Legal Education Commons^™

Meeting The Experiential Challenge: A Fee-Generating Law Clinic (With Harold J. Krent), Gary S. Laser

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No abstract provided.

Meeting The Experiential Challenge: A Fee-Generating Law Clinic (With Gary S. Laser), Harold J. Krent

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Law School Culture And The Lost Art Of Collaboration: Why Don't Law Professors Play Well With Others, Michael I. Meyerson

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I have an Erdős number. Specifically, I have an Erdős number of 5. For the uninitiated, the concept of an “Erdős number” was created by mathematicians to describe how many “degrees of separation” an author of an article is from the great mathematician Paul Erdős. If you coauthored a paper with Erdős, you have an Erdős number of 1. If you coauthor a paper with someone with an Erdős number of 1, you have earned an Erdős number of 2. Coauthoring a paper with someone with an Erdős number of 2 gives you an Erdős number of 3, and so …

The 95 Theses: Legal Research In The Internet Age, Amy E. Sloan

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No abstract provided.

Analysis, Research, And Communication In Skills-Focused Courses, Ruth Anne Robbins, Amy E. Sloan, Kristen Konrad Tiscione

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Since the Carnegie Report and Best Practices for Legal Education were published, a new focus has emerged on building students’ traditional foundational skills through increased opportunities for experiential education, including legal research and writing instruction. Although the Carnegie Report explored legal writing pedagogy in some detail, Best Practices devoted little attention to how foundational analytical, research, and writing skills are or should be taught with specificity, which provided the impetus for more extended treatment here. This section identifies some “better practices” being used and urges adoption of best practices.

In skills-focused courses, legal analysis, research, and writing should be taught …

Implementing Effective Education In Specific Contexts, Ruth Anne Robbins, Amy E. Sloan, Kristen Konrad Robbins-Tiscione

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This chapter of Building on Best Practices: Transforming Legal Education in a Changing World includes contributions from many authors:

• Section A, The Socratic Method, is by Elizabeth G. Porter
• Section B, Analysis, Research, and Communication in Skills-Focused Courses, is by Ruth Anne Robbins, Amy Sloan & Kristen K. Tiscione
• Section C, Use of Technology in Teaching, is by Michele Pistone and Warren Binford
• Section D, Law Libraries and Legal Education, is by Jonathan Franklin
• Section E, Cross-Border Teaching and Collaboration, is by Kimberly D. Ambrose, William H. D. Fernholz, Catherine F. Klein, Dana Raigrodski, Stephen A. Rosenbaum & Leah Wortham …

The Holmes School Of Law: A Proposal To Reform Legal Education Through Realism, Robert Rubinson

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This article proposes the formation of a new law school, the Holmes School of Law. The curriculum of the Holmes School would draw upon legal realism, particularly as articulated by Oliver Wendell Holmes. The proposed curriculum would focus on educating students about "law in fact"—how law is actually experienced. It rejects the idea that legal education should be about reading cases written by judges who not only bring their own biases and cultural understandings to their role, but who also ignore law as experienced, which, in the end, is what law is. This disconnect is especially troubling because virtually all …

Function, Form, And Strawberries: Subverting Langdell, Jeremiah A. Ho

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So why do law schools place skills instruction below the dissemination of legal knowledge even though it is the practice of law that lawyers are engaged in doing and not just the mere knowing of it? Both should be equally significant. Although law teaching methodologies have shifted somewhat to accommodate the changing cognitive adaptations of the human mind in this age of digital technology, law instruction in classrooms still possess a deeply-rooted basis in legal formalist considerations of the law from the 19th century that displaces skills instruction for the advancement of the legal knowledge. Consequently, in order to further …

Called To Serve: Five Habits Of Effective Board Members, Dana M. Malkus

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In any given year, a single nonprofit organization has the potential to positively impact hundreds of lives. Given their training, passion, and community standing, young lawyers are often a great asset for such organizations. At the same time, nonprofit organizations can provide excellent training and networking opportunities for young lawyers.

With a relatively modest investment of time, you can provide the kind of board service that brings substantial impacts for our communities. Whether you currently serve on a board or are simply considering doing so in the future, developing the following five habits will help you more effectively advance your …

A Vast Image Out Of Spiritus Mundi: The Existential Crisis Of Law Schools, Jeremiah A. Ho

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In her recent book, Teaching Law: Justice, Politics, and the Demands of Professionalism, Robin L. West articulates that the crisis is not merely as the The New York Times and other media outlets have described it — not entirely about the faulty business practices of law schools or the lack of practice-oriented teaching in law classrooms. Instead, the crisis lies at the existential core of law schools. The original nineteenth-century set-up of the American law school and that model’s continued existence today have contributed to an identity crisis for law schools, revealing its major incompatibility with how the law is …

Learning Critical Legal Theory Across The Curriculum: An Innovative Course In Applied Feminism, Michele E. Gilman

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In law schools, we are so accustomed to a single professor teaching each substantive class that we rarely question this method of teaching. Imagine instead a class taught by fourteen professors, each of whom teaches for one week to share their substantive expertise through the lens of critical legal theory. At the University of Baltimore School of Law, we offer such a course, entitled Special Topics in Applied Feminism. Throughout the semester, students are exposed to feminist legal perspectives on a wide range of substantive topics, including tax law, international law, immigration law, employment law, and many others.

The course …

Academic Extremism Threatens Democratic Values (Commentary), Kenneth Lasson

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Veritas vos liberabit, chanted the scholastics of yesteryear — "the truth will set you free." It's hard to see how that mantra could be echoed by latter-day counterparts in the academy. Consider the recent resolution by the American Studies Association that advocated an academic boycott of Israel. Its argument — that Israeli universities are complicit in state policies violating Palestinians' human rights — belies the truth: Israel has long been the most diverse, inclusive and tolerant of any Middle Eastern country.

Simulating The Litigation Experience: How Mentoring Law Students In Local Cases Can Enrich Training For The Twenty-First Century Lawyer, José F. Anderson

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No abstract provided.

Setting A Precedent About Precedent: William Richman On Federal Appellate Justice, Amy E. Sloan

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This paper is a tribute to Professor William Richman's scholarship on appellate practice in honor of his retirement.

Clinical Legal Education: A (Brief) Comparison Of The Evolving Structures And Pedagogy In Mexico, Canada And The United States, Elizabeth Keyes, David C. Koelsch, Alejandro Posadas

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This Article highlights the development and current state of clinical legal education in Canada, the United States, and Mexico, and examines recent trends in clinical legal education in each country. This is a timely topic. Canadian clinics and, in particular, Ontario-based law school affiliated clinics are grappling with recently-imposed post-graduation alternatives to traditional articling practices, while Canadian law schools are examining whether additional experiential courses should be offered to law students. U.S. law schools face difficult choices with respect to clinical education in light of sustained lower enrollments and resulting adjusted budget realities, as well as the pressures of meeting …

Shifting The Lens: A Primer For Incorporating Social Work Theory And Practice To Improve Outcomes For Clients With Mental Health Issues And Law Students Who Represent Them, Susan Mcgraugh, Carrie Hagan, Lauren Choate

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This Essay is an effort to promote the inclusion of interdisciplinary practice in our work as attorneys and in our roles as clinical legal professors. As the legal community continues its renewed emphasis on skills training, law schools should look to other professions in order to produce more lasting solutions for our clients and for more satisfactory outcomes for our lawyers. In this Essay, the authors discuss their work incorporating social work theory and practice into clinical legal education when dealing with clients who have serious mental illness. With some studies reporting up to 64.2% of inmates in the United …

Creating And Teaching A Specialized Legal Research Course: The Benefits And Considerations, Erika Cohn

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This article outlines the author's experience creating and teaching a specialized legal research course. It includes the reasons for offering such a course, tips for selecting a topic and developing a syllabus, getting the course approved, creating student interest, developing a teaching plan, and evaluating the course.

Collaboration: Promises And Pitfalls, Dana M. Malkus

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Simply put, collaboration refers to two or more organizations coming together to accomplish a specific goal. It is helpful to think of collaboration as a spectrum: Collaborations range from informal arrangements (e.g., a committee, a task force, a joint initiative, information sharing, joint purchasing arrangements, co-locating arrangements, or program coordination) to more formal arrangements (e.g., the creation of a new entity).

Common reasons for collaborations include

• greater access to certain funding or grant streams;
• access to the expertise of the collaborating organization;
• an ability to increase the human resources that can be devoted to an event or cause;
• access to …

Access To Justice And Technology Clinics: A 4% Solution (With Andrew P. Medeiros) (Symposium), Ronald W. Staudt

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No abstract provided.

Introduction, Justice, Lawyering And Legal Education In The Digital Age (Symposium Editor With M. Lauritsen), Ronald W. Staudt

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No abstract provided.

Reflection, Reality, And A Real Audience: Ideas From The Clinic, Dana M. Malkus

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For a variety of reasons too numerous and complex to recount here, law teachers are increasingly expected to provide law students with more feedback and assessment. This is especially true for those who teach “doctrinal” courses. As a clinician, frequent feedback and assessment are common and essential parts of my teacher-student relationships. I believe the clinical model provides at least three simple—but important—lessons that can inform all law teaching.

Bramble Bush Revisited: Karl Llewellyn, The Great Depression, And The First Law School Crisis, 1929-1939, Anders Walker

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This article recovers the plight of legal education during the Great Depression, showing how debates over practical training, theoretical research and the appropriate length of law school all emerged in the 1930s. Using Bramble Bush author Karl Llewellyn as a guide, it strives to make three points. One, Depression-era critics of law school called for increased attention to practical skills, like today, but also a more interdisciplinary curriculum – something current reformers discount. Two, the push for theoretical, policy-oriented courses in the 1930s set the stage for claims that law graduates deserved more than a Bachelor of Laws degree, bolstering …

From Podcasts To Treasure Hunts— Using Technology To Promote Student Engagement, Marcia L. Mccormick

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Three influential calls for reform in legal education, the MacCrate Report, the Carnegie Report, and most recently the Stuckey Report, have all recommended that professors use teaching methods to provide greater opportunities for students to practice problem solving skills and receive feedback on their performance. Being a lawyer is much more than memorizing rules; students need to be able to understand the big picture and use the details to problem solve. This article details how to use audio and written podcast summaries to help students see the big picture in a subject and how each smaller topic fits together into …

The Lawyer's Toolbox: Teaching Students About Risk Allocation, Dana Malkus, Scott Stevenson, Eric J. Gouvin, Usha Rodrigues

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This Article is the transcript of a panel presented at Emory’s Third Biennial Conference on Transactional Education. The panel focuses on techniques for teaching risk allocation as part of transactional skills classes. The panelists describe their approaches to teaching risk allocation, from syllabus design to final evaluations. How can a professor help students to understand the basic concepts of risk, the role risk plays in business and legal decisions, and how they can help clients manage risk. The techniques for teaching risk allocation include hypotheticals, visual aids, and hands-on assignments. The panelists each take their students down a different path …

Identifying (With) Disability: Using Film To Teach Employment Discrimination, Elizabeth Pendo

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Building on a prior article about using film to teach health law, this Essay is intended to share my experience using the film Philadelphia as a method of enhancing coverage and discussion of the employment provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and to provide an opportunity for recognition of, and identification with, the experiences of people with disabilities.

Compelling Orthodoxy: Myth And Mystique In The Marketing Of Legal Education, Kenneth Lasson

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This article seeks to demonstrate the negative effects of law schools’ preoccupations with enhancing their image and marketing strategy, especially as they are reflected in both scholarship and academic freedom.

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

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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 …

Antisemitism In The Academic Voice: Confronting Bigotry Under The First Amendment, Kenneth Lasson

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The romanticized vision of life in the Ivory Tower - a peaceful haven where learned professors ponder higher thoughts and where students roam orderly quadrangles in quest of truth and other pleasures - has long been relegated to yesteryear. While universities like to nurture the perception that they are protectors of reasoned discourse, and indeed often perceive themselves as sacrosanct places of culture in a chaotic world, the modern campus, of course, is not quite so wonderful.

This chapter examines the relationship between antisemitic and anti-Zionist speech and conduct, how they both play out on contemporary university campuses - and …

American Legal History Survey: Syllabus, Anders Walker

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This syllabus provides an overview of American Legal History, focusing on the manner in which law has been used to organize American society. Several themes will be traced through the semester, including law’s role in encouraging innovation and regulating social relations, in part through the elaboration of legal disciplines like property, tort, contract, criminal law, tax, business associations, administrative law, environmental law, securities regulation, commercial law, immigration, and health law. Emphasis will also be placed on the origins and evolution of constitutional law, from the founding to the present.

The Law Review Games, Miriam A. Cherry, Paul M. Secunda

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A Parody in which The Hunger Games meet the law review submission process.