Legal Education Commons^™

Subjunctive Lawyering And Other Clinical Extern Paradigms, Kate Bloch

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Year In Practice: The Journal Of A Reflective Clinician, Stacy Caplow

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Rules, Story And Commitment In The Teaching Of Legal Ethics, Roger C. Cramton, Susan P. Koniak

Faculty Scholarship

The ABA requires each "approved" law school to provide each student "instruction in the duties and responsibilities of the legal profession." First adopted in August, 1973, in the midst of the Watergate disclosures, this requirement has never been interpreted and is infrequently referred to or enforced in the accreditation process. The professional responsibility requirement is the only substantive teaching requirement imposed by the ABA.

Should the ethics teaching requirement be scrapped? We consider that question in Part I. Although we ultimately conclude the rule should be maintained, we believe this fundamental question must be asked. Given the disdain many legal …

A Feminist Revisit To The First-Year Curriculum, Anita Bernstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

From Courtroom To Classroom: Creating An Academic Component To Enhance The Skills And Values Learned In A Student Judicial Clerkship Clinic, Stacy Caplow

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Searches, Seizures, Confessions, And Some Thoughts On Criminal Procedure: Regulation Of Police Investigation -- Legal, Historical, Empirical, And Comparative Materials, Daniel B. Yeager

Faculty Scholarship

Criminal procedure casebooks densely populate the market but rarely are reviewed. In Criminal Procedure: Regulation of Police Investigation-Legal, Historical, Empirical, and Comparative Materials, Christopher Slobogin copes with the anxiety of influence by writing a different sort of text. Simply put, the book is outwardly somewhat homely. Aesthetics aside, the book is mostly excellent and astonishingly so for a first edition. As the subtitle promises, the book has something for everyone: historians, empiricists, comparativists, theoreticians, case-crunchers, and practitioners. This review essay tracks the book's crowning achievement-the refreshing and inventive "perspectives" chapter that opens the book. The essay then reflects on …

Field Placement Programs: Practices, Problems And Possibilities, Robert F. Seibel, Linda H. Morton

Faculty Scholarship

This article presents empirical data on externship programs in hopes of creating a nationwide clearinghouse for those engaging in and evaluating such programs. The authors analyze the implications of their data, both to better understand and support the pedagogical value of externship programs, as well as to evaluate the effect of the more recent ABA regulations imposed on these programs.

Law Teachers And The Educational Continuum, Michael K. Jordan

Faculty Scholarship

There are many difficulties in teaching the law. These problems are often referred to generically as the difficulty in training students to "think like lawyers." The primary focus of the literature discussing these concerns has, therefore, been on how law schools should assist students in developing this ability. Underlying much of this literature is the assumption that what is needed is some tinkering with the law school curriculum. Students are believed to enter law with a set of abilities and potentialities that are honed by the law school curriculum to produce something called a lawyer or the skill denominated as …

A Decade Of Developments In Performance-Based Legal Education, Deborah A. Schmedemann, Christina L. Kunz

Faculty Scholarship

This tribute summarizes some of the accomplishments of William Mitchell college of Law in performance-based learning in legal education between 1986 and 1996. It first chronicles developments in the first-and second-year performance-based courses and then turns to upper-level curricular developments. At each point, it touches on course development and scholarship--the parallel tracks pursued by faculty focusing on performance-based legal education. As a result of these developments, the college is well positioned to contribute to the growth of performance-based learning in legal education nationally.

Succeeding In Law School: A Comparison Of Woman's Experience At Brooklyn Law School And The University Of Pennsylvania, Marsha Garrison, Brian Tomko, Ivan Yip

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Comment On Moliterno, Legal Education, Experiential Education, And Professional Responsibility, Lance Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

In attempting to predict and prescribe the future, my vision of the recent history of legal education differs from Professor Moliterno's in certain relevant ways.

I graduated from Law School in 1967. I learned largely through doctrinal courses that delivered steady training in thinking like a lawyer and information about areas of law. These courses exposed me and my classmates to legal lingo and to the standard types of legal arguments. We learned, largely by hearing the teacher and our fellow students, to make verbal moves and to see the strengths and limitations of others' argumentation skills and techniques. We …

Administrative Law: The Hidden Comparative Law Course, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

What does today's Administrative Law course give your students that you might not be aware of and might be helped by knowing? That, as I understand it, is the question I am to answer. But we may also want to think about the overall shape of the curriculum: it may be useful to ask about fundamental issues our students may not be aware of, that may not be dealt with elsewhere in the law school curriculum. I'll spend most of my time on the question I've been asked to address, but I hope you will accept a few sentences on …

Colloquium - Gender, Law And Health Care: New Perspectives For Teaching And Scholarship: The Role Of Gender In Law And Health Care, Karen H. Rothenberg

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Mandatory Prelicensure Legal Internship: A Renewed Plea For Its Implementation In Light Of The Maccrate Report, Stephen R. Alton

Faculty Scholarship

Since its publication in 1992, virtually everyone who has any opinion about American legal education has been talking about the Mac- Crate Report. Relatively few among this multitude seem actually to have read the report itself. The purpose of this essay is to present an overview of this thoughtful document, along with some thoughts of my own regarding its implications for the future of legal education, particularly its implications for a mandatory prelicensure legal internship.

Paying Attention To The Signs, Susan P. Koniak, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

After all our efforts and all Keck's money, where are we? Some good has been accomplished. By committing its resources to the study of legal ethics, the W.M. Keck Foundation has encouraged law schools to pay attention to a subject all too often ignored. That itself is good. The money has made things happen. Schools have held conferences devoted to legal ethics that otherwise would not have been held;¹ schools have experimented with teaching programs in legal ethics that otherwise might have been left untried;' members of the practicing bar have had conversations and debates with academics about the …

Why Teach International Family Law In Conflicts?, William L. Reynolds

Faculty Scholarship

[The author] sets forth a challenge to conflicts professors: to teach international family law in their conflict of laws classes. At present, many conflicts professors avoid teaching international family law, in part because the study of this subject is complicated by several statutes addressing particularly difficult issues. Ignorning international family law is unwise, because many United States citizens and lawyers are likely to confront such problems.

Our Perspective On Irac, Christina L. Kunz, Deborah A. Schmedemann

Faculty Scholarship

In this brief article, the authors present their view of IRAC, an acronym for Issue, Relevant law, Application to facts, and Conclusion. The authors conclude that IRAC can be taught so that students understand not only why it is useful as a thinking and writing tool, but also that proper use of it requires judgment and creativity. When IRAC is presented this way, the authors assert, it can serve first-year students well as they study legal writing. And they will operate accordingly, even without being aware of its influence, during their years as practicing lawyers.

Learning By Doing - Preparing Law Students For The Practice Of Law: The Legal Practicum, John O. Sonsteng, Roger S. Haydock

Faculty Scholarship

The MacCrate Report outlined ten skills that are essential for every practicing attorney and should ideally be taught in every law school. The Association of American Law Schools (AALS) concluded that these ten skills cannot be effectively obtained through every law school curriculum because of each school's individual, economic limitations. This article demonstrates how one law school—William Mitchell College of Law, in St. Paul, Minnesota—has , since 1984, incorporated a cost effective Legal Practicum course into its curriculum to help meet the MacCrate Report goal of providing the law student with the opportunity to learn and apply fundamental lawyering skills. …

Rosalie Wahl: Her Extraordinary Contributions To Legal Education, James F. Hogg

Faculty Scholarship

Justice Rosalie Wahl is well-known as the first woman to be appointed to the Minnesota Supreme Court, but she has made a lesser known, yet critical, contribution to the quality and effectiveness of legal education in this country. As chair of the American Bar Association's Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, Wahl created the MacCrate Commission. The MacCrate Report charts the way for improvement in law school teaching and learning, and the discussion following the report lead to the creation of an ABA Commission to take testimony and review the ABA Accreditation Standards. Wahl also chaired this …

An Institutional Commitment To Minorities And Diversity: The Evolution Of A Law School Academic Support Program, Jackie Slotkin

Faculty Scholarship

Given the severe underrepresentation of minorities in the legal profession, law schools have begun to realize their obligation to provide minorities with access to a quality legal education. This Article profiles the ongoing efforts of one private, free-standing law school to fulfill its commitment to diversity in education.

Contextualizing Professional Responsibility: A New Curriculum For A New Century Teaching Legal Ethics: Iv. Developing Specialized Ethics Courses, Mary C. Daly, Bruce A. Green, Russell G. Pearce

Faculty Scholarship

The teaching of professional responsibility in U.S. law schools is entering a new age. A relative newcomer to the traditional curriculum, professional responsibility has struggled over the past twenty-one years to establish its intellectual legitimacy. It has evolved from a cramped course on the codes of lawyer conduct adopted by the American Bar Association ("ABA") to an expansive course on the law of lawyering. The premise of this essay is that professional responsibility has matured as a subject matter to the point where a new genre of courses should join the pervasive method and the traditional survey course. The richness …

Banks Mcdowell, Henry P. Monaghan

Faculty Scholarship

It is very hard for me to get used to the idea that Banks McDowell is retiring from teaching. He and I were colleagues at Boston University more than two decades ago, and I knew him to be a devoted and conscientious person deeply committed to the enterprise of teaching. Banks had great affection for his students, and he took delight in whatever he was able to do to enlarge their horizons.

The Profession Of Law: Columbia Law School's Use Of Experiential Learning Techniques To Teach Professional Responsibility, Carol B. Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

Columbia Law School's ethics course, "The Profession of Law" ("POL"), is an interactive, experiential exploration of lawyer ethics. The course, required for all third-year students, is taught on an intensive basis during the first week of the fall semester. It begins on Monday morning, the first day of the semester, and runs through mid-afternoon on the following Friday. The course has five goals: to introduce students to the rules that govern professional conduct; to help them develop an analytic framework for making ethical decisions in those broad areas where the rules do not give clear answers; to provoke them to …

Business Lawyers And Value Creation For Clients, Ronald J. Gilson, Robert H. Mnookin

Faculty Scholarship

This Symposium marks an important milestone in legal scholarship and education: The spotlight falls on business lawyers for a change. Ten years ago, when one of us first wrote about what business lawyers really do, no one had devoted much attention to this part of the profession. In his broadside against lawyers, Derek Bok, then President of Harvard University and formerly dean of its law school, reserved his invective for litigators and the litigation process. Business lawyers captured the attention of very few critics; even on the unusual occasion when we were noticed, the criticism was at least funny. If …

The Criminal Defense Lawyer's Reliance On Bias And Prejudice, Eva Nilsen

Faculty Scholarship

This Article is divided into three parts. Part I examines both the many contexts in which criminal defense lawyers and clinical students encounter bias and prejudice,¹² and the commonly-raised objections to its exploitation. Part II looks at the way the tactical use of bias relates to a lawyer's duty of zealous advocacy. Here, the Article focuses on whether existing ethics rules provide guidance for a lawyer's use of bias and whether proposed rules aimed at eliminating such advocacy would improve or diminish justice. This article argues against such efforts because they impinge on legitimate lawyering, and they may distract …

Education For A Public Calling In The 21st Century, Phoebe A. Haddon

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Using The Maccrate Report To Strengthen Live-Client Clinics, Ann Juergens

Faculty Scholarship

Clinical teachers can use the "MacCrate Report"—the Report of the ABA Task Force on Law Schools and the Profession: Narrowing the Gap and its Statement of Skills and Values—in a variety of ways to help live-client clinics. This paper assumes that the reader has basic background knowledge of the MacCrate Report. It also makes a fundamental judgment about the value and role of live-client clinics: it assumes that strengthening live-client clinics is important for the future of legal education. Strategies for negotiation for educational change, of course, must be tailored to each negotiation's context. Each law school has its own …

Thoughts About Pursuing Diversity In Legal Education For Pedagogical Rather Than Political Or Compensatory Reasons, J. Clifton Fleming Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Creating A Classroom Component For Field Placement Programs: Enhancing Clinical Goals With Feminish Pedagogy, Linda H. Morton

Faculty Scholarship

This article supports the use of feminist pedagogy to provide the ideal environment for engaging clinic students in self-learning. The author describes the complementary relationship between clinic goals and feminist pedagogy, illustrated through her use of a student-facilitated and non-hierarchical teaching model in her externship classes. The model used provides a unique and valuable educational environment for the training of prospective professionals.

"Skilling" Time, Peter B. Knapp

Faculty Scholarship

This article describes disagreements about the "MacCrate Report" on skills education for law students, as well as the connections between the Report's recommendations and legal education at William Mitchell College of Law. The final commentary focuses on what William Mitchell can do to further ensure that teaching prepares students for the learning they will have to do when they begin working as lawyers.