Legal Education Commons^™

In Memoriam: J. Rodney Johnson, W. Hamilton Bryson

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Genesis Of Conflict: The Zero-Sum Mindset, Jonathan R. Cohen

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

Parties in conflict often operate under the assumption that for one party to win, the other party must lose. This concept, known as the "zero-sum mindset, " can lead to undesirable results, both because it can make disputes harder to resolve and because people holding such beliefs are more likely to get into conflicts to begin with. Over the past several decades, legal educators specializing in dispute resolution have worked hard to challenge that mindset. This task is not simple, for framing conflict in zero-sum terms has very deep cultural roots tracing back at least to the Biblical stories in …

Saving Mr. Banks And Other Interest-Based Negotiations, Michael Rogers

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

The goal of this article is to encourage the use of interestbased negotiations. Some of the stories included will be familiar; others will be fresh. In Getting to Yes, Fisher and Ury identify four principles of negotiation ("principled negotiation") that can be employed effectively in almost any type of dispute resolution: (1) Separate the people from the problem; (2) Focus on interests rather than positions; (3) Invent options for mutual gain; and (4) Insist on using objective criteria. Because focusing on interests is the second step identified in Getting to Yes, and inventing options for mutual gain is the …

Ethical Challenges Of Using Law Student Interns/Externs To Expand Services To Low-Income Older Adults, Eleanor Lanier

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Work With Me Here: Collaborative Learning In The Legal Research Classroom, Susan Azyndar

Journal Articles

From the Article

This article seeks to contribute to this pedagogical project by seeking out links between Millennial student needs, legal workplace expectations, and thoughtful pedagogical strategies; it centers on the important legal skill of collaboration.

What Legal Writers Can Learn From Paint Nite, Beth Cohen, Pat Newcombe

Faculty Scholarship

Paint Nite activities and adult coloring have captured the nation’s interest and gone mainstream. Creating something on our own is what drives similar trends like the popular Do It Yourself movement and the resurgence of knitting after 9/11. At the same time, these fun, creative activities can provide us with a window into the process of legal writing. Using Paint Nite as a reference point throughout a legal writing course allows faculty to present a holistic view of the writing process and provides a useful analogy for faculty as well as an accessible context for students. Legal writing instructors share …

Do Law Schools Adequately Prepare Students For Practice? Surveys Say . . . No!, Robert R. Kuehn

Scholarship@WashULaw

There has been much concern over declining bar passage rates, focusing attention on whether some schools are admitting students who may not be capable of passing the bar exam and whether a school’s program of legal education adequately prepares its graduates for the exam. But if studies of practicing lawyers and recent law graduates matter, it is clear that law schools are also failing in their primary mission to adequately prepare students for legal practice.

This paper examines studies by the National Conference of Bar Examiners, the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, and the American Bar …

Do We Need Subject Matter-Specific Pedagogies?, Kris Franklin

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Why I Don’T Teach Administrative Law (And Perhaps Why I Should?), Allan C. Hutchinson

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

This Commentary reflects upon the challenges of teaching Administrative Law today. Drawing upon the author’s own career trajectory and his commitment to a critical account of law and adjudication, the article seeks to question the foundations of both administrative law and critical theory. It offers no comprehensive or cogent plan as to what to do, but insists upon the relevance and importance of combining both legal theory and legal doctrine in a convincing pedagogical approach.

Assignments With Intrinsic Lessons On Professionalism (Or, Teaching Students To Act Like Adults Without Sounding Like A Parent), Beth H. Wilensky

Articles

There is little question that law schools ought to teach their students professionalism – indeed, they are required to do so to maintain accreditation. And there is little question that the required legal writing and research course is one of the places it ought to be taught. But teaching students to adopt the norms of professional behavior — both in law school and after graduation — is a challenge to law faculties, and particularly to the experiential learning faculty who frequently are on the front lines of teaching professionalism. While there are many ways to teach students what professional and …

When Should We Teach Our Students To Pay Attention To The Costs Of Legal Research?, Beth H. Wilensky

Articles

It is axiomatic in legal research pedagogy that law schools should teach students how to conduct cost-effective legal research. To do that, we need to teach students to consider the amount of time and money their research requires, how paid legal research platforms like Westlaw and Lexis charge for their services, and how to research in an efficient and cost-sensitive way. But we shouldn’t do those things. Or at least, we shouldn’t do them at first. Instead, we should tell students not to worry about the costs of legal research during their first year of law school—with the possible exception …

Assessment Of Learning Outcomes In Transactional Skills Courses, Carol Morgan, Carol Newman

Scholarly Works

The following description of our guided discussion reflects our questions from our original presentation and our own insights and experiences, together with the insights and ideas suggested by our audience. Our audience represented a variety of law schools, varying in size, geographic location, and curricular emphasis on transactional law and skills, and varying in types of transactional courses, including clinics, simulations, and courses focusing on transactional skills. We are grateful to our audience, who served as a thoughtful, vibrant discussion group in generously sharing their experiences, ideas, and suggestions regarding assessing learning outcomes in transactional skills-based courses.

A Tribute To Judge Kaye, Nicholas W. Allard

Brooklyn Law Review

This collection of remarks from scholars, practitioners, and judges serves as a tribute to the life of the beloved and esteemed Judge Kaye and her commitment to the New York State Constitution. The collection culminates with Judge Kaye’s final essay, written for the Brooklyn Law Review, with her reflections on opportunity in life and law and New York’s State Constitution.

Meta-Mindfulness: A New Hope, Peter H. Huang

Publications

This Essay starts by tracing its humble origins to an earlier, related and unique law review article, namely, Tiger Cub Strikes Back: Memoirs of an Ex-Child Prodigy About Legal Education and Parenting. This Essay describes various professional responses to Tiger Cub Strikes Back, provides an update of some developments in research about parenting and legal education since Tiger Cub Strikes Back, and recounts a few personal stories about mindfulness and related to being an ex-child prodigy. This Essay then analyzes meta-mindfulness, defined as mindfulness about mindfulness. This Essay discusses how mindfulness about mindfulness can help facilitate the …

From The Editor, Susan Nevelow Mart

Publications

No abstract provided.

Work Drive Matters: An Assessment Of The Relationship Between Law Students’ Work-Related Preferences And Academic Performance, Jeffrey Minneti

Faculty Articles

This article explores the dimensions of law students' schoolwork-related preferences and discusses an empirical assessment of those preferences. The assessment revealed two findings: (1) a positive correlation between students' schoolwork-related preferences and their first-year law school cumulative grade point average (LGPA); and (2) students' schoolwork-related preferences significantly enhanced the predictive power of the traditional law school success predictors, law students' LSAT performance and their undergraduate cumulative grade point average (UGPA). During spring 2014, 215 law students responded to a survey that included questions from the Multidimensional Work Ethic Profile (MWEP) and Work Drive Inventory. Analysis of the responses indicated that …

Teaching About Economic Efficiency In Law And Economics Courses: Clarifying The Conceptual Problems, Empirical Difficulties, And Normative Biases Of The Efficiency Criterion, Gregory S. Crespi

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Law and Economics courses taught in law schools are sometimes criticized for inadequately explaining the normative criterion of “economic efficiency” and then applying this criterion throughout the course in a superficial and biased manner that pejoratively labels most governmental market interventions and wealth redistribution measures as inefficient. These criticisms have merit, and in this brief article I point out a significant number of conceptual problems, empirical difficulties and normative shortcomings of the efficiency criterion that one needs to understand in order to be able to effectively counter policy arguments that rest upon efficiency assessments.

The specific shortcomings of the efficiency …

Mindfulness - Finding Focus In A Distracted World, Heather Simmons, Kyle K. Courtney

Scholarly Works

Law school and law practice can be an intense and chaotic experience. Library outreach can include programs that support the growing movement within the legal profession toward personal wellness; that is, valuing self-care and paying attention to our emotional, psychological, and physical health while practicing law. Mindfulness and meditation fall squarely within this movement’s mission

A Modest Proposal For Expediting Manuscript Selection At Less Prestigious Law Reviews, Joseph S. Miller

Scholarly Works

The matching market in unsolicited manuscripts, submitted to general law reviews, suffers from far too much wasted student effort. This is especially so among the less prestigious law review staffs, which scramble to read submissions they cannot land in the misguided belief they owe authors serious scholarly engagement with the drafts they submit. If they set aside this quaintly artisanal view—an apparent relic of the “Paper Chase” era that ill suits the age of ExpressO and Scholastica—students can process manuscripts far more efficiently. They need only update their manuscript-review systems according to the same market imperatives that drive the professors …

Law Library Blog (January 2016): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.