Legal Education Commons^™

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.

Gideon's Legacy: Taking Pedagogical Inspiration From The Briefs That Made History, Elizabeth Berenguer Megale

Barry Law Review

No abstract provided.

Law School As Liberal Education, Sherman J. Clark

Articles

The president of a liberal arts college, if asked why college is worthwhile, would be able to respond on several levels. He or she would certainly say something about the value of the degree as a credential to help students get a job or get into graduate school. In addition, he or she would likely emphasize the professional value of the skills and capacities developed through a liberal education, which can help students succeed at work or in graduate school. More deeply, however, we would expect that he or she would have something to say about the intrinsic value of …

Teaching Legal History Through Legal Skills, Howard Bromberg

Articles

I revolve my legal history courses around one methodology: teaching legal history by means of legal skills. I draw on my experience teaching legal practice and clinical s.kills courses to assign briefs and oral arguments as a means for law students to immerse themselves in historical topics. Without detracting from other approaches, I frame this innovation as teaching legal history not to budding historians but to budding lawyers.

Accelerating The Growth Of The Next Generation Of Innovators, Dana Thompson

Articles

In a recent study on the best practices of business incubators that contribute to the success of startups, one of the best practices asserted is to include a business lawyer on the advisory board of business incubators, who may suggest necessary legal issues for startups to address and connect the incubator startups with legal assistance. Although many college and university incubators may have access to experienced attorneys who are able to provide advice, and who are able to represent student-led ventures, most do not have access to a university law clinic established to provide pro bono, direct legal representation and …

Hero For The People, Hero For The Land And Water: Reflections On The Enduring Contributions Of David Getches, Charles Wilkinson

Publications

No abstract provided.

Teaching Business Associations Law In The Evolving New Market Economy, Joan Macleod Heminway

Journal of Business & Technology Law

No abstract provided.

Adaptive Clinical Teaching, Colleen F. Shanahan, Emily Benfer

Faculty Scholarship

Teaching is an exercise in adaptation and clinical legal teaching is no exception. Clinical teachers develop effective approaches through instinct, training, pedagogy, skill, and trial and error. Building on the trials, errors, and instincts of clinical teachers, this article offers a more intentional approach: "adaptive clinical teaching" (ACT). ACT is a structured method of guided analysis and reflection that applies to any clinical teaching situation, allowing a clinician to make her teaching choices based on as much knowledge and with as much intentionality as possible. ACT provides clinicians with an approach for new issues as they arise and builds a …

The Trials And Tribulations Of Japan’S Legal Education Reforms, Daniel H. Foote

Articles

A sense of momentum accompanied the start of Japan's new legal education system in the spring of 2004. Less than three years had passed since the Justice System Reform Council (the Reform Council) issued its final report in June 2001, proposing a major restructuring of Japan's legal training system centered on a new tier of graduate level law schools. And less than a year and a half had elapsed since the details of the law school system were decided and enabling legislation passed. Despite the tight timetable, sixty-eight law schools were ready to commence operations in 2004, having arranged facilities, …

Mocking Equality: Reproduction Of Gender Hierarchy In Collegiate Mock Trial, Lily M. Foss

Scripps Senior Theses

During the information sessions that the Scripps Mock Trial Team hosts at the beginning of the school year for those interested in mock trial, it's customary for all the returning team members to talk about why we decided to join mock trial in college. We had no team at my high school, but at the end of my senior year, my AP American Government teacher decided that having a mock trial in class would give us valuable insight into the American legal system. I was chosen to give the closing statement for the defense, and I found my calling. My …

Peer Review Across The Curriculum, Patricia G. Montana

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In 2007, two very influential institutes published reports that challenged legal educators to reconsider how they design courses, deliver instruction, assess their students’ learning and explore new ways to prepare students for the profession of law. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching published its report, Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law (“Carnegie Report”), and the Clinical Legal Education Association published its study, Best Practices for Legal Education (“Best Practices Report”) (collectively, the “Reports”). Both Reports came to the same conclusion: law schools must devote more attention and resources to helping students develop the professional skills …

Teaching Employment Discrimination Law, Virtually, Miriam A. Cherry

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

The process of education, teaching, and learning has ideally been conceived of as a transformative endeavor. Students learn a new way of thinking and asking questions, rather than memorizing or assimilating material verbatim by rote. As curiosity and inquisitiveness are to be valued, students change their mode of analysis and in so doing, the way that they perceive the world. While this is the typical meaning of “transformative” learning, what if learning were actually transformative? In other words, what if what you were learning or the process of learning turned you into someone else (at least for the course …

The Cplr At Fifty: A View From Academia, Vincent C. Alexander

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

First and foremost, teaching students in an advanced civil procedure course that concentrates on the CPLR helps them prepare for civil litigation in all of the state courts of New York. As we all know, New York has numerous civil courts of original subject matter jurisdiction--a distressing feature for students and litigants alike. What is sometimes overlooked, however, is that the CPLR governs the procedure in all of those courts unless some specific statute says otherwise. Even for students who intend to practice law in other states, an in-depth study of the CPLR will enhance their ability to cope …

Law Student Laptop Use During Class For Non-Class Purposes: Temptation V. Incentives, Jeff Sovern

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

When the creators of the children’s television show Sesame Street wished to know whether preschoolers would actually watch it, their head of research, Ed Palmer, set up a room with a television monitor showing segments from the show. On a nearby screen, Palmer projected slides of various images; the slides changed every seven-and-a-half seconds. Then he brought small children in and waited to see if the children focused on the Sesame Street segments or the still pictures. Only segments that elicited attention from many preschoolers ended up on the air. As a result, the producers discarded segments that they …

Grades Matter; Legal Writing Grades Matter Most, Jessica L. Clark

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this study of 380 students in a law school’s 2011 graduating class, the data demonstrates a strong correlation between high performance in legal writing courses and high performance in non-legal writing courses. There is also a strong correlation at the opposite end: low performers in legal writing courses are low performers in non-legal writing courses. This article provides the hard data to support the significance of writing skills by demonstrating the correlation between performance in legal writing courses and performance in other law school courses by comparing grades and Grade Point Averages (GPAs). Of course grades and GPA data …

There Is No Santa Claus: The Challenge Of Teaching The Next Generation Of Civil Rights Lawyers In A ‘Post-Racial’ Society, Deborah N. Archer

Articles & Chapters

This essay takes a fresh look at the scholarship on the practice of cross-cultural and client-centered lawyering. The current scholarship explores methods of training law students to be mindful of the ways that cultural differences can impact legal representation. However, this scholarship has not addressed how to equip students to address issues of racial discrimination in light of the post-racial lens through which many view these problems. Legal educators must examine how law students’ beliefs regarding the current relevance of race in America affects their ability to represent clients who believe they are victims of racial discrimination.

The essay charts …

Towards Engaged Scholarship, John R. Nolon, Michelle Bryan Mudd, Michael Burger, Kim Diana Connolly, Nestor Davidson, Matthew Festa, Jill I. Gross, Lisa Heinzerling, Keith H. Hirokawa, Tim Iglesias, Patrick C. Mcginley, Sean Nolon, Uma Outka, Jessica Owley, Kalyani Robbins, Jonathan Rosenbloom, Christopher Serkin

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Law And Negotiation: Necessary Partners Or Strange Bedfellows?, Nancy L. Schultz

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

Almost thirty years ago, Robert Condlin wrote an article discussing the frustrations of students in his Negotiations class. He noted that his law students saw legal argument in negotiation primarily as a source of vexation rather than resolution. In the twenty-plus years I have taught negotiations, I have heard the same thing many times. Students will prepare and research and then be disconcerted when their negotiating partners are not swayed by their brilliant legal arguments. One comment by a student in a paper discussing his team's preparation for negotiation shows the initial thought process in a domestic relations negotiation: "It …

A Case For Grade Inflation In Legal Education, Joshua M. Silverstein

Law Faculty Scholarship

This Article contends that every American law school ought to substantially eliminate C grades by setting its good academic standing grade point average at the B- level. Grading systems that require or encourage law professors to award a significant number of C marks are flawed for two reasons. First, low grades damage students' placement prospects. Employers frequently consider a job candidate's absolute GPA in making hiring decisions. If a school systematically assigns inferior grades, its students are at an unfair disadvantage when competing for employment with students from institutions that award mostly A's and B's. Second, marks in the C …

Financial Retrenchment And Institutional Entrenchment: Will Legal Education Respond, Explode, Or Just Wait It Out?, Ian Weinstein

Faculty Scholarship

Both markets and ideas have turned against the American legal profession. Legal hiring has contracted, and law school enrollments are decreasing. The business models of big law and legal education are under pressure, current levels of student indebtedness seem unsustainable, and a hero has yet to emerge from our fragmented regulatory structures. In the realm of ideas, the information revolution has sparked deep critiques of structured knowledge and expertise, opening the roles of the law and the university in society to reexamination. We are less enamored of the scholar-lawyer and gaze with longing at technocrats. I hope that clinical law …