Legal Education Commons^™

Law School On The Liffey: My Experiences At Trinity College, Dublin, Janet Sinder

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Of Learning Civil Procedure, Practicing Civil Practice, And Studying A Civil Action: A Low-Cost Proposal To Introduce First-Year Law Students To The Neglected Maccrate Skills, Raleigh Hannah Levine

Faculty Scholarship

This article proposes three exercises designed to help introduce law students to four of the lawyering skills that the American Bar Association's MacCrate Report has identified as fundamental, but that legal scholarship has largely ignored: factual investigation, client counseling, recognizing and resolving ethical dilemmas, and organization and management of legal work. My goal in devising these exercises has been to allow a professor teaching a traditional, first-year civil procedure class to incorporate them into her syllabus at low cost to herself (in terms of time expended and doctrine sacrificed) and to the law school as an institution (in terms of …

Statutory Interpretation In The Courtroom, The Classroom, And Canadian Legal Literature, Stephen F. Ross

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, judges and scholars in Canada and the United States are devoting more attention to the theory and techniques involved in statutory interpretation. Although some advocate "foundational" theories to answer all theories of interpretation, most difficult cases require a pragmatic approach that requires analysis of the statutory text, original legislative intent, and legislative purpose in light of modern circumstances. Moreover, the most difficult cases may not be answerable by any of these approaches. In difficult cases, judges often resort to "normative canons" - rules they created to further a jurisprudence they desire. These canons need to be closely …

When Those Who Do Teach: The Consequences Of Law Firm Education For Business Law Education, James A. Fanto

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Clients Don't Take Sabbaticals: The Indispensable In-House Clinic And The Teaching Of Empathy, Philip Genty

Faculty Scholarship

After almost 12 years in law teaching, I approached my first sabbatical with a single goal: to free myself from cases. At that time my clinic clients were primarily parents who were involved in family court proceedings in which they were trying to preserve their parental rights and get their children out of the foster care system. Such cases are emotionally draining for both the client and the lawyer. Thus, while I welcomed the chance to have a semester off from teaching and attending faculty and committee meetings, I felt that I needed a break from the demands of lawyering …

(Baby) M Is For The Many Things: Why I Start With Baby M, Carol Sanger

Faculty Scholarship

For several years now I have begun my first-year contracts course with the 1988 New Jersey Supreme Court case In the Matter of Baby M. In this essay, I want to explain why. I offer the explanation in the spirit of modest proselytizing, recognizing that many of us already have a favored method or manner into the course: some introductory questions we pose before leaping into (or over) the introductions already provided by the editors of the many excellent casebooks available. But I have found that Baby M works extremely well in ways that others may want to consider. …

Teaching The Cisg In Contracts, William S. Dodge

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Legal Education And The Reproduction Of The Elite In Japan, Setsuo Miyazawa

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Foreward: A Parallel Community–People Of Color Legal Scholarship Conferences And The Advancement Of Legal Education, H.G. Prince

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Decanal And Administrative Opportunities In The New Millennium, H.G. Prince

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Youthbuild, Dorothy Stoneman, Fatma Marouf

Faculty Scholarship

YouthBuild is a comprehensive youth and community development program that simultaneously addresses several core issues facing lowincome communities: education, housing, jobs, and leadership development. It is based on the conviction that the energy and intelligence of young people need to be liberated and enlisted in solving the problems facing our society, and that low income young people are an untapped resource for solving the problems facing their own communities.

YouthBuild engages disconnected young men and women who have no apparent path to a productive future by teaching them basic academic, life, leadership, and employability skills through work on community housing …

Not Quite Grown Up: The Difficulty Of Applying An Adult Education Model To Legal Externs, Linda H. Morton, Janet Weinstein, Mark Weinstein

Faculty Scholarship

Using andragogical theory developed by Malcolm Knowles as a foundation as well as a counterpoint, this article presents a new framework for teaching clinic students. Frustrated by tensions they encountered in teaching students whom they expected to have all the qualities of “adult learners,” the authors developed a new theory that blends humanistic as well as developmental theory. The article describes this new theory and evaluates why it works in clinical teaching.

Porcupine Diplomacy Produces Summit (Ave.) Accord, Douglas R. Heidenreich

Faculty Scholarship

While William Mitchell College of Law was officially formed in 1956 through the merger of two local evening law schools, there had been discussion of a merger for years before 1956. Even after the merger, the two parts of the new institution continued to operate mostly separately. The acquisition of a building at 2100 Summit Avenue, in St. Paul, in 1958 finally allowed the two schools to become one and to enter the modern era of legal education.

Professional Training, Diversity In Legal Education, And Cost Control: Selection, Training And Peer Review For Adjunct Professors, Marcia R. Gelpe

Faculty Scholarship

The thesis of this article is that adjunct faculty make a unique and valuable contribution to legal education, that law is best taught by a combination of full-time and adjunct faculty members, and that serious consideration should be given to the issues of how best to divide teaching between full-time faculty and adjuncts. In addition, if adjunct faculty are to be viewed as a positive part of the teaching endeavor, it is essential to consider the ways to maximize their contribution. This article recommends a serious change in the way law schools think about and relate to adjunct faculty. Part …

Teaching Reasoning, Vincent A. Blasi

Faculty Scholarship

Reasoning skills of a certain sort are taught well in the traditional law school curriculum. No matter how good her previous education, the typical law student surely acquires an improved facility at testing propositions by considering hypothetical applications. Many students learn a lot about linguistic indeterminacy, unintended consequences, the allocation of decision-making responsibility, and how much turns on which questions are asked and how they are framed. It is a rare, indeed obtuse, person who completes a legal education still temperamentally inclined to refute unwelcome ideas when distinguishing them will do.

Where legal education falls short, I think, is with …

The Cutting Edge Of Poster Law, Michael A. Heller

Faculty Scholarship

Students place tens of thousands of posters around law schools each year – in staircases, on walls, and on bulletin boards. Rarely, however, do formal disputes about postering arise. Students know how far to go – and go no farther despite numerous avenues for postering deviance: blizzarding, megasigns, commercial or scurrilous signs. What is the history of poster law? What are its norms and rules, privileges and procedures? Is poster law effident? Is it just?

Feminist Legal Theory, Feminist Lawmaking, And The Legal Profession, Elizabeth M. Schneider, Cynthia Grant

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

What If There Is No Client?: Prosecutors As "Counselors" Of Crime Victims, Stacy Caplow

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Teaching Creative Problem Solving: A Paradigmatic Approach, Linda H. Morton

Faculty Scholarship

This article presents a visual and descriptive model for teaching creative problem solving in the law school curriculum. After elaborating on the definition and significance of teaching creative problem solving to law students, the author describes her model and her teaching methods in clinical classes as well as law school courses.

And Then There Was One, Douglas R. Heidenreich

Faculty Scholarship

In the twentieth century's second decade, Minneapolis lawyers created four night law schools, all of which William Mitchell College of Law numbers among its predecessor institutions. By 1940, a single law school remained, an amalgam of the original four. It would unite in 1956 with its St. Paul counterpart to form William Mitchell College of Law.

Summer Musings On Curricular Innovations To Change The Lawyer's Standard Philosophical Map, James Coben

Faculty Scholarship

When Hamline’s participation in the FIPSE grant was announced several years ago, the Hamline community saw an opportunity to help achieve the stated strategic-plan objective to ensure that every graduating student “will have basic knowledge about ADR and the opportunity for simulation experience with ADR.” The FIPSE grant working-group established the following objectives to guide the curriculum-development effort: (a) emphasize the importance of ADR by formally recognizing it as “substance,” (b) help students confront the standard philosophical map of lawyers and promote an “alternative” definition of lawyer as “problem-solver,” (c) provide a baseline familiarity with rule vs. interest and position …

Archibald Cox: Teacher, David J. Seipp

Faculty Scholarship

Archie Cox is a teacher. He taught generations of law students at Harvard Law School and, more recently, at Boston University School of Law. He left the classroom on three occasions, reluctantly, when first President Truman, then President Kennedy, then President Nixon's Attorney General called Professor Cox to Washington to play a part on the national stage. In his first weeks as Watergate Special Prosecutor, Cox carried with him a stack of blue books, Labor Law examinations he still had to grade (p. 263). In the public eye, his straight-backed demeanor, his familiar crew cut, half-glasses, bow tie, and tweeds …

We Ask You To Consider: Learning About Practical Judgment In Lawyering, Mark N. Aaronson

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Legal Education Then And Now: Changing Patterns In Legal Training And In The Relationship Of Law Schools To The World Around Them, Joan C. Williams, Bob Gordon, Jack Schlegel, James May

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Learning From Colleagues: A Case Study In The Relationship Between "Academic" And "Ecological" Clinical Legal Education, Robert J. Condlin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Latcrit Praxis To Heal Fractured Communities, Laura M. Padilla

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay explores LatCrit praxis as a healing tool. Before turning to LatCrit practice, let me offer a preliminary observation that many Latinos are troubled by leading divided lives in fractured communities. This is exacerbated by social conditioning which encourages Latinos, as well as other outsiders, to fragment their identities. One of the benefits of LatCrit theory is that it encourages the process of working toward wholeness. At a recent conference which looked at the courage of those who have decided to live lives divided no more, Parker Palmer, the plenary speaker, suggested that the spark which causes people to …

A Field Trip To Benetton And Beyond: Some Thoughts On Outsider Narrative In A Law School Clinic, Carolyn Grose

Faculty Scholarship

This essay explores the process of teaching students—and ourselves—to listen to and accept different versions of reality. Such exploration results in a proposition that is easy to state but difficult to accomplish: that in order to achieve this goal, we must challenge the students' "common sense”—their sense that they "know" how people act—by offering examples of behaviors that differ from that knowledge, without triggering the very "common sense" we are trying to combat. Toward this end, the first section of the essay presents a hypothetical initial interview with a client, and the student interviewer's reactions to her, which reflect the …

Hiram F. Stevens And The Founding Of The St. Paul College Of Law, Douglas R. Heidenreich

Faculty Scholarship

The St. Paul College of Law, one of William Mitchell College of Law's predecessor institutions, was established by five attorneys in 1900. Especially prominent among these attorneys was Hiram F. Stevens (1852-1904), who served as the first dean and was also a legislator, teacher, scholar, popular orator, and a founding member of the American Bar Association.

Keynote Address: Redefining Our Roles In The Battle For Inclusion Of People Of Color In Legal Education, Phoebe A. Haddon

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Less Is More: Teaching Legal Ethics In Context Symposium: 1997 W. M. Mikeck Foundation Forum On The Teaching Of Legal Ethics, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

We who teach legal ethics employ many of the teacher's arts to win our students' appreciation for the course. We do not always succeed. As Deborah Rhode has observed, "[t]here are inherent problems and infinite ways to fail in teaching this subject." Yet, we continue to seek a method for teaching the course effectively. If nothing else, our efforts have led to the development of a substantial body of literature on teaching legal ethics to which this Article will contribute. Its focus is on what, rather than how, to teach. This Article asks: What should be the content of the …