LegalED helps free classroom time for experiential learning

Posted on October 31, 2014 by Paula Schaefer

Regular readers of Best Practices for Legal Education Blog know about Michele Pistone’s LegalED. LegalED shares short videos of leading law professors discussing various topics. (Subject matter areas include administrative law, constitutional law, copyright, evidence, immigration law, legal ethics, trial advocacy, and more). Videos can be viewed by students outside of class, freeing up class time for hands-on, problem-based learning and assessment.

If you have not already joined LegalED, you can join now by filling out this short form.

An interview with Michele Pistone on flipping the law school classroom is currently featured in Scholastica Blog.

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So you want to be a law professor

Posted on October 28, 2014 by Paula Schaefer

So you want to be a law professor. If you do a quick Internet search (as I did today), you will likely find the following advice:

  • The most important factors in determining your success in the market for a law professor position are: (1) the law school you attended (top 5 is ideal; top 20 is workable; a school ranked below that will make your search difficult); (2) law review membership, (3) federal clerkship or clerkships; (3) having one or more published law review articles after graduation; (4) a couple of years of practice experience; and (5) excellent recommendations from law faculty.
  • Adjunct teaching experience is not helpful to your candidacy.
  • Generally, practice experience is not helpful to your candidacy.
  • If you want to be a clinician, practice experience is likely important and a record of publication is likely less important. In one article, a professor explained that in his time on appointments committees he found that most candidates who had extensive practice experience were more interested in teaching than scholarship. He suggested, “Such people often are better directed toward clinical work than regular tenure-track positions.”

In the new era of legal education, this seems like a faulty framework for law school hiring decisions. Maybe this is a non-issue. After all, with declining applications and enrollments, many law schools are not hiring.

But for schools that are hiring, isn’t it irresponsible to continue hiring based on the old criteria? Today’s law students expect to be prepared for practice. The old model – a single exam at the end of a semester of case law and the Socratic method – does not cut it. It never adequately prepared people for practice. But in the old days (when I went to the law school), we got our experiential learning after graduation.

Today, that hands-on learning needs to start in the law school classroom. Preparing students for practice means providing context. It means putting students in the role of lawyer so that they can begin to understand how lawyers use the law to help solve clients’ problems in practice. It means providing students feedback during the semester.

This can, and should, be part of legal education for all three years of law school. It need not be reserved for clinics and externships. This education is something that all law professors should be able to provide our students.

Who should law schools hire to train the next generation of lawyers? Does it make any sense that people (1) interested in teaching; (2) with practice experience; and/or (3) who did not attend a top law school should be viewed as less qualified for law professor positions? Why is a clinical teaching position not a “regular tenure-track position” at most law schools? Aren’t people with a passion for teaching and/or with significant practice experience just as capable as the “traditional” applicants to produce meaningful scholarship?

Some law schools have followed a different hiring model for many years and others are changing. I am sure there are others that believe there is a work-around. They will continue with business as usual, but lean heavily on clinicians in non-tenure track positions to provide the experiential learning students and employers demand. But maybe it’s time to start thinking about the advantages of a different approach.

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A Primer on Professionalism for Doctrinal Professors

Posted on June 26, 2014 by Paula Schaefer
Legal education reform advocates agree that law schools should integrate professionalism preparation throughout the curriculum. Ultimately, it falls to individual professors to decide how to incorporate professionalism issues into each course. This can be an especially difficult task for professors teaching traditional doctrinal classes. The law — and not the practice of law — is the focus of most doctrinal casebooks. Law students typically do not act in role as lawyers in these classes, so they are not compelled to resolve professional dilemmas in class, as students are in a clinic or simulation-based course. As a result, it takes some additional preparation and thought to introduce professionalism issues into these courses. Some professors may resist making this change — not knowing which aspect or aspects of professionalism should be the focus, fearing that time spent on professionalism will detract from the real subject matter of the class, or believing professionalism is adequately covered elsewhere in the curriculum.
My article A Primer on Professionalism for Doctrinal Professors considers how and why doctrinal professors should address the challenge of integrating professionalism into the classroom. The article was recently published in the Tennessee Law Review and is available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2449313.
Part I of the article briefly discusses the multitude of meanings ascribed to attorney professionalism and argues that the lack of a clear, concise, and shared definition is a substantial barrier to effectively incorporating professionalism into the law school curriculum. Next, Part II provides a more coherent, streamlined definition of attorney professionalism. This part also identifies and describes three primary aspects of lawyer professionalism: fulfilling duties to clients, satisfying duties to the bar, and possessing core personal values essential to being a good lawyer. This simplified conception of professionalism should begin to address the concerns of professors who do not know where to begin to incorporate professionalism into their classes. It is also intended to persuade skeptics that professionalism is something they can and should teach as part of their doctrinal classes.
Thereafter, Part III provides guidance for developing course outcomes that connect course subject matter and professionalism. Questions prompt doctrinal professors to look for the natural connections between their course subject matter and issues of professionalism. Then, Part IV considers various methods doctrinal professors can use to introduce professionalism topics into their courses. Integrating professionalism into the classroom does not require professors to abandon their casebooks; using case law can be an effective method. This part also considers other teaching methods and materials for combining doctrine, skills, and professionalism. Finally, Part V concludes with thoughts on how students benefit when professors make the effort to incorporate professionalism into every law school classroom.
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