Legal Education Commons^™

Redefining Professionalism, Rebecca Roiphe

Articles & Chapters

Most scholars condemn professionalism as self-serving, anti-competitive rhetoric. This Article argues that professionalism can be a positive and productive way of thinking about lawyers’ work. While it is undoubtedly true that the Bar has used the ideology of the professional role to support self-interested and bigoted causes, professionalism has also served as an important way of developing and marshalling group identity to promote useful ends. The critics of professionalism tend to view it as an ideology, according to which professionals, unlike businessmen, are concerned not with their own financial gain but with the good of their clients and the community …

Latcrit Praxis @ Xx: Toward Equal Justice In Law, Education And Society, Tayyab Mahmud, Athena D. Mutua, Francisco Valdes

Journal Articles

This article marks the twentieth anniversary of Latina and Latino Critical Legal Theory or the LatCrit organization, an association of diverse scholars committed to the production of knowledge from the perspective of Outsider or OutCrit jurisprudence. The article first reflects on the historical development of LatCrit’s substantive, methodological, and institutional commitments and practices. It argues that these traditions were shaped not only by its members’ goals and commitments but also by the politics of backlash present at its birth in the form of the “cultural wars,” and which have since morphed into perpetual “crises” grounded in neoliberal policies. With this …

Lawyers And Spoiled Identity, Paul Campos

Publications

No abstract provided.

Law School Training For Licensed 'Legal Technicians'? Implications For The Consumer Market, Elizabeth Chambliss

Faculty Publications

In January 2014, the ABA Task Force on the Future of Legal Education released its report calling, among other things, for limited licensing and the expansion of independent paraprofessional training by law schools. In Washington State, all three law schools are collaborating with community college paralegal programs to design and deliver specialized training for “Limited License Legal Technicians” (LLLTs), who will be licensed to deliver limited family law services beginning in 2015. At least three other states, including California and New York — which together contain nearly twenty-six percent of U.S. lawyers and seventy-six law schools — are actively seeking …

Technology And Client Communications: Preparing Law Students And New Lawyers To Make Choices That Comply With The Ethical Duties Of Confidentiality, Competence, And Communication, Kristin J. Hazelwood

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

That the use of technology has radically changed the legal profession is beyond dispute. Through technology, lawyers can now represent clients in faraway states and countries, and they can represent even local clients through a “virtual law office.” Gone are the times in which the lawyer’s choices for communicating with clients primarily involve preparing formal business letters to convey advice, holding in-person client meetings in the office, or conducting telephone calls with clients on landlines from the confines of the lawyer’s office. Not only do lawyers have choices about how to communicate with their clients, but they also frequently choose …

The Role Of Mindfulness In The Ongoing Evolution Of Legal Education, Scott L. Rogers

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Think Like A (Mindful) Lawyer: Incorporating Mindfulness, Professional Identity, And Emotional Intelligence Into The First Year Law Curriculum, Nathalie Martin

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

On Legal Scholarship, Danielle K. Citron, Robin West

Shorter Faculty Works

Academic critics contend that legal scholarship is overly argumentative or too “normative,” simply stating what the law should be, as well as what the law is. It isn’t about pure scholarship’s pursuit of knowledge within the discipline of a recognized academic field. Critics from the bar and the judiciary proffer the opposite complaint: legal scholarship is too academic and not professional enough, enamored with fads, unmoored from any discipline and of little use to the practicing lawyer or sitting judge. Law schools’ legions of cost-conscious critics complain that paying high salaries to professors with low course loads drives up tuitions. …

The American Legal Profession In The Twenty-First Century, Stephen M. Sheppard

Faculty Articles

Lawyers in the United States work in public service, private counseling, and dispute resolution, but many also work outside of traditional legal practice. The million-member American bar, second largest in the world, grows more diverse by gender, and ethnicity and older on average. All members of this learned profession must qualify by education or examination and by proof of good character and fitness before taking an oath to serve as an attorney. Thence, there are few limitations on the form of legal practice, though many law firms require an associateship before an attorney becomes an owner of the firm. Economic …

Adapting To Change In The Legal Profession, Janet Levit, Valerie K. Couch, Joseph Harroz Jr.

Articles, Chapters in Books and Other Contributions to Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Keep Calm And Carry On, René Reich-Graefe

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay examines some of the hard data available for today’s legal market and develops very basic forecasts and hypotheses about what the future will bring for the U.S. legal profession during the next decades. In conclusion, it projects that recent law school graduates and current and future law students are standing at the threshold of the most robust legal market that ever existed in this country—a legal market which will grow, exist for, and coincide with, their entire professional careers. Using admittedly back-of-the-envelope math based on current trends affecting the legal market (in particular, lawyer retirements, population growth, and …

Law Firm Internships And The Making Of Future Lawyers: An Empirical Study In Singapore, Seow Hon Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article examines the findings of an empirical study of law students from the Singapore Management University on their internship experiences at private law firms. As internships are frequently undertaken by law students, it is necessary for stakeholders to understand their impact on the values and ideals of law students in relation to the law and legal practice. This article seeks to increase the consciousness of law school educators, lawyers, and the professional bar about how law firm internships are contributing to the making of future lawyers, so as to facilitate the reflection by these parties as to their roles …

Testing, Diversity, And Merit: A Reply To Dan Subotnik And Others, Andrea A. Curcio, Carol L. Chomsky, Eileen Kaufman

Scholarly Works

The false dichotomy between achieving diversity and rewarding merit frequently surfaces in discussions about decisions on university and law school admissions, scholarships, law licenses, jobs, and promotions. “Merit” judgments are often based on the results of standardized tests meant to predict who has the best chance to succeed if given the opportunity to do so. This Article criticizes over-reliance on standardized tests and responds to suggestions that challenging the use of such tests reflects a race-comes-first approach that chooses diversity over merit. Discussing the firefighter exam that led to the Supreme Court decision in Ricci v. DiStefano, as well as …

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 …

Professionalism And The New Normal, Philip J. Weiser

Publications

No abstract provided.

Who's Eating Law Firms' Lunch? The Legal Service Providers, Law Schools And New Grads At The Table, William D. Henderson, Rachel M. Zahorsky

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Why Environmental Law Clinics?, Adam Babich, Jane F. Barrett

Faculty Scholarship

The law clinic has become an increasingly important part of legal education, giving students the opportunity to learn practical skills as well as to internalize core legal values. Pedagogical concerns preclude clinics from letting fear of criticism drive decisions about how they represent clients. The legal profession's idealistic aspirations pose challenges, and political attacks have answered clinicians' efforts to live up to these aspirations. An error underlies such attacks, however: holding lawyers responsible for their clients' legal positions despite the profession's duty to ensure that such positions get a fair hearing.

Bridging The Law School Learning Gap Through Universal Design, Jennifer Jolly-Ryan

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Student-Friendly Model: Creating Cost-Effective Externship Programs, James H. Bachman, Jana B. Eliason

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Heretical View Of Teaching: A Contrarian Looks At Teaching, The Carnegie Report, And Best Practices, Gary Shaw

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Challenges To Legal Education In 1973 And 2012: An Introduction To The Anniversary Issue Of The Hofstra Law Review, Nora V. Demleitner

Scholarly Articles

Not available.

Can They Work Well On A Team? Assessing Students' Collaborative Skills, Sophie M. Sparrow

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] "Among the many critiques of legal education are criticisms that law students do not graduate with effective emotional intelligence skills-in particular, they have not learned to work well with others. Working with others is an important legal skill; and as law practice increasingly relies on collaboration among lawyers, legal staff, clients, and other individuals, so have legal employers raised the demand for effective collaborative skills among law students and recent graduates.

This essay will focus on ways to engage students in collaborating and assessing that collaboration effectively. Students' interpersonal collaborative skills can be effectively taught and assessed in large …

Gaining From The System: Lessons From The Law School Survey Of Student Engagement About Student Development In Law School, Carole Silver, Louis Rocconi, Heather Haeger, Lindsay Watkins

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This paper considers the factors that influence law students' assessment of their professional and academic development during law school. It uses responses of 5,612 third- and fourth-year law students to the Law School Survey of Student Engagement to identify student activities and behaviors that relate to professional and academic gains; individual and law school characteristics also are examined. Four aspects of the law school experience emerge as integral parts of students' professional and academic development.

How Are Law Schools Addressing Major Changes In The Practice Of Law And In Accrediting Standards For Legal Education?, Margaret Ivey Bacigal

Law Faculty Publications

There was a consensus at the first panel discussion on how law schools are addressing major changes in legal practice and accrediting standards for legal education, that law schools are doing a good job teaching critical thinking and legal analysis. A recurring theme was that more experiential legal education is needed to help students become "practice ready." Deficits in legal writing, problem solving, and understanding the various contexts within which legal problems arise were concerns. A major issue is how do schools enhance legal education given the unsustainable costs and changes in the legal profession?

Developing Professional Identity Through Reflective Practice, Suzanne Darrow Kleinhaus

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Pedigree Problem: Are Law School Ties Choking The Profession?, William D. Henderson, Rachel M. Zahorsky

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Crisis Of The American Law School, Paul Campos

Publications

The economist Herbert Stein once remarked that if something cannot go on forever, it will stop. Over the past four decades, the cost of legal education in America has seemed to belie this aphorism: it has gone up relentlessly. Private law school tuition increased by a factor of four in real, inflation-adjusted terms between 1971 and 2011, while resident tuition at public law schools has nearly quadrupled in real terms over just the past two decades. Meanwhile, for more than thirty years, the percentage of the American economy devoted to legal services has been shrinking. In 1978 the legal sector …

The Challenges Of Developing Cross-Cultural Legal Ethics Education, Professional Development, And Guidance For The Legal Professions, Philip Genty

Faculty Scholarship

The broad goal of this paper is to describe the need, and provide a framework, for engaging in cross-cultural conversations among lawyers, law teachers, and others, who are using legal ethics as a vehicle for improving the legal professions and the delivery of legal services. All legal cultures struggle with the question of how to educate students and lawyers to be ethical professionals and how to regulate the legal profession effectively. The purpose of the cross-cultural conversations discussed in this paper would be to develop principles of legal ethics education, professional development, and regulation of the legal professions that can …

Reflections On Class In American Legal Education, Richard O. Lempert

Articles

Professor Richard Sander's Class in American Legal Education is an almost unique effort to examine empirically the social class origins of American law school students and to relate law student class origins to law school stratification, the class structure of American society and the potential law school applicant pool. His effort, and the special attention he gives to the class composition of elite law schools comes perhaps at a fortuitous time in the history of American legal education. The law degree, like the medical degree, has long been a route for upward mobility in American society. But the access of …

Unpacking The Apprenticeship Of Professional Identity And Purpose: Insights From The Law School Survey Of Student Engagement, Carole Silver, Amy Garver, Lindsay Watkins

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Drawing on data from the Law School Survey of Student Engagement, this paper investigates the ways in which law students develop a sense of professional identity and purpose, the third apprenticeship identified by the Carnegie Foundation in its report, Educating Lawyers. The data offer only a first step toward unpacking how students learn about professional identity and purpose. Generally, the findings point to the importance of law school classes for effective learning about legal ethics, and to the role of clinical legal education as a means for deepening the effectiveness of lessons about ethics, professional identity and purpose.