Legal Education Commons^™

Eighteen Or Thirty, But Not Twenty-Two, John Henry Schlegel

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Teaching Trademark Theory Through The Lens Of Distinctiveness, Mark P. Mckenna

Journal Articles

This contribution to the annual teaching edition of the Saint Louis University Law Journal encourages teachers to begin trademark law courses using the concept of distinctiveness as a vehicle for articulating producer and consumer perspectives in trademark law. Viewing the law through these sometimes different perspectives helps in approaching a variety of doctrines in trademark law, and both perspectives are relatively easy to grasp in the context of distinctiveness.

A Tribute To Robert L. Oakley: Remembering Bob Oakley, Roger F. Jacobs

Journal Articles

A tribute to Robert L. Oakley, Professor and Law Librarian (1945-2007).

A Damn Hard Thing To Do, John Henry Schlegel

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

A Search For Balance In The Whirlwind Of Law School: Spirituality From Law Teachers, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

The first-year introductory course in property law is about all that is left of the traditional black-box curriculum. It is where beginning law students cope with and despair of the arcana of English common law; where, with more detachment than, say, in the torts course, analysis of appellate opinions is what "thinking like a lawyer" means, with no more than peripheral and begrudging attention to modem legislation and administrative law; where legal reasoning is a stretching exercise and initiatory discipline. And, incidentally, surviving bravely the rude invasion of teachers of public law, it is where a teaching lawyer can point …

The Bar Examination, Tony W. Torain, Jo Anne Simon, Melinda Saran, Barbara Hergenroeder

Journal Articles

Transcript of Panel 3: The Bar Examination, from Assisting Law Students with Disabilities in the 21st Century: Brass Tacks, Washington, DC, March 28, 2007.

The Gift Of Milner Ball, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

My friend and teacher Milner Ball speaks of the law as "systemic injustice." I find that a bit harsh and tend instead toward a way of looking at injustice that comes from the equally melancholy reflections of Robert E. Rodes, Jr., also my friend—my colleague, too—and also my teacher (in two senses, including the I-once-paid-tuition sense). Bob Rodes has noticed injustice as much as Milner has, but Bob, who tends to be an Erastian, would say it is not the law that is the source of injustice; it is not even the "system"; it is lawyers who are the source …

Cali Lessons In Legal Research Courses: Alternatives To Reading About Research, Elizabeth G. Adelman

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Matchmaker, Matchmaker Make Me A Match: An Insider's Guide To The Faculty Hiring Process, Debra R. Cohen

Journal Articles

This essay analogizes the process of finding a law faculty position to internet dating. Along the way it provides insights into the law faculty hiring process. These insights are based on over a decade of attendance at the "meat market" in various capacities, speaking with hundreds of interviewers and mentoring hundreds of candidates.

Law School Faculty As Mentors, Jim Rosenblatt

Journal Articles

Professors see potential in our students that they do not see themselves. Based on his or her knowledge of the student and his or her awareness of student performance in the classroom and on examinations, a professor might suggest a career path, an intern opportunity, a research topic, an advanced degree, or a job contact that the student had not considered through the "door opening" process by which the professor opens doors and helps the law student see what is behind that door. Without this mentoring assistance that door may never have been opened by the student left to her …

Redefining Open Access For The Legal Information Market, James G. Milles

Journal Articles

The open access movement in legal scholarship, inasmuch as it is driven within the law library community over concerns about the rising cost of legal information, fails to address - and in fact diverts resources from - the real problem facing law libraries today: the soaring costs of nonscholarly, commercially published, practitioner-oriented legal publications. The current system of legal scholarly publishing - in student-edited journals and without meaningful peer review - does not face the pressures to increase prices common in the science and health disciplines. One solution to this problem is for law schools to redirect some of their …

User Surveys: Libraries Ask, "Hey, How Am I Doing?", Dwight B. King

Journal Articles

Mr. King offers suggestions on how to create and use surveys effectively to assess the quality of a library.

A Tribute To Frederic L. Kirgis, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

Now, hearing of Rick's retirement, I find it hard to imagine Sydney Lewis Hall without him standing guard over the Law Center, or in the dean's office, or from some other nearby vantage point. If Washington and Lee is lucky, Rick will continue to play a role in the welcoming committee, making a welcoming place even warmer. Knowing Rick's commitment to the law school there, I have no doubt he would embrace the role.

While those of us that consider Rick a friend and colleague greet news of his retirement with a reluctant happiness, there is one group that cannot …

In The Mountain/Green Eggheads And Old Hams, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

This article presents In the Mountain and Green Eggheads and Old Hams. Green Eggheads and Old Hams is an academic variation on a theme of Professor Seuss.

Lessons Learned By A New Dean, Jim Rosenblatt

Journal Articles

The account of my first year as dean of the Mississippi College School of Law in no way should focus on me as an individual, for my life and my decanal endeavors were inextricably woven into the life of the law school. The account of my first year as a "new dean" must, therefore, be a recounting of the events and activities of the law school in the academic year 2003-2004. Through this brief account, I shall share the story of the law school from my perspective and along the way recount the lessons I have learned and the nuggets …

Leaky Boundaries And The Decline Of The Autonomous Law School Library, James G. Milles

Journal Articles

Academic law librarians have long insisted on the value of autonomy from the university library system, usually basing their arguments on strict adherence to ABA standards. However, law librarians have failed to construct an explicit and consistent definition of autonomy. Lacking such a definition, they have tended to rely on an outmoded Langdellian view of the law as a closed system. This view has long been discredited, as approaches such as law and economics and sociolegal research have become mainstream, and courts increasingly resort to nonlegal sources of information. Blind attachment to autonomy as a goal rather than a means …

On Teaching Constitutional Law When My Race Is In Their Face, Angela Mae Kupenda

Journal Articles

Constitutional Law is one of my favorite subjects to teach. You see, I am a 45-year-old southern-born, black woman who not only studies constitutional law, I lived it. I attended separate and unequal schools, survived freedom of choice programs, suffered Jim Crow laws, and was a beneficiary of consent decrees and affirmative action programs. I love discussing and debating issues relating to race, gender, etc. I love constitutional law, but many of my students do not love the subject or, perhaps, care for hearing about my related experiences.

Diversity: Do You Really Want It?, Angela Mae Kupenda

Journal Articles

Diversity. Do you really want it? In many of the diversity workshops I have attended, the facilitators assume that the answer is yes and set out to help the educational institution acquire more diversity. But given continuing fears and prejudices in our society, this is a mistaken, and perhaps premature assumption. Yet, when you are asked, as an educator or administrator, whether you want students of different races and colors, from varying socio-economic backgrounds, and with different perspectives, your response may be that "wanting" is irrelevant. You "need" diversity given our country's changing demographics, your institution's need to generate tuition …

Legal Separation: The Relationship Between Law School And The Central University In The Late Nineteenth Century, Mark Bartholomew

Journal Articles

Using Yale Law School as an example, this Article describes the interaction between university-affiliated law schools and the larger university during a crucial period in the development of legal education: the last third of the nineteenth century. At the same time, the Article contrasts Yale with other law schools of the day to show what made Yale unique and how Yale’s nineteenth-century idiosyncrasies would come to shape legal education at other schools in the twentieth century. Part I examines the university administration’s attitude toward the law school and how it typified law school-university relations in the late nineteenth century. Part …

Elucidating The Elephant: Interdisciplinary Law School Classes, Kim Diana Connolly

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

An American Tale, Geoffrey Bennett

Journal Articles

How much influence should the legal profession in England and Wales have over law degree courses? Geoffrey Bennett says to consider the U.S. experience before ditching the idea.

Law School Professors Comment On The Campus Boycott Of Justice Clarence Thomas: Did They Do The Right Thing?, Angela Mae Kupenda

Journal Articles

The black professors' only mistake occurred if they assumed that, like white professors, they would be found deserving of two core professorial rights: the right of academic freedom and the right to exercise individual moral responsibility. The harsh critics of the black professors' boycott of Justice Thomas' speech are trying to deny the professors these core professorial rights/duties that are ordinarily heaped upon white professors without reservation.

The University Of St. Thomas Law Library: A New Library For A New Era In Legal Education, Edmund P. Edmonds

Journal Articles

In spring 2000, the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul/Minneapolis, Minnesota, offered me an intriguing challenge: Would I be willing to help create a brand new law library at St. Thomas' new School of Law? That opportunity was, in many ways, the ultimate chance to reconsider the fundamental underlying premises that form one's basic vision of a law library. One's understanding and thinking about these basic ideas forms the foundation on which one makes critical decisions about the law library every working day. What would it be like to have no past history to either inform or encumber those …

Using The Pervasive Method Of Teaching Legal Ethics In A Property Course, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

The first-year introductory course in property law is about all that is left of the traditional black-box curriculum. It is where beginning law students cope with and despair of the arcana of English common law; where, with more detachment than, say, in the torts course, analysis of appellate opinions is what "thinking like a lawyer" means, with no more than peripheral and begrudging attention to modem legislation and administrative law; where legal reasoning is a stretching exercise and initiatory discipline. And, incidentally, surviving bravely the rude invasion of teachers of public law, it is where a teaching lawyer can point …

One Of A Kind - Professor Emeritus Charles E. Rice, Robert E. Rodes

Journal Articles

In the spring of 1959, when I was faculty advisor of the law review (then called the Notre Dame Lawyer), and my future colleague Bob Blakey was the student associate editor, we worked together on an article called A.I.D.—An Heir of Controversy. The subject, artificial insemination from a donor, was interesting, the treatment was at once lively, rueful, and orthodox, and the conclusion was an engaging shrug of the shoulders: "Upon that note . . . your writer respectfully throws in the towel.'' The author, a graduate of Boston College Law School taking an advanced degree at New York University, …

A Tribute To Andrew W. Mcthenia, Jr., Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

Uncas picked up a five-letter name when he was a boarding school student in Orange, Virginia. By now, it is the way his friends and colleagues, his students and his clients, his wife and his children and his neighbors, identify him. It works throughout the United States and in Canada. I would not be surprised to see it work in, say, the offices of the European Union in Salzburg or in the former Soviet Union. (It occurs to me that this universal name for Andrew W. McThenia, Jr., a name his boarding-school classmates borrowed from James Fenimore Cooper, shares brevity …

Competent Legal Writing - A Lawyer's Professional Responsibility, Debra R. Cohen

Journal Articles

The legal profession is constantly evolving to keep pace with our increasingly complex society.' Today, the legal profession "is larger and more diverse than ever before." Despite this transformation, "the law has remained a single profession identified with a perceived common body of learning, skills and values." This common body of learning, skills, and values constitutes the fundamental elements of competent representation. Writing is one of the essential skills of competent representation.

"Law is a profession of words." Lawyers use words, both written and oral, in a wide array of contexts-to advise, to advocate, to elicit information, to establish legal …

Langdell's Auto-Da-Fé, John Henry Schlegel

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Legal Writing In The New Millennium: Lessons From A Special Teacher And A "Special Classroom", Kenneth F. Ripple

Journal Articles

After receiving the invitation to address this conference, I found my thoughts often returning to my own education in legal writing. As I recall, my legal writing experience in law school was not a very intensive—or positive—one. As was quite typical in that era (almost thirty-three years ago), the program at my law school was not very extensive: we wrote a memorandum of law and a brief under the guidance of a graduate law student.

My real legal writing education took place in the study of the Chief Justice of the United States. For the better part of five years, …

"Meet My Mentor": A Collection Of Personal Reminiscences, Frank G. Houdek, Edmund P. Edmonds

Journal Articles

Contributors describe the mentoring they received as law librarians. Individually the pieces offer fascinating glimpses of individuals and relationships. Collectively, they demonstrate how important - and how varied - the process of mentoring has been and continues to be for the growth and evolution of the profession.