Legal Education Commons^™

Sending The Message To Students That Revising Means Seeing Their Work Through New Eyes, Patricia Grande Montana

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In my experience, students have a narrow view of what revision entails. They typically equate it with polishing–changing words, editing grammar, and fixing citation. In their minds, it is the final clean-up stage in the process before the assignment is due. If we want to encourage our students to treat it differently–that is, to treat it as an opportunity to discover new legal arguments, resolve dissonance in their analyses, and question their original decisions–then our comments on their drafts need to show that revision entails seeing their work through new eyes.

Non-Analytical Thinking In Law Practice: Blinking In The Forest, Kandis Scott

Faculty Publications

Non-analytical thinking is indispensable to good legal representation .Despite its importance in law practice, it is devalued and neglected in the conventional law school curriculum. Even in clinical legal education, where the potential to teach students to use this mode of thinking is most obvious, the elevation of theory and analysis has stifled the impulse of clinical professors to teach students to "blink." One way law schools can counteract this trend, and thereby better train law students for practice, is to enhance clinical teachers' nonanalytical skills through more practice opportunities.

The Case For A Flat-Earth Law School, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

This essay suggests - usually politely - that the American legal academy has been overdoing its push for globalization, and, as a result, education in the basics has suffered. That's a pity because law school graduates need to know the basics to be successful not only in Smalltown USA, but also on a world stage.

Death By Bluebook, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

This review considers a novel about life (and death) on the University of Chicago Law Review, where editors and associates seem to do little but have sex, connive to get ahead, have sex, kill (with Gunther's con law casebook, no less), and have sex. The reviewer, who didn't attend the U of C law school, believes it all.

Tough On Scholarship, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

This series of three articles (that's why it's a trilogy, duh-h-h) chronicles the legal-academic career of one S. Breckinridge Tushingham ("Breck" for short). As the trilogy unfolds, Breck works his way up (or maybe it's down) from his first academic position to an established professorship to dean of the South Soybean (Soso) State University law school. In the process of recording his professional history, and thus memorializing it for the ages, Breck provides (probably defamatory) insights into the American legal academy.

Dead Poets And Academic Progenitors: The Next Generation Of Law School Rankings With Paul Caron, Rafael Gely, Paul L. Caron

Faculty Publications

This Symposium is an outgrowth of our Moneyball article. With the approaching twentieth anniversary of the first U.S. News law school rankings, it is a particularly propitious time to take a fresh look, to hear new voices, and to reconsider issues surrounding law school rankings. Many of America's most thoughtful law professors (as well as academics in other disciplines) gathered on April 15, 2005 at the Indiana University School of Law--Bloomington to discuss “The Next Generation of Law School Rankings.” Many of the participants previously have written about law school rankings, but others have not--all are poets, and many have …

Using Graphics To Teach Evidence, Kevin C. Mcmunigal

Faculty Publications

As an Assistant United States Attorney in the general crimes unit of a metropolitan United States Attorney's Office, I regularly tried a variety of cases ranging from bank robberies and drug offenses to white collar crimes. Regardless of the type of crime, I frequently found various types of graphics useful in presenting the case. Examples included a chart providing a point by point comparison of modus operandi in two armed bank robberies and a map of the scene of a controlled purchase of cocaine showing the locations and movements of multiple defendants, an informant, and federal agents. Such graphics helped …

Segmented Rankings For Segmented Markets, Rafael Gely

Faculty Publications

A joke frequently told by and about economists begins with a group of colleagues searching one night under a lamppost for a key in a gutter. A bystander asks the group where they have lost the key. The economists explain that although they had lost the key in a gutter some distance away, they were looking under the lamppost because the light was better there. The three articles in this panel remind me of this story, albeit in a non-conventional way. By exploring issues regarding the broader context in which rankings exist, the three articles encourage us to look not …

Reflections On Law Schools And The Idea Of The University, Thomas E. Baker

Faculty Publications

Thomas Baker is one of the founding faculty members of the Florida International University College of Law and this article is based on a speech delivered in October of 2002 during the university's Annual Faculty Convocation. It details the composition of both the entering classes and the law faculty and discusses the law school's mission to provide opportunities for minorities to attain representation in the legal profession that is proportionate to their representation in the population. It explores the role of law schools in higher education and notes the FIU College of Law's efforts to incorporate important developments in the …

Integrating Contract Drafting Skills And Doctrine, Eric Goldman

Faculty Publications

In February 2006, I participated in the Symposium, Teaching Writing and Teaching Doctrine: A Symbiotic Relationship?, at Brooklyn Law School. I prepared some personal and unscientific observations about the challenges of concurrently teaching legal doctrine and contract drafting. Obviously, there is a rich literature on these topics that I did not try to address; instead, my goal was simply to acknowledge my first-hand experiences wrestling with these challenges and discuss some specific solutions I have tried. This brief Essay recaps my presentation.

Can Legal Writing Programs Benefit From Evaluating Student Writing Using Single-Submission, Semester-Ending, Standardized, Performance-Type Assignments?, John Schunk

Faculty Publications

Many legal writing programs evaluate a student's performance based on a series of assignments that students write and then rewrite after receiving comments from their legal writing teacher. Over the last decade, some have proposed altering this model by introducing the Multistate Performance Test into the legal writing curriculum or by using traditional objective examinations in first-year legal writing courses.

Based on a three-year experience at Santa Clara University School of Law, this essay suggests that using these principles, those of performance testing and traditional examinations, in a slightly modified form can reap significant benefits for legal writing programs. In …

Generation X In Law School: How These Law Students Are Different From Those Who Teach Them, Joanne Ingham, Robin A. Boyle

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Generation X is the group of approximately forty-five million people born between 1961 to 1981. They have been dubbed Generation X, or Gen Xers for short, because there seemed to be nothing dramatic about their experience—not the Vietnam War, not the Civil Rights movement, not the Second Wave of the Feminist Movement. They also have a reputation for disengagement. Gen Xers have been described as disrespectful and suspicious of authority. These stereotypes can negatively influence how law professors conduct their classes and treat their students in general.

This article presents the results of a multi-year study that examined the …

Law Students With Attention Deficit Disorder: How To Reach Them, How To Teach Them, Robin A. Boyle

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Most law school classes are likely to include students with Attention Deficit Disorder ("ADD") or its related disorder - Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. ADD is a neurological disorder, and many people with it additionally have learning disabilities. Law students with ADD that manifests itself in learning disabilities are the focus of this Article. There has been a growth of services for those with ADD, such as counseling, but unfortunately, "less attention is paid to the thousands of teachers who have been charged with instructing" ADD students. It is imperative for teachers to be equipped for teaching ADD students. To …

Homer Simpson Meets The Rule Against Perpetuities: The Controversial Use Of Pop-Culture In Legal Writing Pedagogy, Louis N. Schulze Jr.

Faculty Publications

Imagine that you have returned to your first year of law school. In your legal writing course, you are required to finish the year with an extensive brief analyzing a legal problem. After months in your doctrinal courses dealing with mind-bending legal issues such as liquidated damages, substantive due process, felony murder, personal jurisdiction, and shifting executory interests, you are ready to sink your teeth into a challenging legal writing assignment. You want to show your stuff and prove that your writing is law review caliber. Your assignment starts as follows: Greenacre is a parcel of land bounded on three …

Advancing Public Interest Practitioner Research Skills In Legal Education, Randy J. Diamond

Faculty Publications

The information revolution has dramatically altered the legal research landscape, expanding the bounds of legal authority. Practitioner research requires more than traditional legal research. It also encompasses factual investigation, non-legal information, interdisciplinary and audience research. Many new lawyers are ill-prepared to research novel and unusual situations, to cope with unwritten laws and local customs, and to meet shifting authority expectations.

The Aba/Aals Sabbatical Site Inspection: Strangers In A Strange Land, R. Lawrence Dessem

Faculty Publications

At some point in their deanships, most law school deans will host a sabbatical site inspection of their law school by the American Bar Association (ABA) and the Association of American Law Schools (AALS). Virtually all deans also will have the opportunity to serve as a representative of the ABA or AALS on a team inspecting another law school. In this article I will discuss these site visits from the dean's perspective.

Reflections On The Teaching Of Constitutional Law, William W. Van Alstyne

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Should Antitrust Education Be Mandatory (For Law School Administrators)?, Thom Lambert, Royce De R. Barondes

Faculty Publications

The purpose of this essay is merely to examine the pertinent antitrust issues. The essay proceeds on the assumption that the AALS policy, whose terms are precatory, speaks to what is in fact an agreement among law schools. As noted below, the policy itself contemplates that law school deans will seek waivers, in individual cases, extending the time periods for up to two months. Were the policy to be litigated, law schools might dispute the existence of an agreement. We believe, though, that the nature of the policy strongly suggests that it represents an agreement among law schools and that …

A Tribute To Professor Herman M. Levy, Margaret M. Russell

Faculty Publications

On April 5, 2004, the Santa Clara University School of Law lost a beloved and exceptional professor, mentor, colleague, and friend. Professor Herman M. Levy passed away in Oroville, California, the day before his seventy-fifth birthday. Herman had taken a quick trip to Oroville to conduct a labor arbitration; he had served for many years as an arbitrator throughout California and other western states. Every year, I invited him to visit my first-year civil procedure class to talk about arbitration as a form of dispute resolution; he always delighted the class with his combination of wry humor and practical wisdom. …

Albany In The Life Trajectory Of Robert H. Jackson, John Q. Barrett

Faculty Publications

We recall Supreme Court Justice and Nuremberg prosecutor Robert Houghwout Jackson (1892-1954) for many reasons, but certainly a leading one is the striking contrast between his humble origins and his exalted destinations. Jackson's life began literally in the deep woods, on a family farm in the gorgeous rural isolation of Spring Creek Township in northwestern Pennsylvania's Warren County. He spent his boyhood and obtained his basic public school education in Frewsburg, a small town in southwestern New York State. While still a teenager, Jackson spent one additional year as a high school student in nearby Jamestown, New York, but he …

Introduction: A Good Idea, Mark L. Movsesian

Faculty Publications

With this volume, the editors of the Hofstra Law Review introduce a new section: "Ideas." "Ideas" will serve as the vehicle for short pieces—from three to ten pages in length and having a minimal number of footnotes—on topics of interest to scholars and practitioners. There will be no subject-matter restrictions and no requirement that the pieces relate to one another. "Ideas" will not be a symposium, but a collection of brief observations on important legal questions. The editors hope to attract submissions from the academy and from prominent members of the bench and bar as well.

The inauguration of this …

A Tyrannosaurus-Rex Aptly Named "Sue": Using A Disputed Dinosaur To Teach Contract Defenses, Miriam A. Cherry

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In August 1990, commercial fossil hunters from the Black Hills Geologic Institute ("Black Hills") discovered the remains of an almost complete Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton located in the Badlands of South Dakota. Named "Sue" after her discoverer, the fossil immediately became the subject of controversy. Although many of the facts were disputed, the collectors gave the purported owner of the land, a Native American rancher named Maurice Williams, a check for $5,000, which he cashed, and the collectors excavated Sue. The fair market value of a T-Rex skeleton with that degree of completeness was over eight million dollars.

Once the …

Professional Responsibility Redesigned: Sparking A Dialogue Between Students And The Bar, Lois R. Lupica

Faculty Publications

In recent years, there have been many public and private, formal and informal complaints about the behavior of lawyers. Moreover, lawyers' tenuous reputation for honesty and integrity has been tarnished by recent, well-publicized scandals. The public, as well as members of the bench and bar, have further decried a decline in attorney professionalism. More than once, it has been suggested that in some way, failings of law schools are to blame. In response to these observations about the professional behavior of lawyers and as a result of the author's experiences of teaching a traditional, Socratic-method Professional Responsibility class for many …

A Brief Exploration Of Space: Some Observations On Law School Architecture, Robert H. Jerry Ii

Faculty Publications

The costs and benefits of some architectural choices are immediately obvious, as in the case of disability accommodations. But other choices are less obvious, even when one does not attempt to predict how a design will function thirty or forty years hence. This is why having a skilled design team involved in developing the plan and executing it is so important.

Tim, R. Lawrence Dessem

Faculty Publications

There comes a time when every law school dean questions just why she or he has chosen to serve as dean. Deans experience both very high highs and very low lows. The dean often sees faculty, staff, and students at their best but just as often sees these same individuals at their worst. Regardless of the mix of highs to lows in any deanship, decanal service--if taken seriously-- demands a tremendous commitment of time and energy. Thus the question is posed: Why devote such a significant portion of one's professional time to such service?

Culture Clash: Teaching Cultural Defenses In The Criminal Law Classroom, Susan S. Kuo

Faculty Publications

In the law school classroom, the Socratic method of legal analysis removes a dispute at issue in a given case from its sociocultural context and takes the cultural backgrounds of the parties into account only when they serve the legal argument. The language of the law commands law students to siphon off the emotional and cultural content because of the enduring belief that the law is neutral and impartial. Accordingly, cultural conflicts are deemed irrelevant to legal analysis because laws are unbiased and culture-blind. This detached outlook has been termed perpectivelessness to denote a neutral, odorless, colorless non-perspective.

This essay …

A Statutory Approach To Criminal Law, Kevin C. Mcmunigal

Faculty Publications

Article suggests that learning about criminal statutes should be incorporated into teaching criminal law.

Damages As Narrative, Melody Richardson Daily

Faculty Publications

The traditional approach to legal instruction in America-the casebook method-requires students to read hundreds of appellate decisions, most of which include equally terse accounts of human suffering. How might this pedagogical approach affect future lawyers? Can reading a book like Damages help law students develop the ability to empathize with their clients?

Damages: Using A Case Study To Teach Law, Dispute Resolution, And Lawyering , Melody Richardson Daily, Chris Guthrie, Leonard L. Riskin

Faculty Publications

Seven law school faculty members and one practicing attorney recently developed and taught a wholly new kind of law course based on an already published case study, Damages: One Family's Legal Struggles in the World of Medicine, by Barry Werth, an investigative reporter who spent several years researching to write the book. Damages, an in-depth account of a medical malpractice case, presents the perspectives of the injured family, the defendant physician, the lawyers, and the three mediators. In this Symposium Introduction, the authors provide a summary of Werth's book, explain why they decided to create a course based on his …

Better Lucky Than Good, Neal Devins

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.