Law Commons^™

Between Diffusion And Distinctiveness In Globalization: U.S. Law Firms Go Glocal, Carole Silver, Nicole De Bruin Phelan, Mikaela Rabinowitz

Articles by Maurer Faculty

There is widespread agreement that law firms have embraced globalization, but what this means and why it matters are subjects still cloaked with uncertainty. Do law firms follow the models and processes of globalization characteristic of other businesses? Or are law firms forced to take a different approach because of the nature of law and its basis in a particular national system? In this article, we consider these questions as they apply to U.S. law firms, and offer a new lens to interpret the role of globalization in the activities of law firms and their lawyers. We use data relating …

Rethinking The Legal Reform Agenda: Will Raising The Standards For Bar Admission Promote Or Undermine Democracy, Human Rights, And Rule Of Law?, Samuel J. Levine, Russell G. Pearce

Scholarly Works

This Article offers a critique of, and alternative to, the American Bar Association's efforts, supported by the United States government, to promote the requirement of a college education in law as prerequisite for becoming a lawyer in developing countries. Using the examples of China, which currently has a far more open system for becoming a legal services provider, and South Africa, which already has a system consistent with the goals of the ABA, the Article argues that more stringent education requirements actually undermine democracy, human rights, and rule of law. In China, where the most significant advocates for human rights …

Globalization And Corporate Social Responsibility: Challenges For The Academy, Future Lawyers, And Corporate Law, Faith Stevelman

Articles & Chapters

Changes in information technology, in combination with changing popular and political opinion (including concern over climate change) are moving the subject of corporate social responsibility ('CSR') to the forefront of policy reform, consumer and investor behavior, and graduate business education. Nevertheless, up to the present, CSR has not thrived within law schools’ curricula, or mainstream graduate or undergraduate programs. First, the subject is too synthetic to fit neatly within the core, established framework of academic subject areas (e.g. history, economics, sociology and management), or law schools’ conventional teaching of corporate, securities, employment, administrative, or environmental law. CSR is relevant to …

The Clinical Year, Stephen J. Ellmann

Articles & Chapters

This article makes the case for the value – and the feasibility, under current accreditation and related rules governing law schools - of a clinical rotation for law students, modeled on the rotations that are a key part of medical school education. The “clinical year,” which would engage students in almost full-time practice/study for their third year of law school, could be a significant step in building the complete apprenticeship that the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has urged. It would also rely to a large extent on the supervision, and teaching, that adjunct law school faculty – …

Mr. Sunstein's Neighborhood: Won't You Be Our Co-Author?, Tracey E. George, Paul H. Edelman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In Six Degrees of Cass Sunstein: Collaboration Networks in Legal Scholarship (11 Green Bag 2d 19 (2007)) we began the study of the collaboration network in legal academia. We concluded that the central figure in the network was Professor Cass Sunstein of Harvard Law School and proceeded to catalogue all of his myriad co-authors (so-called Sunstein 1's) and their co-authors (Sunstein 2's). In this small note we update that catalogue as of August 2008 and take the opportunity to reflect on this project and its methodology.

"Just Trying To Be Human In This Place": Storytelling And Film In The First-Year Law School Classroom, Kate Nace Day, Russell G. Murphy

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

In 2007, the latest in a long line of studies and research projects that critically examined American legal education were published. The Carnegie Foundation Report, “Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law”, and the empirical research findings of linguistic anthropologist Elizabeth Mertz, “The Language of Law School: Learning to 'Think Like A Lawyer'”, identified many shortcomings and negative consequences that result from the traditional pedagogy of the American law school classroom. In this Article, Professors Kate Nace Day and Russell G. Murphy explore some of the findings of these studies in the context of their experimentation with the use …

A Litigation-Oriented Approach To Teaching Federal Courts, Michael Wells

Scholarly Works

The traditional focus of the course on Federal Courts has been the study of highly abstract principles of separation of powers and federalism. This paper argues that most students are better served by a course that focuses on what lawyers need to know in order to litigate issues regarding the types of disputes federal courts may address and the division of authority between federal and state courts. With that aim in mind, the paper suggests that the course should focus largely on the opportunities and obstacles faced by lawyers seeking to advance federal constitutional or statutory claims in the federal …

Foreword Symposium: Having It Our Way: Women In Maryland's Workplace Circa 2027, Margaret E. Johnson

All Faculty Scholarship

On November 14, 2007, the University of Baltimore School of Law, the University of Maryland School of Law and the Women's Law Center of Maryland co-sponsored a symposium entitled "Having it Our Way: Women in Maryland's Workplace Circa 2027." The insightful collection of papers in this volume of the University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class represents the work of employment law scholars, public policy specialists, and activists who presented on the current state of Maryland employment law and discussed Maryland's future. This distinguished group of experts and scholars present several themes: the hope of new …

Balancing Law Student Privacy Interests And Progressive Pedagogy: Dispelling The Myth That Ferpa Prohibits Cutting-Edge Academic Support Methodologies, Louis N. Schulze Jr.

Faculty Publications

Controversy exists over whether the Family Education Records Privacy Act prohibits certain progressive law school academic support methodologies. This Article analyzes these claims, using the text of the statute, the related regulations, case law from the Supreme Court of the United States and other federal courts, and statements from the Department of Education. The thesis of this Article is that most academic support methods are perfectly lawful and that FERPA and progressive pedagogy can peaceably coexist.

Three Ways Of Looking At A Health Law And Literature Class, Jennifer Bard, Thomas W. Mayo, Stacey A. Tovino

Scholarly Works

The authors of this Article participated in a panel at the American Society of Law, Ethics & Medicine Conference in 2008 that discussed the use of literary materials in law school to teach medical ethics (and related matters) in a law school setting. Each author comes at the topic from a different perspective based on his or her own experience and background. This Article and the panel on which it was based reflect views on how literature can play a valuable role in helping law students, as well as medical students, understand important legal and ethical issues and concepts in …

Sim City: Teaching “Thinking Like A Lawyer” In Simulation-Based Clinical Courses, Kris Franklin

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Teaching With Technology: Is The Pedagogical Fulcrum Shifting, Camille Broussard

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Against Practice, Anthony V. Alfieri

Articles

No abstract provided.

Law School And The Making Of The Student Into A Lawyer: Transformation Of First Year Law Students In The National University Of Singapore, Seow Hon Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This paper examines the impact of legal education and law school on the student's moral development and conception of professional identity, through an empirical study of first year law students of the Class of 2010 at the National University of Singapore. The project aims to increase consciousness of how law school remakes students and develops the moral and professional identity of future lawyers, and to facilitate a dialogue that reshapes legal education to achieve its aims. Given that legal education in Singapore is similar to that in other law schools in common law jurisdictions, the analysis is, with allowances for …

Dean Mary Daly: A Tribute, William Michael Treanor

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

I met Mary Daly for the first time on the day I began work at Fordham Law in 1991. I had an office on the second floor of the faculty corridor, and Mary's office was a few offices down the hall. Mary was already a well-established member of the faculty, a star at the U.S. Attorney's Office who had become a star in academia. I was new to Fordham and anxious as I began my career in teaching. Characteristically, and not surprisingly, Mary was the first one to come to my office to greet me. It has been almost twenty …

The Anti-Case Method: Herbert Wechsler And The Political History Of The Criminal Law Course, Anders Walker

All Faculty Scholarship

This article is the first to recover the dramatic transformation in criminal law teaching away from the case method and towards a more open-ended philosophical approach in the 1930s. It makes three contributions. One, it shows how Columbia Law Professor Herbert Wechsler revolutionized the teaching of criminal law by de-emphasizing cases and including a variety of non-case related material in his 1940 text Criminal Law and Its Administration. Two, it reveals that at least part of Wechsler's intention behind transforming criminal law teaching was to undermine Langdell's case method, which he blamed for producing a "closed-system" view of the law …

To And From The Community, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

I am glad to have been asked to share with the readers of Mizan Law Review, the thoughts that occurred to me at the end of my two-week stay in Ethiopia. It is difficult to express thoughts upon impromptu invitation. On the other hand, conversations like the one I had when I was invited to express my thoughts unveil one’s inner voice which readily responds although words from the heart might lack the pattern and the roadmap of thoughts and memories polished through the mind.

From The Editors, Mark Tushnet, Carrie Menkel Meadow

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

The Content Of Consumer Law Classes, Jeff Sovern

Faculty Publications

Attendees at the University of Houston Law Center Conference titled Teaching Consumer Law: The Who, What, Where, Why, When and How were surveyed to determine what topics they covered in consumer law classes. Twenty-five responses were received, representing fourteen survey classes, five clinics, and six miscellaneous responses. The responses indicated considerable diversity in the topics covered. No topic was covered by more than 21 professors and each of the 32 topics listed on the survey instrument was discussed by at least four professors. Under the circumstances, it seems difficult to claim that consumer protection classes have a canon agreed upon …

Cravath By The Sea: Recruitment In The Large Halifax Law Firm, 1900-1955, Jeffrey Haylock

Dalhousie Law Journal

The traditional view is that regularized, meritocratic hiring in Canadian law firms had to wait until the 1960s, with the rise in importance of Ontario university law schools. There was, however, more regional variation than this view allows. After an overview of the rise of large firms in the U.S. and Canada, and of the modern hiring strategies (the "Cravath system") that developed in New York in the early twentieth century, the author considers whether Halifax firms were employing these strategies between 1900 and 1955. Nepotistic hiring continued unabated; however, the three large firms of the period recruited young students …

Is There A Correlation Between Law Professor Publication Counts, Law Review Citation Counts, And Teaching Evaluations? An Empirical Study, Benjamin H. Barton

Scholarly Works

This empirical study attempts to answer an age-old debate in legal academia: whether scholarly productivity helps or hurts teaching. The study is of an unprecedented size and scope. It covers every tenured or tenure-track faculty member at 19 American law schools, a total of 623 professors. The study gathers four years of teaching evaluation data (calendar years 2000-03) and correlates these data against five different measures of research productivity/scholarly influence.

The results are counter-intuitive: there is either no correlation or a slight positive correlation between teaching effectiveness and any of the five measures of research productivity. Given the breadth of …

Thinking Like A Professional, Joshua E. Perry

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Science In The Law School Curriculum: A Snapshot Of The Legal Education Landscape, Mara Merlino, James T. Richardson, Jared Chamberlain, Victoria Springer

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

What's In A Name? A Gen Xer And Gen Yer Explore What It Means To Be Members Of Their Generations In The Workplace, Lauren M. Collins, Elizabeth A. Yates

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

In the NextGen Librarian's Survival Guide by Rachel Singer Gordon, the author cites several reasons this time is different than times before in librarianship. Those that are most relevant to law librarianship include:

• Flattening workplace hierarchies and participative management increase the input of newer librarians in workplace decision making

• New technologies require changing skills that affect attitudes toward the integration of those technologies into our daily work

• Outside pressures, such as the prevalence of the Internet, impose a need for librarians to continually prove our relevance and improve relations with younger patrons

• The much talked about …

Review: Voices Of American Law: Us Supreme Court Cases Meet The 21st Century, Lauren M. Collins

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Review of documentary series Voices of American Law (Thomas B. Metzloff & Sarah Wood, producers)

Globalism From An African Perspective: The Training Of Lawyers For A New And Challenging Reality, Winston P. Nagan, Marcio Santos

UF Law Faculty Publications

This paper deals with the definition and implications of globalism generally and for African interests in particular. Its focus is on globalism as a cluster of social, economic, and political forces contesting for the controlling paradigm of international relations and international law. The article underscores the general issue of globalism's impact on the well-being of the international community. It also considers the impact of globalism on the U.N. Charter, and, in particular, the role of the United Nations in international economic order. The connections between globalism and society are considered as part of the changing character of war and political …

Research Diagnostics: An Interactive Assessment Tool, Samantha A. Moppett

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

Studies have shown that students are more likely to retain information and achieve a higher level of thinking if professors incorporate a variety of teaching methods that respect the various ways that students absorb information. In an effort to acknowledge and validate the learning styles of all students, the author developed online Research Diagnostics to supplement the legal research curriculum. This article describes the Research Diagnostics and discusses the benefits of using the Research Diagnostics to assist in teaching legal research skills.

Acouple Of Generations Ahead Of Popular Demand': The First National Law Program At Mcgill University, 1918-1924, John Hobbins

Dalhousie Law Journal

Following the First World War, Dean Robert Warden Lee introduced some radical changes to the curriculum at the McGill Law Faculty Three-year courses were instituted leading to either a civil law degree or a common law degree, and a four-year course in which both degrees could be obtained. The program was extremely controversial, running into opposition within the part-time faculty the Montreal legal community and the bar societies of several provinces. Difficulties in obtaining professional accreditation for the common law graduates led to a decline in enrollment, and the common law option was discontinued in 1926. Lee's vision of a …

Colonialism And The Process Of Defining Aboriginal People, D'Arcy Vermette

Dalhousie Law Journal

It is not uncommon for Aboriginal law students to experience discomfort in studying the law The discomfort is not unique to legal studies, but the law provides a venue where the effects of the imposition of colonial norms are starkly revealed. In law school the author had to confront how Canadian law has attempted to control Aboriginal identity, at first through legislation and then through the courts. While the locus and style of controlling Aboriginal identity has changed over time, the practice of controlling Aboriginal identity is ever present. This process of control dehumanizes individualsand peoples and continues into the …

From Snail Mail To E-Mail: The Traditional Legal Memorandum In The Twenty-First Century, Kristen Konrad Robbins-Tiscione

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.