Legal Education Commons^™

Specialization In Law And Business: A Proposal For A J.D./'Mbl' Curriculum, Robert J. Rhee

UF Law Faculty Publications

This paper provides the specific details of how an interdisciplinary program of law and business can be structured in a three-year J.D. program. The program envisioned is a J.D./”M.B.L.”, which is distinguished from the better known J.D./M.B.A. The “M.B.L.” stands for “masters of business law,” which is simply an idea tag. The moniker can represent a program conferring a supplemental degree in law and business, or simply a specialized course of study to complete a J.D. Either way, the program is an interdisciplinary program of concentrated study in core transaction-oriented law courses and core business courses. The most effective education …

The Learned-Helpless Lawyer: Clinical Legal Education And Therapeutic Jurisprudence As Antidotes To Bartleby Syndrome, Amy D. Ronner

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Access To Justice And Technology Clinics: A 4% Solution, Ronald W. Staudt, Andrew P. Medeiros

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This article argues that law schools should add Access to Justice and Technology Clinics: a new type of clinical course that teaches law students how to use and deploy technology to assist law practice. If widely adopted, these clinics will help law students learn core competencies needed in an increasingly technological profession while simultaneously building tools and content to help low income, self-represented litigants overcome serious barriers in their pursuit of justice. In our prototype course at Chicago-Kent, Justice and Technology Practicum, students use A2J Author to build A2J Guided Interviews and in the process students learn legal research, writing …

Thinking Like A Lawyer, Designing Like An Architect: Preparing Students For The 21st Century Practice, Tanina Rostain, Roger Skalbeck, Kevin G. Mulcahy

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Various law schools—Chicago-Kent Law School, New York Law School, Vermont Law School, and Georgetown Law Center among them—are beginning to offer innovative classes in which students learn to build legal expert systems intended to enhance access to the legal system. Working in platforms that do not require technical expertise, students are able to build apps that incorporate rules-based logic, factor balancing, and mathematical operations to implement the reasoning of a regulatory regime. In this essay, we suggest that teaching students to design apps furthers pedagogic goals associated with the traditional law school curriculum and clinical teaching. In designing legal expert …

The Teaching Of Law Practice Management And Technology In Law Schools: A New Paradigm, Richard S. Granat, Stephanie Kimbro

Chicago-Kent Law Review

The teaching of law practice management in law schools is becoming more critical for our profession. Employment with a traditional law firm used to provide the training and mentorship necessary to practice law. As a result of fewer employment prospects with traditional law firms, law students are now faced with the prospect of entering into law practice without this critical training and knowledge base soon after they become members of the bar.

Additionally, the Internet and information technology is transforming the practice of law and, as a result, the management of law firms is also being transformed. Lawyers must understand …

Developing An E-Curriculum: Reflections On The Future Of Legal Education And On The Importance Of Digital Expertise, Oliver Goodenough

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Legal education is in the midst of significant change, where much of how and what we have taught is under scrutiny. As we reform our curriculums in this moment of change, we should be guided by considerations of value added, values added, economic sustainability. It is no longer enough for our programs to target bar passage, doctrinal coverage, a shared language of argument, and skills and perspectives, important as these may be. Practice in the foreseeable future requires us to add new knowledge and competencies. Law and technology is an area that is ripe for expansion, with the possibility of …

Law Schools As Knowledge Centers In The Digital Age, Vern R. Walker, A.J. Durwin, Philip H. Hwang, Keith Langlais, Mycroft Boyd

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This article explores what it would mean for law schools to be “knowledge centers” in the digital age, and to have this as a central mission. It describes the activities of legal knowledge centers as: (1) focusing on solving real legal problems in society outside of the academy; (2) evaluating the problem-solving effectiveness of the legal knowledge being developed; (3) re-conceptualizing the structures used to represent legal knowledge, the processes through which legal knowledge is created, and the methods used to apply that knowledge; and (4) disseminating legal knowledge in ways that assist its implementation. The Article uses as extended …

If Only We Knew What We Know, Conrad Johnson, Brian Donnelly

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This article contributes to the broader themes surrounding law and technology raised in this symposium by taking a look at lawyering and knowledge management. This topic is presented both as a theory and with a case study. The first part provides a brief summary of the basic lawyering paradigm used in the Lawyering in the Digital Age Clinic at Columbia Law School—that all lawyering activities can be understood within the context of gathering, managing and presenting information. The second category of the paradigm is expanded upon to review the activity of managing knowledge. Then, knowledge management is positioned as the …

Teaching Law And Digital Age Legal Practice With An Ai And Law Seminar, Kevin D. Ashley

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This article provides a guide and examples for using a seminar on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Law to teach lessons about legal reasoning and about legal practice in the digital age. Artificial Intelligence and Law is a subfield of AI/ computer science research that focuses on computationally modeling legal reasoning. In at least a few law schools, the AI and Law seminar has regularly taught students fundamental issues about law and legal reasoning by focusing them on the problems these issues pose for scientists attempting to computationally model legal reasoning. AI and Law researchers have designed programs to reason with …

Time: An Empirical Analysis Of Law Student Time Management Deficiencies, Christine P. Bartholomew

Journal Articles

This Article begins the much needed research on law students’ time famine. Time management complaints begin early in students’ legal education and generally go unresolved. As a result, practicing attorneys identify time famine as a leading cause of job dissatisfaction. To better arm graduating students, law schools must treat time as an essential component of practice-readiness. Unfortunately, most law schools ignore their students’ time management concerns, despite growing calls for greater “skills” training in legal education.

To date, legal scholarship has overlooked psychological research on time management. Yet, this research is an essential starting point to effective instruction. Rather than …

Illuminating Innumeracy, Lisa Milot

Scholarly Works

Everyone knows that lawyers are bad at math. Many fields of law, though — from explicitly number-focused practices like tax law and bankruptcy, to the less obviously numerical fields of family law and criminal defense — require interaction with, and sophisticated understandings of, numbers. To the extent that lawyers really are bad at math, why is that case? And what, if anything, should be done about it?

In this Article, I show the ways in which our acceptance of innumeracy harms our ability to practice and think about the law. On a practical level, we miscalculate numbers, oversimplify formulas, and, …

Can And Should Human Rights Themes Impact Decision-Making In A Law School? Reflections From The U.S. Perspective, Nora V. Demleitner

Scholarly Articles

Human rights (HR) issues, which often reveal themselves from a comparative perspective, are not categorized as such in law schools though they lie beneath fundamental structural decisions. Institutional funding and access directly impact educational, social, economic – and racial -- equality. Curriculum development and coverage – in doctrinal courses and so-called "clinics"– require reflection upon the amount of resources expanded on the teaching of human rights, the connections made between human rights and related subject areas, the restriction of human rights discourse to specific courses. Student affairs regularly deal with human rights questions ranging from religious to disability accommodations. The …

125 Years Of Law Books, 1888-2013, Keith Ann Stiverson

125th Anniversary Materials

No abstract provided.

U.S. Antitrust: From Shot In The Dark To Global Leadership, David J. Gerber

125th Anniversary Materials

No abstract provided.

What's A Telegram?, Henry H. Perritt Jr.

125th Anniversary Materials

No abstract provided.

Law And Leadership: Integrating Leadership Studies Into The Law School Curriculum, Paula A. Monopoli, Susan Mccarty

Book Gallery

Leadership includes the ability to persuade others to embrace one’s ideas and to act upon them. Teaching law students the art of persuasion through advocacy is at the heart of legal education. But historically law schools have not included leadership studies in the curriculum. This book is one of the first to examine whether and how to integrate the theory and practice of leadership studies into legal education and the legal profession. Interdisciplinary in its scope, with contributions from legal educators and practitioners, the book defines leadership in the context of the legal profession and explores its challenges in legal …

Specialization In Law And Business: A Proposal For A J.D./"Mbl" Curriculum, Robert J. Rhee

Faculty Scholarship

This paper provides the specific details of how an interdisciplinary program of law and business can be structured in a three-year J.D. program. The program envisioned is a J.D./”M.B.L.”, which is distinguished from the better known J.D./M.B.A. The “M.B.L.” stands for “masters of business law,” which is simply an idea tag. The moniker can represent a program conferring a supplemental degree in law and business, or simply a specialized course of study to complete a J.D. Either way, the program is an interdisciplinary program of concentrated study in core transaction-oriented law courses and core business courses. The most effective education …

Tackling "Arithmophobia": Teaching How To Read, Understand, And Analyze Financial Statements, Paula J. Williams, Kris Anne Tobin, Eric Franklin, Robert J. Rhee

Faculty Scholarship

This discussion presents different ideas on how to teach accounting and practical finance to law students.

Transcription Of 2013 Chapman Law Review Symposium: "The Future Of Law, Business, And Legal Education: How To Prepare Students To Meet Corporate Needs", Leo E. Strine Jr., Bradley Borden, Robert J. Rhee, Tania King, Lee Cheng

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Library Services For The Self-Interested Law School: Enhancing The Visibility Of Faculty Scholarship, Simon Canick

Faculty Scholarship

This article suggests a new set of filters through which to evaluate law library services, in particular those that support faculty scholarship. Factors include profound changes in legal education, and motivators of today’s law professors. Understanding the needs of self-interested deans and professors, libraries can fill new roles that are consistent with our core values. In particular we can focus on dissemination and promotion of faculty work, especially through innovative open access projects.

Harmonizing Current Threats: Using The Outcry For Legal Education Reforms To Take Another Look At Civil Gideon And What It Means To Be An American Lawyer, Cathryn Miller-Wilson

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

"Harmonizing Current Threats: Using the Outcry for Legal Education Reforms to Take Another Look at Civil Gideon and What it Means to be an American Lawyer," makes the argument that, like medical education, legal education should be seen as a public responsibility. With the extra government funding that would come from this view of legal education, Miller-Wilson proposes incorporating "teaching law firms" after law school for students to practice in various specialties before graduation, similar to a medical residency.

Teaching Social Justice, Expanding Access To Justice: An Introduction, Jackie Gardina, Ngai Pindell

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

"Teaching Social Justice, Expanding Access to Justice: An Introduction" provides an introduction to the publications in this issue focusing on the need for a change in legal education to promote the moral and ethical obligation of providing affordable and accessible legal services. The article introduces this issues' publications which all support the underlying theme of providing social justice to the underprivileged by making legal services accessible or reforming legal education to promote a new generation of attorneys with an underlying passion for fostering affordable and accessible public service.

"When Numbers Get Serious:" A Study Of Plain English Usage In Briefs Filed Before The New York Court Of Appeals, Ian Gallacher

College of Law - Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Constructing Modern-Day U.S. Legal Education With Rhetoric: Langdell, Ames, And The Scholar Model Of The Law Professor Persona, Carlo A. Pedrioli

Faculty Scholarship

This article explains how lawyers like Christopher Columbus Langdell and James Barr Ames, a disciple of Langdell, employed rhetoric between 1870, when Langdell assumed the deanship at Harvard Law School, and 1920, when law had emerged as a credible academic field in the United States, to construct a persona, that of a scholar, appropriate for the law professor situated within the university. To do so, the article contextualizes the rhetoric with historical background on the law professor and legal education, draws upon rhetorical theory to give an overview of persona theory and persona analysis as a means of conducting the …

Seeking Integrity: Learning Integratively From Classroom Controversy (With Patti Alleva), Patti Alleva, Laura L. Rovner

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

The Carnegie Report* makes a compelling case that preparation for legal practice should involve learning experiences that help to integrate the three basic apprenticeships or dimensions of professional work — thinking, performing, and valuing like a lawyer. This challenge has not been ignored by the legal academy. In recent years especially, many law schools have attempted to foster learning experiences that integrate legal doctrine, lawyering skills, and professional values. These efforts span the spectrum from broad-based curricular change to the addition or revision of individual courses. Not to be overlooked, however, are the immediate integrative learning opportunities presented by unexpected …

Teaching Legal History In The Age Of Practical Legal Education, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

Historian Henry Steele Commager said, “History is useful in the sense that art is useful--or music or poetry or flowers; perhaps even in the sense that religion and philosophy is useful .... For without these things life would be poorer and meaner.” For law students who anticipate a career representing private and public clients and participating in public discussion, however, study of legal history carries rewards beyond intellectual stimulation and personal satisfaction. Law students contemplating client representation should ponder Justice Holmes's advice that “[h]istory must be a part of the study [of law], because without it we cannot know the …

Beyond Skills Training, Revisited: The Clinical Education Spiral, Carolyn Grose

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Beyond Langdell: Innovation In Legal Education, Beverly Peterson Jennison

Catholic University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Legal Education And Professional Skills: Myths And Misconceptions About Theory And Practice, Kate Kruse

Faculty Scholarship

Current critiques of legal education push law schools toward seemingly contradictory goals: (1) provide more practical training to a greater number of students; and (2) lower operational costs. This article addresses those who have a sincere desire to meet both goals. Although it offers a proposal for restructuring legal education, its primary focuses is on the mental and psychological barriers — the mistakes in thinking — that prevent law faculties from engaging in substantial. At the deepest level is a basic myth: that professional education can meaningfully separate theory from practice. This myth divides legal education into a series of …

Reforming Legal Education To Prepare Law Students Optimally For Real-World Practice, John M. Lande

Faculty Publications

This article synthesizes major points in the October 2012 symposium of the University of Missouri School of Law Center for the Study of Dispute Resolution, entitled "Overcoming Barriers in Preparing Law Students for Real-World Practice." There is a growing consensus that American law schools need to do a better job of preparing students to practice law. Teaching students to think like a lawyer is still necessary but it is not sufficient for students to act like a lawyer soon after they graduate.