Legal Profession Commons^™

Newsroom: Court As Classroom 03-01-2018, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Changing The Modal Law School: Rethinking U.S. Legal Education In (Most) Schools, Nancy B. Rapoport

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

This essay argues that discussions of educational reform in U.S. law schools have suffered from a fundamental misconception: that the education provided in all of the American Bar Association-accredited schools is roughly the same. A better description of the educational opportunities provided by ABA-accredited law schools would group the schools into three rough clusters: the “elite” law schools, the modal (most frequently occurring) law schools, and the precarious law schools. Because the elite law schools do not need much “reforming,” the better focus of reform would concentrate on the modal and precarious schools; however, both elite and modal law schools …

The Downside Of Requiring Additional Experiential Courses In Law School, Douglas A. Kahn

Articles

In recent years, the bar has expressed dissatisfaction with what is considered by some to be inadequate preparation of law students to begin practicing law immediately after graduation. There are several reasons why this has become a matter of concern for the legal profession. The profession itself has undergone significant changes. Although there are a few exceptions, most law firms no longer wish to spend time training their young associates or allowing them much time to develop the skills they need. First, clients are unwilling to pay for the time a young lawyer spends in acquiring needed skills. Second, the …

Reimagining Legal Education: Incorporating Live-Client Work Into The First-Year Curriculum, Nancy Vettorello, Beth Hirschfelder Wilensky

Articles

Since 2015, Legal Practice faculty have partnered with local legal services organizations and the law school’s own clinics to provide our 1L students with client interaction, under the close supervision of experienced attorneys. So far, our students have worked with the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, Legal Services of South Central Michigan, and the school’s Unemployment Law Clinic.

Newsroom: Rwu Law Adds Skills Programs And Faculty 8/15/2016, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Trending @ Rwu Law: Dean Yelnosky's Post: Rwu Law Continues To Add Skills Programs And Faculty 08/12/2016, Michael Yelnosky

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

Innovate, Collaborate & Serve: Louisiana’S “Lift” – A Legal Incubator And Accelerator Program Startup Guide, Amy Duncan

Journal of Experiential Learning

No abstract provided.

Finishing The Job Of Legal Education Reform, Mary Beth Beazley

Scholarly Works

In this article, Professor Beazley advocates for the extension of tenure to skills faculty for the good of law faculty and of legal education. She argues that extending tenure to legal writing and other skills faculty will help to advance the goals of education reform in a variety of ways. First, equalizing the power of skills faculty will allow law schools to get the full benefit of their teaching and scholarship, a benefit that is currently blunted by ignorance and bias. Second, fair treatment of skills faculty will advance the values of equality, diversity, and inclusion: law students will benefit …

The Legal Academy Under Erasure, Richard E. Redding

Catholic University Law Review

We hear much about the “crisis” in legal education: steep declines in law school enrollments and graduates unprepared for practice who cannot find jobs. Proposals to address the crisis enjoy wide support and are poised to dramatically change the landscape of legal education. These reforms are harmful to law students and the legal profession, placing the legal academy “under erasure,” as Jacques Derrida would say. They erase the academic nature of law school by: (1) reorienting it from an academically-grounded legal education towards vocational training, (2) requiring just two years of study for the J.D. degree, (3) allowing graduates of …

Efficient Collaboration: How To Build Pathways Between Silos, Model Behavior Ideal For Professional Identity Formation, And Create Complex Experiential Modules All While Having Fun, Christine Cerniglia Brown

Journal of Experiential Learning

No abstract provided.

Defining Experiential Legal Education, David I.C. Thomson

Journal of Experiential Learning

No abstract provided.

"Practice Ready Graduates": A Millennialist Fantasy, Robert J. Condlin

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Designing A Solo And Small Practice Curriculum, Meredith R. Miller

Scholarly Works

There is a reality commonly ignored by the curriculum in most law schools: the largest segment of law graduates will eventually be solo or small firm practitioners. Even before the Great Recession, nearly two thirds of lawyers in the United States practiced in solo or small firms. Since 2008, trends show an increase in the number of recent law graduates that “hang a shingle.” According to a 2012 report of the American Bar Association, about three-quarters of lawyers in the United States work in private practice. Of those attorneys, about seventy percent are in solo or small firms. Many find …

Angst, Technology, And Innovation In The Classroom: Improving Focus For Students Growing Up In A Digital Age, Karin Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Many professors in legal education have noticed increased angst in students, who fear that well-paying jobs are scarce. Often, that angst is manifested in the classroom. Some educators blame the phenomenon on the distractions of technology—but more specifically, the author finds that technology has brought all of our stressors to the fore, affecting concentration and the ability to absorb information. This article addresses the extent to which technology has changed the ways that people navigate the world within the span of only a few generations, and how the author continues to adjust her teaching techniques in her technology-oriented classroom in …

Fostering A Respect For Our Students, Our Specialty, And The Legal Profession: Introducing Ethics And Professionalism Into The Legal Writing Curriculum, Melissa H. Weresh

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

And Now A Crisis In Legal Education, James E. Moliterno

Scholarly Articles

The current crisis in legal education coincides with a crisis in the practice of law. Law practice has changed as a result of technology, globalization, and economic pressures. The market for legal education's product, law graduates, have diminished. Law schools cannot remain the same in this environment. Except for a very small number of elite schools, those that do not adjust are at serious risk of failing.

An economic change has taken place against a system in which mostly corporate clients willingly paid for the training of beginners at major law firms. Law firms could absorb those costs if partners …

Clinical Collaborations: Going Global To Advance Social Entrepreneurship, Deborah Burand, Susan R. Jones, Jonathan Ng, Alicia E. Plerhoples

Articles

In the summer of 2012, transactional law clinics from three U.S. law schools: George Washington University; Georgetown University; and the University of Michigan launched a collaboration to serve a common client — Ashoka, a global nonprofit organization that supports close to 3,000 social entrepreneurs across 76 countries. While clinic collaborations within universities happen occasionally, clinic collaborations across universities are unusual. This essay focuses on the motivations, operations, lessons, and next steps of this cross-university, clinical collaboration aimed at advancing social entrepreneurship globally. Specifically, this essay examines why the collaboration was launched, how the collaboration is structured, what the collaboration offers …

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 …

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 …

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.

Transactional Drafting: Using Law Firm Marketing Materials As A Research Resource For Teaching Drafting, Edward R. Becker

Articles

Since I started teaching drafting, I would like to think that I have continued to learn some lessons about teaching both the substance and the skills of transactional drafting. One of those lessons that I am going to be talking about today is one that I stumbled across by happy accident rather than one that I consciously sought. Specifically, I want to talk about and highlight the ways that law students can use law firm marketing materials to increase their understanding of both drafting and lawyering skills in law school and, hopefully, in practice.

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 Mindful Law School: An Integrative Approach To Transforming Legal Education, Scott L. Rogers

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Crisis Of The American Law School, Paul Campos

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

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 Crisis In Legal Education: Dabbling In Disaster Planning, Kyle P. Mcentee, Patrick J. Lynch, Derek M. Tokaz

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The legal education crisis has already struck for many recent law school graduates, signaling potential disaster for law schools already struggling with their own economic challenges. Law schools have high fixed costs caused by competition between schools, the unchecked expansion of federal loan programs, a widely exploited information asymmetry about graduate employment outcomes, and a lack of financial discipline masquerading as innovation. As a result, tuition is up, jobs are down, and skepticism of the value of a J.D. has never been higher. If these trends do not reverse course, droves of students will continue to graduate with debt that …

Externship Demographics Across Two Decades With Lessons For Future Surveys, J.P. "Sandy" Ogilvy, Sudeb Basu

Scholarly Articles

Sudeb Basu (J.D., Catholic University, 2011) and Professor J.P. “Sandy” Ogilvy (Catholic University) report on the results of a 2007-2009 national survey of externship programs at American law schools and compare many of the data points to previous surveys of externship programs, the 2007-2008 CSALE survey, and some ABA/LSAC data, to chart the growth and increasing sophistication and complexity of the pedagogy associated with legal externships. Some of the data discussed include limits on the number of externship credits or externship courses, student involvement in externships, the distribution of credits awarded for externship courses, the average number of hours of …

The Service-Learning Model In The Law School Curriculum, Laurie Morin, Susan Waysdorf

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.