Legal Education Commons^™

In Memoriam: Jerry Phillips: A Scholar & A Gentleman, Elizabeth Price Foley, Elizabeth C. Price

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

W & M Law School Came First. Why Care?, W. Taylor Reveley Iii

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Ten Things Deans Can Do With Students, R. Lawrence Dessem

Faculty Publications

A healthy relationship with students is beneficial to one's deanship, law school, and to the dean herself. An experienced provost once told me that serving as dean was the best job that he had ever had because he still had significant contact with students. Deans should take advantage of the possibilities for student interactions that their deanships afford them. What follows is my “top ten list” of ways in which deans can build a positive relationship with their students.

Employing Active-Learning Techniques And Metacognition In Law School: Shifting Energy From Professor To Student, Robin A. Boyle

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Teaching a law school class, whether it is doctrinal or skills-based, can be a tiring experience. At the conclusion of class, law professors often experience fatigue, partly from coming to a calm after being on-stage and partly from expending excessive energy lecturing or engaging students with the Socratic method. Law professors who are exhausted after a sixty or ninety-minute class, while their students sit passively except for random one-on-one questioning, are overworking. Chances are the majority of the students are under-performing because they are probably similar in their learning-style to students at other law schools, who do not learn …

U.S. News U.: Or, The Fighting Volunteer Hurricanes, R. Lawrence Dessem

Faculty Publications

A great deal of controversy, catcalling, and consternation has greeted the rankings of law schools by U.S. News and World Report each spring. In their efforts to place higher in these rankings, law schools have engaged in massive public relations wars, misrepresented data, and done other bad and stupid things.

Unsolicited Advice To Law School Dean Search Committees, R. Lawrence Dessem

Faculty Publications

A true bounty of opinion, anecdotes, and advice has been offered by many outstanding deans in these symposia in recent years. By and large, these deans have focused on the art of deaning, which is to be expected. But in addition to their experiences and observations concerning deaning, law school deans are also uniquely situated to provide insights concerning a related topic: the dean search process. This I take as the subject of the current article. As these symposia contemplate, the present article is informal in tone and is based upon my own experiences both as a law school dean …

Reflections On Editing A Journal For Law Teachers, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

One should hesitate to draw grand conclusions based on personal experience, but I won't. What I'll do in this essay is discuss some of the decidedly unscientific lessons about American legal education, or at least about the scholarship dealing with American legal education, that I've drawn from my editorial experience: About American legal education's provincialism, about the limited interest in writing on pedagogical subjects, about quality of writing, and about the politicization of the legal academy.

Imagine: A Comment On "A Liberal Education In Law", Melody Richardson Daily

Faculty Publications

While I was impressed with Professor Parker's paper for many reasons, to me her single most striking assertion is this: "Practicing law--and learning law-is at heart an imaginative enterprise."' It is a sentence that should be carved above the entrance to every law school. Few practicing attorneys would disagree with Professor Parker's observation. After all, if imagination is the ability to deal creatively with reality, then imagination is essential for each of the ten fundamental lawyering skills listed in the MacCrate Report. For example, no lawyer can succeed in problem-solving without first engaging in the process of imagining multiple possible …

Providing Structure To Law Students — Introducing The Programmed Learning Sequence As An Instructional Tool, Robin A. Boyle, Lynne Dolle

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In the past few decades, legal academics have spawned writings about changing law school teaching methods from the traditional Socratic and case method to alternative approaches. Some of these authors encourage law professors to be aware of individual differences among students. Yet there has been little empirical research conducted in law schools concerning the effectiveness of teaching students according to their individual learning styles. "Learning styles" refers to the ways in which individuals "begin [ ] to concentrate on, process, [internalize,] and [remember] new and difficult [academic] information" or skills. The absence of learning-styles research in law schools spurred …

Teacher, Student, Ticket: John Frank, Leon Higginbotham, And One Afternoon At The Supreme Court--Not A Trifling Thing, John Q. Barrett

Faculty Publications

A path to greatness often begins with a special teacher, and this is such a story. In the fall of 1949, John P. Frank was a new associate professor at the Yale Law School. This story also involves a young student. In autumn 1949, A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., was a first year law student at Yale. Higginbotham, a 21-year-old black man from Trenton, New Jersey, had attended Purdue University and, after transferring, graduated from Antioch College in 1949. Leon Higginbotham was one of three black students who entered Yale Law School in fall 1949. Higginbotham met John Frank when he …

Top Ten Reasons To Be A Law School Dean, R. Lawrence Dessem

Faculty Publications

Serving as a law school dean can be tough duty. Many people, particularly law school faculty members, have asked over the years why anyone would ever take such a position. This question is particularly relevant because the likely alternative for most deans is service as a full-time professor on a law school faculty-which is, without a doubt, one of the world's truly great jobs..

Professor Stephen H. Schulman, Peter J. Henning, Eric Kades

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Internationalizing The Study Of Law, Michael P. Scharf

Faculty Publications

Michael P. Scharf gives a talk about efforts to internationalize the curriculum that have been employed at the New England Law School on a fairly modest budget.

The Jeffersonian Vision Of Legal Education, Davison M. Douglas

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Form Letter From The Dean, R. Lawrence Dessem

Faculty Publications

A few years ago, in “A Form Letter to the Dean,” I offered the Journal's readers a template form letter which law school faculty could use to communicate with their deans. In the aftermath of that article's publication, I received letters, phone calls, and small explosive devices indicating that, mirabile dictu, a few people had actually read the article. Because I had never before had such a response to any of what I rather loosely refer to as my scholarship, I was encouraged to write a sequel. Hence the present piece. My current form letter is inspired by the annual …

Cultural Musings Of A Non-Traditional Dean, W. Taylor Reveley Iii

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Managing Internal Administrative Change, Joseph A. Custer

Faculty Publications

Mr. Custer considers the impact of already instituted internal administrative change on library staff and how best to deal with it. He approaches the topic by describing what his own library did when faced with significant internal administrative restructuring.

Ethical Challenges To Legal Education And Conduct, James E. Moliterno

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

American Lawyers And International Competence, Charlotte Ku, Christopher J. Borgen

Faculty Publications

Just over ten years ago, Germans tore down a wall that divided their country and the whole of Europe. Stepping through the hole in the Berlin Wall, they took the first steps towards the reunification of West and East Germany and the end of the Cold War. Today another wall is being torn down—that between purely domestic law and international law. Companies are engaged in international trade at ever increasing rates. Environmental degradation has proved to be a global problem that cannot be solved with uncoordinated local measures. Individuals worldwide are pressing their governments for the recognition of a common …

An Extended Hypothetical For Teaching Administrative Law, Charles H. Koch Jr.

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Relationship Between Equality And Access In Law School Admissions, Angela M. Banks

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Primer For The First-Time Law Dean Candidate, Robert H. Jerry Ii

Faculty Publications

This article identifies fourteen principles of which the first-time dean candidate should be mindful. The prescriptions are aspirational in nature, and the article suggests the reader engage in some introspection about which of the fourteen items are most applicable on a personal level.

(Seven Principles For Good Practice In Legal Education): Principle 5: Good Practice Emphasizes Time On Task, R. Lawrence Dessem

Faculty Publications

Time plus energy equals learning. Efficient time-management skills are critical for students and professors alike. Allocating realistic amounts of time means effective learning for students and effective teaching for faculty. How an institution defines time expectations for students, faculty, administrators, and other professional staff can establish the basis for high performance for all. The fifth principle for good practice in undergraduate education is almost a truism: good practice emphasizes time on task. In their original statement of the seven principles, Arthur W. Chickering and Zelda F. Gamson expressed this as a mathematical formula: “Time plus energy equals learning.” Time on …

Why In-House Live Client Clinics Won't Work In Romania: Confessions Of A Clinician Educator, Rodney J. Uphoff

Faculty Publications

Romanians eat our Big Macs, wolf down pizza slices at Pizza Hut, and guzzle Coca-Cola. They wear baseball caps, Nike clothing, and tennis shoes. They listen to American rap and pop music, see American movies with Romanian subtitles, and watch all of our old television shows. Romanians of all ages, but especially the young, hunger and thirst for all things Western, particularly from the United States. Doesn't it follow, then, that Romanian law schools ought to have - and, indeed, Romanian law professors would want - that symbol of an innovative, modern American law school curriculum: a live client clinical …

In-House Live-Client Clinical Programs: Some Ethical Issues, James E. Moliterno

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Responding To The Value Imperative: Learning To Create Value In The Resolution Of Disputes, Kenneth Margolis

Faculty Publications

This article discusses another topic for clinical teachers to consider adding to their teaching agendas. In this paper, I identify the "value imperative" implicit in the attorney-client relationship and suggest that a perception by the client of high value in the relationship is necessary for its success. Briefly, I describe value in legal services as the client's perception of the ratio of benefits received from legal representation to the sacrifices necessary to obtain those benefits. The more the ratio favors benefits over sacrifices, the greater the value perceived by the client. I present a model describing value in legal services …

Reflections On Britain's Research Assessment Exercise, Jayne W. Barnard

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Teaching Law Students Through Individual Learning Styles, Robin A. Boyle, Rita Dunn

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Teaching can be rewarding, but it can also be frustrating when some students fail to grasp the material. Professor Robin A. Boyle of St. John’s University School of Law has been teaching Legal Research and Writing in small sections of approximately twenty to thirty students for four years. She, like many of her similarly exasperated colleagues, has repeated the same course content by using either lecture or collaborative learning, and has observed some students doing well, whereas others continued to perform poorly. Then, Dr. Rita Dunn was introduced to the law school faculty and suggested that law professors incorporate …

Law And The Wisconsin Idea, Erika Lietzan, Paul D. Carrington

Faculty Publications

We recall a summer of contentment when American law was suffused with optimism, a season ending a long winter of despair and disorder. For the first fifteen years of this century, many (and perhaps most) American lawyers were filled with confidence that America had healed the wounds of civil war and was healing those of class struggle. We could, and we would, overcome all obstacles to peace and prosperity, not only for our people but for all mankind. This, it was widely believed, would be our century. As early as 1879 Daniel Coit Gilman, the premier educator of his time, …

Book Review Of Seattle University Skills Development Series, James E. Moliterno

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.