Law Commons^™

Well-Timed Solutions For Legal Education And The Bar, William D. Henderson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Narrative Topoi In The Digital Age, Zahr K. Said, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

Decades of thoughtful law and humanities scholarship have made the case for using humanistic texts and methods in the legal classroom. We build on that scholarship by identifying and describing three “narrative topoi” of the twenty-first century – podcasts, twitter and fake news. We use the term “topos” (from the Greek meaning “place”) and its plural, “topoi,” to mean “a literary commonplace” and “general setting for discussion” in the context of literary forms. Like an identifiable genre, narrative topoi are familiar story paths for audiences to travel. These narrative topoi live in contemporary popular culture and are products of digital …

Front Matter

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Front Matter contains Table of Contents and Masthead for Lewis & Clark Law Review Volume 22, Issue 4.

Desmond's Law: A Novel Approach To Animal Advocacy, Jessica Rubin

Animal Law Review

In May of 2016, the Connecticut Legislature passed Public Law 16-30, informally called Desmond’s Law. This law allows courts to appoint supervised law students or volunteer lawyers to advocate for the interests of justice in animal cruelty cases. Desmond’s Law institutes a novel approach to animal cruelty cases—advocates support the prosecution and sentencing of individuals charged with animal cruelty offenses and promote enforcement of historically under-utilized anti-cruelty laws. Based upon the author’s personal experience conceiving and implementing Desmond’s Law, this Article aims to aid legislators, judges, and advocates in creating legislation modeled on Connecticut’s Desmond’s Law. This Article also aims …

How To Build A Better Bar Exam, Eileen Kaufman, Andrea Anne Curcio, Carol L. Chomsky

Scholarly Works

As a licensing exam, the purpose of the bar exam is consumer protection–-ensuring that new lawyers have the minimum competencies required to practice law effectively. As critics point out, however, the exam, and particularly the multiple-choice question portion of the exam, has significant flaws because it assesses legal knowledge and analysis in an artificial and unrealistic context, and the closed-book format rewards the ability to memorize thousands of legal rules, a skill unrelated to law practice.

This essay discusses how to improve the exam by changing its multiple-choice content and format. We use two law licensing exams to illustrate how …

A Decade Of Civilian Scholarship: The Role Of The Journal Of Civil Law Studies As A Bridge Between Louisiana And The Civil Law World, Agustín Parise

Journal of Civil Law Studies

No abstract provided.

Ou Law Center For Technology And Innovation In Practice: Continuing The Commitment To Innovation, Melissa Caperton, Jonella Frank

Sooner Lawyer Archive

No abstract provided.

From The Dean, Joseph Harroz Jr.

Sooner Lawyer Archive

No abstract provided.

A Revealed Preferences Approach To Ranking Law Schools, Brian L. Frye, Christopher J. Ryan Jr.

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The U.S. News & World Report (U.S. News) “Best Law Schools Rankings” defines the market for legal education. Law schools compete to improve their standing in the U.S. News rankings and fear any decline. But the U.S. News rankings are controversial, at least in part because they rely on factors that are poor proxies for quality, like peer reputation and expenditures per student. While many alternative law school rankings exist, none have challenged the market dominance of the U.S. News rankings. Presumably the U.S. News rankings benefit from a first-mover advantage, other rankings fail to provide a clearly superior alternative, …

“The Lost Lawyer” Regained: The Abiding Values Of The Legal Profession, Robert Maccrate

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

No abstract provided.

The Untold Story Of The Justice Gap: Integrating Poverty Law Into The Law School Curriculum, Vanita S. Snow

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.

Eying The Body: The Impact Of Classical Rules For Demeanor Credibility, Bias, And The Need To Blind Legal Decision Makers, Daphne O’Regan

Pace Law Review

This Article focuses on law students and attorneys, not parties, witnesses, experts, and others. Part I briefly provides background: the pivotal role of classical rhetoric in western education, including the United States, the dispositive position of demeanor credibility in oral trial, and the persistent doubts about its reliability—doubts turned into certainty over two decades of research. Part II compares modern and ancient manuals to explain the rules of elite demeanor and its ideological claim to truth. Part III compares ancient and modern understanding of popular delivery; that is, choices in non-verbal communication that run counter to the elite rules and …

A Blueprint For A Fairer Aba Standard For Judging Law Graduates’ Competence: How A Standard Based On Students’ Scores In Relation To The National Mean Mbe Score Properly Balances Consumer Safety With Increased Diversity In The Bar, William Wesley Patton

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

Current and recently proposed American Bar Association (ABA) standards regarding students’ bar passage rates have a significant disparate impact on states that have adopted difficult bar examination passage standards (the Multistate Bar Exam (MBE cut scores). Many scholars have demonstrated that the ABA bar passage standards have a negative impact on diversity in the bar by discouraging law schools from enrolling large numbers of minority students, who have, traditionally, performed below state mean in passage rates on the exam. This study presents a new and supplemental standard for the ABA to use in monitoring student outcome measures and law schools’ …

Law As Instrumentality, Jeremiah A. Ho

Marquette Law Review

Our conceptions of law affect how we objectify the law and ultimately how we study it. Despite a century’s worth of theoretical progress in American law—from legal realism to critical legal studies movements and postmodernism—the formalist conception of“law as science,” as promulgated by Christopher Langdell at Harvard Law School in the late-nineteenth century, continues to influence the inductive methodologies used today to impart knowledge in American legal education. This lasting influence of the Langdellian scientific conception of law has persisted even as the present crisis in legal education has engendered other reforms. However, subsequent movements of legal thought have revealed …

John Marshall, The Great Chief Justice, William & Mary Law School

Popular Media

John Marshall, the nation's fourth chief justice, was among the first to study law at W&M.

Decision Making Models In 2/2 Time: Two Speakers, Two Models (Maybe), Sharon Bradley, Tim Tarvin

Presentations

Our students have to learn so many new skills to be successful in law school and law practice. Legal research, client interviewing, and case analysis just for starters. Our teaching methods have to engage our students while preparing them to “think like a lawyer.” We also have the responsibility to familiarize students in evaluating the “benefits and risks associated with relevant technology” and to develop efficient practices and processes. The speakers will look at decision making models that are practical and useable.

One speaker will discuss his experiences in a clinical setting using decision trees, teaching his students to visualize …

Lawyer ≠ Luddite, Jason Tubinis, Khelani Clay, Jim Henneberger, Zanada Joyner, Shannon Roddy

Presentations

Being a competent attorney means being a competent technologist. ABA Model Rule 1.1 (Competence) requires all lawyers to stay abreast of technology even if they still use a Dictaphone and typewriter and think “the cloud” refers to the fluffy white stuff in the sky. It can be malpractice to misuse or misunderstand technology, and this misuse can take many forms. Lack of familiarity with technology can lead to improper production of confidential information, delays in litigation, wasting time and client funds, ending up on Above the Law (and not in a good way), and more.

Legal technology courses are becoming …

Technology And The Classroom: Bringing Twenty-First Century Technologies To The Law Library, Darin K. Fox

Other Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Care And Feeding Of Law Student Research Assistants, Alyssa Dragnich, Rachel H. Smith

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)
Hiring, training, managing, and mentoring research assistants can be highly gratifying. When it works well, the relationship between a professor and a research assistant (RA) can be a distillation of all the best parts of teaching legal writing. It benefits professor and student. It results in a bond of friendship and collegiality. It produces useful and thoughtful work.

But it can also go horribly wrong. The relationship can be a waste of student and professor time and energy. The professor can feel burdened, rather than assisted. The student can feel confused and underappreciated. As any professor knows who has …

“Best Practices”: A Giant Step Toward Ensuring Compliance With Aba Standard 405(C), A Small Yet Important Step Toward Addressing Gender Discrimination In The Legal Academy, Kristen K. Tiscione

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In March 2014, the American Bar Association (ABA) voted to leave Accreditation Standard 405 undisturbed.” The ABA’s decision required law schools to continue to grant tenure to traditional law faculty, yet permitted them to continue to deny tenure to clinical and legal writing faculty. At the same time, recognizing the need for increased professional skills training, the ABA voted to increase the number of experiential credits law students must complete from one to six. As explained to the ABA Council in advance, these two decisions work together to increase the demands on skills faculty, who are predominantly female, yet keep …

Virginia Bar Exam, February 2017, Section 1

Virginia Bar Exam Archive

No abstract provided.

Virginia Bar Exam, February 2017, Section 2

Virginia Bar Exam Archive

No abstract provided.

Bringing Purposefulness To The American Law School’S Support Of Professional Identity Formation, Louis D. Bilionis

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Ten years after the publication of Educating Lawyers, a growing number of American law schools are taking initiative to better support their students in the formation of professional identity. There is widespread recognition that success in these efforts requires an element of “purposefulness” on the part of law faculty and staff. Experiences, environments, and pedagogies that actually work for professional identity formation must be crafted and promoted with intentionality. Bringing the requisite purposefulness to the effort, however, will take a mindset about the education of a lawyer that will be new to many in legal education. This article explores that …

Table Of Contents

Journal of Experiential Learning

No abstract provided.

Research Note: Using Experiential Learning In A Pipeline To Careers In Law Program For First-Generation University Women, Sandi Dimola, Allyson M. Lowe

Journal of Experiential Learning

No abstract provided.

Four Variations In Delivery And Design Of Mock Trial For The Undergraduate Student, Kyle C. Kopko, Grant Keener, Paula Knudsen-Burke, Dianne Mcdonald, William S. Schweers, Michael Vitlip

Journal of Experiential Learning

No abstract provided.

A Lawyer's Experience In K-12 Law-Related Education: Lessons And Opportunities, David A. Scott

Journal of Experiential Learning

No abstract provided.

Cultural Brokers In The Changing Landscape Of Legal Education: Associate Deans For Experiential Education, Binny Miller

Journal of Experiential Learning

No abstract provided.

Experiential Legal Writing Before Law School: Undergraduate Judicial Opinions, Tom Rozinski

Journal of Experiential Learning

No abstract provided.

Implementing A Professional Development Approach To Pre-Law Advising: How To Build A Bridge To Law School And The Legal Profession Through Legal And Professional Development Courses, Professional Societies And Mentoring, Karen Graziano

Journal of Experiential Learning

No abstract provided.