Legal Education Commons^™

Commentary, Critical Legal Theory In Intellectual Property And Information Law Scholarship, Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal Spring Symposium, Sonia K. Katyal, Peter Goodrich

Faculty Scholarship

The very definition and scope of CLS (critical legal studies) is itself subject to debate. Some scholars characterize CLS as scholarship that employs a particular methodology—more of a “means” than an “end.” On the other hand, some scholars contend that CLS scholarship demonstrates a collective commitment to a political end goal—an emancipation of sorts —through the identification of, and resistance to, exploitative power structures that are reinforced through law and legal institutions. After a brief golden age, CLS scholarship was infamously marginalized in legal academia and its sub-disciplines. But CLS themes now appear to be making a resurgence—at least in …

Towards Engaged Scholarship, Nestor M. Davidson

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Law Clinics And Lobbying Restrictions, Kevin Barry, Marcy Karin

University of Colorado Law Review

"Can law school clinics lobby?" This question has plagued professors for decades but has gone unanswered, until now. This Article situates law school clinics within the labyrinthine law of lobbying restrictions and concludes that clinics may indeed lobby. For ethical, pedagogical, and, ultimately, practical reasons, it is critical that professors who teach in clinics understand these restrictions. This Article offers advice to professors and students on safely navigating this complicated terrain.

Introduction, Symposium: The State And Future Of Legal Education, Francis J. Mootz Iii

McGeorge School of Law Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Pregnancy Discrimination In Higher Education: Accommodating Student Pregnancy, Emily Mcnee

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article argues that despite Title IX's protections against sex discrimination, pregnant students in higher education continue to face subtle discrimination, particularly through rigid academic policies that fail to accommodate pregnancy-related needs. It advocates for clarifying Title IX regulations to explicitly require schools to provide accommodations, drawing parallels to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) model, to ensure equal educational opportunities for pregnant students.

Experiential Education In The Lecture Hall, Jessica Erickson

Law Faculty Publications

Legal education today is composed of two separate worlds. The first world includes clinical faculty, law skills faculty, and other related faculty. These faculty members have long embraced experiential education, and they organize and attend conferences like the "Experience the Future" symposium, hosted by Northeastern University School of Law and the Alliance for Experiential Learning in Law. The other world includes people like me- doctrinal faculty members who are still largely teaching the way we always have. As we see it, our role is to teach doctrine and legal analysis, leaving skills training and other experiential teaching to others. Experiential …

From Podcasts To Treasure Hunts— Using Technology To Promote Student Engagement, Marcia L. Mccormick

All Faculty Scholarship

Three influential calls for reform in legal education, the MacCrate Report, the Carnegie Report, and most recently the Stuckey Report, have all recommended that professors use teaching methods to provide greater opportunities for students to practice problem solving skills and receive feedback on their performance. Being a lawyer is much more than memorizing rules; students need to be able to understand the big picture and use the details to problem solve. This article details how to use audio and written podcast summaries to help students see the big picture in a subject and how each smaller topic fits together into …

Bramble Bush Revisited: Karl Llewellyn, The Great Depression, And The First Law School Crisis, 1929-1939, Anders Walker

All Faculty Scholarship

This article recovers the plight of legal education during the Great Depression, showing how debates over practical training, theoretical research and the appropriate length of law school all emerged in the 1930s. Using Bramble Bush author Karl Llewellyn as a guide, it strives to make three points. One, Depression-era critics of law school called for increased attention to practical skills, like today, but also a more interdisciplinary curriculum – something current reformers discount. Two, the push for theoretical, policy-oriented courses in the 1930s set the stage for claims that law graduates deserved more than a Bachelor of Laws degree, bolstering …

Pointing Out The Power Of Prezi, Part Ii: Learning To Use Prezi, Paul M. Birch

Law Faculty Publications

This article introduces Prezi, the online presentation software which has emerged as a most promising alternative to Microsoft PowerPoint. Part II provides a tutorial designed to acquaint the user with the basic steps in creating a presentation, and offers additional advice for effective use of Prezi.

Salvaging The 2013 Federal Law Clerk Hiring Season, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

Ten years ago, the judiciary instituted the Federal Law Clerk Hiring Plan, an employment system meant to regularize hiring in which most circuit and district court jurists voluntarily participated. Throughout the succeeding decade, this process operated effectively for innumerable trial judges, but functioned less well for appellate jurists. In early 2013, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit revealed that all its members "will hire law clerks at such times as each individual judge determines to be appropriate," concomitantly explaining "the plan is [apparently] no longer working." With these statements, the D.C. Circuit explicitly acknowledged what …

Self-Congratulation And Scholarship, Paul Campos

Publications

Professor Jay Silver’s criticism of the reform proposals put forward in Brian Tamanaha’s book Failing Law Schools displays some characteristic weaknesses of American legal academic culture. These weaknesses include a tendency to make bold assertions about the value of legal scholarship and the effectiveness of law school pedagogy, while at the same time providing no support for these assertions beyond a willingness to repeat self-congratulatory platitudes about who professors are and what we do. The high costs for our students of the current scholarly expectations at American law schools are clear. What is not clear is whether those costs are …

The Lawyer's Toolbox: Teaching Students About Risk Allocation, Dana Malkus, Scott Stevenson, Eric J. Gouvin, Usha Rodrigues

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article is the transcript of a panel presented at Emory’s Third Biennial Conference on Transactional Education. The panel focuses on techniques for teaching risk allocation as part of transactional skills classes. The panelists describe their approaches to teaching risk allocation, from syllabus design to final evaluations. How can a professor help students to understand the basic concepts of risk, the role risk plays in business and legal decisions, and how they can help clients manage risk. The techniques for teaching risk allocation include hypotheticals, visual aids, and hands-on assignments. The panelists each take their students down a different path …

Tips For Capturing 2014 Federal Court Clerkships, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

Now is a perfect moment for analyzing 2014 clerkships because law students across the country have completed their productive summer employment and are poised to commence their final year. Below are ideas which could help aspirants secure those coveted positions that start during next August.

Measuring The Racial Unevenness Of Law School, Jonathan Feingold, Doug Souza

Faculty Scholarship

In "Measuring the Racial Unevenness of Law School," Jonathan Feingold and Doug Souza introduce and analyze the concept of racial unevenness, which refers to the particularized burdens an individual encounters as a result of her race. These burdens, which often arise because an individual falls outside of the racial norm, manifest across a spectrum. At one end lie obvious forms of overt and invidious racial discrimination. At the other end, racial unevenness arises from environmental factors and institutional culture independent from any identifiable perpetrator. As the authors detail, race-dependent burdens can arise in institutions and communities that expressly promote racial …

Legal Education At A Crossroads: Innovation, Integration, And Pluralism Required!, Karen Tokarz, Antoinette Sedillo Lopez, Peggy Maisel, Robert Seibel

Faculty Scholarship

Although historically slow to change, law schools are now facing enormous pressure from educators, students, lawyers, judges, clients, and the public to rethink legal education and the lawyer‘s role in society. Now more than ever, there is robust national debate on the threshold contributions law schools should make to the preparation of law graduates for entry into practice. The clamor for reform in legal education is precipitated by a confluence of factors, including new insights about lawyering competencies and experiential legal education; the shifting nature of legal practice in the United States; a decrease in law jobs; changes in the …

Did Legal Education Fail Health Reform? And How Health Law Can Help, Wendy K. Mariner

Faculty Scholarship

Arguments over the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act illustrate the pervasiveness of health law issues in society. In court, arguments on both sides also demonstrated insufficient knowledge of the health care system and health insurance to identify and present useful arguments. Too many lawyers remained wedded to theories of constitutional law that have become disconnected from twenty-first century realities. Legal education may have something to answer for in this respect. This essay examines how legal education in health law may offer some valuable responses to ongoing critiques of legal education in general. The more law moves away from strict …

The Teaching Of Procedure Across Common Law Systems, Erik S. Knusten, Thomas D. Rowe Jr., David Bamford, Shirley Shipman

Faculty Scholarship

What difference does the teaching of procedure make to legal education, legal scholarship, the legal profession, and civil justice reform? This first of four articles on the teaching of procedure canvasses the landscape of current approaches to the teaching of procedure in four legal systems—the United States, Canada, Australia, and England and Wales—surveying the place of procedure in the law school curriculum and in professional training, the kinds of subjects that “procedure” encompasses, and the various ways in which procedure is learned. Little sustained reflection has been carried out as to the import and impact of this longstanding law school …

Founding Legal Education In America, Paul D. Carrington

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Price Of Legal Education, Paul D. Carrington

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

In Defense Of Scholars' Briefs: A Response To Richard Fallon, Amanda Frost

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

In a thoughtful and provocative essay, Richard Fallon criticizes law professors for lightly signing onto 'scholars’ briefs,' that is, amicus briefs filed on behalf of a group of law professors claiming expertise in the subject area. Fallon argues that law professors are constrained by the moral and ethical obligations of their profession from joining scholars’ briefs without first satisfying standards similar to those governing the production of scholarship, and thus he believes that law professors should abstain from adding their names to such briefs more often than they do now.

This response begins by describing the benefits of scholars’ briefs …