Legal Education Commons^™

A Law Clinic Systems Theory And The Pedagogy Of Interaction: Creating Legal Learning System, Patrick C. Brayer

Faculty Works

This article introduces a clinical systems approach that reframes professional experience as an interaction with a professional environment. The article encourages clinical faculty and other legal educators to contemplate the pedagogy of systemic interaction when teaching from experience and to then expand professional interactive opportunities within the short period of student participation. Clinical systems theory operates on the premise that students should reframe how they look at their surroundings so that the challenges that make up their professional system are not seen as problems but as means to a solution. Reframing by the student is realized in a clinical system …

Teaching For Lifelong Learning: Improving The Metacognitive Skills Of Law Students Through More Effective Formative Assessment Techniques, 40 Cap. U. L. Rev. 149 (2012), Anthony Niedwiecki

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

With the widespread criticism of legal education and the proposed changes to the American Bar Association (ABA) accreditation standards, law schools are looking for ways that they can better teach students to be lawyers. In fact, law schools may be facing a perfect storm for significant changes in legal education with the recent release of two high-profile reports criticizing legal education, the major restructuring of law firms and practice because of the weakening economy, and the push to change the ABA's accreditation standards.

These events highlight the need to prepare law students to be practice-ready and to help make them …

Teaching Students To Negotiate Like A Lawyer, John M. Lande

Faculty Publications

Some important stages might include: (1) initial client interview, (2) negotiation of a retainer agreement, (3) developing good working relationships with counterpart lawyers, (4) conducting factual investigation and/or legal research, (5) working with counterparts to plan the negotiation process, (6) resolving discovery disputes, (7) preparing client for negotiations, (8) conducting an ultimate negotiation, (9) engaging a mediator and mediating the matter, and (10) drafting a settlement agreement. This essay suggests that by using both single-stage and multi-stage simulations, instructors can better prepare students for negotiations that they will actually conduct in practice. These suggestions grow out my book, Lawyering with …

Educating Lawyers For Community, Anthony V. Alfieri

Articles

This Essay is part of an ongoing classroom study and clinical service project addressing the mindful education of law students and the civic training of lawyers. Its purpose is to build a pedagogy of community and public citizenship within an outcome-based, rotation curricular model of legal education sketched out by commonly allied scholars in prior work here in the Wisconsin Law Review and elsewhere. The Essay seeks to advance this earlier curricular work by integrating ethics, education and psychology, and law and religion into a cohesive pedagogical approach to civic professionalism and community engagement. From the springboard of integration next …

Uk Law Notes, 2012, University Of Kentucky College Of Law

Annual Magazines

No abstract provided.

Equipping Our Lawyers: Mitchell's Outcomes-Based Approach To Legal Education, Gregory M. Duhl

Faculty Scholarship

It is timely that the William Mitchell Law Review has decided to dedicate an issue to outcomes in legal education. As a long-time innovator in pedagogy, professional skills education, and experiential learning, William Mitchell has once again emerged as a leader in its outcomes-based approach to course and curricular design. Amid the current climate of uncertainty in legal education and the legal profession, and as a relative newcomer to Mitchell’s history, I believe in Mitchell’s future – tied to the past, but innovative and distinct. In this essay, I share our vision for increasing emphasis on outcomes, expanding experiential learning …

The Status Of Clinical Faculty In The Legal Academy: Report Of The Task Force On The Status Of Clinicians And The Legal Academy, Kate Kruse, Bryan L. Adamson, Brad Colbert, Kathy Hessler

Faculty Scholarship

In the midst of ongoing debates within the legal academy and the American Bar Association on the need for "practice-ready" law school graduates through enhanced attention to law clinics and externships and on the status of faculty teaching in those courses, this report identifies and evaluates the most appropriate modes for clinical faculty appointments. Drawing on data collected through a survey of clinical program directors and faculty, the report analyzes the five most identifiable clinical faculty models: unitary tenure track; clinical tenure track; long-term contract; short-term contract; and clinical fellowships. It determines that, despite great strides in the growth of …

Bringing Mindfulness Into The Law School Classroom: A Personal Journey, Richard C. Reuben

Faculty Publications

This autobiographical essay discusses how the author used the techniques and benefits associated with mindfulness to improve his law school classroom teaching. Mindfulness is a state of non-judgmental present moment awareness that is often cultivated through meditation practice but also carried forward into everyday life. The essay discusses how this stance of mindfulness helped the author achieve a greater connection with his students in a variety of both doctrinal and non-traditional classes by fostering more openness, receptivity, and responsiveness to where students are at in the classroom moment, as well as the greater clarity, courage, and compassion that can be …

Don't Just Do Something! E-Hearsay, The Present Sense Impression, And The Case For Caution In The Rulemaking Process, Liesa L. Richter

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Blueprint For Blogger Involvement In Academic Legal Symposia, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This essay reflects on my experience as the “featured blogger” at the Michigan State Law Review symposium Gender and the Legal Profession's Pipeline to Power and maps out possible models for future blogger involvement in other academic legal symposia. Successful blogger involvement in live academic events requires contributors who will write without much time to revise and organizers who will cede control over the way the conference is interpreted and discussed by others. Ultimately, I judge this experiment at the intersection of scholarly dialogue, legal education, and cyberspace to be a success. Blog-based conversations continued after the actual symposium and …

Winter 2012 Magazine

Ergo

No abstract provided.

The Influence Of Law And Economics Scholarship On Contract Law: Impressions Twenty-Five Years Later, Jeffrey L. Harrison

UF Law Faculty Publications

This is an update of a work done in conjunction with a contract law conference 25 years ago. My specific assignment was to assess the impact of law and economics scholarship on contract law. I responded by conducting an empirical study of judicial citations to selected law and economics works in order to ascertain the extent to which judges seemed to be relying on the teachings of law and economics. In effect, the effort was part of a general question that concerns all law professors: Does scholarship matter? I have repeated the study with respect to the scholarship sample selected …

When Things Go Wrong In The Clinic: How To Prevent And Respond To Serious Student Misconduct, Robert L. Jones Jr., Gerard F. Glynn, John J. Francis

University of Baltimore Law Review

No abstract provided.

Meeting The Professional Identity Challenge In Legal Education Through A Relationship-Centered Experiential Curriculum, Susan L. Brooks

University of Baltimore Law Review

Legal education is facing a series of crises, the worst of which may well be its graduates' perceived lack of professionalism qualities such as civility, judgment, and commitment to service. This urgent message has been amplified by recent high-profile critiques emphasizing the need to teach professionalism, as well as to make law schools more nurturing and humanistic environments. The purpose of this article is to show that the challenge of preparing law students to become caring and competent professionals can be met by using a sequence of experiential learning opportunities to teach relational competencies.

Even the harshest critics of legal …

In Defense Of Mandatory Curves, Joshua M. Silverstein

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

This article sets forth the first comprehensive defense of mandatory curves. It begins with a case study of one law school. That institution lacked formal grade normalization policies during the period of the case study. As a result, the school suffered from dramatic grade disparities. This article contains a list and statistical analysis of the most significant disparities. The statistical analysis supports the conclusion that the grade disparities were caused by differences in teacher grading philosophy, and not by student merit or any other factor.

Next, this article presents several arguments in favor of mandatory curves. The most crucial is …

In Defense Of Mandatory Curves, Joshua M. Silverstein

Law Faculty Scholarship

This article sets forth the first comprehensive defense of mandatory curves. It begins with a case study of one law school. That institution lacked formal grade normalization policies during the period of the case study. As a result, the school suffered from dramatic grade disparities. This article contains a list and statistical analysis of the most significant disparities. The statistical analysis supports the conclusion that the grade disparities were caused by differences in teacher grading philosophy, and not by student merit or any other factor.

Next, this article presents several arguments in favor of mandatory curves. The most crucial is …

What Is The Value Of Associations, Or Is It Safe To Row Alone, Darcy Kirk

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Editor's Note, Alfred C. Aman, Micah J. Nichols

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Globalization and Migration Symposium, Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Bloomington, Indiana, April 7-8, 2011

The New Legal Writing: The Importance Of Teaching Law Students How To Use E-Mail Professionally, Kendra Huard Fershee

Maryland Law Review Online

No abstract provided.

Resource-Based Learning And Course Design: A Brief Theoretical Overview And Practical Suggestions, Meg Butler

Faculty Publications By Year

Law librarians teaching legal research should follow resource based learning pedagogical strategies. This paper provides a background in constructivist educational theory and resource based learning before identifying useful instructional strategies regarding course design decisions related to goal-setting, assignments, rubrics, and assessment.

Law School Of The Future: Centre Of Cutting-Edge Practice?, Clark Cunningham

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

Empirical Evidence That Formative Assessments Improve Final Exams, Carol Springer Sargent, Andrea A. Curcio

Faculty Publications By Year

Despite the recent widespread call for law professors to incorporate more feedback during the semester, there is a relative dearth of empirical evidence about the impact of practice materials and feedback on law student performance. This study begins to fill that gap. Using five ungraded quizzes, a graded midterm, and reflection exercises, this study shows that feedback improved student performance on a cumulative final exam up to a full letter grade compared to a cohort with only a traditional end-of-semester final exam. The study confirms an earlier study showing that learning gains from formative assessments concentrate among those with stronger …

Gaining From The System: Lessons From The Law School Survey Of Student Engagement About Student Development In Law School, Carole Silver, Louis Rocconi, Heather Haeger, Lindsay Watkins

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This paper considers the factors that influence law students' assessment of their professional and academic development during law school. It uses responses of 5,612 third- and fourth-year law students to the Law School Survey of Student Engagement to identify student activities and behaviors that relate to professional and academic gains; individual and law school characteristics also are examined. Four aspects of the law school experience emerge as integral parts of students' professional and academic development.

Not Everyone Works For Biglaw: A Response To Neil J. Dilloff, Louis N. Schulze Jr., Lawrence Friedman

Faculty Publications

In a law review article entitled "The Changing Cultures and Economics of Large Law Firm Practice and Their Impact on Legal Education," DLA Piper partner Neil J. Dilloff details recent changes in the way that BigLaw does business. He then suggests a number of improvements in legal education ostensibly compelled by the new economic realities of large firm practice. While many of Attorney Dilloff's suggestions make very good sense, several problems exist. In this short essay, we take the position that law schools should not pattern current reforms solely on the needs of BigLaw. Instead, we suggest that reforming legal …

On The Occasion Of Leon Lazer’S 90th Birthday, Jeffrey B. Morris

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Female Law Students, Gendered Self-Evaluation, And The Promise Of Positive Psychology, Dara Purvis

Faculty Scholarship

For the last several decades, studies and surveys have shown that female law students perform worse and feel worse about their experiences in law school than do male students. Hidden in average figures, however, is a subgroup of female students who thrive. Positive psychology, focusing on what traits make people happy rather than how to alleviate depression, provides novel ideas of how to improve legal education for women without making accommodations specifically targeting gender.

Clinical Faculty In The Legal Academy: Hiring, Promotion And Retention, Bryan L. Adamson, Calvin G. C. Pang, Bradford Colbert, Kathy Hessler, Katherine R. Kruse, Robert R. Kuehn, Mary Helen Mcneal, David A. Santacroce

Articles

The Chair of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Section on Clinical Legal Education appointed us in 2005 to the Task Force on the Status of Clinicians and the Legal Academy (Task Force) to examine who is teaching in clinical programs and using clinical methodologies in American law schools and to identify the most appropriate models for clinical appointments within the legal academy. Our charges reflected two ongoing concerns: 1) the need to collect valid, reliable, and helpful data that would inform discussions on the breadth of clinical education in the legal academy and the status of clinical educators …

How Are Law Schools Addressing Major Changes In The Practice Of Law And In Accrediting Standards For Legal Education?, Margaret Ivey Bacigal

Law Faculty Publications

There was a consensus at the first panel discussion on how law schools are addressing major changes in legal practice and accrediting standards for legal education, that law schools are doing a good job teaching critical thinking and legal analysis. A recurring theme was that more experiential legal education is needed to help students become "practice ready." Deficits in legal writing, problem solving, and understanding the various contexts within which legal problems arise were concerns. A major issue is how do schools enhance legal education given the unsustainable costs and changes in the legal profession?

Foreword: 2012 Clinical Legal Education Symposium, Leigh Goodmark

University of Baltimore Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Critique Of Best Practices In Legal Education: Five Things All Law Professors Should Know, Michael T. Gibson

University of Baltimore Law Review

No abstract provided.