Legal Education Commons^™

Notes Toward An Understanding Of The U.S. Market In Foreign Ll.M. Students: From The British Empire And The Inns Of Court To The U.S. Ll.M., Bryant G. Garth

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Mindie Lazarus-Black and Julie Globokar's article on "Foreign Attorneys in U.S. LL.M. Programs: Who's In, Who's Out, and Who They Are" uses interviews, LL.M. student observations, and actual admissions committee documents from one Midwest and one East Coast law school to confirm the tremendous growth of those programs over the past two decades in the United States and indicate who makes the journey to the United States; how foreign LL.M. candidates pitch themselves to admissions committees; how those admissions committees evaluate candidates; and what candidates expect from LL.M. programs. The voices that come through are quite compelling. We now know …

Foreign Attorneys In U.S. Ll.M. Programs: Who's In, Who's Out, And Who They Are, Mindie Lazarus-Black, Julie L. Globokar

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

In recent decades, there has been a remarkable growth in the number of foreign attorneys enrolled at U.S. law schools and particularly in LL.M. programs. To learn more about these students and how they fare, we conducted research in two law schools, one in the Midwest and the second on the East Coast. We examine the admissions process for foreign attorneys from the perspectives and experiences of both the administrators who make admissions decisions and the students who seek admission. We consider the layered international, national, state, and local laws that complicate the selection process, as well as the standards …

The Aspiring And Globalizing Graduate Law Student: A Comment On The Lazarus-Black And Globokar Ll.M. Study, Jayanth K. Krishnan, Vitor M. Dias

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

As a thought experiment, in the next section we present a theoretical frame (that builds on what previous scholars have discussed) for understanding motivation-as it relates to the subject focused on by Lazarus-Black and Globokar. Based on this model, we then postulate an alternative motivation for why foreign applicants might wish to pursue their LL.M. studies. We base our hypothesis on the experiences we have had in two countries we know well: India and Brazil. Because this is just a short Comment, we leave the empirical work on our proposal for future research. Our hope is that this exercise might …

Technology And Legal Research: What Is Taught And What Is Used In The Practice Of Law, Rebecca Sewanee Trammell

CCAC 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 …

Chip Off The Old Block, Jim Rosenblatt

Journal Articles

What a proud moment it is for a father or mother to have a child pursue the same vocation as the parent. There is something affirming about knowing that a child has observed your work, your lifestyle, your colleagues, and your impact on the world, and chooses to follow in your vocational footsteps. A child who claims the lifestyle and work of the parent, after having observed it close at hand for a number of years, sends a positive message to the parents that what they are doing is worthwhile enough to be emulated. One son chose to attend law …

Disciplining Legal Scholarship, Lynn M. Lopucki

UF Law Faculty Publications

U.S. law schools are hiring large proportions of J.D.-Ph.D.s in tenure-track faculty positions in an effort to increase the quantity and quality of empirical legal scholarship. That effort is failing. The new recruits bring methods and objectives unsuited to law. They produce lower-than-predicted levels of empiricism because they compete on the basis of methodological sophistication, devote time and resources to disputes over arcane issues in statistics and methodology, prefer to collaborate with other Ph.D.s, and intimidate empiricists whose work does not require high levels of methodological sophistication. In short, Ph.D.s impose the cultures of their disciplines on legal scholarship. Importing …

Addressing Barriers To Cultural Sensibility Learning: Lessons From Social Cognition Theory, Andrea A. Curcio

Faculty Publications By Year

Understanding subconscious biases, their pervasiveness, and their impact on perceptions, interactions, and analyses, helps prepare lawyers to represent people from cultural and racial backgrounds different from their own, and to address both individual and institutional injustice. Two law student surveys suggest many students believe lawyers are less susceptible than clients to having, or acting upon, stereotypes or biases. The survey results also indicate that many students suffer from bias blind spot – i.e. they believe that while others cannot recognize when they are acting based upon stereotypical beliefs and biases, the students know when they are doing so. The survey …

An Incredible Legacy, Kristina L. Niedringhaus

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

A Vast Image Out Of Spiritus Mundi: The Existential Crisis Of Law Schools, Jeremiah A. Ho

All Faculty Scholarship

In her recent book, Teaching Law: Justice, Politics, and the Demands of Professionalism, Robin L. West articulates that the crisis is not merely as the The New York Times and other media outlets have described it — not entirely about the faulty business practices of law schools or the lack of practice-oriented teaching in law classrooms. Instead, the crisis lies at the existential core of law schools. The original nineteenth-century set-up of the American law school and that model’s continued existence today have contributed to an identity crisis for law schools, revealing its major incompatibility with how the law is …

What Judges Want And Need: User-Friendly Foundations For Effective Judicial Education, Duane Benton, Jennifer A.L. Sheldon-Sherman

Journal of Dispute Resolution

This article evaluates the connection between judicial education and judges’ needs and preferences. In Part I, we begin by discussing the history, purpose, and form of judicial education, charting its evolution over time. In Part II, we examine current judicial education programs and scholarship, highlighting differences and similarities between federal and state programming. In Part III, we analyze the limitations of existing scholarship and programming, arguing judicial education programs are insufficiently tied to evidence of judicial demands. We conclude in Parts IV and V by suggesting two proposals to align programming with needs: (1) an annual needs-based assessment of judicial …

Redefining Attention (And Revamping The Legal Profession?) For The Digital Generation, Lauren A. Newell

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Crisis And Trigger Warnings: Reflections On Legal Education And The Social Value Of The Law, 90 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 615 (2015), Kim D. Chanbonpin

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

This Essay begins by understanding the law school crisis through the framework of disaster capitalism. This framing uncovers the ways in which reformers are taking advantage of the current crisis to restructure legal education. Under the circumstances, faculty may reasonably read the contemporaneous student-led movement to require trigger warnings in the classroom as an assault on academic freedom. This reading, however, clouds the water. Part II attempts to clear the confusion by decoupling the trigger-warning movement from the broader phenomenon of law school corporatization. Trigger-warning demands might alternatively be read as a student critique of traditional law school pedagogy. Especially …

Judicial Education And Regulatory Capture: Does The Current System Of Educating Judges Promote A Well-Functioning Judiciary And Adequately Serve The Public Interest?, S. I. Strong

Faculty Articles

This phenomenon suggests a pressing need for further scrutiny into matters relating to the education of judges in this country. This Essay therefore considers of a number of fundamental issues relating to judicial education in the United States so as to consider, at least as a preliminary matter, whether regulatory capture exists. Given the scope of this Essay, some issues are necessarily excluded. Nevertheless, this Essay hopes to trigger a deeper debate about judicial education in this country.

The structure of the analysis is as follows. First, the Essay considers certain obstacles to research concerning judicial education as a means …

Leaping Language And Cultural Barriers With Visual Legal Rhetoric, Michael D. Murray

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This Article discusses the scholarship of popular culture, cognitive studies and brain science, data visualization studies, modern argument theory in rhetoric, the rapid development of technology in the production of documents, and technology in the reading and reception of documents, which all point to one outcome: the tools of legal education and law practice must become more visual by following principles of visual legal rhetoric and visual narrativity. Visual has become the "new normal" in communication, and legal rhetorical communication in law school and law practice must not let itself fall behind the times.

Making Sausage: What, Why And How To Teach About Legislative Process In A Legislation Or Leg-Reg Course, Deborah A. Widiss

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Although a rapidly growing number of law schools require students to take a course on legislation, many of these courses teach very little about how laws are actually enacted. This essay, written for a special issue of the Journal of Legal Education, argues that study of the legislative process helps students interpret and apply statutory language.

The essay surveys existing text books and supplemental resources that could be easily integrated into a Leg-Reg or Legislation class to explain modern Congressional procedure. The focus is the multiple distinct paths that bills may take through a legislative body and the written …

Foreword: Reflections On Our Founding, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, Guy-Uriel Charles

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

You Make Me Feel Like Dancing: Students, Scholars, And Sources In The Law Library, Jeanne Price

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

School-Based Supports For Trans Youth In Ontario, Charlie E. C. Davis

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Trans youth are some of the most marginalized youths in schools. In 2012, the Ontario Government passed two legislations, one of which was the Accepting Schools Act, strengthening supports for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or questioning (LGBTQ) students in schools. The other was Toby’s Act, an amendment to the Ontario Human Rights Code including protection from discrimination on the grounds of gender identity and gender expression. The purpose of this thesis is to examine how these two acts have created a political context supporting trans youth in schools. A comprehensive mixed-methods approach was used to examine provincial trends of trans-specific …

From Thinking Like A Lawyer To Acting Like A Lawyer: Externships Provide Invaluable Experience, Austen L. Parrish

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Scholarship Against Desire, Shari Motro

Law Faculty Publications

This article uses my own experience navigating the law review placement process to reflect on the dynamics that shape intellectual life at American law schools. My recent work focuses on the legal relationship between unmarried lovers who conceive. At its heart, it is about the law’s role in shaping the precursor to pregnancy—heterosexual sex. When I began researching this topic what I was most curious about was how law and culture might conspire to foster connections that are more loving and less violent, more authentic and less alienated. Pursuing this topic—which would entail exploring big existential questions to which I …