Legal Education Commons^™

The Impact Of The Covid-19 Pandemic On First-Generation Women Test-Takers: Magnifying Adversities, Stress, And Consequences For Bar Exam Performance., Freiburger Erin, Victor D. Quintanilla, Kurt Hugenberg, Sam Erman, Nedim Yel, Anita Kim, Mary C. Murphy

Articles

By magnifying gender- and socioeconomic status-based inequalities, the COVID-19 pandemic caused stress and disrupted career progress for professional students. The present work investigated the impact of pandemic-related stress and prevailing barriers on structurally disadvantaged women preparing for a high-stakes professional exam. In Study 1, we found that among US law students preparing for the October 2020 California Bar Exam—the professional exam that enables one to become a practicing attorney in California—first-generation women reported the greatest stress from pandemic-related burdens and underperformed on the exam relative to others overall, and particularly compared to continuing-generation women. This underperformance was explained by pandemic-related …

Law’S Contributions To The Mindfulness Revolution, Elizabeth F. Emens

Faculty Scholarship

These are phenomenally challenging times. Mindfulness is a tool that can help lawyers support themselves, each other, their clients, and their collaborators in the hard work needed to build community and take action. For these and other reasons, mindfulness has made major inroads into law and legal institutions. Law firms, law schools, and courthouses offer training in mindfulness meditation to support the cognitive clarity and emotional self-regulation necessary for the demanding work of analyzing problems, resolving conflicts, overcoming bias, and doing justice. A growing literature, from empirical social science to legal scholarship, catalogs these and other benefits of mindfulness for …

Academic Leadership Is A Full-Contact Sport: Reflections From A Law School Dean, Jacob H. Rooksby

Law Faculty Publications

Leadership in any setting is hard, often physically as well as emotionally. Academic leadership requires a full-dimensional, mind-body-soul effort that uniquely calls upon one’s baseline character, positionality, and preparation for leadership. Our willingness and ability to read the word as we also read the world combine to shape our approach and range as leaders. And ultimately, our legacy is our imprint on people. This article shares the views of a law school dean on how life experiences, leadership lessons, and book learning intertwine to inform our humanity and charter our influence on people and organizations.

Modular Legal Learning: Revitalizing The Law Classroom, David Sandomierski, Stephanie Ben-Ishai

Articles & Book Chapters

The targeted and strategic use of asynchronous learning materials can free up important space for classroom teaching, and can unlock the spirit of experimentation, innovation, and engagement that animates in-person learning. This article sets out five principles that should guide future efforts to integrate asynchronous modules into legal education. Modules should be designed to supplement, not substitute, the live classroom; they should deliver content but also stimulate reflection, critique, and contextualization; they should be varied with respect to their subject matter; theoretical underpinnings, and pedagogical approach; professors should be able to easily customize their selections; and they should encourage collaboration …

Making Space For Online Research Experiments In Law School Courses, Hilary Evans Cameron, Sean Rehaag

Articles & Book Chapters

This reflective article explores opportunities for integrating online research experiments into large law school courses. It does so by drawing on the experience of the authors with an online research experiment involving simulated refugee adjudication undertaken with the full cohort of 1L students in a Canadian faculty of law. The article describes the context for the research, sets out the lessons that the authors learned about conducting experimental research, and describes the positive feedback provided by student participants. The article concludes with a recommendation by the authors that other legal scholars consider integrating research experiments into law school courses, both …

Cocurricular Learning In Management Education: Lessons From Legal Education’S Use Of Student-Edited Journals, Matthew I. Hall, Matt Theeke

Scholarly Works

In this essay, we draw on insights from U.S. legal education’s century-long experiment using student-edited journals as a cocurricular learning tool, to develop the argument that management education should consider introducing a new category of student-edited, practitioner-oriented journals. Student-edited journals are potentially well-suited for management education because they encourage students to learn professionally relevant skills and to develop a greater understanding of research and its role in professional education. Enlisting students to help edit practitioner journals could also benefit business professionals by increasing the availability of practitioner-oriented research. In doing so, management education can use this cocurricular learning activity to …

The Need For Social Support From Law Schools During The Era Of Social Distancing, Michele Okoh, Inès Ndonko Nnoko

Faculty Scholarship

Law students have been faced with unparalleled stress during the syndemic. They must cope with being students during the COVID-19 pandemic but also must deal with stress related to social and political unrest. This essay recommends that law schools apply social support theory in developing interventions to effectively address the needs of law students now and in the future.

Social support theory focuses on the value and benefits one receives from positive interpersonal relationships. These positive relationships impact both mental and physical health and promote beneficial short and long-term overall health. However, not all supports are the same, and social …

Feminist Legal History And Legal Pedagogy, Paula A. Monopoli

Faculty Scholarship

Women are mere trace elements in the traditional law school curriculum. They exist only on the margins of the canonical cases. Built on masculine norms, traditional modes of legal pedagogy involve appellate cases that overwhelmingly involve men as judges and advocates. The resulting silence signals that women are not makers of law—especially constitutional law. Teaching students critical modes of analysis like feminist legal theory and critical race feminism matters. But unmoored from feminist legal history, such critical theory is incomplete and far less persuasive. This Essay focuses on feminist legal history as foundational if students are to understand the implications …

Exploring Race And Racism In The Law School Curriculum: An Administrator's View On Adopting An Antiracist Curriculum, Amy Gaudion

Faculty Scholarly Works

This article provides a candid assessment of the demanding, and rewarding, work that is required to put into action the written words of institutional support for implementing an Antiracist curriculum. This article starts by describing the two Penn State Dickinson Law faculty resolutions that committed the faculty to condemn racism and bias against our Black and Brown brothers and sisters, while committing to teach and learn according to Antiracist pedagogy and best practices. It then describes the resolve to become Antiracist teachers, discusses the investments in curricular policy and reform, and details the bureaucratic processes to accomplish the following: adding …

The Rise Of The Decanal Collective Voice, Danielle M. Conway

Faculty Books

The United States is a nation of laws, and its Constitution and the rule of law have allowed it to confront and successfully navigate many threats to democracy throughout the nation’s complex history, including a Civil War. All of these threats challenged the nation in various ways, but never has there been a challenge to the truth of our elections like what happened on January 6, 2021.

The Insurrection represents a turning point in America’s history. In addition to the unprecedented assault on the U.S. Capitol, members of the government sought to undermine an election and supported an attack on …

A Black Woman Law Dean Speaks About The Precarity Of Leadership, Danielle M. Conway

Faculty Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Feedback Loops: Keep/Cut, Patrick Barry

Articles

In the first of installment of this new column on feedback in the September Illinois Bar Journal, we began to address the pernicious problem of vague feedback—that unhelpful, empty-calories form of (non) guidance that deprives people of learning what they’re currently doing well and what they need to ix. Without concrete, explicit guidance, it can be really tough to grow and improve.

An Empirical Analysis Of Clinical Legal Education In Middle Age, Robert R. Kuehn, David A. Santacroce

Articles

Modern clinical legal education has turned fifty. Much has been written on its development and history, both as a pedagogy and in relation to the broader enterprise of legal education. But there has been no longitudinal empirical analysis documenting that growth until now. By looking at a series of nationwide surveys starting in 2007 and comparing those results to surveys dating back to the 1970s, this article paints a factual picture of clinical legal education’s progression from early adulthood to middle age.

Feedback Loops: Surviving The Feedback Desert, Patrick Barry

Articles

I ask my law students the following set of parallel questions on the very first day of “Feedback Loops,” a course I have been teaching for the past couple of years: What did you get better at last year? How do you know? What should you get better at this year? How do you know?

From Langdell To Lab: The Opportunities And Challenges Of Experiential Learning In The First Semester, Steven K. Homer

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Other Bar Hurdle: An Examination Of The Character And Fitness Requirement For Bar Admission, David L. Hudson Jr., Andrea Gemignani

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Storytelling And Truth-Telling: Personal Reflections On The Native American Experience In Law Schools, Angelique Eaglewoman, Dominic J. Terry, Lani Petrulo, Dr. Gavin Clarkson, Angela Levasseur, Leah R. Sixkiller, Jack Rice

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

How To Be Biased In The Classroom: Kwayeskastasowin - Setting Things Right?, Jaime M.N. Lavallee

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Some Reflections Of A Métis Law Student And Assistant Professor On Indigenous Legal Education In Canada, Scott Franks

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Square Pegs And Round Holes: Differentiated Instruction And The Law Classroom, Karen J. Sneddon

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.