Legal Education Commons^™

Celebrating 30 Years Of The Indigenous Blacks & Mi’Kmaq Initiative: How The Creation Of A Critical Mass Of Black And Aboriginal Lawyers Is Making A Difference In Nova Scotia, Naiomi Metallic

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Drawing on my own experience as alumni of the Indigenous Blacks & Mi’kmaq Initiative at the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University—one of the only dedicated access program in a Canadian law school for Black and Aboriginal students—I argue that such programs create optimal conditions for fostering greater awareness of critical race issues within the legal profession. The reason for this is that such programs create a critical mass of Black and Aboriginal law students and alumni, who support and encourage each other and, as a result, acquire confidence and skill in raising, and educating others about, critical race …

An Introduction To Legal Research, Anne Burnett, Stephen Wolfson

Presentations

As part of UGA Summer Academy Legal Camp two law librarians teamed up to give an introduction to legal research to high school students from across the country, including tips and strategies for using Google effectively.

From Decoder Rings To Deep Fakes: Translating Complex Technologies For Legal Education, Jason Tubinis, Rachel S. Evans

Presentations

Technological developments are disrupting the practice of law” is a common refrain, but the last few years has seen some particularly complex pieces of technology become the hot new thing in legal tech. This session will look at blockchain, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and ‘Deep Fakes’ as examples of how instructors can stay abreast of technological developments and inform themselves about their impacts in the legal profession. Then we will look at how to translate the complexities and jargon of these examples into lessons for for-credit courses, one-off informational sessions, or meetings with stakeholders.

Learning outcomes:

• Participants will be able …

Reforming Recidivism: Making Prison Practical Through Help, Katelyn Copperud

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

While Texas has long been recognized as “Tough Texas” when it comes to crime, recent efforts have been made to combat that reputation. Efforts such as offering “good time” credit and more liberal parole standards are used to reduce the Texas prison populations. Although effective in reducing prison populations, do these incentives truly reduce a larger issue of prison overpopulation: recidivism?

In both state and federal prison systems, inmate education is proven to reduce recidivism. Texas’s own, Windham School District, provides a broad spectrum of education to Texas Department of Criminal Justice inmates; from General Education Development (GED) classes to …

The Consummate Legal Education: Teaching Analysis As Doctrine, Julie Ann Interdonato

Concordia Law Review

This paper addresses the necessity and means of developing analysis and its written expression as an independent topic of study throughout students’ law school tenure. “Doctrine,” as it appears in the above title, is defined as the transcendent analytic concepts that underlie the common law, and the modality of their application in the law’s constant evolution. The purpose of presenting analysis in this context is to enhance analytic instruction presently provided in law school, and thereby take students one step further in their education, into the realm of the practicing attorney. In this manner, educators, building on the case law …

News - University Of Georgia School Of Law, Rachel S. Evans

Georgia Library Quarterly

No abstract provided.

The Hybrid Law Library Orientation: Video Creation, Face-To-Face Reconfiguration And Comparative Assessment, Rachel S. Evans

Presentations

In Fall 2018 UGA Law Library changed the orientation process for incoming students. The 3-pronged approach (1) updated a libguide which served as home-base for the online orientation experience, (2) created a brand new video to deliver basic information to 1Ls in the form of a virtual tour, and (3) introduced a one-day outreach which included a resource fair, librarian meet-and-greet, and in-person library tours event to re-enforce the guide and video content. This program will share the reasons why we designed orientation this way, how we did it and assessed impact, and what our results were.

A Reply To The National Conference Of Bar Examiners: More Talk, No Answers, So Keep On Shopping, Suzanne Darrow-Kleinhaus

Ohio Northern University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Digital Pro Bono: Leveraging Technology To Provide Access To Justice, Kathleen Elliott Vinson, Samantha A. Moppett

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Part I of this Article explores the United States justice system’s failure to adequately serve all people irrespective of wealth and position. Next, Part II discusses the ABA’s call to leverage technology to increase access to justice. Part III explores ABA Free Legal Answers Online, the program that the ABA pioneered to help confront the justice gap in the United States. Subsequently, Part IV illustrates how law schools can leverage technology to increase access to justice for low-income communities while providing pro bono opportunities for attorneys and students in their state. This Part highlights Massachusetts as an example of …

Teaching Justice-Connectivity, Michael Pinard

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay conveys the importance of building in law students the foundation to recognize the various systems, institutions, and conditions that often crash into the lives of their clients, as well as the residents of the communities that are just outside law schools’ doors. It does so through proposing a teaching model that I call Justice-Connectivity. This model aims for students to understand and be humbled by the ways in which different institutions, systems, and strands of law converge upon, oppress, isolate, and shun individuals, families, and communities. The ultimate teaching lesson is that individuals, families, and communities are often …

Legal Education Unbundled (And Rebundled), Megan Carpenter

Law Faculty Scholarship

This essay calls for an unbundling of legal education, much like the kind of unbundling we have seen in the cable, music, and print news media. It suggests that the standard legal education "bundle"-the generalized JD-is just one of many forms of legal education that can be packaged appropriately for today's legal education market needs.

Uniting The Head, Hands, And Heart: How Specialty Externships Can Combat Public Interest Drift, Alexi Freeman, Katherine Steefel

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Many students come to law school because they want to use their law degrees “for good,” to help people, have an impact on society, or create social change. As has been extensively documented, these plans often dissipate at some point during their three years. Public interest drift, as this phenomenon is commonly referred, is a crisis caused by numerous factors. It requires a full-fledged, multi-faceted effort to push back against it. In this article, we propose the development of public interest specialty externship programs as one tool to combat drift. These programs offer students the ability to extern at a …

Happy Golden Anniversary, St. Mary's Law Journal!, Stephen M. Sheppard

Faculty Articles

Half a century ago, a handful of dedicated St. Mary's law students and faculty begat a premiere experience in legal education, the St. Mary's Law Journal. As the Journal marks its 50th anniversary, it continues to represent the diligence, imagination, practicality, and sheer effort of our faculty and students,

The Rise Of The Creative Law School, Gregory W. Bowman

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

No abstract provided.

On The Values Of Words, Michael J. Cedrone

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Mary Norris' Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen and Kory Stamper's Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries use observations about language as a touchstone for a nuanced examination of deeper truths about language, culture, and law in a changing world. In so doing, they point to deeper truths about the use of language and its consequences. Law students, lawyers, and law professors will benefit from journeying with Norris and Stamper towards the goal of crafting prose that is clear, accurate, and inclusive. In particular, the legal community will benefit from the books' efforts to define …

Using Mindfulness Meditation To Foster Reflection In Externships, Alison F. Lintal

Faculty Scholarly Works

In an externship setting, where students are asked to combine theory and practice, intentional reflection is key to processing what has been learned from experience. Students are asked to maintain an open curiosity about practice and to connect with their inner experiential world as part of this process. There is a natural connection between reflection and contemplative practice. Teaching reflection to law students can be enhanced by introducing mindfulness practices which share similar attributes such as open awareness, observation, and acceptance of both positive and negative outcomes. This article describes the ways in which mindfulness techniques can be introduced into …

Reflections On A More “Catholic” Catholic Legal Education, William M. Treanor

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

I am grateful to Professors Breen and Strang for their thoughtful book about Catholic legal education in the United States. It is an important topic, and their work promises to be a significant contribution to the conversation about the mission of Catholic law schools. My reflections here will focus on Chapter Five.

All of us participating in this symposium are engaged in the collective enterprise of thinking through and implementing what it means to be a Catholic law school. As a historian, personally I am well aware of the value of studying where we have been as part of the …

Foreword, Sudha Setty

Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, the Author reflects on legal education and the role of law reviews. Law reviews not only serve as an educational opportunity, but offer potential legal reforms to help legal scholars, practitioners, and the public understand possible shortcomings of the current state of the law and help law and policy makers contemplate potential improvements.

From The Courtroom To The Classroom: How A Litigator Became A Transactional Drafting Professor, Amy Bauer

Publications

No abstract provided.

On Being Old Codgers: A Conversation About A Half Century In Legal Education, Mark Tushnet, Louis Michael Seidman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This conversation, conducted over three evenings, captures some of our thoughts about the last half century of legal education as both of us near retirement. We have edited the conversations so as to eliminate verbal stumbles and present our ideas more coherently, slightly reorganized a small part of the conversation, and added a few explanatory footnotes. However, we have attempted to keep the informal tone of our discussions.

The "Pink Ghetto" Pipeline: Challenges And Opportunities For Women In Legal Education, Renee Nicole Allen, Alicia Jackson, Deshun Harris

Faculty Publications

The demographics of law schools are changing and women make up the majority of law students. Yet, the demographics of many law faculties do not reflect these changing demographics with more men occupying faculty seats. In legal education, women predominately occupy skills positions, including legal writing, clinic, academic success, bar preparation, or library. According to a 2010 Association of American Law Schools survey, the percentage of female lecturers and instructors is so high that those positions are stereotypically female.

The term coined for positions typically held by women is "pink ghetto." According to the Department of Labor, pink-collar-worker describes jobs …

A Justice School: Teaching Forced Migration Through Experiential Learning, Lauren Gilbert

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

This article demonstrates how experiential learning in law school can prepare students for the practice of law and, if done well, instill in them a life-long commitment to social justice. I use my efforts to integrate a public service component into my immigration courses to illustrate this. Despite institutional obstacles encountered along the way, the success of this effort ultimately turned on working collaboratively with student leaders with a shared commitment to equal justice, winning the support of well-placed individuals within our administration, and ensuring that the experience for students was rewarding. Our signature achievement has been the Karnes Pro …

Teaching Communication Skills In Transactional Simulations, Eric J. Gouvin, Katherine M. Koops, James E. Moliterno, Carol E. Morgan, Carol D. Newman

Faculty Scholarship

This Article describes the role of communication exercises in transactional law and skills education, and provides several examples of such exercises. After a discussion of fundamental differences between communication in the context of litigation and transactional law, the Article discusses exercises designed to improve written communication skills, including the use of e-mail, in the context of transactional law. It follows with a similar discussion of exercises focusing on oral communication skills, including listening, interviewing, counseling, negotiation, and presentations. The Article concludes with examples of exercises combining oral and written communication skills in the context of simulated transactions.

The Deconstructed Issue-Spotting Exam, Jamie Abrams

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This article proposes a teaching technique for use in large, Socratic-style law school classes to embed exam preparation, formative assessment, and lawyering simulations in the course without overburdening the professor or students. This technique is sustainable, yet highly efficacious for students.

Law schools nationwide are implementing new reforms pushing law schools toward stronger assessment techniques and client-based simulations better preparing students for the practice of law. Many law schools have implemented these reforms around the margins or outside of the traditional doctrinal course. Law schools have generally added new classes with experiential learning components or with simulations integrated into the …

Law Schools Harm Genizaros And Other Indigenous People By Misunderstanding Aba Policy, Bill Piatt, Moises Gonzales, Katja Wolf

Faculty Articles

Law schools justifiably seek to enroll a diverse student body in order to enrich the academic experience and environment, and to provide attorneys who will serve all segments of our society. American law schools enjoy the constitutional right to maintain such diversity. Indeed, accreditation standards promulgated by the American Bar Association ("ABA") require it. The Association of American Law Schools carries a similar mandate.

In seeking to create a diverse student body, law schools offer applicants the opportunity to identify their backgrounds. There generally is no "diversity police" checking on the accuracy of the self-identification as a member of a …

Persons And The Point Of The Law, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

This short essay is a comment and reflection on a manuscript by Professors John Breen and Lee
Strang, "A Light Unseen: A History of Catholic Legal Education in the United States." It is based on remarks presented at a February 14, 2020 conference, sponsored by the Journal of Catholic Legal Studies and the Center for Law and Religion at St. John's University School of Law. It
addresses, among other things, Breen and Strang's argument that a Catholic law school should have a distinctive "intellectual architecture" and proposes that a distinctive moral anthropology -- that is, an account of what the …

Flying Without Wings, Eleanor Lanier

Scholarly Works

Because of Georgia’s unique court structure and political challenges, state advocates were unable to secure funding for a spot in the WINGS nest. But there is good news. The bonds we forged over our many years of advocacy on guardianship issues, and our effort to pull together the (unsuccessful) WINGS application, helped a few of our ideas take flight. This article highlights one highly successful and easily replicable effort that can be undertaken for a local court, in a region or at the state level, depending on resources and interest.

Reflecting Clinics At 50: Reports From The Field, Russell C. Gabriel

Scholarly Works

For lawyers, learning law by practicing law is customary. In the world of legal education, learning from practice is situated in both acceptance and opposition. There are practical arguments in its favor—the practicing bar wants law graduates to be “practice ready,” and theoretical arguments—understanding how law operates in the real world yields a clearer understanding of law itself, how it maintains social and economic structures, and how it impacts individuals. At the University of Georgia, law students, hungry for a legal education and a bar license, have been learning from practice in the Law School’s clinical programs for over fifty …

Clinical Syllabi As Demonstration Of Best Practices Implementation, Jean Goetz Mangan, Fernanda Mackay

Scholarly Works

This Article posits that the University of Georgia School of Law for Clinical Programs course syllabi demonstrate implementation of recommendations found in leading works that advocate for change in traditional legal education. This Article reviews some high points of legal education reform with a focus on clinical legal education and then discusses the role of syllabi in the classroom and the potential within the document that many professors miss. This Article then turns to using syllabi to measure the extent that the clinics are implementing instruction that addresses all three apprenticeships as defined in the Carnegie Report.. To assess the …

Why Is The Protective Order Project Still In Business; Or, If The Family Justice Clinic Has Been At It So Long, Why Hasn’T Anything Changed? Domestic Violence As A Continuing Societal Concern, Christine M. Scartz, Chelsea Reese

Scholarly Works

This Article explores the Georgia Law Family Violence and the continuing societal concern surrounding domestic violence.