Law Commons^™

Raising The Bar: The Nextgen Bar Exam And Contract Drafting, Susan M. Chesler, Karen J. Sneddon

Transactions: The Tennessee Journal of Business Law

No abstract provided.

Ok, Computer: Harnessing Ai In Contracts To Change How Our Students Will Practice And How We Will Teach, Mark E. Need

Transactions: The Tennessee Journal of Business Law

No abstract provided.

Teaching Transactional Business Law Through Campus And Community Partnerships, Joan Macleod Heminway, Brian Kingsley Krumm

Transactions: The Tennessee Journal of Business Law

No abstract provided.

How To Make Transactional Classes More Engaging And Practical With Blended Learning And Flipped Classrooms: A Practical Framework And A Look At The University Of Miami School Of Law’S Innovative Approach, Marcia Narine Weldon, Ian Nelson

Transactions: The Tennessee Journal of Business Law

No abstract provided.

Introducing Law Students To Transactional Practice: From Using Precedent To Closing The Deal, Ben Fernandez

Transactions: The Tennessee Journal of Business Law

No abstract provided.

Incorporating Real-World Legal Practice Into Law School Curricula, John Lande

Faculty Publications

This annotated bibliography was prepared for the program, “Pracademically Speaking: Incorporating Real-World Legal Practice Into the Curriculum,” at the 2024 Annual Conference of the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution. It includes relevant entries from the Real Practice Systems Project Annotated Bibliography.

This includes three sections, identifying: (1) problems with legal education and licensing, (2) resources for law schools and faculty, and (3) resources for law students. It particularly focuses on teaching skills for helping clients, which is critically important because practitioners often fail to recognize and respect clients’ perspectives and interests. Teaching students to work well with clients – and …

Why Equity Follows The Law, Adam J. Macleod

Faculty Articles

Renewed attention to equity in higher education is welcome because true equity helps us to reason together well. When administered correctly, the jurisprudence of equity models civil discourse and, therefore, can teach us how to carry out civic engagement reasonably. Equitable interpretation of the law teaches us how to understand each other charitably. And equity’s deference to law teaches us how to reason well together about our practical problems. Law is the practical reasoning that we do together. Equity serves the ends of justice by serving law, rather than undermining it. These functions of equity in adjudication point toward a …

Language Models, Plagiarism, And Legal Writing, Michael L. Smith

Faculty Articles

Language models like ChatGPT are the talk of the town in legal circles. Despite some high-profile stories of fake ChatGPT-generated citations, many practitioners argue that language models are the way of the future. These models, they argue, promise an efficient source of first drafts and stock language. Others make similar claims about legal writing education, with a number of professors urging the acknowledgment of language models. Others go further and argue that students ought to learn to use these models to improve their writing and prepare for practice. I argue that those urging the incorporation of language models into legal …

Abolish The Mpre, Michael Ariens

Faculty Articles

In nearly every jurisdiction, applicants to the bar must pass the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination (MPRE). Its purpose, according to its owner, the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE), is "to measure candidates' knowledge and understanding of established standards related to the professional conduct of lawyers." It does test whether an examinee has kept in short-term memory the rules and exceptions that make up part of the understanding of what it means to serve as a lawyer. However, success (or initial failure) on the MPRE has not been correlated with ethical conduct or misconduct. For example, the Texas Board of …

Helping Students To Organize Their Thoughts About The Erie Doctrine, William Casto

Indiana Law Journal

This little Essay presents a framework for teaching the Erie Doctrine. It is not a grand analysis of the federal courts’ puzzle. It does not even offer a wondrously insightful vision of one of the puzzle’s colorful pieces. Rather, the purpose is quite modest. The essay simply aims to help students to organize their thoughts about whether a particular legal issue is governed by state or federal law. Given the Essay’s limited and wholly heuristic purpose, the usual endless parade of all possible cases and the careful rehearsal of exquisite and finely-tuned factors and considerations are eschewed.

Teaching The Choice Between Vagueness And Precision In Contracts, Naveen Thomas

Transactions: The Tennessee Journal of Business Law

No abstract provided.

One Semester, One Deal: A Transactional-Practice Focused Syllabus, Kari Sanderson

Transactions: The Tennessee Journal of Business Law

No abstract provided.

Externships For Equity, Lauren K. Valastro

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

This article examines the crucial role of externships in improving employment outcomes for marginalized law students, who often face systemic barriers to success in the legal field. Despite advancements, these students continue to have lower employment rates after graduation, largely due to institutional failures. Externships offer a low-cost, high-impact opportunity for students to gain the competencies employers seek, thus significantly enhancing their chances of securing employment. By analyzing data, the essay highlights the positive effect of externships on marginalized students' hiring outcomes. It also addresses broader questions on how legal employers evaluate candidates and proposes that expanding and supporting externship …

The Case For Waivable Employee Rights: A Contrarian View, William Corbett

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Charity Scott, Elizabeth Weeks

Scholarly Works

This essay pays tribute to Professor Charity Scott’s transformative impact on health law, legal education, and medical-legal partnerships. Reflecting on personal experience and Scott’s pioneering work, It highlights Scott’s integrity, compassion, and dedication to improving individual and community well-being through law. Scott’s role in establishing the Health Law Partnership (HeLP) and advancing the medical-legal partnership model is situated within the broader evolution of health justice, social determinants of health, and interprofessional collaboration. The essay underscores her legacy as a scholar, mentor, and innovator whose work continues to shape health law and inspire future generations of advocates, educators, and practitioners

Aba Standard 303(C) And Divisive Concepts Statutes And Regulations: Challenges And Opportunities, Andrew King-Ries, Karen Tokarz, Becky L. Jacobs, Sherley Cruz, Kendall Kerew, Carwina Weng

Faculty Law Review Articles

This article by six clinicians discusses the challenges and opportunities of new ABA Standard 303(c), including the implications of and interactions between Standard 303(c) and divisive concepts laws and other threats to representation, academic freedom, and free speech in legal education. The article also highlights the intersection of  Standard  303(c) and Standard 303(b)(3), which addresses professional identity formation; discusses opportunities to adapt current curriculum and teaching and create new curricular responses to meet the new accreditation standards and interpretations; and explores ways to resist increasing limitations and find a supportive academic community to sustain hope and resilience.

Teaching Stare Decisis To First-Year Law Students In Higher Education: A Pedagogical Blind Alley?, Kenneth Yin, Carmela De Maio

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

The doctrine of stare decisis is often explained in first-year law studies as synonymous with the doctrine of precedent and dichotomised into ratio decidendi and obiter dicta. This explanation of stare decisis is frequently supplemented by an exercise where the novice law student is provided with a case and directed to identify the ratio decidendi of the case, and to appreciate the distinction between ratio and obiter dicta in it, the latter being persuasive only. It is argued that this pedagogy is limited and unrealistic because stare decisis is a dynamic process whereby, applying the precepts of formal legal logic, …

“I Was But The Learner, Now I Am The Master”: Using The Protégé Effect To Accelerate Learning Outcomes, Anita M. Singh

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Like most legal writing professors, I frequently use peer editing, collaborative editing, and rewriting in my classes and have done so since I began teaching in 2009. Last year, looking to increase student self-direction, promote ownership and accountability, and drive students to engage more meaningfully with my feedback, I added something slightly different to the mix. By combining “learning by teaching” and self-reflection, I stumbled upon an exercise that students across-the-board called “[t]he most important thing [we did] for my writing” and “the best reviewing exercise we [did] all year.” It had the added bonus of supporting students’ professional identity …

Innovative Approaches To On-Demand Continuing Legal Education Ethics Training: A Case Study, Tigran W. Eldred, Molly J. Walker Wilson

Faculty Scholarship

In the ongoing discussions about continuing legal education (CLE), concerns have been raised about the quality of programming that is created and delivered. Critics have emphasized the weaknesses in mandatory programs, arguing that requiring annual training on topics such as legal ethics tends to fall short of stated goals.¹ Too often, it is said, such programs fail to deliver content in an engaging manner that is likely to improve competence.² The picture conjured up is of the bored lawyer, sitting in the back of a room flipping through a newspaper or some other distraction, as CLE instructors passively …

Beyond "Hard" Skills: Teaching Outward - And Inward-Facing Character-Based Skills To 1ls In Light Of Aba Standard 303(B)(3)'S Professional Identity Requirement, Marni Goldstein Caputo, Kathleen Luz

Faculty Scholarship

In this article, we share some ways in which we have adjusted our teaching to comply with Standard 303(b)(3) by addressing professional identity formation through the vehicles of outward-facing and inward-facing character-based skills. We believe that if law students do not intentionally start *811 exploring their professional identities as soon as they step foot into law school, they run the risk of believing that legal education and practice are somehow separate from their inner, personal identities as lawyers when, of course, they are, and ought to be, enmeshed. By injecting skills into the 1L curriculum that force both the development …

Closing The Feedback Gap: Reflections As Diagnostic Resource, Jaclyn Celebrezze

Presentations

Providing students with helpful, actionable feedback is a perennial challenge. This presentation identifies an additional data source for instructors when drafting feedback: digital student reflections. This process has a dual benefit for both instructors and students. For instructors, digitized reflections unlock an understanding of why a student drafted a certain way, minimizing guesswork and ensuring more targeted feedback. For students, this process directs the instructor’s gaze to a concrete concern or discomfort for immediate response. While not a solution for all feedback problems, digitizing student reflections allows instructors and students to work together to close the gap.

Mothers In Law: A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Mothers In Law School, Sarah M. Jordon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Mothers are an increasing student population in higher education but an extensively under-researched population. While research examining motherhood is limited, the dearth of studies examining motherhood in higher education is especially limited, with even less available in the legal field and the institutions that provide legal education. This study examined how mothers in law school made meaning of their experiences utilizing a postmodernist epistemological framework, postmodernism and performance as a theoretical framework, and critical discourse analysis as a methodology. Data collection took place over the 2022-2023 academic year. Eight mothers participated in this qualitative study representing a range of ability …

Belonging Matters: One School’S Strategy For Fostering Community And Confidence Among Students From Historically Excluded Groups, Alexi Freeman, Caley Carlson

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

For generations, law students from historically excluded and underrepresented groups—including but not limited to students of color, students with disabilities, gender diverse and gender non-conforming students, and students who identify as LGBTQIA+—have been expected to navigate their legal educations “successfully” despite the many challenges they encounter. This article describes Denver Law Ascent, a program at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law that is designed to provide critical supports to such students and cultivate a sense of belonging early on as well as throughout students’ educational journeys. Drawing from evidence-based research and best practices, Denver Law Ascent is one …

What Do Law Professors Believe About Law And The Legal Academy?, Eric H. Martinez, Kevin Tobia

Faculty Scholarship

Legal scholarship is replete with debates about competing legal theories: textualism or purposivism; formalism or realism; natural law or positivism; prison reform or abolition; universal or culturally specific human rights? Despite voluminous literature about these debates, great uncertainty remains about which views experts endorse. This Article presents the first dataset of American law professors’ views about legal theory. A study of over six hundred law professors reveals expert consensus and dissensus about dozens of longstanding debates.

Law professors also debate questions about the legal academy. These include descriptive questions: Which subjects (for example, constitutional law) and methods (for example, law …

Progressive Prosecution Or Zealous Public Defense? The Choice For Law Students Concerned About Our Flawed Criminal Legal System, Abbe Smith

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Article addresses a question asked by many law students concerned about our flawed criminal legal system: should they become a prosecutor in an office run by a progressive prosecutor, or a public defender in an office devoted to zealous, client-centered (or holistic) defense? The Article starts with an anecdote about Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s road show to recruit law students and young lawyers, and then proceeds as follows: First, this Article makes the case for progressive prosecution; then, it makes the case for zealous indigent defense; then, it identifies the obstacles and challenges for both kinds of lawyers …

Here Are Ways Professional Education Leaders Can Prepare Students For The Rise Of Ai, A. Benjamin Spencer

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Maurer School Of Law, Iu Northwest Partner On Law Scholars Program, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

The Indiana University Maurer School of Law, working in collaboration with Indiana University Northwest, has established a new program to act as a pipeline into law school, the schools announced today (June 27).

The Indiana University Northwest Law Scholars Program will substantially reduce tuition for up to four IU Northwest graduates interested in pursuing a legal education in Bloomington, as well as supply qualifying students with dedicated faculty mentorship to help ensure their success.

On Bringing Alternative Methods To Legal Research Instruction, Tanya M. Johnson

Northern Illinois University Law Review

Legal research is typically taught in a predictable, traditional way, but this doctrinal approach does not provide the skills and techniques needed for research in support of social justice efforts. This essay discusses a legal research course that I teach called Research for Social Justice, which incorporates critical and alternative methodologies that are not usually taught in legal research classes. After describing the content of the course, I focus on explaining what alternative legal research would entail, including a discussion of some alternative methods and strategies that I teach in my course with the goal of introducing students to a …

The Next Gerneration Professional: An Opportunity To Reframe Legal Education To Center Student Wellness, Benjamin Afton Cavanaugh

Hofstra Law Review

The article discusses the challenges of mental wellness and mental health in legal education, particularly in law schools. It highlights issues like depression, anxiety, and stress among students and legal professionals. It emphasizes the need for reform in legal education to address these mental health concerns and advocates for a more comprehensive approach to promote well-being in the field.

Medical-Legal Partnership As A Model For Access To Justice, Yael Cannon

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The United States is plagued with a “justice gap” that leaves many Americans with unmet civil legal needs. Americans with low income do not receive the legal help they require for as many as 92% of their substantive civil legal problems. The justice gap requires many legal aid agencies to triage, becoming “emergency rooms” for clients with unmet legal needs. This national crisis calls for new innovations so that access to justice (A2J) can function more like primary care, promoting better use of resources and preventing legal crises that can cause long-lasting harm.

Medical-Legal Partnerships (MLPs) embed lawyers in healthcare …