enter its market through foreign law firms and foreign-licensed lawyers working …

Globalization And The Monopoly Of Aba-Approved Law Schools: Missed Opportunities Or Dodged Bullets?, Carole Silver

Carole Silver

As the market for lawyers and for law itself has responded to global forces, legal education also is becoming accustomed to working within a global context. U.S. law schools routinely look beyond the country’s borders to attract new students and opportunities. As with law firms and business generally, it no longer is sufficient to be domestic only; in order to gain prestige and to effectively compete in the U.S. market, schools must have a credible claim to being globally connected, if not global themselves. But despite the reorientation of law schools toward globalization, the regulatory regime in which U.S. law …

Getting Real About Globalization And Legal Education: Potential And Perspectives For The U.S., Carole Silver

Carole Silver

This article addresses whether US law schools are preparing their JD students to work in the global environment that many - if not most – law graduates will encounter. It begins by considering the significance of globalization for legal education, drawing on research analyzing its influence on legal practice as well as on higher education. It then explores possible settings and opportunities for learning to work in a global environment. For the vast majority of students whose learning must occur in the US, the presence of international students in their law school offers the potential for creating a global learning …

Gaining From The System: Lessons From The Law School Survey Of Student Engagement About How Students Benefit From Law School, Carole Silver, Lindsay Watkins, Louis Rocconi, Heather Haeger

Carole Silver

This paper considers the factors that influence law students’ assessment of their development professionally and academically during law school. It uses responses of 5,612 third- and fourth-year law students to the Law School Survey of Student Engagement to identify student activities and behaviors that influence professional and academic gains; individual and law school characteristics also are examined. Four aspects of the law school experience emerge as common influences of students’ professional and academic development.

Book Review: Stacey Steele And Kathryn Taylor, Eds., Legal Education In Asia: Globalization, Change And Contexts, Carole Silver

Carole Silver

U.S. legal education is under fire from all sides. Travel outside of the U.S., however, and the U.S. often is a model for reform efforts, even the standard against which legal education programs in much of the rest of the world measure themselves. In Legal Education in Asia, Stacey Steele, Kathryn Taylor and their co-authors offer insight into globalization’s influence on legal education. They find that globalization has sharpened the peripheral vision of reformers by encouraging them to consider the approaches followed elsewhere to educating lawyers as well as the role lawyers play in society. Their analysis also identifies the …

States Side Story: Career Paths Of International Ll.M. Students, Or “I Like To Be In America”, Carole Silver

Carole Silver

This Article draws on an empirical study of the careers of international law graduates who earned an LL.M. in the United States, and considers the role of a U.S. LL.M. as a path for building a legal career in the United States. It identifies the institutional, political, and economic forces that present challenges to graduates who attempt to stay in the United States. While U.S. law schools prize the international diversity of their graduate students, this study reveals that the U.S. legal profession is most accessible to international students from English-speaking common law countries, whose language and background allow them …

The Variable Value Of Us Legal Education In The Global Legal Services Market, Carole Silver

Carole Silver

Many U.S. law firms now claim to be global organizations, and they seek to occupy the same high status everywhere they work. In part, simply supporting overseas offices is an indication of status for U.S.-based firms. But firms want more than this and they strive for recognition as elite advisors around the world. In this pursuit, have firms identified a set of common characteristics and credentials that define a “global lawyer?” That is, is there a uniform and universal profile, or perhaps a set of assets that comprise global professional capital, which are emerging as the indicia of credibility and …

Educating Lawyers For The Global Economy: National Challenges, Carole Silver

Carole Silver

This essay addresses the challenge of educating law students to work in an increasingly global context. For students enrolled in United States law school, insight into the ways in which globalization matters can be drawn from the structural approaches to globalization of US-based law firms. These firms pursue their international practices by integrating lawyers educated and licensed in the firm’s home country (the US) and in the host jurisdictions in which the firm has offices. As a result, the success of the firm in its international practice depends upon the ability of its lawyers to develop strong and effective cross-national …

Globalization And The Business Of Law: Lessons For Legal Education, Carole Silver, David Van Zandt, Nicole Phelan

Carole Silver

No abstract provided.

Translating The U.S. Llm Experience: The Need For A Comprehensive Examination, Carole Silver, Mayer Freed

Carole Silver

No abstract provided.

Internationalizing U.S. Legal Education: A Report On The Education Of Transnational Lawyers, Carole Silver

Carole Silver

This article analyses the role of U.S. law schools in educating foreign lawyers and the increasingly competitive global market for graduate legal education. U.S. law schools have been at the forefront of this competition, but little has been reported about their graduate programs. This article presents original research on the programs and their students, drawn from interviews with directors of graduate programs at 35 U.S. law schools, information available on law school web sites about the programs, and interviews with graduates of U.S. graduate programs. Finally, the article considers the responses of U.S. law schools to new competition from foreign …

The Case Of The Foreign Lawyer: Internationalizing The U.S. Legal Profession, Carole Silver

Carole Silver

This article contriubtes a new perspective to existing scholarship on internationalization of the legal profession by focusing on the increasing presence of foreign lawyers in U.S. law schools and law firms. It analyzes the interaction between foreign-educated lawyers and the legal profession in the U.S. based upon two sources of information: first, a series of interviews with foreign-educated lawyers and U.S. law firm hiring partners regarding experiences in law school and in firms, and second, a database comprised of biographical information for more than 300 foreign-educated lawyers who were working in New York during 1999 and 2000. The various roles …