Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Institution
- Publication Year
- Publication
- Publication Type
Articles 1 - 17 of 17
Full-Text Articles in Legal Writing and Research
The Writing’S On The Wall: Using Multimedia Presentation Principles From The Museum World To Improve Law School Pedagogy, Cecilia A. Silver
The Writing’S On The Wall: Using Multimedia Presentation Principles From The Museum World To Improve Law School Pedagogy, Cecilia A. Silver
Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)
Law school pedagogy is a relic. Nearly 150 years after Christopher Langdell pioneered the case method, the typical doctrinal course remains predominantly a verbal domain, featuring lectures, Socratic dialogue, and final exams. But the visual disconnect between legal education and legal practice does students a disservice. Under the proliferating influence of laptops, iPads, smartphones, and Zoom, students now read, work, and study electronically more than they ever have before. So instead of business as usual, it’s time to embrace “visualization”—using multimedia to enhance, or even supplant, the near-exclusive reliance on language—to build a more vibrant and inclusive learning environment.
Law …
Research Across The Curriculum: Using Cognitive Science To Answer The Call For Better Legal Research Instruction, Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff
Research Across The Curriculum: Using Cognitive Science To Answer The Call For Better Legal Research Instruction, Tenielle Fordyce-Ruff
Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)
The American Bar Association (ABA), law students, and employers are demanding that law schools do better when teaching legal research. Academic critics are demanding that law professors begin to apply the lessons from the science of learning to improve student outcomes. The practice of law is changing.
Yet, the data shows that law schools are not changing their legal research curriculum to respond to the need of their students or to address the ABA’s mandate. This stagnation comes at the same time as an explosion in legal information and a decrease in technical research skills among incoming students. This article …
The Drive To Advise: A Study Of Law Students At A Pro Bono Brief Advice Project, Linda F. Smith
The Drive To Advise: A Study Of Law Students At A Pro Bono Brief Advice Project, Linda F. Smith
St. Mary's Law Journal
Abstract forthcoming.
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 …
Decision Making Models In 2/2 Time: Two Speakers, Two Models (Maybe), Sharon Bradley, Tim Tarvin
Decision Making Models In 2/2 Time: Two Speakers, Two Models (Maybe), Sharon Bradley, Tim Tarvin
Presentations
Our students have to learn so many new skills to be successful in law school and law practice. Legal research, client interviewing, and case analysis just for starters. Our teaching methods have to engage our students while preparing them to “think like a lawyer.” We also have the responsibility to familiarize students in evaluating the “benefits and risks associated with relevant technology” and to develop efficient practices and processes. The speakers will look at decision making models that are practical and useable.
One speaker will discuss his experiences in a clinical setting using decision trees, teaching his students to visualize …
Technology And Legal Research: What Is Taught And What Is Used In The Practice Of Law, Rebecca Sewanee Trammell
Technology And Legal Research: What Is Taught And What Is Used In The Practice Of Law, Rebecca Sewanee Trammell
CCE Theses and Dissertations
Law schools are criticized for graduating students who lack the skills necessary to practice law. Legal research is a foundational ability necessary to support lawyering competency. The American Bar Association (ABA) establishes standards for legal education that include a requirement that each law student receive substantial instruction in legal skills, including legal research. Despite the recognized importance of legal research in legal education, there is no consensus of what to teach as part of a legal research course or even how to teach such a course.
Legal educators struggle to address these issues. The practicing bar and judiciary have expressed …
'Experiential Education Through The Vis Moot' And 'Building On The Bergsten Legacy: The Vis Moot As A Platform For Legal Education', Ronald A. Brand
'Experiential Education Through The Vis Moot' And 'Building On The Bergsten Legacy: The Vis Moot As A Platform For Legal Education', Ronald A. Brand
Articles
Recent discussions of experiential education have at times considered the role of moot opportunities in legal education. Many, if not most, moot courts and related activities have been designed primarily as competitions. One moot, the Willem Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot, is different in that it was designed, and has been consistently administered, as a tool for educating future lawyers. That education has included both skills training of the highest order and the development of a doctrinal understanding of important international legal instruments, especially those created and administered by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL). This pair …
Crowdsourced Coursebooks, Stephen E. Henderson, Joseph T. Thai
Crowdsourced Coursebooks, Stephen E. Henderson, Joseph T. Thai
Stephen E Henderson
Given increasing criticism and dropping admissions, American legal education is likely to change, hopefully reversing the unsustainable trend of increasing expense without increasing value. Much debate focuses on restructuring the curriculum to make it more “practical” and skills-infused; here we instead propose a rethinking of the basic unit of law teaching, the casebook. Casebook authors and publishers are cautiously venturing into electronic editions, but they fail to harness the power of social learning to make textbooks dramatically smarter as well as cheaper. Working with a technology startup, we are developing an online platform that reinvents both authorship and learning. The …
Teaching Law And Digital Age Legal Practice With An Ai And Law Seminar: Justice, Lawyering And Legal Education In The Digital Age, Kevin D. Ashley
Teaching Law And Digital Age Legal Practice With An Ai And Law Seminar: Justice, Lawyering And Legal Education In The Digital Age, Kevin D. Ashley
Articles
A seminar on Artificial Intelligence ("Al") and Law can teach law students lessons about legal reasoning and legal practice in the digital age. Al and Law is a subfield of Al/computer science research that focuses on designing computer programs—computational models—that perform legal reasoning. These computational models are used in building tools to assist in legal practice and pedagogy and in studying legal reasoning in order to contribute to cognitive science and jurisprudence. Today, subject to a number of qualifications, computer programs can reason with legal rules, apply legal precedents, and even argue like a legal advocate.
This article provides a …
Thinking Like Thinkers: Is The Art And Discipline Of An "Attitude Of Suspended Conclusion" Lost On Lawyers?, Donald J. Kochan
Thinking Like Thinkers: Is The Art And Discipline Of An "Attitude Of Suspended Conclusion" Lost On Lawyers?, Donald J. Kochan
Donald J. Kochan
In his 1910 book, How We Think, John Dewey proclaimed that “the most important factor in the training of good mental habits consists in acquainting the attitude of suspended conclusion. . .” This Article explores that insight and describes its meaning and significance in the enterprise of thinking generally and its importance in law school education specifically. It posits that the law would be best served if lawyers think like thinkers and adopt an attitude of suspended conclusion in their problem solving affairs. Only when conclusion is suspended is there space for the exploration of the subject at hand. The …
True North: Navigating For The Transfer Of Learning In Legal Education, Tonya Kowalski
True North: Navigating For The Transfer Of Learning In Legal Education, Tonya Kowalski
Seattle University Law Review
As lifelong learners, we all know the feelings of discomfort and bewilderment that can come from being asked to apply existing skills in a completely new situation. As legal educators, we have also experienced the frustration that comes from watching our students struggle to identify and transfer skills from one learning environment to another. For example, a first-semester law student who learns to analogize case law to a fact pattern in a legal writing problem typically will not see the deeper applications for those skills in a law school essay exam several weeks later. Similarly, when law students learn how …
Law School 2.0: Legal Education For A Digital Age, David I.C. Thomson
Law School 2.0: Legal Education For A Digital Age, David I.C. Thomson
Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship
Legal education is at a crossroads. As today's media-saturated students enter law school, they find themselves thrust into old style lecture-orientated, casebook modes of instruction, much of which is over 100 years old. Over those years legal education has resisted many studies recommending change, most recently from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Clinical Legal Education Association. . .
Teaching As Art Form - Review Of The Elements Of Teaching, David I.C. Thomson
Teaching As Art Form - Review Of The Elements Of Teaching, David I.C. Thomson
Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship
The authors of this gem of a book—both retired college teachers who gave their professional lifetimes to teaching—write simply and passionately about what it takes to be an effective teacher, and manage to reduce the key aspects of a complex process down to nine primary elements. In so doing, they provide not only a road map of aspiration for the new teacher, but also signposts of inspiration for the experienced teacher.
Teach The Children Well: Incorporating Cultural Literacy Into The Law School Learning Experience, Debra Moss Curtis
Teach The Children Well: Incorporating Cultural Literacy Into The Law School Learning Experience, Debra Moss Curtis
Faculty Scholarship
This article is an examination of what and how we teach in law school. Much attention has been given to the concept of the Socratic Method and whether teaching in this manner "hides the ball" from students. Rather than focusing on whether the ball is hidden, my work shall focus on whether students know what the ball is in the first place.
"In A Case, In A Book, They Will Not Take A Second Look!" Critical Reading In The Legal Writing Classroom, Debra Curtis, Judith Karp
"In A Case, In A Book, They Will Not Take A Second Look!" Critical Reading In The Legal Writing Classroom, Debra Curtis, Judith Karp
Faculty Scholarship
This article is based on a presentation that was first assembled for the Southeastern Regional Legal Writing Conference in September 2003. The theme of that conference was "The Basics and Beyond: Building Solid Skills on Flawed Foundations." As legal writing professions with nine years of teaching experience between us, we immediately honed in on "reading" as a core lawyering skill--though it is the one that seemed most flawed in the first-year legal writing class. We determined that case analysis, statute analysis, synthesis, and application were not possible unless students critically read the material with which they were working. Many students …
You've Got Rhythm: Curriculum Planning And Teaching Rhythm At Work In The Legal Writing Classroom, Debra Curtis
You've Got Rhythm: Curriculum Planning And Teaching Rhythm At Work In The Legal Writing Classroom, Debra Curtis
Faculty Scholarship
With increased frequency, attention is being given to the methods and style of teaching the law, and to the educational knowledge of law teachers necessary for their development. While teachers in many other areas of higher education are required to take credit hours in education courses, that requirement or focus on pedagogy itself has not yet fully spilled over to legal education professionals. In addition, although law professions, have been encouraged to think and learn about the law, they generally have long since accepted the Socratic method as a primary method of teaching. Recently information about students' learning styles, and …
Designing Electronic Casebooks That Talk Back: The Cato Program, Kevin D. Ashley
Designing Electronic Casebooks That Talk Back: The Cato Program, Kevin D. Ashley
Articles
Electronic casebooks offer important benefits of flexibility in control of presentation, connectivity, and interactivity. These additional degrees of freedom, however, also threaten to overwhelm students. If casebook authors and instructors are to achieve their pedagogical goals, they will need new methods for guiding students. This paper presents three such methods developed in an intelligent tutoring environment for engaging students in legal role-playing, making abstract concepts explicit and manipulable, and supporting pedagogical dialogues. This environment is built around a program known as CATO, which employs artificial intelligence techniques to teach first-year law students how to make basic legal arguments with cases. …