Legal Education Commons^™

Professional Identity Formation Through Pro Bono Revealed Through Conversation Analysis, Linda F. Smith

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Law school is supposed to teach legal analysis and lawyering skills as well as mold law students’ professional identities. Pro Bono work provides an opportunity for law students to use their legal knowledge and skills and to develop their identities as emerging legal professionals. As important as both pro bono work and identity formation are, there has been very little research regarding how pro bono contributes to students’ identity formation. This paper utilizes a data set of over forty student-client consultations at a pro bono brief advice clinic that have been recorded and transcribed. It uses conversation analysis to study …

“The Worst Idea Ever”: Lessons From One Law School’S Embrace Of Online Learning, Eric S. Janus

Faculty Scholarship

This essay explores one law school's contrarian and pioneering embrace of online education into the core of its J.D. program, a five-year journey undertaken by William Mitchell College of Law (now Mitchell Hamline School ofLaw). This essay makes a simple point. Online pedagogy ought to be part of the palette of tools available for the design of J.D. programs. But placing it at the core of a J.D. program is not universally to be desired. Like any pedagogy, these online tools have their strengths and their weaknesses. The particular combination of tools and methods represents a question of design: of …

Sociolegal Research, The Law School Survey Of Student Engagement, And Studying Diversity In Judicial Clerkships, Shih-Chun Steven Chien, Ajay K. Mehrotra, Xiangnong Wang

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

The Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE) is an extraordinary asset for examining a vast array of topics related to the educational experiences of law students. By focusing on student-oriented surveys, LSSSE provides law schools and researchers an invaluable opportunity to delve into a wide range of issues dealing with the law student experience, including the career preferences and expectations of students throughout their law school years. In particular, there remains a wealth of opportunity for scholars interested in using LSSSE data to explore issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in legal education and the profession.

The American Bar …

Integrated Learning, Integrated Faculty, Rachel Arnow-Richman

UF Law Faculty Publications

A fundamental obstacle to the success of legal education’s practice readiness movement is the “bifurcated faculty.” Most law schools continue to operate a two tiered system in which a group of elite credentialed “doctrinal” faculty enjoy the generous compensation, security, and privileges associated with tenure, while an underclass of contract faculty teach work intensive “skills” courses for lower pay and lesser status. This Essay analyzes the bifurcated faculty as a personnel practice, leveraging insights from management theory and employment discrimination scholarship to evaluate law schools as employers. It considers, first, the rise of new economy management practices that eschew static …

The Systems Approach To Teaching Business Associations, Lynn M. Lopucki, Andrew Verstein

UF Law Faculty Publications

The systems approach applies the methods of systems analysis to law. The principal method is to describe the system, situate a problem within the system, and take system mechanics into account in solving it. The system might be the “legal system”—essentially litigation. But more often, it is a “law-related system”—one not composed of law, but one in which law plays a role. That system might be crime, the Internet, the corporation, or any other activity substantially affected by law. The analyst situates the application of law in the context of the physical system as it actually operates. In business associations, …

Ai Report: Humanity Is Doomed. Send Lawyers, Guns, And Money!, Ashley M. London

Law Faculty Publications

AI systems are powerful technologies being built and implemented by private corporations motivated by profit, not altruism. Change makers, such as attorneys and law students, must therefore be educated on the benefits, detriments, and pitfalls of the rapid spread, and often secret implementation of this technology. The implementation is secret because private corporations place proprietary AI systems inside of black boxes to conceal what is inside. If they did not, the popular myth that AI systems are unbiased machines crunching inherently objective data would be revealed as a falsehood. Algorithms created to run AI systems reflect the inherent human categorization …

A Light Unseen: The History Of Catholic Legal Education In The United States: A Response To Our Colleagues And Critics, John M. Breen, Lee J. Strang

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

A Conversation With Associate Justice Elena Kagan, Justice Elena Kagan

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.

Bending (And Breaking) The Cost Curve Of Legal Education, Peter B. Rutledge

Popular Media

Law school graduates will accumulate an average of over $140,000 in debt for their undergraduate and law school studies, and some law schools have reported costs exceeding $100,000 annually. Peter B. “Bo” Rutledge, dean of the University of Georgia School of Law, examines the ever-escalating costs and explains his school’s three-part strategy for dealing with it.

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 …

Women Law Deans, Gender Sidelining, And Presumptions Of Incompetence, Laura M. Padilla

Faculty Scholarship

Discussions of presumptions of incompetence and gender sidelining all address challenges that women, especially women of color, face in leadership roles. This Article explores these topics in the context of law deans.

This Article starts with updated data on the number of women law deans, including women of color, and demonstrates increased numbers of both women and women of color in deanships. It then shifts to plausible explanations for this growth: some optimistic and some more skeptical. It may be no coincidence that as the job became less desirable, women were appointed in greater numbers.

Next, this Article provides narrative …

The Voice Of The Gods Is Crippling: Law School For Helicoptered Millennials, Katerina P. Lewinbuk, Taci Villarreal, Elena Bolonina

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

As millennials dominate law school classrooms, many professors are recognizing the importance of altering the traditional methods of teaching law. Millennials act, think, and learn differently. Numerous factors are linked to why this new generation of law students is distinctively different than previous generations. This article examines these factors and how they influence millennials’ learning styles. Alternative methods of teaching millennial law students are also discussed and proposed, along with a specific example of a tailored professional responsibility textbook and course to the modern law student.

Facilitating Distinctive And Meaningful Change Within Us Law Schools (Part 2): Pursuing Successful Plan Implementation Through Better Resource Management, Patrick H. Gaughan, Samantha J. Prince

Akron Law Faculty Publications

In Part 1 of this series, one of the current authors used institutional theory, behavioral economics, and psychology to explain why US law schools have had difficulty evolving faster and better.'The author then used institutional entrepreneurship to propose a seven-step, faculty-led, operational change process designed to overcome institutional isomorphism and to enable each law school to formulate a distinctive, meaningful, strategic plan. In Part z, the current article addresses the typical implementation challenges to be expected within the context of existing law school governance. The article begins by discussing the Resource Based View of the firm and the role of …

Unsafe At Any Campus: Don't Let Colleges Become The Next Cruise Ships, Nursing Homes, And Food Processing Plants, Peter H. Huang, Debra S. Austin

Publications

The decision to educate our students via in-person or online learning environments while COVID-19 is unrestrained is a false choice, when the clear path to achieve our chief objective safely, the education of our students, can be done online. Our decision-making should be guided by the overriding principle that people matter more than money. We recognize that lost tuition revenue if students delay or defer education is an institutional concern, but we posit that many students and parents would prefer a safer online alternative to riskier in-person options, especially as we get closer to fall, and American death tolls rise. …

Law Students And Cell Phone Use: Results Of A Six-School Survey, Hugh D. Spitzer, Robert M. Jarvis, Cindy I.T. Archer, Linda Galler, Jodi L. Wilson, Mark E. Wojcik

Articles

The sight of a law student using his or her cell phone now is so common that law professors do not give it a second thought. But what, exactly, is the student doing? Texting with friends? Shopping? Watching a movie? To try to find out, during the Fall 2019 semester we asked our six diverse law schools to take an online survey consisting of eighteen questions. To our knowledge, this is the first phone survey of law students.

This paper presents the results of the survey, exploring applications used (text, social media, email, etc.) and differences by audience (e.g., whether …

Is The Legal Profession Finally Ready For The Institutional Change Necessary To Yield Greater Diversity?, Carla D. Pratt

Other Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Safeguard Or Barrier: An Empirical Examination Of Bar Exam Cut Scores, Victor D. Quintanilla, Sam Erman, Michael B. Frisby

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In 2019, nearly 70,000 people took the bar exam. More than forty percent failed. Given the existing scores required to pass those exams (the “cut score”), nearly 30,000 test-takers otherwise qualified to practice law were lost to the profession. Had the cut score been lower, many would now be lawyers. So it goes every year, with staggering costs. Legal educators devote substantial resources to teaching tens of thousands of people legal skills that never get put to use in law practice. A national crisis in access to justice grows more entrenched. Applicants invest three years and countless thousands of dollars …

The Bar Exam And The Covid-19 Pandemic: The Need For Immediate Action, Patricia E. Salkin, Eileen Kaufman, Claudia Angelos, Sara J. Berman, Mary Lu Bilek, Carol L. Chomsky, Andrea A. Curcio, Marsha Griggs, Joan W. Howarth, Deborah Jones Merritt, Judith Welch Wegner

Scholarly Works

The novel coronavirus COVID-19 has profoundly disrupted life in the United States. Schools and universities have closed throughout much of the country. Businesses have shuttered, and employees are working from home whenever possible. Cities and states are announcing lockdowns in which citizens may leave their homes only for vital errands or exercise.

Medical experts advise that at least some of these restraints will continue for 18 months or more—until a vaccine is developed, tested, and administered widely. It is possible that localities will be able to lift some of these restrictions (such as lockdowns and school closures) intermittently during those …

Access To Law Or Access To Lawyers? Master’S Programs In The Public Educational Mission Of Law Schools, Mark Edwin Burge

University of Miami Law Review

The general decline in juris doctor (“J.D.”) law school applicants and enrollment over the last decade has coincided with the rise of a new breed of law degree. Whether known as master of jurisprudence, juris master, master of legal studies, or other names, these graduate degrees all have a target audience in common: adult professionals who neither are nor seek to become practicing attorneys. Inside legal academia and among the practicing bar, these degrees have been accompanied by expressed concerns that they detract from the traditional core public mission of law schools—educating lawyers. This Article argues that non-lawyer master’s programs …

2018-2019 Annual Report, Caroline L. Osborne

Law Library Annual Reports and Assessments

No abstract provided.

Teaching Social Justice Through “Hip Hop And The Law”, André Douglas Pond Cummings

Law Faculty Scholarship

This article queries whether it is possible to teach law students about social justice through a course on hip hop and its connection to and critique of the law. We argue, in these dedicated pages of the North Carolina Central Law Review, that yes, hip hop and the law offer an excellent opportunity to teach law students about social justice. But, why publish an article advocating that national law schools offer a legal education course on Hip Hop and the Law, or more specifically, Hip Hop & the American Constitution? Of what benefit might a course be that explores hip …

Access To Law Or Access To Lawyers? Master's Programs In The Public Educational Mission Of Law Schools, Mark Burge

Faculty Scholarship

The general decline in juris doctor (“J.D.”) law school applicants and enrollment over the last decade has coincided with the rise of a new breed of law degree. Whether known as a master of jurisprudence, juris master, master of legal studies, or other names, these graduate degrees all have a target audience in common: adult professionals who neither are nor seek to become practicing attorneys. Inside legal academia and among the practicing bar, these degrees have been accompanied by expressed concerns that they detract from the traditional core public mission of law schools—educating lawyers. This Article argues that non-lawyer master’s …

Gender Inequity Throughout The Legal Academy: A Quick Look At The (Surprisingly Limited) Data, Kristen K. Tiscione

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The long-standing overrepresentation of female law faculty in skills teaching and service-oriented positions is well documented. In contrast, the historical underrepresentation of female law faculty in top dean and tenured or tenure-track teaching positions has been widely recognized but difficult to quantify. The American Bar Association has a link in the statistics archives of its website to a chart from Fall 2013 on the gender, ethnicity, and status of law faculty. The Association of American Law Schools (AALS) links to the same chart on its website. This chart replaced a similar chart covering 2008 to 2009 that the ABA has …

Mediation And Millennials: A Generational Shift In Dispute System Preferences, Shawna Benston, Brian Farkas

Pace Law Review

Millennials have been the subject of intense media scrutiny for more than a decade. Studies have examined their social, financial, technological, and work habits. However, few studies have examined this generation’s attitudes or proclivities towards civil litigation. Such an examination presents two problems: First, the absence of data on litigants’ age makes an empirical study virtually impossible. Second, generalizations about an entire generation are inherently problematic, glossing over countless cultural, economic, familial, and demographic differences. Nevertheless, this Article argues that millennials’ experiences and educations have primed them, at the margins, to avoid litigation more than prior generations. Instead, this generation …

Small Teaching Transactional Skills In The Legal Writing Classroom, Adam N. Eckart

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

As law schools are increasingly charged with creating “practice ready” graduates, calls to integrate transactional skills into a historically litigation-focused curriculum continue to amplify. Law schools have made great strides in addressing this need in the 2L and 3L years by offering advanced courses, clinics, and concentrations, but more can be done in the formative first year of law school. In my Legal Practice Skills (“LPS”) course, I utilize the principles of “small teaching” to introduce transactional skills, foster learning, and increase student engagement.

Rural Practice As Public Interest Work, Hannah Haksgaard

Maine Law Review

As the rural lawyer shortage continues to grow, rural states and communities must find new ways of attracting law students and graduates to rural practice. This Article explores incentives based on conceptualizing rural private practice as public interest work. Rural lawyers provide public interest lawyering through pro bono cases, mixed practices, community service, and even through providing fee-paid services in rural communities. The Article asserts that law schools and rural communities can capitalize on this view to recruit new lawyers and argues that federal loan forgiveness programs should be expanded to cover rural lawyers.

Foreword, Mac Walton Editor-In-Chief

Maine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Connecting Prospective Law Students' Goals To The Competencies That Clients And Legal Employers Need To Achieve More Competent Graduates And Stronger Applicant Pools And Employment Outcomes, Neil W. Hamilton

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

The author’s chapters in the 2018 professional responsibility hornbook, Legal Ethics, Professional Responsibility, and the Legal Profession, discuss the new data available to help law faculties and students understand the competencies that clients and legal employers want. The foundation for many of these competencies—like ownership over continuous professional development and the relational competencies with clients and teams—is the student’s professional identity or moral core. But students need help to understand these connections.

We have seen some very useful new data over the last few months that will help build bridges among the three major stakeholders in legal education: the …

Time Traveling With Timelines: Web Apps For Storytelling In Libraries, Sharon Bradley, Rachel S. Evans

Articles, Chapters and Online Publications

From online embeds to interactive displays, timelines can serve many purposes and tell powerful stories. At the University of Georgia’s Law Library we have teamed up with faculty and staff to bring history to life, engage students, and preserve scholarly and institutional milestones. Through trial and error we have found a variety of tools for creating timelines digitally. In this article we share our four favorite web-based applications for creating timelines including Tiki-Toki, TimeToast, Prezi and Piktochart.

Reflections From Calicon19: Two Best Sessions, Rachel S. Evans

Articles, Chapters and Online Publications

Rachel Evans summarizes the recent Computer Assisted Legal Education (CALI) conference held in Columbia, SC in June 2019. Specifically Evans reviews two sessions related to automating work in institutional repositories and using eResources for more affordable course materials.

TechScans is a blog to share the latest trends and technology tools for technical services law librarians. The official blog of the TS-SIS and OBS-SIS AALL groups.