Shifting Law School Faculty Demographics

Posted on January 5, 2022 by Melanie Daily, University of Kansas School of Law

By Robert Kuehn, Washington University School of Law

In 1980, one-third of law students and only 14% of all law teachers were female, and a mere 9% of students and 4% of faculty were identified as non-white. Today, law faculties are more diverse by gender and race/ethnicity. Yet, the demographics of faculty subgroups diverge widely and, importantly, faculty remain less diverse than their students.  

Focusing principally on law clinic and field placement teachers (full time, excluding fellows), over two-thirds identified as female (cis or trans) in the latest 2019-20 Center for the Study of Applied Legal Education (CSALE) survey. The graph below reflects a trend of increasingly female clinical faculty beginning in the late 1980s/early 1990s and continuing through all five tri-annual CSALE surveys:[1]

Newer clinical teachers are even more predominantly female ─ 73% of those teaching three years or less are female. Within clinical teaching areas, those who primarily teach field placement courses are more predominantly female than those who primarily teach in a law clinic — 82% of field placement teachers are female compared to 65% of clinic teachers.

By comparison, 47% of all full-time law teachers were identified as female in 2020 law school ABA annual reports, an increase from 40% in 2011, 32.5% in 2000, and 24% in 1990. However, ABA results include the overwhelmingly female clinical and legal research and writing faculties. If clinical (67% female) and legal writing (70% female) faculty are removed from the 2020 ABA totals, women constitute fewer than 38% of full-time non-clinical/non-legal writing faculty, as illustrated below.[2] In contrast, 54% of J.D. students in 2020-21 were female, compared to 47% in 2010, 48% in 2000, 43% in 1990, and 34% in 1980.

Faculty have increased in racial and ethnic diversity since 1980. The percentages of full-time clinical teachers by race/ethnicity are shown in the table below. Surveys indicate steady, but slow, growth in the percentage of full-time non-white clinical teachers (excluding fellows) over the last four decades.

Clinical Faculty Race/EthnicitySALT 1980[3]SALT 1986AALS 1998[4]CSALE 2007CSALE 2010CSALE 2013CSALE 2016CSALE 2019
White95%92%87%87%86%83%80%78%
Non-White5%8%13%12%13%15%17%18%
Other/2 or More Races──<1%1%1%3%3%3%

Among newer clinical teachers of three years or less, the percentage of white teachers was slightly lower at 76%. Within clinical teaching, 77% of primarily law clinic instructors and 83% of primarily field placement teachers are white.

In the 2020 annual reports, 21% of full-time law faculty were identified by their schools as “minority,” an increase from approximately 17% in 2011, 14% in 2000, and 10% in 1990. The most recent ALWD/LWR survey identified 13% of legal research and writing faculty as non-white, multiracial or other, compared to 12% reported non-Caucasian in its 2010 survey.  

Similar to gender, law school faculty are less racially/ethnically diverse than their students: 34% of students were identified in 2020 annual reports as minority, an increase from 24% in 2010, 21% in 2000, 14% in 1990, and 9% in 1980.

 Available surveys and reports do not include recent information on the age of law faculty. There has been no change, however, over the five CSALE surveys since 2007 in the median number of years of prior practice by those teaching full time in a law clinic or field placement course, remaining approximately eight years. Excluding those hired into temporary fellow positions, similarly across CSALE surveys the median number of years of prior practice experience among newer faculty teaching three years or less in a law clinic or field placement course has been eight years.

In sum, while the diversity of law school faculty has been increasing over the past four decades, it still lags behind the gender and racial/ethnic diversity among students. And even though schools are hiring increasingly more female faculty, women continue to be disproportionately hired into traditionally lower status/lower paying clinical and legal writing positions.[5] There may be no easy fix to these issues, but the first step towards addressing them is to be aware of the numbers.

[1] “SALT” percentages are from Richard H. Chused, Hiring and Retention of Minorities and Women on American Law School Faculties, 137 U. Pa. L. Rev. 537, 556-57 (1988) (also reporting 14% of all law teachers as female and 5% as non-white in 1980). “Angel” percentages are from Marina Angel, The Glass Ceiling for Women in Legal Education: Contract Positions and the Death of Tenure, 50 J. Legal Educ. 1, 4 (2000).

[2] The 2020 ABA annual reports identified 4,399 female and 4,986 male full-time faculty (5 reported as “other”). Removing 1,157 female clinical teachers (67% of the 1,727 full-time clinical faculty reported by the 95% of schools that participated in the CSALE survey) and 649 female legal research and writing teachers (70% of the 927 full-time LRW faculty at the 169 of 203 ABA schools that participated in the 2019-20 ALWD/LWI Legal Writing Survey) results in 2,593 full-time female non-clinical/non-legal writing faculty. Further removing 848 male faculty identified in the CSALE and ALWD/LWI surveys results in 38.5% full-time non-clinical/non-legal writing female faculty. If the missing 5% of schools in the CSALE survey and 17% in the ALWD/LWI survey are accounted for, 37% of 2020 full-time non-clinical/non-legal writing faculty were female.  

[3] The 1980 and 1986 SALT surveys excluded faculty from minority-operated schools and, therefore, likely underrepresented non-white faculty.

[4] “AALS” percentages are from an AALS Clinical Section database reported in Jon C. Dubin, Faculty Diversity as a Clinical Legal Education Imperative, 51 Hastings L.J. 445, 448-49 (2000). [1] Robert R. Kuehn, The Disparate Treatment of Clinical Law Faculty (2021), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3760756.

[5] Robert R. Kuehn, The Disparate Treatment of Clinical Law Faculty (2021), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3760756.

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Teaching Students the Art of Giving (and Receiving) Feedback and Sharing IDEASS

Posted on August 19, 2021 by Melanie Daily, University of Kansas School of Law

By Kaci Bishop, UNC School of Law

Law students may be accustomed to receiving feedback, but as lawyers, they will also be called on to give feedback.  They may review a colleague’s brief or contract, adapt samples, help moot a case or supervise a summer or new associate, etc.  Learning how to give feedback effectively can also help them develop their critical eye to assess and revise their own work.  Giving feedback effectively is thus another skill worth teaching. [1]

In my classes, students have opportunities to exchange feedback with peers on written assignments through structured peer reviews and through moots and case rounds.  More informally, they exchange feedback regularly with their partner as they work on their clients’ cases, and as we debrief together in team meetings.

To be sure we have a shared vocabulary and framework for giving feedback, I include in the beginning of the semester a lesson on giving feedback.  It also sets a tone for receiving feedback.  My stated objectives for the lesson are to (1) reflect on how they have received and given feedback in the past; (2) explore what it means to have a growth mindset; (3) learn a framework for giving effective feedback; and (4) practice using that framework.

I begin by having them answer polls about what goals or concerns they have had when giving feedback in the past and then how they like to receive feedback.  Often, the polls reveal that most students want to help someone improve their work but are concerned they will hurt the receiver’s feelings—while they themselves prefer direct and honest (which students often frame to me as “harsh”) feedback.  We discuss these tensions, and circle back to them throughout the class and the semester.  We also explore and discuss the differences between direct and directive feedback, and I share how I usually give feedback (e.g., asking them questions to help them puzzle out what they need to do to make the product more effective or sometimes identifying the issue and modeling one but letting them find where they did it other times).

Figure 1: Sample Poll Question Assessing How Students Like to Receive Feedback

Discussing the polls segues to talking about what it means to have a growth mindset, because the polls usually demonstrate that the students’ best experiences in giving and receiving feedback were when they were open and ready to learn.  I introduce (or re-introduce) Carol Dweck’s Mindset theory work, highlighting the differences between the fixed mindset (intelligence is static) and the growth mindset (intelligence is malleable).  I emphasize how we all occupy both mindsets at different times, even though we may gravitate to one over the other. I emphasize, too, how we can learn to recognize when we are occupying a fixed mindset and then work to reorient ourselves to be in one of growth.[2]  For example, as a 1L, I struggled to grasp Contract law.  It would have been easy to give up and conclude that I was just not a Contracts person and write off the class (and my ability to understand it).  That’s a fixed mindset.  To succeed, I had to shift to a growth mindset.  I had to shift to thinking that while I was not yet understanding Contracts, I was capable of understanding it and needed to put forth more time and effort to do so. 

Figure 2: Slide with a summary of Carol Dweck’s mindset attributes.

One’s mindset is important for feedback—both receiving and giving. When a person is occupying a fixed mindset when receiving feedback, she is entering the exchange with the goal of receiving validation and approval.  She will be more resistant to criticism, no matter how constructive.  Similarly, when giving feedback, a person occupying a fixed mindset may offer feedback aimed more at demonstrating how smart he is or with performing if in front of other people than responding to the goals of the person seeking the feedback.  Alternatively, someone giving feedback while occupying a fixed mindset may not think he has anything of value to add and thus not offer much in the exchange.  Getting into a growth mindset—for both the receiver and giver of feedback—and seeing the exchange as an opportunity for both to learn and improve is essential for sharing feedback effectively.  If both the giver and the receiver are occupying a growth mindset when exchanging feedback, they will learn and draw inspiration from each other and propel each other to higher levels of achievement.

In addition to having a growth mindset, I advise the students that when giving feedback, they should focus on the skills or product not on the person, personality, or identity.  And their feedback should be constructive; meaning, it should be based on observations not opinions, be concrete and achievable, and limited.  The giver of feedback should not overwhelm the receiver with tons of pieces of things to correct and should always include at least one thing that should be preserved because it is already effective.

I then share the following framework for giving feedback, complete with the (possibly silly) mnemonic: IDEASS.

Figure 3: IDEASS Framework

The first objective when someone is asked to give feedback to another is to identify the priorities or goals of the person seeking the feedback.  What would the receiver most like to get out of the peer review, moot, or rounds?  What feedback would be most helpful?  How do they prefer to receive feedback?  Are there particular questions the receiver has that they are seeking answers to?  When is the product due and how much time do they have to revise?  These questions help set expectations to guide the exchange.

The student then needs to diagnose the issues.  This may be difficult; it’s also crucial because it focuses the feedback and helps to train the analytical skills and critical eye of both the giver and the receiver.  To diagnose the issues, the giver of feedback needs to understand and articulate what the underlying norms or rules of the skill or product are.  For example, if giving feedback on headings in a brief, the underlying rule for effective headings might be that they should be framed as conclusions that blend law and fact allowing the writer’s arguments to appear as an exoskeleton of the brief.  For a direct exam, the underlying rule might be that the questions should be open-ended rather than leading. These underlying issues or rules might mirror what the receiver of feedback identified as their priorities.  They might have asked for help making their direct exam more open-ended, for instance.  If the underlying norms or rules for the product are not clear, the giver of feedback should askthe person seeking feedback what they intended or how they chose to do what they did, then the giver can share observations about the product or skill.

The student giving feedback should share one or two effective aspects and then one or two areas of focus for improvement.  Often “feedback” seems only to encompass the latter but sharing what worked well or what was effectively done helps the giver know what to keep or what to replicate going forward.  Both feedback about effective aspects and those that could be improved or more effective should be shared as what the giver observed.

Sharing observations, not opinions, helps both receiver and giver to continue to occupy a growth mindset and to maintain the goal that both are learning through the exchange.  The giver should focus on what they noticed about the skill or product and reflect or even replay what the person seeking the feedback said or did.  For example, if the student seeking feedback on a direct exam asked a leading question, the student giving the feedback might note: “you asked your client: ‘Were you trying to leave your partner when you went to stay at your grandmother’s?’ That is a leading question.”

After reflecting what she noticed, the student giving the feedback can then suggest next steps or solutions.  How might someone do it differently next time?  The student may also model a solution.  She might, for example, say: “Instead, you could ask: ‘Why did you go to stay at your grandmother’s?’”  Alternatively, the student giving the feedback might ask the student who did the direct exam to arrive at a solution by saying something like: “How might you ask an open-ended question to get the same point?” At this phase, if possible, the person seeking the feedback could try again or revise the product, incorporating the feedback.

Putting it all together, a student’s feedback on the direct exam hypothetical may look like this:

  • You wanted me to assess your direct exam.
  • Your questions have a good rhythm and build upon each other in a way that allows your client’s story to come out persuasively.
  • Some of your questions were not yet open-ended. For example, at one point, you asked your client: ‘Were you trying to leave your partner when you went to stay at your grandmother’s?” That is a leading question.  Instead, you could ask: “Why did you go to stay at your grandmother’s?”

Beyond sharing IDEASS with their peer, I encourage students to also use growth language[3] in giving feedback—such as the words: yet, and, and opportunity—and to express gratitude by thanking each other for the time, feedback, and opportunity to help.  Then, to finish the lesson, I have my students practice using the framework with a simulation.  I share a video of a simulated client interview (e.g., one from the Legal Interviewing and Language Access Film Project, created by Lindsay M. Harris and Laila L. Hlass, which as one of the participants in the lightning session at the AALS Clinical Conference in the spring of 2021 noted is the gift that keeps on giving!) and have the students share their feedback to the student interviews in the video.  The students thus get to practice using this IDEASS framework for feedback in a low-stakes way.  We can then revisit this shared vocabulary and framework as needed throughout the semester when they are called upon to give feedback to a peer—and continue to build this skill along with many others.

[1] This blog post summarizes the lightning session at the AALS Clinical Conference 2021 by the same name.

[2] In addition to exploring Carol Dweck’s work, here are some other resources for incorporating her mindset theory into legal education: Corie Rosen, The Method and The Message; Heidi K. Brown, The Emotionally Intelligent Law Professor; Paula J. Manning, Word to the Wise; and Megan Bess, Grit, Growth Mindset, and the Path to Successful Lawyering;

[3] I explore growth language in more depth in my article on Framing Failure in the Legal Classroom.

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Round and Round We Go: The Stages of Rounds applied to a AALS Clinical 2021 Lightning Session

Posted on May 17, 2021 by Melanie Daily, University of Kansas School of Law

By Cori Alonso-Yoder,  Sherley Cruz, Vanessa F. Hernandez

Stage 1: Description of the Issue

“In almost every small group of clinicians at clinical conferences, someone raises the subject of ‘improving rounds.’”  – Elliott Milstein & Sue Bryant, Rounds: A “Signature Pedagogy” for Clinical Education?   

While this year’s virtual AALS Clinical Conference differed from prior years, clinicians’ desire to maximize rounds remains a constant. These facilitated classroom discussions are what Professors Elliot Milstein and Sue Bryant called a “signature pedagogy” for clinical legal education. Indeed, rounds figure as a meta exercise of clinical education. By giving up total control, rounds may feel challenging or unpredictable. Yet, year after year, rounds remain a principal teaching tool. Because, as observed by Milstein and Bryant, “when the conversations go well, they are precious sources of learning.” 

In 2019, a group of us compared notes to discuss their use of rounds.[1] We learned that we had similar approaches, but that there was also great flexibility in our practices of rounds. At the Rounds on Rounds Session, we hoped that by sharing our experiences we could learn from one another while also amplifying different models of rounds. To our delight, 136 conference participants also wanted to learn new ways of teaching rounds.

Stages 2 & 3:  Questions to Clarify and Problems Identified

Our initial goals for the AALS lightning session were to 1) introduce the concept of rounds; and 2) to share different approaches to rounds. To seek feedback from our participants, we used a Google form survey to learn more about our audience’s familiarity with rounds (especially the “ traditional Milstein/Bryant five stages”), while also soliciting ideas on different approaches. In particular, we sought to introduce the concept of rounds for student learning and as a tool for clinicians to use in their own development as supervisors and educators. 

From our survey, we learned that over 90% of our 69 respondents currently used rounds. Of these, the vast majority (more than 85%) reported using rounds in discussion with students about client fieldwork. Only about 30% of respondents mentioned using rounds with colleagues to discuss supervision of students. Almost 10% of respondents, 7.2%, responded that they didn’t use rounds or were unsure if they used rounds.

Figure 1. Responses about rounds modes used by participants.

The survey also asked respondents to identify their priorities for learning within the session. Most of the respondents, 63.8%, indicated that they were most interested in learning about maximizing their use of rounds to discuss lawyering skills.

Figure 2. Responses about priorities for learning in the lightning session.

These responses helped us focus our discussion for the remaining time and to clarify our goals for the session.

Stage 4: Goals Clarified

Based on the responses from students, we returned to our dual goals of 1) introducing rounds as a teaching tool; and 2) sharing practices for rounds.

Stage 5: Lawyering Strategies Exchanged/Proposed Solutions

To set the stage for the nearly 10% of respondents not presently using rounds, we presented some of the foundational concepts related to use of rounds.

Figure 3. A slide with the “Milstein/Bryant” rounds structure from the lightning session.

Participants took part in a How Do You Use Rounds Google Doc “quick write” to share their perspectives on what is working in rounds and where they experienced challenges. Having 150 participants trying to access a Google Document at once “crashed” the shared doc. Despite the technical difficulties, we were able to spark a rich discussion from the quick write. We took a fresh look at the first few stages from a cultural, racial, gender, and other differences perspective, which provided an opportunity for conversations about bias, stereotypes, and their impact on third parties.[2]  

Stage 6: Lessons Learned

Perhaps it is poetic justice that a 30-minute lightning discussion on rounds with nearly 150 participants would feel rushed and incomplete.

Many clinicians in the quick write exercise expressed their feelings of struggling to find time for rounds, or properly developing the conversation. We, the presenters, faced similar struggles in getting out all that we hoped to share with our session, but were encouraged by the enthusiastic responses from our colleagues.

Among the helpful conversations that developed with participants after the formal conclusion of the Zoom session, we identified the need to develop materials to foster student led discussion and participation. One participant asked for readings to provide to students in advance of rounds. Another participant wanted to learn more about one of our practices in requesting students prepare a pre-rounds memo.

This session confirmed that challenges and opportunities with structuring rounds will likely remain a topic to which we continue to circle back. We look forward to the next “go round” on this topic.

[1] This group included Cori Alonso-Yoder,  Sherley Cruz, Vanessa F. Hernandez, Nadiyah Humber, and  Katie Ladewski Jarosz.

[2] This innovation was credited to Professor Alexander Scherr at the University of Georgia. The exercise was particularly resonant as an intervention given the conference’s larger theme of “Recognizing Our Past and Building for Our Future.”

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Implementation of the ABA’s New Experiential Training Requirement: More Whimper Than Bang

Posted on April 28, 2021 by rkuehnblog

By: Robert Kuehn, Washington University School of Law

When the ABA adopted a new experiential training requirement in 2014, there was hope it would spur law schools to significantly change the way they prepared students for legal practice. The new six-credit requirement in ABA Standard 303(a)(3) was less than the fifteen credits proposed by some educators and did not include a mandate for a law clinic or externship experience. Nonetheless, the six credits were an improvement over the ABA’s previous “substantial instruction” in professional skills requirement.[1] But data from the initial implementation of the new experiential requirement suggest its effect has been more of a whimper than the bang some hoped for, with little evidence it has spurred legal education to enhance the ability of students to get hands-on training in professional skills.

            Law schools are required to report annually to the ABA on the number of seats simply “available” to students in law clinic and simulation courses and the number of field placement/externship positions actually “filled.”[2] Data from the first two years of the new six-credit requirement in 2019 and 2020 show no increase in the positions available to students in clinics or simulations and even a decrease in actual enrollment in field placement courses, when normalized to address fluctuations in nationwide law school enrollment. While some law schools have made important changes to their curriculum, the graph below indicates that, on average, schools have not reported positive changes in law clinic, field placement, or simulation data since the ABA’s adoption of the new experiential standard in 2014. The number of clinic seats available per J.D. student in 2014 was 0.27 and still only 0.28 in 2020; field placements decreased from 0.26 in 2014 to 0.24 in 2020; and seats available in simulations likewise decreased over the six-year period from 1.22 to 1.12 per student.


  Source: ABA 509 Required Disclosures at http://www.abarequireddisclosures.org/Disclosure509.aspx

            The New York Court of Appeals followed the ABA in 2015 with its own new skills competency standard for bar candidates, proclaiming that “the goal of ensuring effective, ethical and responsible legal services in New York requires more than what the new ABA Standards provide.”[3] Commentators on the proposed New York standard argued it simply mirrored the ABA’s requirement, with some additional paperwork, and would not improve the skills training of students. The graph below shows that the New York competency standard, indeed, does not appear to have spurred New York’s law schools to noticeably enhance their professional skills training of students or to provide more training than schools in states following only the ABA requirement. Although students at New York schools were offered more opportunities to enroll in simulation courses lacking the supervised experience of handling the complexities of real-life clients, opportunities to participate in a law clinic were unchanged and field placements decreased.


Source: ABA 509 Required Disclosures for 15 New York law schools

            Data from the recent Center for the Study of Applied Legal Education (CSALE) 2019-20 Survey of Applied Legal Education of 95% of law schools also show little measurable effect from the new experiential training standard.[4] Schools reported no increase in the median number of law clinic courses offered to their students since the prior 2016-17 survey and no increase in the percentage of students that graduate with a law clinic experience. Similarly, there was no reported increase in the percentage of students that graduate with an externship experience, with student demand for externship courses in 2019-20 up slightly from the last survey yet significantly less than externship demand in 2014 when the new standard was adopted. And, the percentage of schools requiring each J.D. student to participate in a law clinic or externship course as a condition of graduation only increased marginally from 20% in 2016-17 to 23% in the 2019-20 survey.

            Two thirds of schools in the CSALE survey did report making some changes to their curriculum in response to the ABA’s new experiential requirement, with almost half reporting the addition of a new law clinic, field placement, or simulation course(s), and one quarter of schools reporting increased slots available in an existing experiential course(s). A 2018 survey by Allison Korn and Laila Hlass also found that about two thirds of schools reported an expansion or enhancement of their course offerings in light of the ABA’s new experiential course requirement.[5]

            In both surveys, however, significant numbers of schools simply restructured existing courses to meet the experiential training definition, including merely relabeling parts of the first-year required legal writing course as “experiential” or offering a one-credit simulation component to a doctrinal course. Because the survey questions did not ask separately about law clinic and externship courses but grouped them with non-clinical simulation courses, the data do not reveal if legal education has increased live-client clinic or externship opportunities for students or simply adjusted to the new requirement in other ways. In the 2019-20 CSALE survey, there was a slight increase of approximately 5% in the reported percentage of students that participated in a law clinic or externship prior to graduation. But fewer than 20% of schools attributed any increase in clinic or externship demand to the new ABA requirement.

            To the extent the ABA’s new six-credit experiential requirement was intended to provide law students with more meaningful hands-on training in important professional skills, its own data do not show that intended result. In addition, surveys of schools on their implementation of the new training requirement do not show significant gains in skills training as a result of the new accreditation standard.

            It is time for the ABA to address these deficiencies by at a minimum requiring schools to report actual enrollments in law clinic and simulation courses so that the ABA can truly judge the effect of its requirement and prospective applicants to law schools will not continue to be potentially deceived by reports of ethereal “available” law clinic opportunities.[6]

            Yet students, and the clients they will soon represent in practice, deserve more than just enhanced reporting requirements. The ABA’s six-credit experiential requirement remains far below the skills training other professional schools require of their students.[7] Two recent studies on legal education have highlighted the need for greatly enhanced skills training, including mandatory clinical training prior to bar licensing.[8] The ABA should heed these calls for reform and revisit the proposals for fifteen-credits of experiential coursework and a mandatory, live-client clinical experience for all J.D. students.

[1] An ABA memorandum explained that “substantial instruction” equaled only one credit of lawyering skills instruction, which could be in a simulation course. Peter A. Joy, The Uneasy History of Experiential Education in U.S. Law Schools, 122 Dick. L. Rev. 551, 574 (2018), available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3129111.

[2] Prior to 2017, the ABA also required schools to report the actual number of students enrolled in law clinic and simulation courses, not just seats available. However, the ABA determined that asking schools to report actual enrollment, when the accreditation standard only requires “substantial opportunities,” was unnecessarily burdensome and now only requires schools to report the number of clinic and simulation opportunities that are potentially available to students.

[3] New York Court of Appeals, New Skills Competency Requirement for Admission to the Bar (Dec. 16, 2015), at

http://www.courts.state.ny.us/ctapps/news/nottobar/nottobar121615.pdf; Task Force on Experiential Learning and Admission to the Bar: Report to Chief Judge Lippman and the New York Court of Appeals 3 (Nov. 2015), at http://ww2.nycourts.gov/sites/default/files/document/files/2018-05/Experiential-Learning-Admiss2Bar-Report122015.pdf.

[4] Center for the Study of Applied Legal Education, 2019-20 Survey of Applied Legal Education (2020), available at https://www.csale.org/#results.

[5] Allison Korn & Laila L. Hlass, Assessing the Experiential (R)Evolution, 65 Villanova L. Rev. 713, 731-33 (2020), available at https://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/vlr/vol65/iss4/1/.

[6] One school with enrollments of approximately 300 students per class claimed in its 2018 509 Required Disclosure to prospective applicants over 1,500 seats available to students in its law clinics. Another school with a class of 100 reported over 300 clinic positions available, yet only 50 students actually enrolled in those purported available positions.

[7] See Robert R. Kuehn, Pricing Clinical Legal Education, 92 Denv. U. L. Rev. 1, App.. A (2014) (documenting one-quarter to one-third required credits in skills training for other professional schools), available at. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2318042.

[8] Deborah Jones Merritt & Logan Cornett, Building a Better Bar 75-76 (2020), available at  https://iaals.du.edu/sites/default/files/documents/publications/building_a_better_bar.pdf; Joan W. Howarth & Judith Welch Wegner, Ringing Changes: Systems Thinking About Legal Licensing, 13 Fla. Int’l L. Rev. 383, 430-31 (2019), available at https://scholars.law.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2220&context=facpub.

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The Imperative and Power of Empirical Research

Posted on February 18, 2021 by Melanie Daily, University of Kansas School of Law

By Anahid Gharakhanian, Southwestern Law School

Allison Korn and Laila L. Hlass’s Assessing the Experiential (R)evolution, recently published in Villanova Law Review, should be celebrated as a much needed example of empirical investigation and analysis in legal education, specifically experiential education.  As aptly noted in the Experiential Education section of Building on Best Practices, “[l]egal education urgently needs empirical research on what methods will best promote deep learning that transfers to practice.” 

For many years, the experiential teaching community has had the benefit of the triennial CSALE Study, providing extensive data about the infrastructure of clinics and externships.  Now Korn & Hlass’s empirical work provides data about the proliferation of deans/directors of experiential education and growth in experiential curricula.  This data sets the stage for the important questions they raise about what law schools are doing about the following:  “working to uplift experiential programming as an essential part of the institution,” and “core to the law school curriculum”; “taking steps to identify, recruit, and support clinicians of color”; and ensuring security of position and voice in law school governance.  Korn & Hlass’s work, along with CSALE’s compilation of data since 2007 about applied legal education, serves as an essential foundation for posing these important questions and joins the clarion call of others that rigorous empirical research is critical in every aspect of our assessment and advancement of experiential education – the students’ learning, role of experiential curricula, and diversity of and equity for experiential faculty. 

I think about the critical importance of empirical work from the vantage point of externships or field placement courses, which provide a singularly unique bridge to practice and where so much of the student’s experience occurs outside of the classroom and the externship professor’s direct observation.  Anecdotally we know that these real world experiences are very important to a student’s professional development and practice readiness as a new attorney.  At the same time, the ABA and some in legal education have worried about the educational rigor outside of the law school setting.  What’s needed is exploration of our impressions and perceptions through rigorous empirical work.  In the world of externships, this translated into research questions that Carolyn Young Larmore, of Chapman University, Fowler School of Law, and I took up in a year-long, multi-school study, assessing students’ success at externships and factors contributing to it (involving three law schools in the same geographic area, with very different externship program designs, and widely different incoming credentials – with 2019 median LSATs of 153, 158, and 168).  The study yielded helpful information about the importance of externships to practice readiness.  Also, a notable finding of our study – related to access – was that students from all three surveyed schools achieved very similar levels of externship success (measured in terms of first-year practice readiness), regardless of widely different entering credentials as well as the academic component of the externship programs.  Similarly, the study found that law school GPA plays a very limited role in predicting externship success.  You can see how this data could be a powerful tool in creating access for law students, from many diverse academic backgrounds and schools, to career-shaping professional experiences while in law school and beyond.

As we tackle empirical questions in experiential education, it’s helpful to think about backward design.  In the case of the experiential programming that we offer to our students, a couple of recent national studies are enormously helpful: IAALS’s Foundations for Practice, a relatively recent national study about what foundations entry-level attorneys need to begin a successful legal career (which is the study that Carolyn and I used to define externship success in our own study – i.e., how close are externs by the end of their externship to first-year practice readiness); and the very recent study by IAALS and Professor Deborah Jones Merritt, Building a Better Bar: Capturing Minimum Competence, with one of its two objectives to “[d]evelop and promote understanding of the minimum competence needed to practice law” (and the second one to “[a]lign the bar exam with research-based concepts of minimum competence”). 

To borrow from IAALS and Professor Merritt, the key here is being guided by research-based concepts.  Whether assessing our students’ learning (as Carolyn and I tackled in our externship study), or raising questions about the role of experiential curricula, and diversity of and equity for experiential faculty – as Korn & Hlass have done – we need to engage in more empirical research and use this powerful tool to inform and advance the critical work of experiential education and educators.

Filed under: Best Practices, Best Practices & Externships, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Clinical Scholarship | Tagged: , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Registration is Open for the “Teaching Multicultural Lawyering” Conference!

Posted on February 15, 2021 by Melanie Daily, University of Kansas School of Law

By

By: Kim O’Leary, Professor, WMU-Cooley Law School and Mable Martin-Scott, Professor, WMU-Cooley Law School

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce registration is open for our online conference Teaching Multicultural Lawyering: Development, Integration and Conversation at WMU-Cooley Law School.  There is no charge to attend.  

Information about registration, schedule and the conference topics and panelists follow.   The focus of the conference is teaching multicultural lawyering in a variety of forms.

The online conference will take place on Thursday, March 11 (from Noon-3:30 p.m. EST) and Friday, March 12, 2021 (11 a.m.-4:30 p.m. EST).

Registration Information

Register at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/teaching-multicultural-lawyering-development-integration-and-conversation-tickets-124694060291. 
Please note that space is limited.  The deadline for registration is February 19, 2021.

Conference Schedule

The conference agenda is designed to accommodate the many demands on your time by focusing on two afternoons with two sessions each day and a keynote panel discussion on Friday.

While we understand there are many competing demands on your time, we encourage you to attend the full event if possible.  This conference will bring together law professors who teach this subject in different ways.  We would like to build on this shared knowledge to explore the possible ways we can teach these important issues to law students.

The conversations will be enriched and most effective if participants attend all presentations and activities that we have planned for these two afternoons.

That said, we know that everyone will not be able to attend all the sessions.  We only ask that when you sign up for a small group session, you are reasonably sure you can attend that small group.  You do not have to enroll in every small group opportunity.

Program Overview

The following is a brief overview of the conference.  Some of the sessions will have break-out groups to facilitate small, in-depth discussions.  We look forward to welcoming the distinguished speakers and panelists!  Listed below are panelists who are confirmed.

Thursday, March 11 (from Noon-3:30 p.m. EST)

Session 1:  Introduction; Multicultural Lawyering: Development and Teaching the Course

Professor O’Leary (co-moderator), Professor Martin-Scott (co-moderator), and WMU-Cooley Law School students

Session 2:  Learning Objectives and Assessment Regarding Multicultural Curricular Offerings
 

Professor O’Leary (moderator); Professor Dan Sheaffer, WMU-Cooley Law School; and, Catherine McCollum, Director, Teaching and Learning Center, WMU-Cooley Law School


Friday, March 12, 2021 (11 a.m.-4:30 p.m. EST)

Distinguished Panel Discussion:  Insights from Those Who Have Led the Way

President and Dean James McGrath (moderator); Dean and Professor Leonard M. Baynes, University of Houston Law Center; Dean and Donald J. Farage Professor Danielle Conway Penn State Dickinson Law, Professor Berta Hernández-Truyol, University of Florida, Levin College of Law; and, Professor Emerita Vernellia Randall, University of Dayton School of Law

Session 3:  Incorporating Multicultural Topics Into Law Courses

Professor Paula Johnson, Syracuse University College of Law; Professor Arlene S. Kanter, Syracuse University College of Law; Professor Suzette Melendez, Syracuse University College of Law; and, Professor Mary Szto, Syracuse University College of Law


Session 4:  Professional Identity and Multicultural Lawyering

Professor Martin-Scott (moderator); Professor Janice Craft, University of Richmond School of Law; and, Professor Lucy Jewel, University of Tennessee College of Law


Please contact us at mcl@cooley.edu with questions and if you would like to be added to our interest list to receive updates and other details as they become available.  Anyone who registers for the conference will receive regular updates.


We hope you can join us!

Kim O’Leary, Professor, WMU-Cooley Law School

Mable Martin-Scott, Professor, WMU-Cooley Law School

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Dean Darby Dickerson — on Equity, Security, and Status

Posted on December 2, 2020 by davidafinger

Many of us were inspired to hear AALS President Darby Dickerson, Dean, UIC John Marshall Law School speak about “caste”, “candor”, and “change” during her address at the January 2020 Annual Meeting.

In this new article, first posted in the AALS Newsletter, she follows up with some worrisome data from the 2019-2020 CSALE study, works through potential harms to schools and students, and issues a call to action to address issues of pay equity, security, and status.

We value the conversations and discussions that often happen live and informally at in-person conferences as we share our progress (or lack thereof). So, dear readers, please let us know in the comments about any promising practices or initiatives at your schools. How are leaders addressing pay equity, security, and status in an era of hiring freezes and financial insecurity? What changes are you working toward?

Warmly,

Davida and Melanie

Filed under: Best Practices, Best Practices and Clinics, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Best Practices, Diversity & Social Justice, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Comments Off on Dean Darby Dickerson — on Equity, Security, and Status

Menstrual Products and the Bar: Advocacy Seeks to Create Equal Bar Exam Testing Conditions for Menstruators

Posted on August 5, 2020 by Melanie Daily, University of Kansas School of Law

By: Elizabeth B. Cooper, Fordham Law School; Margaret E. Johnson, U. Baltimore Law (visiting at American); and Marcy L. Karin, UDC David A. Clarke School of Law

We can all recall the stress, fear, and worry that accompany taking the bar exam.  About half of us also were anxious we would have to manage our period in the middle of this awful two-to-three-day ordeal.  Bar examiners across the country have made this prospect far more daunting than it needs to be by not treating menstruation as the natural biological process that it is.

Without proof of any test-taker having ever cheated using a tampon or pad, some states have chosen to stigmatize and potentially penalize people who have their periods with draconian policies prohibiting bar examinees from bringing their own menstrual products with them.  Other states have failed to adopt or communicate clear policies on the subject, increasing test-takers’ anxiety: one should not have to waste time researching the Bar Examiners’ hard-to-find policies  or calling their offices for answers—which may, or may not, yield consistent information. 

The harm here is four-fold: 1. It is wrong to make test-taking conditions more challenging for people based on the fact they menstruate; 2. It is wrong to limit test-takers to random products selected by Bar Examiners that could put test-takers’ health and menstruation management at risk; 3. It is wrong to exclude text-takers from any menstrual products simply because they do not use the women’s restroom; and 4. It is wrong to convey the harmful message that all people who menstruate are untrustworthy and do not belong in the legal profession. 

Some states, including Texas and Pennsylvania, prohibited exam-takers from bringing in their own menstrual products, offering to provide a limited and unpredictable set of products in the women’s bathroom.  (After much advocacy, Texas changed its rule for the September exam, though it is unclear if this is a permanent change.)  This does not solve the problems these states created in the first place by banning test-takers from bringing in their own products.  People who menstruate need their own products because menstrual products are not “one size fits all”: menstruaters require different sizes and levels of absorbency in their products to best fit their body and menstrual flow.  

Use of the wrong size product can lead to everything from pain and discomfort to toxic shock syndrome (if too large) and time-consuming, uncomfortable, and disruptive leaks (if too small). Further, some individuals require hypoallergenic products to protect against allergic reactions.  If not provided, applicants may experience vaginal itching or other problems caused by using allergen-containing tampons or pads inside or adjacent to their bodies.  All of these consequences are awful enough on their own; here, they create an unconscionable risk of derailing exam performance.

In addition, by limiting test-takers from bringing in their own products and then providing products only in the women’s restrooms, Bar Examiners relegate transgender men and nonbinary persons who may menstruate, and who may use the men’s restrooms or all-gender restrooms, to having no access to menstrual products during the bar exam.

Other states allow test-takers to bring their own products, but require them to be packaged in a clear plastic bag—with some states mandating that the product be unwrapped.  This last requirement makes no sense: the wrapper both keeps the product hygienic before being inserted into or placed adjacent to one’s body and provides an efficient way to safely dispose of used products, reducing janitorial staff’s exposure to bodily fluids.  Further, removing the wrapping exposes the adhesive on the bottom of some pads, rendering them practically useless when the menstruator tries to unstick them from the clear plastic bag.

As much as we want to destigmatize menstruation and eradicate the embarrassment and taboo of being seen with a tampon or pad, it remains an invasion of privacy to require test-takers to carry their products in a clear plastic bag, revealing to a proctor (and possibly a classmates, colleagues, or future opposing counsel) that one has or expects to get their period during the exam.  (One North Carolina bar exam test-taker reported that a proctor asked her if she “really needed those” while inspecting her plastic bag of menstrual products.)  Finally, this intrusion is even more painful for, and potentially outs, transgender men and non-binary law graduates who may not be public about their biological sex.  It may even set them up for bigoted harassment—during the biggest exam of their lives.

Other states allow test-takers to bring their own products and do not require them to be carried in a clear bag—but, they must check them with a proctor or retrieve them outside the exam room before heading to the restroom.  This “solution” means that a menstruating person with will have to take vital time away from the exam (or a break between sections of the exam) to obtain their menstrual products before using the restroom.  This “time tax” is as unacceptable as the other approaches described above.

At least some states treat people who menstruate without such bizarre suspicion, allowing them to bring in and keep their own products with them during the exam, and use them as needed during the test—without having to ask a stranger for their own personal possessions.  To date, there have been no known accusations of test-takers trying to do the impossible: write helpful information on a pad or tampon to give them an edge on the exam or smuggle in written answers inside the product’s wrapping.

The lack of uniformity of equity-based rules permitting access to one’s own menstrual products is unacceptable and must be changed. Thankfully, in the age of social media, law graduates have taken the lead on this advocacy, sharing the hurdles they are facing on social media and asking state Bar Examiners to eliminate these outrageous rules, largely under the #bloodybarpocalypse hashtag. 

Once we saw their posts, the three of us, working with fantastic former clinic students of Fordham and UDC, began advocating that all state Bar Examiners adopt better menstrual products policies.  We drafted a letter to the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE)—co-signed by over 2800 law professors, law students, law school graduates, and lawyers in under 24 hours.  We also sent letters to Bar Examiners in each state that administered an in-person July bar exam and did not have a clear, acceptable policy in place.  All of these efforts led to some quick changes. 

The NCBE contacted state Bar Examiners and informed them that menstrual products were not included in the NCBE’s “prohibited paper” category and that test-takers should be able to bring in their own products.  The press started asking questions of the state Bar Examiners.  And state Bar Examiners began changing or clarifying their policies, with some confirming to examinees that they could bring personal menstrual products to the exam.  For instance, West Virginia Bar Examiners insisted that they permitted products in the exam room, even though their website said differently. Texas state Bar Examiners changed their policy from not permitting products to permitting them at its September exam.  (The state has issued contradictory statements, however, about whether this change is permanent.)

This positive change is not, however, uniform: even those states that have adopted equitable policies must be monitored to ensure they are adopting best practices.  In our efforts to get accurate and honest information from state Bar Examiners across the country, it has been deeply disconcerting to learn how many jurisdictions are silent on whether examinees may bring in their own menstrual products; have informal policies that contradict written statements about what items are allowed in the exam (e.g., not listing menstrual products in the list of items test-takers can bring in, but informally allowing them); or have stubbornly held onto their recalcitrant policies.  

Equally unacceptable, many Bar Examiners will not share the documentation that they say embodies their policies (e.g., generic letters to test-takers informing them what they can and cannot bring into the exam; postings on their web sites behind a security wall).  Without this proof, there is no accountability and the true practices of these states remain unknown.   

As we reach out to jurisdictions administering in-person exams in the coming months, our demands are clear: Bar Examiners must issue explicit policies permitting examinees to bring their own menstrual products in to bar exams, in an opaque container or on their person, and to publish these policies on their websites.  Other bar-related policies that can have disproportionate effects also must be changed.  For instance, examinees needing to pump their breastmilk must be given ready accommodations and bathroom access must not be limited as it affects both pumpers and menstruators.

To learn more about all of the advocacy efforts in this area, check out Menstrual Equity and the Bar Exam: Round Up of Op-Eds and Other Media Coverage on the Feminist Law Professors blog and follow the hashtag #MPandTheBar.  If you want to get involved in this work, let us know. And no doubt other activists working on the pumping and bathroom access issues would welcome assistance too. There is, unfortunately, plenty of work to be done.

Filed under: Bar Exam, Best Practices, Best Practices, Diversity & Social Justice, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Davida Finger (Loyola New Orleans) and Melanie Daily DeRousse (Kansas) Begin Work as Editors for Best Practices in Legal Education Blog 

Posted on July 20, 2020 by Melanie Daily, University of Kansas School of Law

As Mary Lynch announced in her July 13, 2020 farewell post, we are taking over as the editors of the Best Practices in Legal Education Blog. Mary’s post tells us about the Blog’s birth and growth out of CLEA’s Best Practices Committee’s work on the Best Practices in Legal Education book and the collaboration that led to the publication of Building on Best Practices.

Now that we have spent a little time looking back, we are excited to share a little about who we are and where we are headed.

Who we are:

  • Davida Finger is a Clinic Professor and Associate Dean of Students and Experiential Learning at Loyola New Orleans College of Law. She founded the Community Justice section of the Law Clinic where she and her clinic students have represented on housing, special education, and other civil rights matters with a focus on movement lawyering. Davida received the Bellow Scholars award from the AALS Clinical Association for her empirical research on New Orleans eviction geography that documented the discriminatory impact of evictions. She is the founding director of the College of Law’s Incubator Program for solo practitioners working for social justice. Davida recently completed a 2-year term as the president of the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) and is currently teaching the externship course.
  • Melanie Daily DeRousse is a Clinical Associate Professor and Director of the Legal Aid Clinic at the University of Kansas School of Law. Melanie began work at KU in 2015 after she responded to a job posting that invited essays on how candidates would reinvent the then-47-year-old clinic by applying the principles in Best Practices in Legal Education. In her second term as a CLEA board member, she co-chairs the Best Practices in Pedagogy committee and serves on the Elections committee. She presents on legal education pedagogy with other Best Practices committee members at regional and national conferences, and also recently worked on the planning committee for CLEA’s 2020 New Clinicians’ Virtual Conference. Her clinical work focuses on juvenile justice, criminal defense, and child welfare; outside the clinic, she teaches and writes about family law and engages in university work on promotion, tenure, and pay equity, among other things. Before joining KU Law, Melanie represented survivors of intimate partner violence in family law matters through Legal Services of Eastern Missouri. She was a racial justice fellow in the inaugural class of advocates through the Shriver Center’s Racial Justice Institute.

Where we are headed:

It is humbling, to put it mildly, to be at the helm of such an insightful and collaborative group of contributing authors. As Mary mentioned, this Blog continues to evolve and spark “collaboration on steroids” as new ideas are generated, implemented, assessed, and modified. It is a powerful home for vetting ideas about teaching. We hope to continue to nurture the imaginative, inquisitive, and aspirational tone the Blog has cultivated over the years. As we focus our work as editors, we note the emergence of three main content areas worth highlighting:

  • Teaching justice by doing justice work: we will highlight efforts around inclusion, diversity, and radical change to upend structural racism in legal education and academic institutions;
  • Pedagogical (r)evolution: we will continue the Blog’s intense discussion of legal education reform and seek to emphasize emerging ideas about how we teach in ever-evolving classrooms with a priority on justice ideals; and
  • Large scale policy changes affecting teaching: we will share advocacy around big-picture issues in legal education – changes in ABA standards, forthcoming CSALE studies, structural changes in higher education that impact legal education.

In addition, we hope to use the tools of social media to encourage greater engagement in these discussions and feature prominently the voices of colleagues teaching diverse topics across the legal education curriculum. We welcome new authors, voices, and comments as we seek to broaden the conversation. CLEA is self-reflective and self-critical in understanding that, as an organization, it must do more to amplify and expand all manner of justice including through this Blog.

And, finally, a thank-you and a goodbye:

Finally, thank you to Mary Lynch, founder and 13-year editor of the Blog. We knew from reading the Blog that she was a very busy and involved editor; but during this transition, we had the first opportunity to see just how much she does behind the scenes to keep the conversation interesting, interactive, inclusive, and meaningful. She has been as thoughtful and supportive in this transition as could be possible. We are grateful that she will stay on as “Editor Emeritus” as the Blog continues to grow. Mary, thank you for all that you have done to create a space to engage all legal educators in a thoughtful and productive discussion about why, how, and what we teach, and why it matters.

 

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Addressing Structural Racism in Law School: CUNY Law Faculty Issues Statement and Demand for Action

Posted on July 9, 2020 by Melanie Daily, University of Kansas School of Law

At law schools across the country, we are grappling with how to respond to internal and external conversations about the role of the legal profession in addressing structural racism, white supremacy, and racist policing. At CUNY Law School, Black faculty and non-Black faculty of color recently drafted and published a Statement and Demand for Action that was endorsed by the full faculty. The impressive and comprehensive statement outlines action steps, policy demands, and faculty dynamics that must change, addresses CUNY’s problematic relationship with the NYPD, and pushes for specific action to create an anti-racist campus.

As we collectively consider the path forward, what steps in CUNY’s plan resonate? What similar discussions are taking place at other law schools, and what is changing? Let us know in the comments.

 

Full text of the statement appears below this line: 

Statement and Demand for Action to Create an Anti-Racist Campus

By Black Faculty and Faculty of Color at CUNY Law

June 30, 2020

Black Faculty and Faculty of Color of CUNY School of Law issue the following statement, endorsed by the full faculty. We believe unequivocally that Black Lives Matter. We grieve with the families of Ahmaud Aubery, Rayshard Brooks, George Floyd, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, and every victim of anti-Black violence. We stand in solidarity with those who are demanding justice for their deaths, and who are fighting to dismantle white supremacy in all its forms, and specifically, systemic anti-Black racism. We join in solidarity with those in New York City and around the country who are challenging not only structural racism and racist policing, but anti-Blackness and racism in all of our institutions. The legal academy, including CUNY School of Law, are not exempt from these legacies of slavery and subjugation.

Statement and Demand for Action to Create an Anti-Racist Campus

As Black and non-Black faculty of color, we support the Movement for Black Lives Policy Platforms and stand in solidarity with the movement to defund and abolish police and redefine public safety and accountability through non-carceral investments in Black communities. Accordingly, we reject reforms that preserve the status quo.  As lawyers and educators, we acknowledge our profession’s history of upholding white supremacy and thwarting these demands. However, we are also uniquely situated to further them. Below are preliminary areas in which the law school must work in furtherance of these goals:

Our role in the legal profession: We heartily embrace the dual mission of our law school — to facilitate access to underrepresented communities historically excluded from the profession by white supremacy, and particularly anti-Blackness, and to act as an entrée into providing legal support to communities fighting against systems entrenched in white supremacy. Our view of social justice calls for a complete reimagining of the state and society. Accordingly, we seek to serve those students who will genuinely and fearlessly pursue transformative racial and economic justice.

We uplift and honor the legacy of W. Haywood Burns, the first Black law school dean in New York State, who was also the second dean of CUNY School of Law and tirelessly fought for Black liberation in and outside of the walls of CUNY Law. We are cognizant that among the central tools of oppression under white supremacy is the law, particularly as meted out by police, military and prosecutors of all stripes — be they police who criminalize or cage, police who alienize or deport, or purportedly protective agencies who demonize or separate families.

As Black and non-Black faculty of color, we are committed to dismantling these tools of oppression through a pedagogical approach that deploys critical and radical analyses to challenge our students and by offering a robust and humble praxis in service of movements that seek transformative and restorative justice.  We further reiterate the importance of affirming CUNY Law’s dual mission, from admission to graduation and beyond, through a commitment of  institutional self-reflection that is unflinching, inclusive, and continual.

Curriculum: Black students routinely call on the CUNY Law faculty to recognize and confront the negative impact that the traditional legal curriculum has had on Black students. We call on faculty to acknowledge the concerns of students of color and incorporate the feedback into their teaching.

To work towards becoming an anti-racist campus, we demand that, starting in Fall 2020, faculty mobilize pre-existing resources like the Race, Privilege, and Diversity and Professional Development committees toward educating ourselves across the administration and faculty — including adjuncts, visitors, tenure-track, and tenured faculty — on anti-Blackness, racial capitalism, state overreach into communities of color and abolition movements, particularly by engaging with work authored by Black people, incorporating critical frameworks like critical race feminism and queer theory, disability justice, abolition, and decoloniality, among others, throughout every course, and centering intersectional Black perspectives in the classroom.

To achieve these goals, we demand that CUNY Law provide the material resources so that all faculty may take the time necessary to engage in this learning and unlearning. To ensure accountability and transparency, we demand that these committees and others apprise the full faculty in writing each semester on their progress and any challenges encountered in this process.

Non-Curricular Policy Points

  • The various departments that constitute the law school make powerful choices that should be calibrated to center and uplift anti-racist objectives. We demand increased outreach to Black and non-Black students of color in admissions by the career planning office and heightened engagement with Black and non-Black alumni of color. Understanding that internships and initial jobs are key to a student’s ability to practice law over the long-term and practice in the frontlines of social justice movements, we also demand that the career planning office provide increased support to Black and non-Black students of color, particularly first-generation higher education students, whose resumes and cover letters can and should reflect the valuable perspectives and skills that each of our students has to offer the legal profession. We call on the relevant committees to report back on these developments to the full faculty in Fall 2020.
  • For too long we have participated in maintaining barriers to the legal profession even as we seek to break those down. Accordingly, we demand that, starting Fall 2020, the minimum LSAT requirement for all scholarships, including the Graduate Fellowship, be abolished and that the law school keep records of and make public the distribution of scholarship and summer fellowship funds by race. Similarly, we demand that admissions data collection be expanded beyond the required ABA categories to include more detailed, granular, and less reductive categories to better account for the multiple and diverse identities our students bring to the school. We call on the Admissions committee to report back on these developments to the full faculty on a bi-semesterly basis.
  • CUNY Law offers the services of a Nurse Practitioner and Mental Health Counselor on the premises, but otherwise, students are not offered health insurance and are instead invited to enroll in Medicaid programs during open enrollment each period. The limited resources made available are not sufficient for CUNY’s student body. Particularly given the dynamics described above, we call on the law school to consider allocation of funds to mental health services and other medical insurance.
  • Some of our academic standing policies — such as the threshold for academic probation — have a disparate impact on Black and non-Black students of color. We demand that those policies be immediately reconsidered and amended. We call on the Academic Standing committee to report back to the full faculty on these developments on a bi-semesterly basis.
  • We reiterate the importance of the role of Black and non-Black faculty of color on the faculty appointments committee. We call on the Committee on Committees to report back to the full faculty on developments to this end in Fall 2020.
  • Like many law schools, CUNY Law relies on faculty with non-secure positions for critical teaching positions. Our adjunct, visitor, instructor, and other non-tenure track faculty contribute immensely to our institution yet lack job security, opportunities for training and development, and other benefits that permanent faculty enjoy. We demand meaningful job security for our colleagues in these positions, especially Black and non-Black faculty of color. We call on all relevant committees to report back to the full faculty on progress to this end in Fall 2020.

Faculty Dynamics

  • Invisible institutional service and labor of Black and non-Black faculty of color: In 2019, 88% of lawyers were white and in 2018, 8 out of 10 law professors were white. CUNY School of Law boasts a more racially diverse faculty. We especially acknowledge the school’s laudable efforts to bring ten faculty of color, including 4 black faculty, onto the tenure track in the past 3 years alone. Nonetheless, we must do more to dismantle anti-Blackness in our governance. Black and non-Black faculty and staff of color, both at CUNY Law and throughout the U.S., routinely perform unrecognized labor beyond their job descriptions and in the service of their institutions, to confront anti-Blackness and other forms of racism. A wealth of research shows these contributions both sustain diversity and inclusion efforts in the academy and create additional demands that detract from the time required for fulfilling traditional expectations of all faculty.

Faculty of color devote significant time to mentoring and supporting Black and non-Black students of color, ensuring that our institution can retain the most marginalized students after they matriculate.  We advocate explicitly and in more personalized ways for Black and non-Black students of color, who suffer regular indignities, while we also abide microaggressions from colleagues, the profession, and indignities from broader society ourselves. We disproportionately bear the burden of ensuring equitable distribution of labor among faculty and scholarship and fellowship awards among students.

We highlight the lack of recognition (both in salary/pay and formal acknowledgement through evaluation, tenure, and promotion standards) of the amount of invisible institutional service and labor that Black and non-Black faculty and staff of color contribute to the law school.  We demand that similar to our institution’s commitment to recognizing advocacy work product as scholarship, CUNY Law change provisions in promotion, hiring, assignment to and distribution of labor on committees, and tenure policies to honestly and explicitly reflect the now hidden workload of Black and non-Black faculty and staff of color.  For example, we need more conscientious reappointment and annual review reporting policies and re-conceptualized categories of “teaching, scholarship, and service” across the faculty.  We call on all relevant committees to report back to the full faculty on progress to these ends in Fall 2020.

  • Recognition of privilege and power: We note the complex conditions inherent in participating in governance discussions. We demand that faculty be mindful of their privilege and hierarchies of power and reflect on the ways in which they participate in committees, faculty meetings, and other spaces — stepping back where appropriate.

Policing: Generations of faculty, students, and staff of color have repeatedly expressed concerns about the relationship between CUNY Law’s public safety and the New York City Police Department (NYPD). We demand that any memoranda of understanding governing the role or presence of CUNY Public Safety, of the NYPD, or of any other law enforcement agency on the CUNY School of Law campus be shared immediately with the full faculty, staff, and student body of the law school. In keeping with the demands and concerns of generations of students, faculty, and staff, we’re calling on CUNY Law School to discontinue any formal or informal relationship with NYPD and reimagine campus security by supporting the safety and well-being of the people on campus through divestment from punitive policing systems and investment in alternatives, including de-escalation, conflict resolution, and transformative and restorative justice training for all faculty, staff, and designated student representatives. The Public Safety committee was explicitly tasked with addressing these issues in the Fall of 2019. We call on that committee to report back to the full Faculty by October 2020 on progress to these ends.

Finally, we stand by Brooklyn College’s Black Faculty and Staff (BFS), Faculty of Color (FOC) Group, Latino Faculty and Staff (LFSO), and other caucus groups in the CUNY system, and we adopt our Brooklyn colleagues’ statement, slightly adapted to the law school’s context, as follows: This moment in our country is the culmination of systemic denial of dignity that typifies antiblackness. As lawyers fighting for racial and economic justice, we know that structural inequality cannot be addressed through empty statements of standing in solidarity and promoting “diversity.”

We advocate a transformational solidarity with an ethos of social justice that is action- oriented. Transformational solidarity means that the systemic racism, surveillance, and austerity that have become a normal feature of society is aggressively challenged on campus. Transformative solidarity understands that struggles against domination are shared and that anti-Blackness and austerity work in tandem and must be fought hand-in-hand. This is a fight that involves Albany and state politics but it begins with us on campus. We demand a shift in the current institutional logic of the administration that urges faculty and staff to do more for our students with less. By embracing this moment of profound possibility in response to this crisis, we hope to imagine and create a life-affirming campus we do not have, but require.

  • Chris Adams
  • Beena Ahmad
  • Naz Ahmad
  • Saba N. Ahmed
  • Bahar Ansari
  • Nermeen Arastu
  • Ann Cammett
  • Eduardo R.C. Capulong
  • Janet Calvo
  • Asima Chaudhary
  • Natalie M. Chin
  • Frank Deale
  • Farah Diaz-Tello
  • Pamela Edwards
  • Golnaz Fakhimi
  • Raquel Gabriel
  • Mary Godfrey-Rickards
  • Natalie Gomez-Velez
  • Victor Goode
  • Fareed Hayat
  • Julia Hernandez
  • Carmen Huertas-Noble
  • Chaumtoli Huq
  • Tarek Z. Ismail
  • Ramzi Kassem
  • Donna Lee
  • Degna Levister
  • Julie Lim
  • Gregory Louis
  • Lynn Lu
  • Shirley Lung
  • Princess Masilungan
  • Michelle Pinzon
  • Missy Risser-Lovings
  • Jeena Shah
  • Charisa Kiyô Smith
  • Nicole Smith
  • Yasmin Sokkar Harker
  • Cynthia Soohoo
  • Rafael Varela
  • Shomari Ward

 

We call on all of our faculty colleagues to endorse this statement, mindful that such an endorsement carries with it the responsibility of ensuring the statement’s implementation.

 

Endorsed by:

  • Mary Lu Bilek
  • Beryl Blaustone
  • Rebecca Bratspies
  • Sue Bryant
  • Janet Calvo
  • Nina Chernoff
  • Douglas Cox
  • Lisa Davis
  • Ryan Dooley
  • Dave Fields
  • Laura Gentile
  • Julie Goldscheid
  • Florence Kerner
  • JM Kirby
  • Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier
  • Sarah Lamdan
  • Stephen Loffredo
  • Matthew Main
  • Camille Massey
  • Andrea McArdale
  • Haley Meade
  • Laura Mott
  • David Nadvorney
  • Jason Parkin
  • Talia Peleg
  • Allie Robbins
  • Ruthann Robson
  • Joe Rosenberg
  • Merrick T. Rossein
  • Jonathan Saxon
  • Franklin Siegel
  • Richard Storrow
  • Erin Tomlinson
  • Sarah Valentine
  • Kara Wallis
  • Alan White
  • John Whitlow
  • Sofia Yakren
  • Deborah Zalesne
  • Steven Zeidman
  • Jean Zorn

Filed under: Best Practices, Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices & Setting Goals, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Best Practices, Diversity & Social Justice, Catalysts For Change, Diversity & Social Justice, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Sharing Takeaways from Michele Pistone’s Bootcamp “Designing an Online Law Course”

Posted on June 30, 2020 by Mary A. Lynch

I am posting about my experience with this  Bootcamp  for two reasons: 1) to create a space for participants to continue to share experiences and takeaways (please add in comments section below); and 2) to provide some content for those unable to participate in the virtual conference but who are interested in preparing for blended learning or online teaching in 20-21.   The hope is to form a national community of law teacher-scholars-learners as we navigate the uncharted waters of summer 2020 in preparation for the unpredictable  20-21 academic year.

I will start first.  My first takeaway is how comforting it was to discuss with other law faculty in my small Zoom breakout room group the challenges our institutions are facing, the common concerns we all have,  and the inability we have at this moment to know what August will bring.  As Michele Pistone  reminds us in her  Top 5 Tips for Teaching Law Online , we have to change our mindset — from thinking “how can we replicate what we did before” to “how do we utilize this new opportunity to ensure  student learning.”  We have to use time and space differently – thinking about class “time” as a continuum of learning interactions before during and after direct instructor contact/live sessions.  We need to prioritize pivoting and adapting from in person to virtual as the learning benefits afford us opportunities (online polling, quizzes, pre-recorded videos) and the disadvantages – ZOOM FATIGUE – constrain our usual preference for live synchronous lecture, discussion, or flipped classroom.

Preparing for the Fall Semester is akin to preparing for a camping trip or long Adirondack hike — what do I need to have in my EMERGENCY LAW TEACHING KNAPSACK?

Adirondack Hiking | Official Adirondack Region Website

I would suggest packing some handy lodestars we used today to ground our work – such as Bloom’s Taxonomy of Teaching,  VERBS Adapted From Bloom_s Taxonomy  26 Effectiveness Factors Shultz _&  Zedeck. and as my colleague Professor Christine Sgarlata Chung uses in her Bus Orgs casebook  IAALS’ Foundations for Practice.

Another takeaway from the first day of Bootcamp involved deconstructing one’s “in person” syllabus into Unit-Level Learning Goals, Learning Content and Learning Activities.  The folks in my group – who BTW were brilliant, personable and collaborative – found it made us all more intentional and descriptive in parsing our particularized goals and expectations.

Unit-Level Learning Goals

What do I want students to know, be able to do, and value?

Students will be able to: ………
Learning Content

How will the students learn?

What can help transfer knowledge from professor/expert to the student?(textbook, readings, cases, law review articles, statutes, regulations, videos, podcasts)
Learning Activities

How will the students engage with the course content?

How will students put their learning to work?(discussion, reflections, exercise, role plays)

My small breakout room group found ourselves untangling our integrated goals and content and activities to examine the pieces so we can re-assemble in a new, vibrant and effective way.

Looking forward to DAY 2 and more lessons.

I invite any and all participants to add their takeaways in the Comment Section below

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MOVING FORWARD: DAY TWO OF DREXEL (and some favorite poetic quotes)

Posted on May 28, 2020 by Mary A. Lynch
Congratulations are in order to Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law, to Dean Dan Filler and to all who planned and presented at the virtual conference.  LEANING INTO UNCERTAINTY: ENSURING QUALITY LEGAL EDUCATION DURING CORONAVIRUS.  Previously,  I wrote a few thoughts about Day One of the conference.  In this post, I will focus on Day Two. But first, good news for those of you who were unable to join virtually: Drexel’s Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Research, Alex C. Geisinger, plans to create a digest of the ideas and questions raised and discussed at the conference. As law schools face the evolving uncertainty presented by both the virus and the conflicting responses of our state and federal leaders, they will benefit from the kind of collaborative efforts and stimulating exchange of ideas that the Drexel conference organizers skillfully facilitated.  As I work with my law school colleagues to plan an exciting and enriching Fall 2020 Semester, I am using the wisdom gained from the conference. A few maxims from yesterday’s gathering stayed with me:
  • Acknowledge and name your biggest WORRY.
  • In crisis, there is OPPORTUNITY.
  • There is always ANOTHER crisis, we just don’t know what it will be.
I was reminded by the wise words of William Butler Yeats

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold  

Below I share five conference discussions which interested me. 1.  Relationships Still Matter and Matter Even More We know from LSSSE that for health and wellness and law students “Relationships Matter.”  How do we prioritize and facilitate those in a virtual or partly virtual world?
  • Phone call contact with each incoming 1L to find out worries, concerns, and hopes and model that relationships with individuals at the school matter.
  • Throughout semester, should teachers, staff, and administrators be polling the mood of the day or the week?
  • Set up a more systematic “social work case management system” to keep tabs on individual student, staff, and faculty wellness.
  • Provide in a simple format directly to each student in a personal phone call, meeting, or interaction a single document which outlines who the actual person and contact is when in trouble – academically, financially, emotionally, physically.  Maybe start this process over the summer using all employees  throughout the law school?  (CALI worked on a lesson that each school can use to modify the system or contact flow Lesson is at https://www.cali.org/lesson/18103)
  • Prioritize peer-to-peer opportunities for mentoring, collaboration, and synergy.
2.    Create Distinct “Places” for Students To Be
  • Virtual Libraries
  • Virtual Study Spaces
  • Virtual Social Spaces
  • Dedicated physical place for experiential learners to access supplies – not necessarily in clinic office space.
Makes me think of having students feel they have in the words of poet Mary Oliver’s a “place in the family of things”
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting— over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
3. Anticipate Enforcing Safety and Health Regulations During A Polarized Presidential Election Season
  • Messaging and Communication of Community Rules
  • Incorporate into Student and Personnel Regulations
  • Harder to Anticipate What Will Happen in a Public School Setting
4.  What changes are Temporary? What Will Continue after the Pandemic? Although forced to engage in Remote Emergency Teaching, Professors became facile with useful pedagogical online tools and will incorporate them into their general toolbox.
  • Investment already made in technology will accelerate usage.
  • This was all going to happen anyway as part of Law School 2.0?
  • Increasing options for law students? For institutions growing online programming?
  • Will law schools and universities be more open to allowing staff to work remotely?
  • Will we better appreciate, celebrate, and prioritize the importance of presence and in-person relationship in Higher Ed Learning?
5. With the impact of COVID-19 elevating the issues of access disparity and the diverse needs of our students, how can law schools minimize the threat to learning continuity and academic success?
  • Continue to modify assessment and grading practices?
  • Financial Insecurity?
    • Loss of Employment
    • Food Insecurity  – Virtual Food Pantry
    • Rent and Housing
    • Alums offered physical space (offices) for students without good space to study and take exams.
  • Supporting caregivers and others with outside responsibilities.
  • Evolving accommodations for students with disabilities and immune-suppressed students as we change the manner and methods of teaching.
The above five are a poor summary of the many ideas and queries raised at the conference and thus I look forward to the report back. As we arrive at the end of May 2020, take courage and know we are all in this TOGETHER!
One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.  Maya Angelou

Filed under: Best Practices, Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices, Diversity & Social Justice, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change, Disruptive Leadership, Diversity & Social Justice, Teaching Methodology, Technology | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on MOVING FORWARD: DAY TWO OF DREXEL (and some favorite poetic quotes)

“Take-Aways” from Day 1 of Drexel Conference

Posted on May 26, 2020 by Mary A. Lynch

Over 1,000 legal educators are taking part in a two day conference “Leaning into Uncertainty: Ensuring Quality Legal Education During Coronavirus,”  hosted by Drexel Law School and University.  Brief opening plenary remarks were made by Northwestern Law Professor Daniel Rodriguez who cautioned against “virtue signaling” noting that today on May 26th, we don’t know the choices students, faculty and others will make in August.   He called for legal educators to work across law schools to engage in “Collaboration on Steroids!”

After very brief “framing” discussions of questions, participants were assigned into scores of breakout groups.  Today’s Roundtable topics included:

Roundtable 1: Beyond Zoom! Moving from Emergency Virtual Classrooms to a Rigorous, Engaging Online Experience

Roundtable 2: Designing Curriculum and Programs in a World of Social Distancing: Sections, Schedules and Changing Circumstances

Roundtable 3: Maintaining High Quality Experiential Learning Opportunities from a Distance

Each breakout group recorder took notes which will be compiled into a report.  The hope is to make the lessons from the conference useful this summer as legal educators re-imagine law school operations and adapt our teaching methods and designs to meet student and public health needs.

I was able to participate in Roundtable 1 and 3 and found the discussions useful in thinking about my summer course redesign, the needs of our Justice Center, and the different way different schools can adapt and innovate. I jotted down a few “take-aways:”

General 

  • Time and Space are no longer the same as they were pre-pandemic.
  • To be a good teacher virtually, just like teaching in residence,  you have to be YOU!
  • What parts of your teaching are MOST important to be Synchronous? and how do we move other parts to be asynchronous?
  • Who could we record now (besides ourselves!) that we can use for asynchronous learning this FALL .. For e.g., share a hypo with other faculty in your department, or other subject matter experts from other law schools, or practitioner experts and record their reaction to a hypothetical that you can assign students to review after having discussed the hypo in breakout groups and  reported back.
  • If we are socially distanced with masks, and spread apart in the classroom, and we are teaching both virtually (through the class streaming or recording) and in residence at the same time, what works for that kind of socially distanced teaching? Might Zoom sometimes work better?

Community Building Ideas

  • ESPECIALLY for 1L’s in building community – Use Zoom questions for registering to ask students community building questions regarding hobbies
  • Start now to create break out rooms for 1Ls pre-assigning over the summer with asking of human questions.
  • Opening up Zoom 10 minutes ahead as if you are standing by podium and can be asked questions
  • Reframe the week – conversation starts on chat or CANVAS before class and continue  into and after class. 
  • Offer off class opportunities for virtual tea, coffee, happy hours to discuss what’s happening with students generally or what’s happening in the world

Experiential

  • Take Advantage of this moment.  Clinics and experiential courses could serve as important front line workers for the unprecedented need for legal services.
  • How do we overcome barriers to actually get to the people in need and to get them what they need?
  • How do we teach students to be community and client-centered if we are not in the community but physically or socially distanced?
  • How do we prepare students and ourselves to perform competently in the world of virtual courts and lawyering when the rules, protocols and comfort level with the virtual differ across kind of state and federal courts and among different judges?
  • How do we build the people-centered core of clinical work that helps students develop skills, values and networks in interpersonal relationships?
  • How do we resource our students and clients for virtual legal practice?

Lots to chew on and looking forward to hearing more tomorrow!

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Is Mandatory P/F An Opportunity to More Accurately Assess Competency to Practice Law and For Bar Admission?

Posted on March 29, 2020 by Mary A. Lynch

As our knowledge of COVID19 and its impact becomes more extensive each day, each workplace, profession and community is facing some common and some unique questions. Those working on the front lines in hospitals – such as several of  my relatives in NYC and NJ – are experiencing the kind of trauma, shortages, emotional overload and duress that is usually experienced in wartime. It can only be weakly imagined by the rest of us.   For those of us not experiencing  people suffering and dying in front of us on a daily basis, some less horrific choices are before us:  How do we modify “business as usual”?  How do we evolve and adapt with each days new tsunmai of information and data?  How do we support our best selves and our core values in this historically momentous time on our shared planet? 

Before turning to the topic of grading and assessment, I want to pause to give a shout-out to my home institution. Our multi-talented leader Dean Alicia Ouellette has been holding  community town halls every day since Friday March 20th. (BTW Dean Ouellette  just shared on Facebook  that she had been suffering from “presumptive COVID 19” fever and symptoms but thankfully is now symptom free). During our daily town halls, my faculty colleagues and I have expressed our wonder and gratitude for the  character, resilience and grit of our law students who are balancing so much right now, and facing so many financial, tech-related, health and extended family burdens. Our students’ engaged and forgiving response to “tech-curious but not necessarily tech-savvy” teachers and their community-minded empathy for those hardest hit keeps the faculty motivated and inspired.

One of the COVID19 decisions for legal educators involves whether and how we assess and sort — which in reductive  vernacular means “grade and rank.”  Maintaining appropriate expectations, options, rigor and excellence in law teaching  may assume primacy for those  who have been long focused on ensuring that law students receive real value for the time, talent and treasure they expend on law school.   For others focused on fairness in law placement,  transparent employer signals about how they will view Spring 2020 legal education may be most influential.  For those concerned about our profession’s  reputation for lack of wellness and lack of diversity, those concerns are elevated at this moment when those least advantaged are most hard pressed.  For those struggling with equity, there are so many permutations and consequences of COVID19 – whichever choice a school makes – that voting faculty could become as immobilized as Chidi Anagonye on THE GOOD PLACE. (BTW Good idea for escape television for those who love philosophy or Kristen Bell).

On the other hand, might this be a moment to look for the opportunities for reform and improvement that only come when the status quo is disturbed and rocked to its foundations as is happening now.  Here is what I am thinking:

Might Mandatory P/F force educators and employers to admit that traditional law school grading and ranking is a misleading and reductive proxy for measuring potential success as a lawyer?

Could it force employers to use other ways to learn about the WHOLE STUDENT with all her strengths, gaps, and individual aptitudes including the situation she faced during law school?

Might it accelerate a move to a more qualitative than quantitative assessment of each law student? Or, at least might it prioritize learning which enables a school to assemble a portfolio of student recommendations ( demonstration of knowledge, skills, aptitudes, and professionalism)?

Foundational resources include of course Educating Lawyers, Best Practices in Legal Education, and Building on Best Practices: Transforming Legal Education in a Changing World, which also provide helpful wisdom points. In addition, looking back through the dozen or so years of this blog’s existence, there are lessons from which we can pull core knowledge and core values to assist in our continued educational deliberations at this turbulent time. 

CORE KNOWLEDGE AND REFLECTIONS

Valuing Legal Education over Sorting – For example, focus on the difference between assessment and grading.  Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers conferences have brought employers, law schools, and legal education stakeholders together to tackle the disconnect between our current sorting systems (primarily used to help elite employers looking for a simple and reductive initial screening system) and the needs of society and most employers for competent new attorneys and the needs of students and the profession for fairness.

Focus instead on formative and evaluative assessment of law students and graduates

Focus on growth mindset, on reflection and learning from mistakes or experience

Recognize the limits and problems with GPA’s or LSAT scores to create a more competent profession with more able and diverse learners.

Acknowledge that the media and the academy is still stuck in a mindset that focuses on sorting methods rather than on better preparation and assessment of law students to serve clients and society.

Class rank does not predict who will become a competent, healthy and ethical lawyer

Effective Education includes

CORE LEARNING VALUES

Growth Mindset 

Inclusion and Diversity

Student-centered Learning  and the Introduction to the original Best Practices – “One of our basic tenets is that law schools should become more student-centered”

Wellness  

Collaboration and Innovation

Integrity 

Character 

Justice

Situational Excellence

There is a common theme here: P/F with alternative assessment information and measures should be seen not as temporary emergency expedients to “sort and rank”, but rather as long overdue components of a better educational program and more nuanced assessment paradigm.

I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.  I wish all our readers and citizens of our little blue planet moments of peace, love, safety, and compassion. May someone be kind to you today and let’s pay it forward.

 

 

 

Filed under: academic freedom, Bar Exam, Best Practices, Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices & Setting Goals, Best Practices and Clinics, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Best Practices, Diversity & Social Justice, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change, Disruptive Leadership, Diversity & Social Justice, First Year Law School Innovations, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Examples of How Law Schools are Addressing Law Student Well-Being

Posted on July 11, 2019 by Paula Schaefer

In a recent post, we summarized the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being’s recommendations for law schools. This post follows up to provide examples of what law schools are doing on the subject of student wellness. These efforts are intended to educate students and create good habits that they will take with them into practice.

Gather Well-Being Resources on a Webpage. Gathering a list of programs and resources in one place makes it easy for students to know the opportunities that are available and highlights the school’s commitment to student well-being. William & Mary Law School does a nice job of cataloging their wellness opportunities on this page, which links to another page listing “Wellness Wednesday Events.”

Curriculum. Law schools are increasingly creating classes on wellness-related topics. This blog recently discussed The University of Tennessee College of Law’s class Thriving as a Lawyer (A Scientific Approach).  Many schools have developed courses on the subject of mindfulness. For example, University of Miami School of Law offers a number of classes in its Mindfulness in Law Program, Northwestern Law’s mindfulness offerings include Mindfulness-Based Resilient Lawyering, while UC Davis School of Law offers Mindfulness and Professional Identity: Becoming a Lawyer While Keeping Your Values Intact.  The University of San Francisco School of Law and South Texas College of Law Houston both offer courses in Contemplative Lawyering.

Extra-Curricular. Extra-curricular activities can address multiple aspects of student wellness, from creating a sense of community to addressing physical health. Yoga classes (such as the weekly classes offered at Marquette University Law School) and running clubs (like those at Lewis & Clark Law School and UCLA Law) are popular at law schools. Book clubs (like the one at the Michigan Law which is promoted as a fiction escape from law books) and potluck dinner gatherings (offered for students at Tennessee Law) provide opportunities for students to connect, socialize, and recharge.

Counseling. Many law schools are connected to universities with counseling and related services available to all students; it can be incredibly helpful to make law students aware of those university resources by creating a list on a law school webpage (like the one created by the University of Missouri School of Law).  Some law schools, like American University Washington College of Law, and William & Mary Law School  have counseling and “wellness coaching” services in the law school building to make it easier for students to access.

Creating a Space that Encourages Student Health and Wellness. A number of law schools have given thought to student health and well-being as they have designed or re-designed their space. While not every school can afford a gym, many have made space for standing desks in the library, ping pong tables, and exercise bikes.

Well-Being Committees and Student Organizations.  A number of schools have created well-being committees or student organizations, often at the urging of students. For example, the Washburn Association for Law Student Health states its purpose is to “actively promote the education and awareness regarding health and wellness of the law student body, mentally and physically, while creating a community for students interested in promoting health and wellness in their own lives and in the lives of their peers.”

These examples only scratch the surface of all the things law schools are doing on the topic of well-being. If your law school is doing something that other schools may want to consider, please add it in the comments.

 

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