Legal Education Commons^™

Lawyers’, Law Professors’ And Law Students’ Free Speech: The Rule Of Law, Civility, And Informed Engagement, Eli Wald

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

The Article is organized as follows. Part I summarizes the traditional doctrine governing lawyers’ free speech, as well as the related doctrines of free speech, academic freedom, and tenure on college campuses. Part II explores twenty-first century developments that have thrown these old established doctrines into a state of flux.

Part III consists of three sections. The first suggests a new understanding of lawyers’ free speech, arguing that unprecedented twenty-first-century attacks on the rule of law justify recognizing a third, narrowly tailored restriction on lawyers’ free speech. In addition to the traditional restrictions grounded in protecting clients from lawyers’ …

Visible Learning: Adapting Primary And Secondary Pedagogical Approaches To Legal Education, Dawn Young

Faculty Publications & Other Works

As a new generation of students, Generation Z, enter law school, educators must continually adapt and improve to be the most effective in their roles. While traditional teaching methods like Socratic dialogue, the case method, and experiential learning are all valuable to varying degrees, law professors can gain further insight by exploring additional teaching approaches.

As law professors welcome Gen Z to their classrooms, how can they ensure they are adapting to the needs of this cohort? Could gaining an understanding of Gen Z’s prior educational experiences provide law professors with additional insight?

This Article argues that law professors can …

Chatgpt, Professor Of Law, Tammy Oltz

Faculty Scholarship

In this Paper, I test the ability of ChatGPT to assist with common tasks performed by law professors. To conduct the experiment, I ran four service-related prompts and three teaching-related prompts through the free version of ChatGPT and then analyzed the results. ChatGPT performed very well on the service-related prompts and moderately well on the teaching-related prompts. I conclude that ChatGPT can provide law professors with near-finished products for routine tasks and a solid jumping-off point for those that are more complex.

The History Of Religious Hiring At American Catholic Law Schools, John M. Breen, Lee J. Strang

Touro Law Review

A mission-driven institution requires personnel who are competent for the realization of the mission. The following article examines the practice of Catholic law schools hiring Catholics as law professors throughout the over 150-year history of Catholic legal education in the United States. This history shows that Catholic law schools alternately sought to hire Catholics as law professors or to hire individuals without regard to their religious affiliation as these schools’ self-understanding of mission changed over time.

Actively Achieving Greater Racial Equity In Law School Classrooms, Catherine Bramble, Rory Bahadur

Cleveland State Law Review

2020 illustrated the ongoing pervasiveness of implicit and explicit racism in our society. Less well-acknowledged and recognized is the extent to which Socratic pedagogy also reflects those pervasive racist realities while simultaneously resulting in inferior learning based on a teaching method invented 150+ years ago. Despite this racist and outdated reality, the legal academy has been reluctant to alter the traditional method of teaching. Tangible, empirical evidence obtained from data-driven cognitive learning science research demonstrates that active learning not only improves learning outcomes for all students, but also mitigates the structural effects of racism in the classroom thereby increasing racial …

Renard Strickland: A Legacy Of Generosity, Darla Jackson

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Will Legal Education Change Post-2020?, Heather K. Gerken

Michigan Law Review

The famed book review issue of the Michigan Law Review feels like a reminder of better days. As this issue goes to print, a shocking 554,103 people have died of COVID-19 in the United States alone, the country seems to have begun a long-overdue national reckoning on race, climate change and economic inequality continue to ravage the country, and our Capitol was stormed by insurrectionists with the encouragement of the president of the United States. In the usual year, a scholar would happily pick up this volume and delight in its contents. This year, one marvels at the scholars who …

Tribute To Bob Burdick, Naomi M. Mann

Faculty Scholarship

In losing Bob, we have truly lost a legal giant. He was a visionary in poverty law. He led significant litigation that improved the lives of countless individuals in the Commonwealth. It is because of him, a team of legal aid attorneys, and his students that individuals who are considered mentally incapacitated are entitled to Rogers hearings before being administered medication. It is also under his leadership that student attorneys throughout the Commonwealth can get attorney’s fees for their legal services organizations. Through his guidance and teaching, generations of law students have learned how to infuse their work (wherever they …

A Tribute To Robert (“Bob”) G. Burdick: A Man Of Vision And Light, Constance A. Browne

Faculty Scholarship

One of Bob’s former students said it best: “Bob was the lawyer I wanted to be. He was the person I wanted to be.”1 Bob was also the mentor, teacher, and innovator I aspired to be. For many marginalized clients, Bob brought the change they needed; the change justice required. He embodied hope—he saw the light and strove to enable others to share in its glow.

Extrapolating Lessons From A Master Mentor: What Bob Burdick Taught Me, Susan M. Akram

Faculty Scholarship

Bob Burdick began his career in clinical practice as a student in the clinic at Boston University School of Law in 1970, shortly after the civil clinic had been established as the Legal Aid Program in Hyde Park in 1969. Right out of law school, Bob worked at Greater Boston Legal Services (“GBLS”), he then was hired at BU as a clinical instructor and later promoted to director of what became the Civil Litigation Program in 1979. During the forty years Bob led the civil clinic (now renamed the Civil Litigation and Justice Program), he was the creative and innovative …

Some Special Words For Robert Burdick, Mary Connaughton

Faculty Scholarship

Many words can be used to describe Bob Burdick, my supervisor, colleague, and friend at the Boston University Civil Litigation Program since the fall of 1993. BU has recognized him as a “Quiet Legal Giant”; as his colleagues, we have commented on his compassion, low-key humility, creativity and innovation, strength as a mentor, and expertise in negotiation. We share common images and experiences as well: the open door to his office and the light already burning at 6:30 on dark mornings as we arrived early to go to court. His insight and understanding after a disturbing experience with an opposing …

From Academic Freedom To Cancel Culture: Silencing Black Women In The Legal Academy, Renee Nicole Allen

Faculty Publications

In 1988, Black women law professors formed the Northeast Corridor Collective of Black Women Law Professors, a network of Black women in the legal academy. They supported one another’s scholarship, shared personal experiences of systemic gendered racism, and helped one another navigate the law school white space. A few years later, their stories were transformed into articles that appeared in a symposium edition of the Berkeley Women’s Law Journal. Since then, Black women and women of color have published articles and books about their experiences with presumed incompetence, outsider status, and silence. The story of Black women in the legal …

Nine Ways Of Looking At Oklahoma City: An Essay On Sam Anderson’S Boom Town, Rodger D. Citron

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

What Will (Or Might?) Law School Look Like This Fall?: Teaching In The Midst Of A Pandemic, Ted Becker

Articles

January 2020 marked the start of a new semester for Michigan law schools. There was little reason to suspect it wouldn’t be a semester like any other: for 3Ls, the start of the stretch run to graduation; for 1Ls, a chance to begin anew after the stress of their first set of law school final exams; for law school faculty, administrators, and staff, a return to the excitement and activity of crowded hallways and classrooms after the brief interlude of winter break. Classes began and proceeded as normal.

Is Law A Discipline? Forays Into Academic Culture, Gene R. Shreve

Cleveland State Law Review

This Article explores academic culture. It addresses the reluctance in academic circles to accord law the full stature of a discipline. It forms doubts that have been raised into a series of four criticisms. Each attacks an academic feature of law, inviting the question: Is law different from the rest of the university in a way damaging its stature as an academic discipline? The Article concludes that, upon careful examination of each criticism, none establishes a difference between law and other disciplines capable of damaging law’s stature.

Join With Me, Won't You? Civic Engagement, Covid-19, And The Millennial Generation Of Law Professors, Joseph Schremmer

Faculty Articles

My goals in this essay are to place legal education’s COVID-19 crisis into this broader context and illuminate the unique opportunity that millennial law professors have to create the conditions for more robust community participation within and outside of our law schools. Part I summarizes the decline of civic engagement and social capital in preceding decades and its consequences for law, public discourse, and quality of life. Part II outlines how this deficit of social capital exacerbates the challenges facing law schools and professors in delivering legal education and constructing community during the coronavirus pandemic. Part III explores the unique …

Spoiler Alert: When The Supreme Court Ruins Your Brief Problem Mid-Semester, Margaret Hannon

Articles

Partway through the winter 2019 semester,1 the Supreme Court ruined my favorite summary judgment brief problem while my students were working on it. I had decided to use the problem despite the Court granting cert and knowing it was just a matter of time before the Court issued its decision. In this Article, I share some of the lessons that I learned about the risks involved in using a brief problem based on a pending Supreme Court case. I conclude that, while I have not typically set out to base a problem on a pending Supreme Court case, doing so …

Foundations: Curriculum & Faculty, University Of Michigan Law School

Miscellaneous Law School History & Publications

Michigan Law Faculty are the best of the best. As you look through these pages, you will see some of their accomplishments: They serve as senior advisers to policymakers and governments around the world, they argue important cases in courts of every level, and they produce superb research that addresses society's greatest problems.

Our faculty also take teaching very seriously. They are dedicated to using their research and experience to help create a curriculum that will challenge and transform you. Michigan Law's rich curriculum features foundational courses that evolve with the needs of the profession, a wide array of upper-level …

Collaboration With Doctrinal Faculty To Introduce Creac, Beth Hirschfelder Wilensky

Articles

When legal writing professors introduce CREAC (or IRAC, TREAT, etc.), our examples necessarily use some area of substantive law to demonstrate how the pieces of legal analysis fit together. And when we ask students to try drafting a CREAC analysis, they also have to learn the relevant substantive law first. Students might be asked to analyze whether a worker is an employee or independent contractor or whether the elements of a tort claim are satisfied. But that means that students need to learn the relevant substantive doctrine while they are also grappling with the basics of CREAC. In the language …

Using Appellate Clinics To Focus On Legal Writing Skills, Timothy Pinto

Articles

Five years ago, I went to lunch with a colleague. I was teaching a legal writing course to 1L students, and he taught in a clinic in which 2L and 3L students were required to write short motions and briefs. Several of his students had taken my writing class as 1Ls, and he had a question for me. "What the heck are you teaching these students?" he asked as we sat down. He explained that several of his students were struggling with preparing simple motions. They were not laying out facts clearly. They were not identifying key legal rules. In …

Of Brutal Murder And Transcendental Sovereignty: The Meaning Of Vested Private Rights, Adam J. Macleod

Faculty Articles

The idea of vested private rights is divisive; it divides those who practice law from those who teach and think about law. On one side of the divide, practicing lawyers act as though (at least some) rights exist and exert binding obligations upon private persons and government officials, such that once vested, the rights cannot be taken away or retrospectively altered. Lawyers convey estates in property, negotiate contracts, and write and send demand letters on the supposition that they are specifying and vindicating rights, which are rights not as a result of a judgment by a court in a subsequent …

As A Last Resort, Ask The Students: What They Say Makes Someone An Effective Law Teacher, James B. Levy

Maine Law Review

There is an adage among doctors that “as a last resort, ask the patient.” It is a not so facetious reference to the observation that because doctors are so highly educated and trained, they can start to believe they know what’s best for their patients better than the patients themselves. Consequently, these doctors may discount, or altogether ignore, the opinions of the very people they are suppose to be helping. The same observation could be made about the law professor-student relationship. Unlike doctors, though, our relationship with students is hierarchical, and thus we may be even less inclined to “ask …

The Downside Of Requiring Additional Experiential Courses In Law School, Douglas A. Kahn

Articles

In recent years, the bar has expressed dissatisfaction with what is considered by some to be inadequate preparation of law students to begin practicing law immediately after graduation. There are several reasons why this has become a matter of concern for the legal profession. The profession itself has undergone significant changes. Although there are a few exceptions, most law firms no longer wish to spend time training their young associates or allowing them much time to develop the skills they need. First, clients are unwilling to pay for the time a young lawyer spends in acquiring needed skills. Second, the …

Symposium Presenters, Editorial Board

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

Listing of symposium presenters and their institutional affiliation.

Experience 100+, University Of Michigan Law School

Miscellaneous Law School History & Publications

100+ facts about the University of Michigan Law School and Ann Arbor, Michigan for the 2017-2019.

The Law School (2013), Margaret A. Leary

Book Chapters

This chapter describes the growth and changes to the University of Michigan Law School for the period 1973-2013.

Is Legal Scholarship Worth Its Cost?, Paul Campos

Publications

No abstract provided.

Using Advanced Conflict Waivers To Teach Drafting, Ethics, And Professionalism, Edward R. Becker

Articles

On a substantive and ethical level, I tell my students to take on faith that if you were to do all of this and take all this into account, if you were to apply the conflict of interest and the disqualifications rules, it could make it extremely difficult or many of the firms involved in these matters to avoid being conflicted out; especially, if the parties and the kind of firms involved were not dealing with these conflicts and issues until a problem arose. The question I ask my students again at this point is what could be done. What …

Creating (And Teaching) The "Bail-To-Jail" Course, Jerold H. Israel

Articles

Yale Kamisar has explained how events that occurred about fifty years ago led to the creation of a stand-alone criminal procedure course and, a few years later, led to the division of that stand-alone course into two courses. The second of those courses came to be called, almost from the outset, the "Jail-to-Bail" course. My focus today is on why that course was created and how it was shaped. Modern Criminal Procedure, as Yale has noted, was the first coursebook designed for a stand-alone course in criminal procedure. Modern was published in 1966. A year earlier, the first version …

The Market Myth And Pay Disparity In Legal Academia, Paula A. Monopoli

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.