Legal Education Commons^™

The Art Of The Fact: An Afternoon Colloquy In A Tentative Key, Jethro K. Lieberman

Books

No abstract provided.

Continuing Classroom Conversation Beyond The Four Whys, Jeffrey W. Stempel, Bailey Kuklin

Scholarly Works

LAW school classes regularly prove Santayana's aphorism. Although nearly every law teacher desires to keep discussion focused and forward-moving, there are more than a few moments of thundering silence experienced in the classroom. Most of us adjust to this inevitability by positing some pedagogical virtue to still air and contenting ourselves with the knowledge that conversation-stopping “whys?” are usually delivered by us as teachers rather than the students. Perhaps we are underappreciative of the value discomfitting silence has, but we generally prefer that the conversation continue, that we miss the opportunity to feel simultaneously smug and uncomfortable, and that students …

What We're Not Telling Law Students - And Lawyers - That They Really Need To Know: Some Thoughts-In-Action Toward Revitalizing The Profession From Its Roots, Lawrence S. Krieger

Journal of Law and Health

Part I of this article sets forth a generally encouraging set of propositions about student and attorney life that I have found to be true. If they are, law students and lawyers need to hear them repeatedly. They collectively represent an approach to life and law which, to the extent it is internalized, can increase life satisfaction, raise standards of professional behavior, and relieve many of the kinds of distress that law students and lawyers are prone to experience. Some students seem to bring much of this information with them to law school years and after, do not lose sight …

Law And The Wisconsin Idea, Erika Lietzan, Paul D. Carrington

Faculty Publications

We recall a summer of contentment when American law was suffused with optimism, a season ending a long winter of despair and disorder. For the first fifteen years of this century, many (and perhaps most) American lawyers were filled with confidence that America had healed the wounds of civil war and was healing those of class struggle. We could, and we would, overcome all obstacles to peace and prosperity, not only for our people but for all mankind. This, it was widely believed, would be our century. As early as 1879 Daniel Coit Gilman, the premier educator of his time, …

Innovative Teaching Methods And Practical Uses Of Literature In Legal Education, Karin M. Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Because I believe a breadth of reading enhances one's ability to think and write, throughout the years I have tried to encourage extra curricular and diversified reading to be done in conjunction with my Legal Writing class. Unfortunately, yet understandably, law students generally only do the required work, but not more. As a consequence, I have discovered, over time, that the "readers" in my classes continue to read while the "non-readers" never take the opportunity to discover what advantage there might be in taking my advice. Because no change has occurred in students' overall attitudes, I decided to make life …

An Analysis Of Gender In Admission To The Canadian Common Law Schools From 1985-86 To 1994-95, Brian M. Mazer

Dalhousie Law Journal

Using statistical data covering a ten year period, this study examines the issue of gender representation in admissions to first year law study at common law schools in Canada. After addressing three identifiable steps in the admission process-applications, offers and registration-the author concludes that while there has been progress and the gap has narrowed, the problem of gender inequality persists.

A Case For Compulsory Legal Ethics Education In Canadian Law Schools, Jocelyn Downie

Dalhousie Law Journal

The author presents principled arguments, consequentialist arguments, arguments by analogy and arguments by authority in support of her conclusion that Canadian law schools should have compulsory legal ethics education. Among other things, she argues that legal ethics education is an imperfect but essential way to meet the obligations that arise from the public trust placed in the legal profession. She also explores a number of benefits that can accrue to students, law schools, the legal profession and society in general when ethics is a compulsory component of legal education.

Does Law Teaching Have Meaning? Teaching Effectiveness, Gauging Alumni Competence, And The Maccrate Report, Daniel Gordon

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Article examines law school teaching evaluation techniques and probes the use of a law school alumni survey to measure teaching effectiveness. The Article focuses on a survey of St. Thomas University School of Law graduates. The Article also examines teaching effectiveness in the context of the MacCrate Report and the so called gaps between legal education and law practice it identified. The Article argues that the MacCrate Report was incomplete in its coverage of teaching effectiveness, and that much of the discord it created can be overcome by focusing on teaching effectiveness.

Foreword: Under Construction- Latcrit Consciousness, Community, And Theory, Francisco Valdes

Articles

No abstract provided.

Why Are U.S. Lawyers Not Learning From Comparative Law?, Ernst C. Stiefel, James Maxeiner

All Faculty Scholarship

Address the problem of comparative law in the United States. Explains why comparative law matters. Gives reasons why U.S. lawyers are not learning from comparative law. These include lack of skills, lack of institutional supports, and legal structures that resist comparative law and an attitude that comparative law has little to teach.

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.

Teaching In The Shadow Of The Bar, Joan W. Howarth

Scholarly Works

This Essay is a memorial tribute to Professor Trina Grillo. Trina took seriously what many of us know but find too hard to remember: the student who is academically disqualified or who fails the bar examination might be the most brilliant in the class or the most needed within the profession. When we conceive of the bar exam as a particularly grueling and potentially unfair rite of passage between law school and the practice of law, we collude in hiding the pervasive and often negative power of the bar exam. The bar examination permeates and controls fundamental aspects of legal …

Preface: Law In (Case)Books, Law (School) In Action: The Case For Casebook Reviews, Janet Ainsworth

Seattle University Law Review

In the aggregate, these casebook reviews demonstrate the significance of the casebook, with its strengths and weaknesses, not just in shaping the temporary experience of students and teachers in the law school classroom but more profoundly for the longer-term development of the legal profession. Because casebooks still maintain the center of gravity in legal education, they serve as the vehicle through which each succeeding generation of lawyers is socialized into patterns of thinking about law and legal practice. Ironically, any single popular casebook probably has a more direct and profound influence on the legal culture than all of the other …

Striving To Teach “Justice, Fairness, And Morality”, Jane H. Aiken

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The MacCrate Report has reinvigorated legal education by identifying fundamental skills and values that are essential to effective lawyering. As we go through the process of ensuring that we train students in these fundamentals, we should not ignore the values identified in the report. At the heart of these values is the injunction that lawyers should strive to promote justice, fairness, and morality. Law schools and law teachers can play a significant role in instilling in our students a passion to ensure justice.

Comparing United States And New Zealand Legal Education: Are U.S. Law Schools Too Good?, Gregory S. Crespi

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Article offers a thoughtful comparison of the legal educational systems of the United States and New Zealand. The author highlights the significant differences between these two legal educational systems by contrasting their admissions policies, clinical programs, "law-and-economics" electives, and staffing of required courses. Based on this analysis, the author concludes that although U.S. law schools are clearly "better," such superiority may have been achieved at too high of a cost, in terms of both the substantial resources now devoted to legal education which could otherwise be applied to alternative uses and the problematic effects of the stratified legal educational …

The Impact Of The Americans With Disabilities Act On Legal Education And Academic Modifications For Disabled Law Students: An Empirical Study, Donald H. Stone

All Faculty Scholarship

Law schools face the challenge of providing disabled students with reasonable accommodations in their academic setting in a fair and equitable manner. Disabled law students continue to demand academic modifications in course examinations by claiming to be persons with mental or physical disabilities. Law schools are also beginning to see requests for extension of time for degree completion, priority in course registration, and authorization to tape record classes, all by virtue of an entitlement under the mandates of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Persons with a wide range of disabilities are seeking academic modifications from their law schools. What …

The Revolving Door Part I: A Federal Prosecutor Returns To School, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

Law teaching is hard work. To my trial lawyer friends who expressed envy at the easy life I must be enjoying, I often said they should imagine having to prepare and present five or six oral arguments a week, every week, for months on end. To the novice teacher presenting several courses for the first time, the task often feels just that daunting. As practicing lawyers, we flatter ourselves that we are "experts" in our fields, and thus that it would be a simple matter to step over to the local law school and, with minimal preparation, unburden ourselves of …

Teacher Power In The Law School Classroom, Julie Macfarlane

Dalhousie Law Journal

Law teachers make choices over syllabus material, teaching methods and assessment formats, and thus inevitably exercise some control over what and how students learn. The actualpowerof each individual law professor will depend on the context of her particular classroom and her perceived credibility, generally defined by the university as the demonstration of a particular (rationalist) model of subject expertise. The intrinsic hierarchies and highly competitive culture of law school sustain this traditional model of knowledge along with its congruent image of the professor as autonomous, powerful and the focus of the classroom. Feminist law teachers and others who wish to …

The Use And Effectiveness Of Various Learning Materials In An Evidence Class, Stephen J. Shapiro

All Faculty Scholarship

Like many law teachers, I take reasonable care in selecting the outside materials I require my students to use (or recommend to them) in preparing for class and studying for the exam. I base my choice on my own notions of what would be most helpful to them in learning the material, preparing for class, succeeding on the exam, and preparing to be lawyers. I carefully weigh such matters as length of assignment, interest to the students, and active versus passive learning.

My assessment, however, is based almost entirely on my own notions of what the students will find most …

5, Amy D. Ronner

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

"Simple Truths" About Moral Education , Eleanor W. Myers

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Ethical Commitments, Anthony V. Alfieri

Articles

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 …

How We Teach: A Survey Of Teaching Techniques In American Law Schools, Steven I. Friedland

Seattle University Law Review

A person's law school teaching is predicated on or supported by one or more learning theories, therefore, Part II of this Article discusses cognitive and developmental learning theories and how they relate to law school teaching methods. Part III explains the teaching survey that was sent to the law schools, including the questionnaire used and the type of respondents who answered. Part IV of the Article reproduces the questionnaire results. Part V analyzes those results. This Article concludes that teaching methods should be consciously related to the learning process. Only by focusing on how students learn can a teacher truly …

“Some Kind Of Lawyer”: Two Journeys From Classroom To Courtroom And Beyond, Terry Birdwhistell

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In January 1996 a panel of the American Bar Association released a report concluding that "discrimination continues to permeate the structures, practices and attitudes of the legal profession." It has been a long journey in women's efforts to obtain equity in both law schools and in the legal profession generally. This article is composed of two interviews with University of Kentucky College of Law graduates: Norma Boster Adams (’52) and Annette McGee Cunningham (’80). Twenty-eight years separated Norma Adams and Annette Cunningham at the College of Law. They faced different obstacles and chose varied paths to success. While each can …

Books Vs. Non-Book Information, Betty W. Taylor

UF Law Faculty Publications

Book survival, particularly in the field of law, is faced with various challenges in this modern age of computer technology." Are law librarians at the crossroads where we have chosen non-book resources over books because of their superiority in content and value? Will books survive? Will only some types of books survive? These questions serve as fodder for futurists, happy solutions for financial woes of administrators, and concern of librarians about service, space, and, perhaps most important of all, their own survival.

Development Of Law Firm Training Programs: Coping With A Turbulent Environment, Edwin H. Greenebaum

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

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.

Confronting Expectations: Women In The Legal Academy, Christine Haight Farley

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

A seemingly insurmountable barrier to women's success in legal academia is the way they are perceived. Numerous studies have shown that women are perceived as less competent than men and that the same work is evaluated more critically when it is thought to have been done by a woman than by a man. This problem exists in all aspects of life, but it is especially acute for women in professional roles, such as academics. Legal academia, however, seems to be particularly resistant to viewing women as equally competent. The article presents original empirical research that shows that student evaluations of …