Best Practices for Legal Education

Since the downturn of the economy and restructuring of the profession, most news about law schools boiled down to

However, a new ranking lists Attorney as one of the top four promising careers for millenials. The study compared 109 different types of entry-level jobs based on 11 key metrics, ranging from starting salaries to industry growth rate.

For more details you can find the report here.   Perhaps the new image can be:

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This morning, on the WBUR (Boston) radio station, a criminal trial professor (from New York) was discussing the case of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, recently convicted of the bombing of the Boston Marathon two years ago, with hosts Margery Eagan and Jim Braude.

As you may be aware, the punishment phase of the case began today – the question is whether Tsarnaev will get the death penalty or life in prison. The hosts asked whether the defense would be able to argue, to mitigate the punishment and try to avoid the death penalty for their client, that the older brother, Tamerlan, who died in a police shootout (and after being run over by his brother!), was the one truly behind the bombing — essentially that Dzhokhar was “under the influence” of his brother.

The lawyer being interviewed was asked whether, if Dzhokhar doesn’t want to use that defense, but rather considers his brother to be a hero in avenging US aggression overseas (comments he scrawled in ink and blood on the tarp covering the boat in which he hid before being arrested), could Dzhokhar deny his lawyers permission to use that defense theory. The lawyer said that it is clear that he could not forbid his lawyers from arguing that, and opined that these were merely “trial” tactics that are not in the client’s control, but rather in the hands of the lawyers.

I was frustrated that the radio show was not taking calls, as I was eager to dispute that conclusion, and to point out that this type of lawyering is far different from that which we in the clinical community practice as we guide our students through the principles of client-centered lawyering. It was anathema to me to hear the role of the client completely discounted.

Criminal law is not my expertise, but it made me wonder whether my assumptions about clinical teaching don’t apply in criminal and/or death penalty clinics. In a death penalty case, after conviction, at the sentencing stage, does the defendant lose the right to control his/her defense? I’m eager to hear the views of those teaching criminal clinics.

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Yesterday’s Bloomberg Business article leads with a startling headline:  The Smartest People Are Opting Out of Law School. It seems that while law school matriculation numbers have been declining, in addition, far fewer people with high LSAT scores have been deciding to enroll in law school at all. So while the total number of new students continues to decrease, the proportion of lower-LSAT-scoring students is actually increasing.

Leaving aside the temptation to question the validity of the LSAT for predicting whether someone can or will become an effective lawyer, the test is among the best predictors of how well students do in their first year of law school and how likely they are to pass the bar.  Among other things, if students with lower LSAT scores are increasingly going to law school, but not able to succeed, perhaps admissions standards should be tightened as a matter of ethics and integrity. Why string along students whom we can predict will have difficulty achieving mandatory milestones like bar passage? An honest response would include the obvious conflict of interest – law schools need students in order to survive. But society continues to need well-educated lawyers too.

The ongoing effort to improve legal education needs to explicitly embrace students who don’t tend to do particularly well on high-stakes tests like the LSAT, first-year law school exams, or the bar. Even schools who have long administered healthy academic assistance programs may need to consider whether changes should be made. The facts cited in this article could spur faculty to hold discussions about building a curriculum for the students we have – not the students we used to have, or the students we wished we had. By re-envisioning both teaching methods and programmatic structures, schools can both adapt to changing conditions and help students learn and perform well.  Re-focusing a program of legal education to teach the students who are there, not the students who might have attended a decade ago, could invigorate the profession, opening doors that allow less-privileged, more diverse, and otherwise nontraditional students to succeed and excel.

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In recent years a term has been coined describing the unfortunate links that have grown up, over the past nearly 20 years, between immigration law and criminal law: crimmigration. Many criminal lawyers have realized the need to educate themselves about the pitfalls they can inadvertently create for their immigrant clients when recommending various plea options, pitfalls that can result in deportation. Crimmigration is also relevant on the other end of representation – during an initial interview. It is at this point in the representation, the beginning, or even “before the beginning” (the person may not yet be a client) when the lawyer, or student-lawyer, is receiving details about the case, that difficult lessons about interviewing need be learned. It is at this point where student supervision in an immigration clinic reminds me of criminal defense.

The theory of criminal defense is, of course, that the state needs to prove its case against the defendant. Because the defendant is not obliged to help the state do that, it is less important that the client tell the lawyer “what happened” than for the lawyer to ascertain “what evidence the state has” against the client. To a large degree, this is also true in immigration defense, particularly so since harsh immigration laws were enacted in 1996 and 1997, both making many more activities deportable, and removing several avenues of defense against deportation. While not arising weekly, often enough, in response to the student telling the potential client during an initial interview, “you can tell me everything, and I need you to; everything you tell me is confidential,” the client does. At this point, the client might reveal details — often about conduct that may have an adverse impact on the case if disclosed to the government–that may even make the person either deportable or wholly ineligible for the relief being sought.

So, can the client “tell you everything?” Do we really want to teach our students to use this terminology? Is it the “right” way to practice? Is it the “best” way? Or is it naïve, essentially serving the government’s interests and not the potential client’s?

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In 1984, I was 33 years old. I was arrogant, judgmental, narcissistic and very full of myself. I was not as interested in justice as I was in winning. To borrow a phrase from Al Pacino in the movie “And Justice for All,” “Winning became everything.” ….

Had I been more inquisitive, perhaps the evidence would have come to light years ago. But I wasn’t, and my inaction contributed to the miscarriage of justice in this matter. . . .

My mindset was wrong and blinded me to my purpose of seeking justice, rather than obtaining a conviction of a person who I believed to be guilty. I did not hide evidence, I simply did not seriously consider that sufficient information may have been out there that could have led to a different conclusion. And that omission is on me.

• Marty Stroud – March 2015 – Apology to Glenn Ford and to the justice system

Although we may have “second chances,” none of us can undo what has already been done. All of our actions and inactions have consequences – whether immediately or decades from now – that cannot be re-spooled.

Law students learn (hopefully) early on that the law provides remedies which, for the most part, merely substitute for what has been lost whether limbs, rights, freedoms, or life. And in some cases, there are wrongs that simply cannot be remedied. Sometimes, the best we can offer is an apology. The apology offered by prosecutor Marty Shroud to Glenn Ford is sincere; the author proffers no excuses and takes full responsibility for his own acts and omissions – and we should expect no less. I hope Mr. Shroud’s apology reminds those of us in legal education to pay attention to the mindset of our students and to challenge as well as guide them to better develop their professional consciences, mindful of the potential for causing lasting harm and their larger obligation to the legal system.

As educators, the first challenge is to admit when we ourselves are wrong, that we don’t have all of the answers, that the premises upon which we make our arguments can be flawed or judgmental, and that we don’t know everything. The second challenge is to help our law students learn the same. And, law school makes this challenge profoundly difficult for law students. Think about it. Nearly everything depends on “doing well” relative to others in law school – on performance and achievement by mastering content. Many law school and career opportunities depend on doing better than the next person. In a time of “personal truth” and “confirmation bias,” pushing students to take a sincere personal inventory can seem nearly impossible. In a more practical sense, teaching students how to admit mistakes and to take responsibility for those mistakes is difficult. I’m pretty sure there’s no grading rubric or assessment with columns for “makes mistakes,” or “admits to those mistakes” in the larger profession- and life-sense. And, while assigned reflective pieces may encourage students toward more honest personal assessment, those types of assignments are generally not in the mainstream podium classes.

A further impediment to meeting these challenges is what seems to me to be an almost embedded professional cultural insistence that admitting mistakes is a sign of weakness – as though only those who are never wrong are strong. This apology, however, is a singular example of potential change. The apology was forthright; it was both personal and made to the general public at a time when the public is particularly critical of our legal system. As a teacher, I hope my students are able to learn from this letter and remain mindful of the potential for inattentiveness, hubris, and the resulting harm not only to others, but to our entire justice system when we lose sight of the larger picture.

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As law professors, we tend to teach in ways we were taught in law school, using methods we found effective as students.

For example, my very first law professor, Adrienne Davis, kicked off our first-semester 1L Contracts class with an unconventional assignment:  read the book, or watch the film: “The Remains of the Day.” What could this novel possibly have to do with first-year Contracts?  Professor Davis wouldn’t tell us. “You’ll see” she said.  “you’ll see.”  So I read the book.  Or I tried to. And then I became impatient about three chapters in because there was no contract dispute.  And my 1L brain was very angry.  “What is the point?!” my 1L brain screamed. So I watched the film.  And I still didn’t get it.  The story is about an English butler. It has nothing to do with Contracts.

So we 1Ls in Professor Adrienne Davis’s Contracts class were rather disgruntled.  “What was the point?” We silently asked her with our glares and our eye rolls.  “The point,” she said wisely, “was to give you a chance to contemplate duty.  Attorneys have duties to their profession and their clients.  The Butler in the book was grappling with his duty to his household.”

Professor Davis wanted us to consider what sort of attorneys we would be; what we saw as our professional roles and duties as lawyers. And that is what I invite my students to contemplate as well.  It is an invitation to tap into what I call “Self-Aware Professionalism.”

Socrates stressed the importance of self-awareness.  In 2007, law professor Paula Lustbader channeled Socrates when she wrote: “It is ironic that in institutions where the Socratic Method is the main currency, law schools do not do more to promote reflection.  Socrates himself states, ‘[L]ife without enquiry is not worth living.’ Through reflection and discernment, students develop skills to endure and excel with grace in humility in law school as well as in the profession.”

Reflection and discernment, as Lustbader wisely notes, have a place in legal education.  Her language about “students develop[ing] skills” could deceive the reader into thinking reflective learning is only useful in legal skills courses.  Yet, as my first-year Contracts professor also perceived, reflection and discernment have a place in traditional doctrinal law teaching as well.  Students learning legal doctrine surely benefit from a professor who creates space for critical reflection on the multifaceted causes and effects of that doctrine.  Reflective learning cultivates a robust and sustainable system of legal education.

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See this interesting article on the New York Times website discussing proposals to change the Bar Exam!

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Several of the authors of chapters in the soon-to-be-released book, Beyond Best Practices in Legal Education, are speaking today at LegalED’s Igniting Law Teaching conference at American University Washington College of Law.

I am now hearing from Kristen Tiscione from Georgetown Law and then Ruth Anne Robbins will be up.  Earlier today we learned from Warren Binford, Susan Brooks and Paula Schaefer who are all also collaborators in the book.

The editors of BBP have assembled an amazingly talented group of law professors to guide us as we move into the next era of legal education. The more I hear from them, learn from them, the more excited I am for the book to come out later this year.

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I am at LegalED’s Igniting Law Teaching conference at American University Washington College of Law hearing from Prof Syd Beckman about Tips for Using Interactive Technology for Assessment.

Here are his 5 Tips for Assessment:

1. Plan and tie learning outcomes to assessment

2. Execute it — use interactive technology that can help with assessment; clickers, smart devices, online quizzes — these devices can

3. Evaluate the results of your assessments — final exam comes too late (no way of fixing it) but by providing formative assessment over semester the students and the professor can both make course corrections.  Profs can go back and reteach things that students are not understanding.  Everybody learns through formative assessment and let’s you provide meaningful feedback to students.

4. Document — important for everything, including compliance and tie courses to outcomes

5.  Revise — use what we learn to make improvements, iterate, alter lesson plans, add some assignments, compensate for excellent performance, change benchmarks.

This is the circle of assessment.  Because as you revise you can use that to plan and around you go in a circle.

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Today, I am at the Igniting Law Teaching conference at American University Washington College of Law.  We are now hearing from Professor Michael Colatrella from McGeorge Pacific School of Law.  He is telling us what he learned about law teaching from being an art student.

Great ideas about how learning takes place over months and even years.  He wanted to become an artist — had given it up as a child. His grandmother had set him up to paint as a kid, but he gave it up.  Then he found an art studio in San Francisco with an atelier system for training people how to paint and draw.  The first class, 8 weeks for 4 hours/day, all you do is make sphere.  Then they given you one color.  Then black and white.

These are his take aways for law professors —

1.  it is great to put yourself back in a position of being a novice, a position of vulnerability and having lots of new information.  You get good dose of empathy from making yourself a student.

2. teach foundational skills before moving on.  Master one skill before moving on to the next.  Even if seems like you’re covering less, because doing it slowly, really doing it better and covering more.

3.  by having foundational skills, your students will go forth and be able to use them for advanced projects.

So the big secret — set clear learning objectives and provide frequent assessment and individualized feedback.  But we know that!  Research finds that there is a 400% increase in learning achievement when giving assessments and feedback throughout.  There are tools for assessment out there — use them!

You can watch the #ILT2015 conference live today, http://legaledweb.com/

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Live from LegalED’s Igniting Law Teaching Conference, sponsored by CALI, and hosted by American University Washington College of Law.

Now up is Professor Emmy Reeves from University of Richmond Law School

Here are tips on how to flip a law school classroom:

1.  Start small — flip a narrow discrete part, parts that don’t lend themselves to high level socratic dialogue

2.  Low tech beats no tech — don’t need to be tech guru, start will narrated powerpoint slides, crete podcasts, record yourself on your computer

3.  keep it short and engaging — 10 minutes is outside limit, try to be as engaging as possible, use inflection in voice

4.  accountability — if use LMS, or even better, use quizzes at beginning of class to ensure watched and internalized material.

You can watch it live today at http://legaledweb.com/

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LegalED’s Igniting Law Teaching 2015 is taking place now at American University Washington College of Law. Watch it live today.

The conference features talks by 30 law school academics and practitioners from the US, Canada and England in a TEDx-styled conference to share ideas on teaching methodologies. LegalED’s Teaching Pedagogy video collection includes many of the talks from last year’s conference, which have been viewed collectively more than 5000 times.

The panels for this year include: Law Teaching for the 21^st Century, Applying Learning Theory to Legal Education, The Art and Craft of Law Teaching, Using Technological Tools for Legal Education, and Pathways to Practice. Here is a link to the topics, speakers and schedule.

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Researchers conclude that having a law degree over a bachelors degree alone is advantageous in the end.  The salary differential between a graduate with a law degree and one without, is favorable to the former, even in a bad economy.  The research also tells us not to worry about “timing” when going to law school.  Even during hard economic times, the value of a degree only decreases by $30,000 while the overall worth in the long run is $1 million.

See http://www.abajournal.com/mobile/article/the_lifetime_value_of_a_law_degree_drops_only_about_30k_in_a_bad_economy_st/

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38th Annual Conference on Clinical Legal Education:

Leading the New Normal: Clinical Education at the Forefront of Change

May 4-7, 2015

Rancho Mirage, CA

CALL FOR PROPOSALS: VIDEO SERIES

The Planning Committee for the 2015 AALS Clinical Conference issues this call for professors to participate in a video series designed to capture the creativity and innovation that is a hallmark of our community. The video collection will feature ideas about teaching methodology for an audience of law professors. Participants will work with the Committee to develop their topics and videotape their talk on Monday, May 4, the day before the Clinical Conference.[1] The AALS has expressed a strong interest in embedding these videos on its website as part of an effort to convey more effectively the value of a legal education.

The new normal in legal education asks law teachers of all kinds to integrate practical lawyering skills and professional values into their teaching. These are topics central to our clinical teaching, and our community has the knowledge and experience to address them in interesting ways. We seek teachers who have developed thoughtful ideas about law school teaching and who want to spread those ideas to the broader community. We envision this project as a way to showcase you and the clinical community as leaders in teaching innovation and to inspire innovation by others. Starting this year, we mean to create a collection of short videos on law school pedagogy that can continue to develop over time and to foster further integration of active learning and practical skills in the law school curriculum. Topics could include:

• 5 things every law professor should know about learning theory
• the value of reflection in learning
• beyond finals: 5 formative assessment tools for legal education
• faculty teaching rounds: how they work and why you should host them
• teaching collaboration
• how to add a negotiation/mediation/interviewing/oral advocacy/drafting exercise into a law school course
• how to make a simulation/role play successful
• how to bring cross-cultural lawyering into a doctrinal course
• top 5 tips for training externship field supervisors
• what I’ve learned from being a law professor for __ years
• 5 things I’ve learned about advising students

These topics are just illustrative; the value of this format is we can be open to ideas brought forth by participants.

The Clinical Conference represents an ideal time for taping. Each year, it draws us together for focused discussion of our roles and approaches as teachers and as lawyers. Taping at one time and in one location allows us to hire a professional videographer to assure a consistent look and solid production values. This year in particular, we are located in shouting distance of Hollywood, so our options are good.

Video format: We plan to produce up to 8 videos at the conference. We will consider proposals that address all kinds of teaching methods, including both clinic-specific methods and methods that integrate skills, values and professional development into other kinds of law school teaching.

The videos will each be between 5-10 minutes long, with a preference for shorter videos; studies show that shorter videos are more appropriate for an online format. The videos will be in the style of an interview, with a single person talking to the camera. You can view examples of this style, applied to substantive topics in immigration law, here.

Criteria for Selection: If you would like to take part in this project, please send a one-page summary of your video proposal to 15clinical@aals.org no later than March 16, 2015. In your proposal, please include the following information:

— your name and school affiliation.

— a working title for your video.

— a short description of the content you propose to cover.

— a short description of your goal for the video, including the impact you would like it to have and the takeaways that you will deliver to the viewer.

— a short statement of your relevant experience, including past experience with your particular topic, experience with videotaped talks and scholarship or presentations that relate to your proposal.

The Committee will review the proposals on a rolling basis with the goal of notifying the selected presenters by March 16, 2015. Participation as a presenter at the main conference does NOT disqualify you from participation in this project.

Commitment: We ask all people who we accept to make the following commitments:

— to participate in or review webinars that we will schedule before the conference on how to make an educational video.

— to develop an outline of your talk before the conference, in collaboration with members of the Planning Committee.

— to practice delivering your talk to others at your location before you attend the conference. We do not encourage speaking from a text, but instead encourage well-prepared spontaneity in your delivery. Practice can help you feel comfortable in this format.

— to be prepared to videotape your session on Monday, May 4. For many, this will require arrival at the conference location on Sunday, May 3. Please hold yourself available for that entire Monday. We will develop a schedule before the conference that gives each presenter a reserved time slot.

Taping: The talks will be videotaped at the conference hotel in 45 minute intervals from 9am-5pm on Monday, May 4, 2015. While the end-product will be roughly 10 minutes, you should expect to engage in multiple takes during your taping session.

This is a great opportunity to showcase your innovations to the legal academy. We hope you will consider putting in a proposal for the video project at the 2015 AALS Clinical Conference. If you have any questions, please feel free to email Michele Pistone, pistone@law.villanova.edu, or Alex Scherr, scherr@uga.edu.[1] The talks in this series will be videotaped during the first day of the Clinical Conference. They complement a growing collection of material about teaching methodology, including webinars organized by the Teaching Methodologies Committee of the AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education.

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Registration is now open for LegalED’s Igniting Law Teaching 2015. The conference is March 20, 2015 at American University Washington College of Law. It is also available for live viewing by webcast.  Here is the list of speakers, topics and schedule.

The conference will feature talks by 35 law school academics and practitioners from the US, Canada and England in a TEDx-styled conference to share ideas on teaching methodologies. LegalED’s Teaching Pedagogy video collection includes many of the talks from last year’s conference, which have been viewed collectively more than 5000 times.

The panels for this year include: Law Teaching for the 21^st Century, Applying Learning Theory to Legal Education, The Art and Craft of Law Teaching, Using Technological Tools for Legal Education, and Pathways to Practice.

The Igniting Law Teaching conference is unlike other gatherings of law professors. Here, talks will be styled as TEDx Talks, with each speaker on stage alone, giving a well scripted and performed talk about an aspect of law school pedagogy. In the end, we will create a collection of short videos on law school-related pedagogy that will inspire innovation and experimentation by law professors around the country, and the world, to bring more active learning and practical skills training into the law school curriculum. The videos will be available for viewing by the larger academic community on LegalED, a website developed by a community of law professors interested in using online technologies to facilitate more active, problem-based learning in the classroom, in addition to better assessment and feedback.

We hope you can join us on March 20^th, either live or virtually.

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