Law Commons^™

Webex From An Instructor's Perspective, Jennifer Mart-Rice, Terri Iacobucci, Jaesook Gilbert

Jennifer Mart-Rice

No abstract provided.

Inventing The New Classroom, Jennifer Mart-Rice, Debra Denslaw, Susan Boland, Jesse Bowman

Jennifer Mart-Rice

No abstract provided.

The Aging Of The American Law Professoriate, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

A recent (rather tasteless) article argued: “Professors approaching 70 … have an ethical obligation to step back and think seriously about quitting. If they do remain on the job, they should at least openly acknowledge they’re doing it mostly for themselves.” In “The Forever Professors: Academics Who Don’t Retire Are Greedy, Selfish, and Bad For Students”, the insensitive author added: “the number of professors 65 and older more than doubled between 2000 and 2011.” The author’s most intellectually savage comments were that: “faculty who delay retirement harm students, who in most cases would benefit from being taught by someone younger …

Using The Client-File Method To Teach Transactional Law, Bradley T. Borden

Bradley T. Borden

This Article presents a teaching method (the client-file method) for transactional law courses that combines the business school case-study method with the law school case method. The client-file method of teaching requires students to become familiar with real-word legal issues and the types of documents and information that accompany matters that transactional clients bring to attorneys (i.e., the contents of a client file). The method also requires students to learn and apply substantive law to solve problems that arise in a transactional law practice. Because the client-file method places students in a practice setting, it helps them become more practice-ready …

Foreword, Robert J. Rhee

Robert Rhee

No abstract provided.

Teaching Business Law Through An Entrepreneurial Lens, Michelle M. Harner

Michelle M. Harner

The legal market has changed. Although change creates uncertainty and fear, it also can create opportunity. This essay explores the opportunity for innovation in the business law curriculum, and the role of simulation to help create more practice-aware new lawyers.

Making And Teaching “Real” Family Law: A Celebration Of The Scholarship And Service Of Professor Margo Melli, Jalae Ulicki

Jalae Ulicki

No abstract provided.

“A Message From Your Body: How To Remove Toxicity In Yourself And In The Practice Of Law”, Jalae Ulicki

Jalae Ulicki

No abstract provided.

The Analytic Classroom, Todd E. Pettys

Todd E. Pettys

This article proposes a dramatic shift in law schools’ approach to teaching doctrinal courses. The proposal flows in large part from three separate developments: (1) the rise of strong economic headwinds in the market for legal education; (2) the emergence of empirical evidence that law schools are falling short of their goal of equipping students with powerful analytic abilities that transcend the particular doctrinal frameworks law schools teach; and (3) the incipient revolution in higher education, with prestigious universities now aggressively pursuing the opportunity to provide the public with free or low-cost access to many of their courses through the …

Class Participation As A Learning And Assessment Strategy In Law: Facilitating Students’ Engagement, Skills Development And Deep Learning, Alex Steel, Anna Huggins, Julian Laurens

Alex Steel

Well designed assessment can be a vehicle for encouraging students to learn and engage more broadly than with the minimums required to complete the assessment activity. In that sense assessment need not merely ‘drive’ earning, but can instead act as a catalyst for further learning beyond what a student had anticipated. In this article we reconsider the potential roles and benefits in legal education of a form of interactive classroom learning we term assessable class participation (ACP), both as part of a pedagogy grounded in assessment and learning theory, and as a platform for developing broader autonomous approaches to learning …

Clarifying Assessment: Developing Official Typologies And Instructions For Forms Of Assessment In Law, Alex Steel

Alex Steel

Law students are expected to complete a range of assessment throughout their degree, and do so with varying levels of success. Increasingly, research has examined the ways in which student performance can be enhanced. While much focus has been on how to best to provide students with feedback that can be acted on, this paper examines the extent to which standardisation of the way in which assessment tasks are described could assist students. The use of the same name to describe different variations of an assessment task can create confusion for students and for new members of staff. Research demonstrates …

‘Works Well With Others’: Examining The Different Types Of Small Group Learning Approaches And Their Implications For Law Student Learning Outcomes, Julian Laurens, Alex Steel, Anna Huggins

Alex Steel

In the current regulatory climate, there is increasing expectation that law schools will be able to demonstrate students’ acquisition of learning outcomes regarding collaboration skills. We argue that this is best achieved through a stepped and structured whole-of-curriculum approach to small group learning. ‘Group work’ provides deep learning and opportunities to develop professional skills, but these benefits are not always realised for law students. An issue is that what is meant by ‘group work’ is not always clear, resulting in a learning regime that may not support the attainment of desired outcomes. This paper describes different types of ‘group work’, …

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 …

Answering Legal Problem Questions In A Grid Format, Alex Steel, Dominic Fitzsimmons

Alex Steel

The development of legal reasoning skills is a fundamental aspect of legal education. What has sometimes been called “learning to think like a lawyer” is a threshold competency that students must acquire before they can progress to more complex analysis of broader legal issues. This chapter discusses the use of problem-based scenarios to both engage students and to develop legal analysis. It outlines the threshold difficulties students must overcome in order to read texts as a lawyer and explains how use of a grid format answer – rather than an essay format – can both assist students to overcome these …

Mind The Gap: How Law Professors, Academic Support Professionals, And Students Can Fill In The Formative Assessment Gap, Heather Zuber-Harshman

Heather Zuber-Harshman

This article serves to accomplish three things. First, to provide students with feedback tools that will help them achieve academic success and improve the quality of their law school experience. Students who do not receive feedback or receive inadequate feedback should use the provided forms to proactively and creatively find ways to obtain feedback. They should never be afraid or too proud to ask others for assistance with generating this feedback.

Second, to encourage professors and Academic Support professionals who believe students should receive adequate feedback to take steps towards providing the feedback.

Third, to provide Academic Support professionals with …

"Learning" Research And Legal Education: A Brief Overview And Selected Bibliographical Survey, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

Back To The Future In Law Schools, William Reynolds

William L. Reynolds

This paper first argues for the maintenance of the traditional first-year curriculum. It does so in the context of an examination of what most lawyers do in practice and, therefore, what most lawyers should know. This portion includes a defense of the Socratic Method. The paper then addresses contemporary concerns about legal education, including the devaluation of courses in the private law curriculum, and considers why legal academics are not interested in private law.

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 …

The Psychology Of Hope: Legal Educators Must Strengthen Students' "Waypower" To Succeed, Cassandra L. Hill

Cassandra L. Hill

The power of hopeful thinking is often undervalued. According to C.R. Snyder, the father of hope theory, hope reflects a mental set in which we have the willpower to move toward a goal and the “waypower” or mental capacity to devise effective methods, plans, or paths to reach that goal. Both the willpower to succeed and the waypower to solve problems are required to have a truly hopeful attitude. Applying this formula to legal education, if law students lack either the willpower or the waypower for their goals, they cannot have high hope to succeed. And hope is a key …

Emerald City Mayhem & Murder, Beau James Brock

Beau James Brock

This skit is a fictitious trial of Dorothy for for murdering witches in Emerald City. It is an educational tool for schools to use in conjunction with Civics class for Law Week activities. It is a complete mock trial skit with roles for an entire class to play either parties, lawyers, court officials or jurors. The skit will last approximately 25 minutes when performed and with discussion afterwards will fill 45 minutes to an hour.

Kuwait University, Civil Law And The Internet: Genesis Of A Dedicated Civil Law-Teaching Website (Being A Unesco Cited Project), Mashael Alhajeri

Mashael Alhajeri

No abstract provided.

The Movement For Open Access Law, Michael W. Carroll

Michael W. Carroll

My claim in this contribution to this important symposium is that the law and legal scholarship should be freely available on the Internet, and copyright law and licensing should facilitate achievement of this goal. This claim reflects the combined aims of those who support the movement for open access law. This nascent movement is a natural extension of the well-developed movement for free access to primary legal materials and the equally well-developed open access movement, which seeks to make all scholarly journal articles freely available on the Internet. Legal scholars have only general familiarity with the first movement and very …

Global Legal Education And Human Rights, Claudio M. Grossman

Claudio M. Grossman