Legal Education Commons^™

First-Year Law Faculty Are Uniquely Poised To Mentor Stellar Students For Elbow Employment With Judges, Laurie A. Lewis

Scholarly Articles

Judicial clerkships are in high demand for new law graduates. In this tight job market, applicants must possess outstanding applications. Applicants must be not only practice-ready, but also clerkship-ready. They must be people-oriented, with superb oral communication skills. They must be outstanding researchers and writers. And they must have a passion for discovering truth and promoting justice.

Students should embark on a clerkship-ready path during their first year of law school. First-year faculty members are uniquely poised to identify students with skills and traits inherent to successful clerks. Such students demonstrate intellectual excellence, superior work habits, and an ability to …

Teaching Social Justice Lawyering: Systematically Including Community Legal Education In Law School Clinics, Margaret Martin Barry, A. Rachel Karn, Margaret E. Johnson, Catherine F. Klein, Lisa Vollendorf Martin

Scholarly Articles

There is a body of literature on clinical legal theory that urges a focus in clinics beyond the single client to an explicit teaching of social justice lawyering. This Article adds to this emerging body of work by discussing the valuable role community legal education plays as a vehicle for teaching skills and values essential to single client representation and social justice lawyering.

The Article examines the theoretical underpinnings of clinical legal education, community organizing and community education and how they influenced the authors’ design and implementation of community legal education within their clinics. It then discusses two projects designed …

Autonomy-Mastery-Purpose: Structuring Clinical Courses To Enhance These Critical Goals, Leah Wortham, Catherine F. Klein, Beryl Blaustone

Scholarly Articles

Part I describes the difference in extrinsic and intrinsic motivation and reviews the negative effects of business and educational models assuming extrinsic motivation to be most effective rather than seeking to stimulate intrinsic motivation. Part II describes the Carnegie Foundation's Preparation for the Professions project's call for law schools to focus on law students' sense of identity and purpose as part of their professional education, as well as noting the similar goal that students learn "how to be" as articulated by the Tuning Project of the Bologna process regarding higher education in Europe. Part III provides basics on the theory …

Electronic Discovery And Sanctions For Spoliation: Perspectives From The Classroom, Robert A. Weninger

Catholic University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Externship Demographics Across Two Decades With Lessons For Future Surveys, J.P. "Sandy" Ogilvy, Sudeb Basu

Scholarly Articles

Sudeb Basu (J.D., Catholic University, 2011) and Professor J.P. “Sandy” Ogilvy (Catholic University) report on the results of a 2007-2009 national survey of externship programs at American law schools and compare many of the data points to previous surveys of externship programs, the 2007-2008 CSALE survey, and some ABA/LSAC data, to chart the growth and increasing sophistication and complexity of the pedagogy associated with legal externships. Some of the data discussed include limits on the number of externship credits or externship courses, student involvement in externships, the distribution of credits awarded for externship courses, the average number of hours of …

Crucible Of Talent: 60 Years Of The Catholic University Law Review, Ralph J. Rohner

Miscellaneous Historical Documents

An article appearing in the Winter 2011 CUA Lawyer celebrating the achievements of the Catholic University Law Review over the past 60 years,

A Century Of Excellence: Columbus Community Legal Services And The Catholic University Law Review Celebrate Milestone Anniversaries, Thomas Haederle

Miscellaneous Historical Documents

An article appearing in the Winter 2011 issue of CUA Lawyer celebrating the achievements of the Clinic and the Law Review over the years.

Winning The Game Of Appellate Musical Shoes: When The Appeals Band Plays, Jump From The Client’S To The Judge’S Shoes To Write The Statement Of Facts Ballad, Laurie A. Lewis

Scholarly Articles

An appellate brief's Statement of Facts is critical to a successful appeal. The client trusts the attorney with his or her story. To fully hear it, the attorney must actively listen and demonstrate empathy in the initial interview. The attorney needs to step into the client's shoes to retell the story at trial. On appeal, however, the attorney needs to step into the appellate judge's shoes. The story must be recast for an audience knowing nothing about the client. It must be interesting, and appeal to the judge's spirit of justice. If the client suffered an injustice in the court …

Telling Tales In School: Storytelling For Self-Reflection And Pedagogical Improvement In Clinical Legal Education, Faith Mullen

Scholarly Articles

In the past twenty years, there has been a surge in legal scholarship that recognizes the value of story in law, and law schools are beginning to tap into the extraordinary power of story. Largely absent from this mix are stories told by law students about their own experiences with the law. The authors used class time formerly devoted to clinic rounds to offer students the opportunity to tell stories about their cases outside the presence of their supervising attorneys. Clinical faculty then compared their own, recorded version of the story of a case with the student’s version. This article …

The Uniform Bar Examination: A Benefit To Law School Graduates, Veryl Victoria Miles

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

The Excitement Of Interdictory Ideas: A Response To Professor Anders Walker, Marc O. Degirolami

Scholarly Articles

Having canvassed admirably the historical changes to the criminal law case book over the twentieth century, Professor Anders Walker's article suggests that criminal law ought to concern itself with the business of training future prosecutors and defense attorneys by eliminating, or at least greatly reducing, the place of moral and political reflection in the course, which was in any event the supercilious indulgence of elite law schools that disprized criminal practice. His normative prescriptions are of a piece with much that is currently in vogue in criticisms of legal education: that it is impractical, that it does not respond to …

Lawyering Outside Lawsuits: Incorporating Negotiations, Settlements, And Mediations Into The Legal Writing Curriculum, Olivia Farrar, A.G. Harmon

Scholarly Articles

Legal education is built around a core irony: almost no human disputes are resolved via trials, and yet we dedicate years to teaching law students how to resolve disputes via litigation. To remedy this incongruity between legal education and the reality of lawyering, the two of us have begun integrating negotiations, settlements, and mediation into our 1L legal writing curriculum. This article describes why and how we have introduced our students to these non-litigation skill sets, starting to train them in what we believe may be their most powerful dispute resolution skills when they enter the legal world.

The Stellar Parenthetical Illustration: A Tool To Open Doors In A Tight Job Market, Laurie A. Lewis

Scholarly Articles

The carefully crafted parenthetical illustration can be a powerful tool in persuasive legal analysis. It can also reflect five areas of a student’s practice-ready skills. These skills include research, use of mandatory and persuasive authorities, rule synthesis and application, clarity and conciseness in writing, and citation form. The student who achieves competency not only in formatting citations but also in drafting clear, concise, illustrative parentheticals demonstrates an understanding of rule permutations. This competency can open doors for opportunities both within and outside law school. Doors can open to better grades, journal invitations, publication offers, internship and externship placements, and jobs, …

Celebrating Clepr’S 40th Anniversary: The Early Development Of The Clinical Legal Education And Legal Ethics Instruction In U.S. Law Schools, J.P. "Sandy" Ogilvy

Scholarly Articles

This article introduces the essays, articles, and remarks celebrating the fortieth anniversary of the establishment of the Council on Legal Education for Professional Responsibility (CLEPR). The Section on Professional Responsibility and Section on Clinical Legal Education of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) jointly sponsored a half-day program at the 2009 AALS Annual Meeting in San Diego, California, in recognition of the fortieth anniversary of CLEPR and the one hundredth anniversary of the promulgation of the American Bar Association Canons of Professional Ethics, the ABA's first effort at establishing a private law of lawyering to govern its members. After …

Practice-Ready: A Law School Perspective On Bar Certification, Veryl Victoria Miles

Scholarly Articles

Law schools play a critical role in the bar certification process. They certify that graduates have the character and fitness necessary to become members of the bar,and they verify that graduates have completed the schools’ academic requirements for graduation. Each of these certifications is much more than a mere check mark but rather an analysis of a complex set of factors.The certification of character and fitness is not a simple notice of the lack of negative information about the graduate. Law school determination of character and fitness is quite detailed. While all of the levels of that process are beyond …

Reflections On The Nature Of Legal Scholarship In The Post-Realist Era, Marin Roger Scordato

Scholarly Articles

This article presents a tightly organized and closely reasoned analysis of legal scholarship in the current post-realist era. Secure and well-defined within the formalist legal world of the nineteenth century, the practice of legal scholarship has been profoundly affected by the realist revolution of the early twentieth century and the instrumentalist view of law that now prevails in the twenty-first century. In response, legal scholars have been forced to dramatically alter the focus, the materials and the basic methods of their study. The practice of legal scholarship is currently occupied in a prolonged struggle to adapt to these changes and …

Justice Education And The Evaluation Process: Crossing Borders, Margaret Martin Barry, Martin Geer, Catherine F. Klein, Ved Kumari

Scholarly Articles

If social justice is a teaching goal, how do we effectively assess it? An analysis of a multi-cultural teaching workshop and lessons learned and unanswered.

Taking The Show On The Road: Teaching Legal Research In Poland, Stephen E. Young

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Dean's Dedication, Veryl Victoria Miles

Miscellaneous Historical Documents

It is with special pleasure that I add these dedicatory words to this inaugural issue of the Journal of Law, Philosophy and Culture, a new interdisciplinary publication of the Center for Law, Philosophy and Culture of The Catholic University of America and the Columbus School of Law. This new journal promises to fulfill aspirations at the heart of both The Catholic University of America and its law school. In 1895, William C. Robinson, formerly dean of the Yale Law School, accepted his commission to spearhead a new law faculty at The Catholic University with the express purpose that this new …

Externship Demographics Redux, J.P. "Sandy" Ogilvy, Robert Seibel

Scholarly Articles

Professors Ogilvy (Catholic University) and Seibel (California Western) report on the results of a national survey of externship programs at American Law Schools and compare many of the data points to previous surveys of externship programs to chart the growth of legal externships in 1) number of schools with externship programs as part of their curriculum, 2) number of discrete courses within programs, and 3) the increasing sophistication and complexity of the pedagogy associated with legal externships. Some of the data discussed include the average number of credits allowed for participation in externships, the average number of hours of fieldwork …

Student Services In The 21st Century: Evolution And Innovation In Discovering Student Needs, Teaching Information Literacy, And Designing Library 2.0-Based Services, Frances M. Brillantine, Kumar Jayasuriya

Scholarly Articles

The authors discuss the changing library needs of law students as computers, technology, and legal publishing evolve. In order to track the evolving needs of students, the authors discuss ways that librarians can survey students and explain how focus groups and usability tests can provide further insights regarding students’ research skills and information needs. The article examines the literature regarding information literacy and suggests minimum standards for legal information literacy upon graduation, and the authors suggest new services that law librarians could create for law students. Next the authors examine the recent literature about Library 2.0 services, and offer suggestions …

Dean Steven P. Frankino: Inspired Leadership Of Grace, Power And Abundant Generosity, Veryl Victoria Miles

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Steven P. Frankino: A Fond Farewell, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Aiding Clinical Education Abroad: What Can Be Gained And The Learning Curve On How To Do So Effectively, Leah Wortham

Scholarly Articles

The author advocates donor support for clinical education projects abroad and outlines the minimal requisites that she would have for such projects - direct experience with disadvantaged clients, faculty involvement, and sincerity and integrity of organizers. She cautions against funders and consultants pressing new clinics to fit American clinical models. She provides sample reporting questions that would require projects to reflect on goals sought and results achieved. She draws lessons for efforts to assist clinics abroad from critiques of the law and development movement (LDM), the last major international initiative in legal education reform; more recent efforts termed the New …

First Do No Harm: Law Professor Misconduct Toward Law Students, Lisa G. Lerman

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

In Memoriam: Steven P. Frankino, Ralph J. Rohner

Miscellaneous Historical Documents

A dedication to former Dean Steven P. Frankino appearing in 55 Cath. U. L. Rev. 1 (2005).

Clinical Legal Education: An Annotated Bibliography, J.P. "Sandy" Ogilvy

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Misconduct By Law Professors: Why It Matters, Lisa G. Lerman

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Recruiting And Retaining Faculty Of Color In The Legal Academy: A Longstanding Commitment Of The Association Of American Law Schools, Veryl Victoria Miles

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Introduction To The Symposium On Legal Externships: Learning From Practice, J.P. "Sandy" Ogilvy

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.