Law Commons^™

If Only We Knew What We Know, Conrad Johnson, Brian Donnelly

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This article contributes to the broader themes surrounding law and technology raised in this symposium by taking a look at lawyering and knowledge management. This topic is presented both as a theory and with a case study. The first part provides a brief summary of the basic lawyering paradigm used in the Lawyering in the Digital Age Clinic at Columbia Law School—that all lawyering activities can be understood within the context of gathering, managing and presenting information. The second category of the paradigm is expanded upon to review the activity of managing knowledge. Then, knowledge management is positioned as the …

Teaching Law And Digital Age Legal Practice With An Ai And Law Seminar, Kevin D. Ashley

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This article provides a guide and examples for using a seminar on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Law to teach lessons about legal reasoning and about legal practice in the digital age. Artificial Intelligence and Law is a subfield of AI/ computer science research that focuses on computationally modeling legal reasoning. In at least a few law schools, the AI and Law seminar has regularly taught students fundamental issues about law and legal reasoning by focusing them on the problems these issues pose for scientists attempting to computationally model legal reasoning. AI and Law researchers have designed programs to reason with …

Remedies: A Guide For The Perplexed, Doug Rendleman

Scholarly Articles

Remedies is one of a law student’s most practical courses. Remedies students and their professors learn to work with their eyes on the question at the end of litigation: what can the court do for the successful plaintiff? Remedies develops students’ professional identities and broadens their professional horizons by reorganizing their analysis of procedure, torts, contracts, and property around choosing and measuring relief - compensatory damages, punitive damages, an injunction, specific performance, disgorgement, and restitution. This article discusses the law-school course in Remedies - the content of the Remedies course, the Remedies classroom experience, and Remedies outside the classroom through …

Teaching Westlawnext: Next Steps For Teachers Of Legal Research, Ronald E. Wheeler

Faculty Scholarship

As a follow up to his earlier piece titled "Does WestlawNext Really Change Everything: The Implications of WestlawNext on Legal Research," Professor Wheeler here explores strategies for teaching students to effectively research using the WestlawNext legal research platform. He focuses on challenging law librarians and other teachers of legal research to embrace change, to innovate and to devise research exercises that highlight both the advantages and the alleged pitfalls of WestlawNext. In particular, Professor Wheeler discusses source selection, filters, addressing the volume of results, esoteric content, and Boolean searching.

Time: An Empirical Analysis Of Law Student Time Management Deficiencies, Christine P. Bartholomew

Journal Articles

This Article begins the much needed research on law students’ time famine. Time management complaints begin early in students’ legal education and generally go unresolved. As a result, practicing attorneys identify time famine as a leading cause of job dissatisfaction. To better arm graduating students, law schools must treat time as an essential component of practice-readiness. Unfortunately, most law schools ignore their students’ time management concerns, despite growing calls for greater “skills” training in legal education.

To date, legal scholarship has overlooked psychological research on time management. Yet, this research is an essential starting point to effective instruction. Rather than …

Illuminating Innumeracy, Lisa Milot

Scholarly Works

Everyone knows that lawyers are bad at math. Many fields of law, though — from explicitly number-focused practices like tax law and bankruptcy, to the less obviously numerical fields of family law and criminal defense — require interaction with, and sophisticated understandings of, numbers. To the extent that lawyers really are bad at math, why is that case? And what, if anything, should be done about it?

In this Article, I show the ways in which our acceptance of innumeracy harms our ability to practice and think about the law. On a practical level, we miscalculate numbers, oversimplify formulas, and, …

Can And Should Human Rights Themes Impact Decision-Making In A Law School? Reflections From The U.S. Perspective, Nora V. Demleitner

Scholarly Articles

Human rights (HR) issues, which often reveal themselves from a comparative perspective, are not categorized as such in law schools though they lie beneath fundamental structural decisions. Institutional funding and access directly impact educational, social, economic – and racial -- equality. Curriculum development and coverage – in doctrinal courses and so-called "clinics"– require reflection upon the amount of resources expanded on the teaching of human rights, the connections made between human rights and related subject areas, the restriction of human rights discourse to specific courses. Student affairs regularly deal with human rights questions ranging from religious to disability accommodations. The …

125 Years Of Law Books, 1888-2013, Keith Ann Stiverson

125th Anniversary Materials

No abstract provided.

U.S. Antitrust: From Shot In The Dark To Global Leadership, David J. Gerber

125th Anniversary Materials

No abstract provided.

What's A Telegram?, Henry H. Perritt Jr.

125th Anniversary Materials

No abstract provided.

Law And Leadership: Integrating Leadership Studies Into The Law School Curriculum, Paula A. Monopoli, Susan Mccarty

Book Gallery

Leadership includes the ability to persuade others to embrace one’s ideas and to act upon them. Teaching law students the art of persuasion through advocacy is at the heart of legal education. But historically law schools have not included leadership studies in the curriculum. This book is one of the first to examine whether and how to integrate the theory and practice of leadership studies into legal education and the legal profession. Interdisciplinary in its scope, with contributions from legal educators and practitioners, the book defines leadership in the context of the legal profession and explores its challenges in legal …

Specialization In Law And Business: A Proposal For A J.D./"Mbl" Curriculum, Robert J. Rhee

Faculty Scholarship

This paper provides the specific details of how an interdisciplinary program of law and business can be structured in a three-year J.D. program. The program envisioned is a J.D./”M.B.L.”, which is distinguished from the better known J.D./M.B.A. The “M.B.L.” stands for “masters of business law,” which is simply an idea tag. The moniker can represent a program conferring a supplemental degree in law and business, or simply a specialized course of study to complete a J.D. Either way, the program is an interdisciplinary program of concentrated study in core transaction-oriented law courses and core business courses. The most effective education …

Tackling "Arithmophobia": Teaching How To Read, Understand, And Analyze Financial Statements, Paula J. Williams, Kris Anne Tobin, Eric Franklin, Robert J. Rhee

Faculty Scholarship

This discussion presents different ideas on how to teach accounting and practical finance to law students.

Transcription Of 2013 Chapman Law Review Symposium: "The Future Of Law, Business, And Legal Education: How To Prepare Students To Meet Corporate Needs", Leo E. Strine Jr., Bradley Borden, Robert J. Rhee, Tania King, Lee Cheng

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Library Services For The Self-Interested Law School: Enhancing The Visibility Of Faculty Scholarship, Simon Canick

Faculty Scholarship

This article suggests a new set of filters through which to evaluate law library services, in particular those that support faculty scholarship. Factors include profound changes in legal education, and motivators of today’s law professors. Understanding the needs of self-interested deans and professors, libraries can fill new roles that are consistent with our core values. In particular we can focus on dissemination and promotion of faculty work, especially through innovative open access projects.

Harmonizing Current Threats: Using The Outcry For Legal Education Reforms To Take Another Look At Civil Gideon And What It Means To Be An American Lawyer, Cathryn Miller-Wilson

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

"Harmonizing Current Threats: Using the Outcry for Legal Education Reforms to Take Another Look at Civil Gideon and What it Means to be an American Lawyer," makes the argument that, like medical education, legal education should be seen as a public responsibility. With the extra government funding that would come from this view of legal education, Miller-Wilson proposes incorporating "teaching law firms" after law school for students to practice in various specialties before graduation, similar to a medical residency.

Teaching Business Associations Law In The Evolving New Market Economy, Joan Macleod Heminway

Scholarly Works

Over the past ten years, the doctrinal rules governing business associations have become more complex (with, e.g., the addition of significant federal law on corporate governance and corporate finance and the recent enactment of social enterprise forms of entity). Moreover, a number of us have added experiential learning to the business associations course (or another similarly titled foundational course on business entity law) and have increased the number and types of assessment tools used in our business associations pedagogy. This has made the task of teaching business associations somewhat overwhelming.

Law faculty respond to the challenges of teaching introductory business …

Teaching Social Justice, Expanding Access To Justice: An Introduction, Jackie Gardina, Ngai Pindell

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

"Teaching Social Justice, Expanding Access to Justice: An Introduction" provides an introduction to the publications in this issue focusing on the need for a change in legal education to promote the moral and ethical obligation of providing affordable and accessible legal services. The article introduces this issues' publications which all support the underlying theme of providing social justice to the underprivileged by making legal services accessible or reforming legal education to promote a new generation of attorneys with an underlying passion for fostering affordable and accessible public service.

"When Numbers Get Serious:" A Study Of Plain English Usage In Briefs Filed Before The New York Court Of Appeals, Ian Gallacher

College of Law - Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Teaching Antitrust After The Financial Crisis, Maurice Stucke

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

A Case Study In Transactional Centers And Certificate/Concentration Programs: From Program Design To Student Experience, The Clayton Center For Entrepreneurial Law, Brian Krumm, Joan Macleod Heminway, Michael J. Higdon

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Constructing Modern-Day U.S. Legal Education With Rhetoric: Langdell, Ames, And The Scholar Model Of The Law Professor Persona, Carlo A. Pedrioli

Faculty Scholarship

This article explains how lawyers like Christopher Columbus Langdell and James Barr Ames, a disciple of Langdell, employed rhetoric between 1870, when Langdell assumed the deanship at Harvard Law School, and 1920, when law had emerged as a credible academic field in the United States, to construct a persona, that of a scholar, appropriate for the law professor situated within the university. To do so, the article contextualizes the rhetoric with historical background on the law professor and legal education, draws upon rhetorical theory to give an overview of persona theory and persona analysis as a means of conducting the …

Preparing The Transactional Lawyer: From Doctrine To Practice, George Kuney

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Seeking Integrity: Learning Integratively From Classroom Controversy (With Patti Alleva), Patti Alleva, Laura L. Rovner

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

The Carnegie Report* makes a compelling case that preparation for legal practice should involve learning experiences that help to integrate the three basic apprenticeships or dimensions of professional work — thinking, performing, and valuing like a lawyer. This challenge has not been ignored by the legal academy. In recent years especially, many law schools have attempted to foster learning experiences that integrate legal doctrine, lawyering skills, and professional values. These efforts span the spectrum from broad-based curricular change to the addition or revision of individual courses. Not to be overlooked, however, are the immediate integrative learning opportunities presented by unexpected …

Teaching Legal History In The Age Of Practical Legal Education, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

Historian Henry Steele Commager said, “History is useful in the sense that art is useful--or music or poetry or flowers; perhaps even in the sense that religion and philosophy is useful .... For without these things life would be poorer and meaner.” For law students who anticipate a career representing private and public clients and participating in public discussion, however, study of legal history carries rewards beyond intellectual stimulation and personal satisfaction. Law students contemplating client representation should ponder Justice Holmes's advice that “[h]istory must be a part of the study [of law], because without it we cannot know the …

Measuring The Racial Unevenness Of Law School, Jonathan Feingold, Doug Souza

Faculty Scholarship

In "Measuring the Racial Unevenness of Law School," Jonathan Feingold and Doug Souza introduce and analyze the concept of racial unevenness, which refers to the particularized burdens an individual encounters as a result of her race. These burdens, which often arise because an individual falls outside of the racial norm, manifest across a spectrum. At one end lie obvious forms of overt and invidious racial discrimination. At the other end, racial unevenness arises from environmental factors and institutional culture independent from any identifiable perpetrator. As the authors detail, race-dependent burdens can arise in institutions and communities that expressly promote racial …

The World Is Not Flat: Conference Planning And Presentation As Part Of A Multidimensional Understanding Of Scholarship, Iselin Magdalene Gambert, Karen Thornton, Amy R. Stein

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Scholarship. For many academics, the word is filled with a combination of excitement, anticipation, obligation, and dread. Academics are expected to reliably produce scholarship, much like sculptors are expected to produce art, baristas cappuccinos, and stockbrokers profits. While “scholarship” has perhaps traditionally been viewed as strictly words on a page, some scholars view it to be a multidimensional enterprise, something that encompasses the many aspects of the life of a scholar. The idea of scholarship as comprising more than just the generation of a tangible written product is taken up in Maksymilian Del Mar’s Living Legal Scholarship, which asserts “five …

Legal Education At A Crossroads: Innovation, Integration, And Pluralism Required!, Karen Tokarz, Antoinette Sedillo Lopez, Peggy Maisel, Robert Seibel

Faculty Scholarship

Although historically slow to change, law schools are now facing enormous pressure from educators, students, lawyers, judges, clients, and the public to rethink legal education and the lawyer‘s role in society. Now more than ever, there is robust national debate on the threshold contributions law schools should make to the preparation of law graduates for entry into practice. The clamor for reform in legal education is precipitated by a confluence of factors, including new insights about lawyering competencies and experiential legal education; the shifting nature of legal practice in the United States; a decrease in law jobs; changes in the …

Cornerstones, Curb Cuts, And Legal Education Reform , Judith Welch Wegner

Journal of Dispute Resolution

This essay seeks to contribute to this dialogue by offering both theoretical and practical observations about legal education reform. This approach reflects the judgment that current efforts to improve legal education will only get so far unless underlying impediments to change that are often invisible become better understood. The essay provides legal educators with theoretical insights from the design, organizational behavior, education, and psychology literature in order to help that process along. Theoretical insights can be hard to apply in the abstract, however. The essay therefore also offers practical recommendations about both small and large actions that might be taken …

Beyond Skills Training, Revisited: The Clinical Education Spiral, Carolyn Grose

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.