Simplistic Media Reports

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Thomas F. Guernsey

The website Law.com recently published an article entitled “ABA: Law schools getting the message on practical skills” The gist of the article is summarized in its opening sentence: “The dismal job market for newly minted lawyers has influenced how most law school administrators approach their course offerings, with 76 percent of the institutions surveyed by the American Bar Association reporting that they’ve modified their curricula to adapt.”

I will be interested in seeing the whole study. I’m not so sure of the causal link the article suggests, and certainly the Executive Summary of the ABA report makes no such connection. Most significantly, coming to the conclusion that the job market is the motivating factor in curricular reform based on a comparison between 1992-2002 and 2002-2012 seems tenuous. Comparing curriculum over 20 some years and concluding that the 2008 job market collapse is the cause of change seems a bit tenuous.

Skills training has been evolving in legal education since before 2008. While, as the article correctly points out, the Carnegie Report and Best Practices for Legal Education have influenced law schools since they were published in 2007, the McCrate Report (and the Crampton Report before it) arguably spurred greater and, at least at this point, more fundamental change. Indeed, the changes in legal writing cited in the article, including the proliferation of Lawyering Skills courses rather than legal research and writing courses, began in the 90’s. One thing that has made me proud of legal education over the decades is the increasing emphasis on skills – proud, because it has been done despite the fact that the reward structure to which law schools respond (e.g., U.S. News, large firm hiring, judicial clerkships) gives little reward to schools who do skills training well or students who take skills courses.

The article completely ignores what I think has been the biggest curricular reform in the past 20 years—the creation of academic support programs. My gut tells me that in the past 10 years law schools have invested at least as many, if not more, resources into programs to increase bar passage than teach skills.

My real concern with the article, however, and why I want to read the report, is that the article’s conclusion implies the conclusions are those of the ABA. In reality, the conclusions foster what I believe is the simplistic view expressed in the press and the biggest impediment to true reform of legal education in the area of skills training—the belief that reform is solely a law school problem. There is wide spread belief that if law schools just did the right thing, we would produce practice ready lawyers.

The fact is, skills education is a profession wide issue. I have already mentioned the fact that (despite criticism of legal education) the reward structure does not value skills training. You want to change legal education? Get federal court judges and hiring partners at large law firms to say they will not hire anyone who does not have 15 credit hours of clinic.

But the issue runs deeper. It requires all parts of the profession to look at what it does to inhibit the training of practice ready lawyers. Just take one example; bar admission. One of the biggest impediments to developing a program that truly prepares someone to practice law is the bar exam itself. When students need to take upwards of 22 subjects in some states to prepare for the bar exam, it leaves little time in the curriculum for innovative skills training. And, when a state (such as New York) decides to add a pro bono requirement for initial admission to the bar, rather than say reducing the number of subjects tested on the exam and requiring a truly meaningful clinical experience, it does not help matters

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Catalysts For Change, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Simplistic Media Reports

Assessment Tales: The Bluebooks That Stayed

Posted on January 17, 2012 by glesnerfinesb

It’s that time of year when we all have the grading of our last semester’s bluebooks well behind us and the last few students have come in to review their exams. So we have packed up the bluebooks to be archived and they are out of sight and out of mind.

But wait! In the world of assessment, the bluebooks come back! These papers and exams have a wealth of assessment information for us to mine if we only take the time to gather, reflect and use that information.

How can you use your bluebooks for efficient assessment and improvement of student learning?

Many faculty gather holistic impressions as they grade about the performance of the students overall and the areas of difficulty and strength. To improve on this reflective process, faculty can take a few more simple steps:

1. Improve your data collection.

Rather than gathering general impressions as we grade bluebooks, we can mine the bluebooks for some more concrete data. Examine the distribution of performance on individual questions or issues. Note that you need not gather every data point possible from the bluebooks. Often it is helpful to begin with two or three items to analyze. For example, what is the one thing that nearly every student did well on the exam? What were the one or two questions/issues/approaches that many students had problems on? What percentage of the students had these problems?

2. Analyze your data.

For issues students appear to have learned well, look again at your questions. How confident are you that the question truly tested the student understanding? In this respect, essay questions are often easier to evaluate than multiple choice questions, because you can see the students reasoning on the former, whereas consistently correct answers on the latter can be the result of distractors that are patently wrong. What materials and techniques did you use to prepare the students for that question? When during the semester did you teach those matters? If the student performance is improved from prior exam administrations, what, if anything, did you change that may have caused this improved learning?

For issues or questions on which a significant percentage of student performance was deficient, again, begin by reexamining the question, its placement in the examination and the time allocated for responses, to identify other possible reasons for poor performance that are less related to student learning and more related to exam conditions. Look for patterns in the student errors or misconceptions that can help you diagnose what learning conditions led to the student poor performance. What materials and methods did you use to teach this doctrine?

3. Plan for the next class

When students are performing well on a doctrine or concept, especially when that competent performance appears to have been the result of your prior efforts to target and improve learning activities for that material, you may be tempted to rest on your (and your students’) laurels. However, consider that any change to one part of a course can affect other parts and each class brings with it different experiences and preparation.

To improve student learning on areas that have presented difficulties for students, consider not only improving teaching materials or methods related to that area, but also incorporate more formative assessments during the term to help you and the students identify earlier and more clearly the learning deficiencies.

4. What my bluebooks told me this semester:

To illustrate this process of mining bluebooks for assessment, I will discuss this semester’s Professional Responsibility exam. From this semester’s bluebooks, I gathered a range of data on materials well understood and poorly understood. I will share three examples of data to illustrate the process of using bluebooks for an assessment process.

The doctrinal winner this year in terms of student performance was multijurisdictional practice of law. Is this because the students understood these aspects of the course better than others? Reviewing the exam, I noticed that the question testing this subject called for a fairly low level of mastery (basic issue spotting and knowledge of rule) without any sophisticated analysis required. This was a topic for which I had provided a number of practice problems to the students and I had tested the issue in a similar fashion on a prior year’s exam, which I had made available for student review. Moreover, it is a subject that, because my law school is located on a state line, with dramatically different variations on this rule, the students understood that this was a rule that would impact their immediate future, as they chose which state bar exam to take first. What I learned from this is the fairly unremarkable understanding that my law students can and will master at a knowledge-level those topics for which they know they will be tested and for which they also have a more personal motivation to learn well. I concluded that I would and could generalize these understandings to not only raise the bar on testing this doctrine, requiring a more sophisticated understanding, but also would look for other areas in which I could improve student motivation by identifying the specific need-to-know circumstances looming in their immediate future for other rules.

A second topic about which I have been tracking student learning performance for many semesters is the student understanding of the distinction between the evidentiary attorney-client privilege and the ethical duty of confidentiality (among other doctrine). When I first began tracking, as many as 30% of students were demonstrating fundamental confusion on this topic – using language of “privilege” when the subject was confidentiality (or vice versa) or confusing the exceptions to the ethical duty with the crime-fraud exception to privilege. I knew from speaking with other Professional Responsibility teachers that this is a common area of confusion for students. Over the course of several semesters, I worked to improve student learning in this area: including more problems in course materials, writing and assigning a CALI lesson on the subject, and explicitly telling the students that this is something that I am tracking and cheering them on to “make this the 100% mastery year.” The efforts are bearing fruit. This semester was the best yet – only four out of 72 students used the vocabulary of the two doctrines improperly and three of these applied the correct rule even though they were not using the correct terminology in doing so.

An area on which I had thought I was making progress in student learning turned out to be a continuing problem. Students commonly are confused by the rule governing an attorney’s right to withdraw from representation. I have made the same efforts on this doctrine as I have with the privilege v. confidentiality confusions: increasing problems, providing additional outside resources (again, I wrote a CALI lesson on the subject); and providing in-class quizzes to assess understandings while there was still time to improve learning. However, I was puzzled to see 13 of the students declare that an attorney may not withdraw from representation if it would harm the client. What could have been the source of this confusion? Searching through my course materials and lesson plans, I uncovered the problem. A powerpoint lecture on withdrawal from representation when the client fails to pay the attorney contained a page with a bulletpoint list of reasons that courts might deny an attorney permission to withdraw even though the rules would permit the withdrawal. One of the bullet points listed “degree of harm to the client” as a factor the court would consider. Obviously some students had transferred the powerpoint slide into their notes on the general withdrawal rule rather than recognize that these factors were connected only to the judicial discretion to deny an otherwise permissible withdrawal. Again, a well-worn lesson learned anew: as helpful as powerpoint slides can be for organizing discussions and providing visual cues for learning, students will study text of these slides as definitive statements of law rather thumbnails of larger discussions and understandings. Conclusion: no shortcut summary slides!

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Uncategorized | Tagged: | 2 Comments »

New Requirements for Bar Exam Stress Clinical Education

Posted on January 14, 2012 by Mary A. Lynch

In a press release issued on January 12th, 2012, the New York State Board of Law Examiners announced

[T]he amendment of the Court’s educational requirements for U.S.-educated graduates of ABA-accredited law schools to sit for the New York State bar examination. After consulting with law school administrators and representatives of the State bar and reviewing the current American Bar Association Standards for Approval of Law Schools (ABA Standards), the State Board of Law Examiners proposed changes to the rules which have been approved by the Court of Appeals.

The rule changes can be viewed here.

Among the changes for the 2012-2013 school year are:

  • Increase in maximum clinical hours, field placement and externships from 20 to 30
  • Increase in number of hours required to graduate from 80 to 83
  • Requiring professional responsibility

The New York Law Journal published a story on the new rules today featuring a quote from Connie Mayer, the Interim President and Dean at Albany Law School. In the article she supported the changes, but she would have gone further stating: “‘My view is there should be some requirement that a law student should meet with an actual client,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how you graduate from law school and never actually see a potential client.'”

The changes were made partially in response to the report from the New York State Bar Association Task Force on the Future of the Legal Profession. The Task Force has been discussed before on Best Practices. The view of the Task Force has been that students need to have practice at dealing with clients and learning practical skills so that they know how to handle complex client problems and have exposure to the ethical dilemmas that arise every day in law.

While this movement is in the right direction, the fact is New York’s rules were more restrictive than almost all other states on how it “counted” clinical courses. The real issue for New York as identified by the NYSBA Taskforce is the nature and content of its Bar Exam. The current structure of the NYS Bar Examination not only affects the cost and content of legal education at NY law schools but also has a discriminatory effect on the success of diverse law graduates. The NYSBA Committee on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar is currently reviewing proposals to offer alternatives or modifications to the current exam. Stay tuned to see what happens. That would be change to crow about!

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Catalysts For Change | Comments Off on New Requirements for Bar Exam Stress Clinical Education

Harvard Law’s Curricular Reform: 3 Years In

Posted on December 8, 2011 by Howard Katz

This was recently posted on PrawfsBlog by Glen Cohen.

Several years ago, under the stewardship of then-dean Kagan and then-professor-now-dean Minow, Harvard Law School made a significant change to its first year curriculum. Different portions were phased in at different times, but this will be the third full year of it all being in place, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to discuss the reforms. Unlike the Langdellian Socratic method that was also started at Harvard, I have seen less copying of our reforms. That may be that others do not think it a good idea, but I suspect it is more to do with the fact that this was a resource intensive change (adding an additional 21 professors needed to teach 1Ls) that was implemented at a moment where most schools are facing economic woes.

Here is the reform in a nutshell:

The typical Harvard 1st year courses (Civ Pro, Contracts, Torts, Property, Criminal Law) were all dropped from 5 credit hours a week to 4 credit hours.  An additional 4-credit class entitled “Legislation and Regulation,” which largely combines a course in legislation/statutory interpretation with parts of administrative law was added.  In addition, a 4-credit international/comparative law elective was required and added to the first year curriculum. Students choose from a menu of seven classes for 1Ls with foci such as private international, public international law, international humanitarian law, an comparative law (China, for example).  Last, and most recently, we moved our finals into the fall and now give the 1Ls a winter (or J-) term class called “Problem Solving Workshop,” which is taught intensively over 13 week days. Each day the students are given a problem, and in small groups have a day or two to solve it and submit work product as a group. While some of the problems are focused on litigation, others are things like dealing with public relations and media, negotiating, and other skills. The next day the students re-assemble, debrief and consider how different groups dealt with the problem, and start a new problem. The course is pass/fail. Once in the middle of the class and once at the end the students meet with practicing lawyers to test their proposed solutions against the practical realities as the lawyers see it.

Students also take a regular elective in the spring.

Here is my internal sense of how these have been received, but one reason why I want to post about it is to get feedback from those of you in the world out there who have seen our students under the new curriculum and their performance.

Click here for the rest of the article.

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, First Year Law School Innovations, Related Blogs | Comments Off on Harvard Law’s Curricular Reform: 3 Years In

Occupy Law School

Posted on November 20, 2011 by vmerton

What Law Schools Don’t Teach Law Students: Lawyering

Nothing new.  Simple truths:

““The fundamental issue is that law schools are producing people who are not capable of being counselors,” . . .  “They are lawyers in the sense that they have law degrees, but they aren’t ready to be a provider of services.” ”

“Law schools . . . have added or expanded programs that provide practical training through legal clinics.  But almost all the cachet in legal academia goes to professors who produce law review articles, which gobble up huge amounts of time and tuition money.  The essential how-tos of daily practice are a subject that many in the faculty know nothing about — by design.  One 2010 study of hiring at top-tier law schools since 2000 found that the median amount of practical experience was one year, and that nearly half of faculty members had never practiced law for a single day.  If medical schools took the same approach, they’d be filled with professors who had never set foot in a hospital.”

” . . . there are few incentives for law professors to excel at teaching.  It might earn them the admiration of students, but it won’t win them any professional goodies, like tenure, a higher salary, prestige or competing offers from better schools.  For those, a professor must publish law review articles, the ticket to punch for any upwardly mobile scholar. ”

And of course not only is there a lack of incentives, there are numerous disincentives, for law faculty to engage in the more theoretical forms of teaching, such as curricular design and developing effective means of assessment that measure actual learning of professional competences.

So.  The emperors stand arrayed in all their naked glory on the front page of the New York Times, in what seems to have become almost a regular ritual of rather harsh exposure of their, ahem, shortcomings.

Will a single hiring decision, of the hundreds about to unfurl at this very moment in law schools across the country, change in the slightest?

Will a single prospective student in the process of deciding where to apply, modify his or her list of law schools one iota?

Will a single accreditation or government funding decision be even faintly affected ?

And, most important, will USNWR make any adjustment whatsoever to the solipsistic criteria that accord so much weight to the opinions of these very naked emperors of legal education?

No, no, no, and no — I’ll take whatever odds you’ll give.  Nothing is changing.  Not unless and until prospective law students finally realize how they are getting ripped off and stop showing up.  Which will not happen because each student is betting that she or he will land in the 1% who either does get a good education in law school — that is possible — or who despite an inadequate education, finds a meaningful and satisfying way to live and work after law school that justifies that student’s investment in law school — which is also possible, though rare.

Will the Occupy movement change the maldistribution of wealth and/or income disparities?

Will repeated denunciation of the self-serving structure of legal education transform — or even alter — that structure?

I’m not holding my breath.

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness | 3 Comments »

Why “Practice-Ready” Isn’t Enough

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Kevin Ramakrishna

The Chronicle of Higher Education posted an article this week on practice-readiness in the legal profession.  There’s More to the Law Than ‘Practice-Ready’, by Alfred S. Konefsky and Barry Sullivan, is a call for law schools to go beyond the ABA’s resolution for law school’s to produce “‘curricular programs intended to develop practice-ready lawyers.'”  The article is about taking steps past the debate between skills and doctrinal education to have a wider discussion about successfully integrating both.  Here is a piece of the article:

So “practice-readiness” is indeed an important goal of legal education—but we think that law schools owe students more than that. Successful careers begin with competent practice in the early years, but preparation for the long haul is also essential. At the very least that means acquiring an array of skills beyond those usually mentioned in connection with practice-readiness. When we look back at the changes we have personally seen in society and the world, as well as in the legal profession and in legal education, we can only begin to imagine the world in which today’s law students will finish their careers. The real task of legal education must be to prepare students, as best we can, for a lifetime of successful, ethical, and personally rewarding practice.

The article provides some nice examples of what the authors view as important to practice like the difference between civil and common law systems, or the impact of race and gender on the practice of law (incidentally, a recent article by Professor Laurie Shanks on that issue is posted on SSRN).

Give the article a read and let us know what you think!

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices & Setting Goals, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Catalysts For Change | Comments Off on Why “Practice-Ready” Isn’t Enough

Building on Best Practices: Call for Ideas and Authors

Posted on October 23, 2011 by dmaranville

The Clinical Legal Association, Best Practices Implementation Committee is planning a follow-up publication to Best Practices for Legal Education by Roy Stuckey and others.     The vision of the book is to build on ideas for implementing best practices, and to develop new theories and ideas on Best Practices for Legal Education.   If you would like to author a section in the book please let us know as soon as possible.   Then by December 1, 2011 send either of us a 3-5 page abstract identifying the knowledge, skills and values as well as the learning objectives and methodology of your innovative teaching idea.   The Editorial Board will meet at the AALS meeting in January to select pieces for inclusion in the book.

 

If you have any questions or thoughts about the project please feel free to contact either of us.

 

Looking forward to drawing  on the expertise of the legal academy to build on Best Practices for Legal Education!

 

Antoinette Sedillo Lopez ,Chair, Publication Committee

Deborah Maranville,  co-editor

 

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices & Externships, Best Practices & Setting Goals, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Best Practices, Diversity & Social Justice, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change, First Year Law School Innovations, International Initiatives and Models, Teaching Methodology, Upcoming Events | 2 Comments »

The Center For Excellence in Law Teaching’s Inaugural Conference

Posted on October 4, 2011 by Kevin Ramakrishna

Albany Law School’s Center for Excellence in Law Teaching (CELT) will host a national conference on “Setting and Assessing Learning Objectives from Day One” for law school faculty and administrators on March 30, 2012.

The conference, to be held at Albany Law School, will focus on setting and assessing foundational objectives for law students, as well as what some law schools have already done to better structure curriculum and prepare students to meet proposed new American Bar Association standards.

We encourage collaborative presentations from faculty teaching throughout the curriculum including those who teach in the first year, the upper level curriculum, the legal writing program, the lawyering program, and the clinical program. We also encourage collaboration between those who teach large doctrinal classes, perspective seminars, or advanced subject matter courses, with those who teach in clinic, in field placement, or in a capstone course. We welcome in particular those teachers and administrators who have experimented with school wide attempts to define and assess objectives.

 Visit the conference website at www.albanylaw.edu/celt2012

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices & Setting Goals, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change, Teaching Methodology | Comments Off on The Center For Excellence in Law Teaching’s Inaugural Conference

New Article – Teaching From the Dirt: Best Practices and Land Use Law Pedagogy

Posted on September 29, 2011 by Kevin Ramakrishna

Professor Keith Hirokawa from Albany Law School has a recent article entitled Teaching From the Dirt: Best Practices and Land Use Law Pedagogy. The paper is about a real course employing real world skills in the law school classroom.  Here is the abstract:

The inspired and compelling article by Patricia Salkin and John Nolon, ‘Practically Grounded’, suggests that a course in land use law may be well-suited for cutting-edge pedagogical practices. This essay addresses what the authors of Practically Grounded have identified as a present deficiency in legal education: many, perhaps most, future land use lawyers graduate from law school without having looked at a parcel of real property from the perspective of a practicing attorney. This essay explores the opportunities presented in a course that incorporates ‘teaching from the dirt’ and discusses how such a course can help to connect the dots that lie between legal education and the practice of law. Teaching from the dirt involves using land and real world controversies to facilitate student engagement with the facts and laws that govern land use decision making. Students in such a class are required to perform like lawyers. To accomplish these goals, this course compels students to participate in a simulated regulatory process concerning the development of an actual parcel of vacant property, to engage the controversy on behalf of a client, to navigate the legal process, and to envision how the law applies to the land and influences the outcome of the process.

Give it a read and tell us what you think!

 

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum | 1 Comment »

New Article: Improving Legal Education by Improving Casebooks: Fourteen Things Casebooks Can Do to Produce Better and More Learning

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Kevin Ramakrishna

Michael Hunter Schwartz from Washburn University School of Law has a recent article in the Elon Law Review entitled Improving Legal Education by Improving Casebooks: Fourteen Things Casebooks Can Do to Produce Better and More Learning. The article points to a fundamental problem with casebooks – they are written by scholars, not teachers.  In order to fulfill the ideas of Carnegie, casebooks have to be designed to incorporate best practices so that law professors can model/remodel their classes.  Here is a taste of the article from the abstract:

The distinctive features [of the article] fall into five categories. First, the article describes innovations aimed at increasing the likelihood that we produce practice-ready lawyers. Second, it articulates what casebooks can take from the field of instructional design. Third, it addresses what was, perhaps, the most challenging aspect of the design, creating learning experiences that assist students in synthesizing their existing value systems with the value systems implicitly and explicitly taught in law school. Fourth, the article describes the ways in which series books assist law teachers in being more effective as day-to-day classroom teachers. Finally, it explains what the books in the series do to assist law professors in providing students meaningful opportunities for practice and feedback, and to make it easier for law teachers to conduct multiple and varied summative assessments.

Give the article a read and let us know what you think!

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum | 2 Comments »

Building on Best Practices–Call for Ideas and Authors

Posted on June 17, 2011 by Antoinette Sedillo Lopez

The Clinical Legal Association Best Practices Implementation Committee is planning a follow-up publication to Best Practices for Legal Education by Roy Stuckey and others. The vision of the book is to build on ideas for implementing best practices, and to develop new theories and ideas on Best Practices for Legal Education. We would like to call for topic suggestions and author abstracts. If you are interested in submitting a topic suggestions, please do so by August 1 by emailing Antoinette Sedillo Lopez at lopez@law.unm.edu with the topic idea and potential authors and resources relating to the idea. If you would like to author a section in the book and 3-5 page abstract identifying the knowledge, skills and values as well as the learning objectives and methodology of your innovative teaching idea. The abstract is due December 1, 2011. The Editorial Board will meet at the AALS meeting in January to select pieces for inclusion in the book.
If you have any questions or thoughts about the project please feel free to contact me or Deborah Maranville, co-editor.
Looking forward to drawing on the expertise of the legal academy to build on Best Practices for Legal Education! Antoinette Sedillo Lopez, Chair, Publication Committee

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices & Externships, Best Practices & Setting Goals, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Best Practices, Diversity & Social Justice, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change, First Year Law School Innovations, International Initiatives and Models, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Building on Best Practices–Call for Ideas and Authors

Enhancing our Syllabi

Posted on May 16, 2011 by Irene Scharf

We’re going to be gathering next month at UMass School of Law – Dartmouth to join in a working session that focuses on our syllabi.  I believe we’ll be working primarily on syllabi for doctrinal rather than clinical courses. (See below for reference to prior blog entry about modifying clinical syllabus) Not only do we want to amend them to reflect incorporation of various aspects of MacCrate (and other) Skills and Values, but we also want to be more descriptive as to what we do in the classroom and what we expect our students to do. 

This project follows a year of regular conversations about Best Practices in general, and has led folks to ASK to come in during June to do this work!  During the year, we’ve hosted Sophie Sparrow to work with us on small-group projects (our first meeting next year will build on what she started with us).  We’ve also talked about and determined a list of Skills and Values we think are important to impart to all law students before they graduate.  From this, we’ve developed a document listing them that we’re filling-out on a course-by-course basis.  Once we’ve covered all the courses, we’ll be able to determine which Skills and/or Values we’re not covering.   

The second aspect of the June project is to develop more complete descriptions of both the substance that will be covered in our classes as well as what we expect from our students:  when we say “participate in class,” what does that mean?; what does it mean to “act professionally” in the classroom and generally?; what do “legal analysis” and even essay exam answers look like?; how will students be assessed?

While I teach Torts and hope to gain insight as to how to enhance that syllabus, I also run our Immigration Clinic, and believe I’ve already blogged here about changes I made to that syllabus that incorporate “competencies” and also that move away from the static syllabus to a more free-flowing concept of “units”; once the basic orientation and other foundational materials are completed, offering the course in units provides me with flexibility so that I can base the substantive aspects of the classroom component on the types of cases on which the students are working. 

The work I hope to accomplish in June is to apply the principles used in amending the Immigration Clinic Syllabus (and the Policies and Procedures Manual – as that explains my expectations to the students) to the Torts classroom.

I’d appreciate hearing from those of you who are either thinking about doing syllabus work or have already done it.  What works?  What doesn’t?  What great materials can we read in advance?

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum | Comments Off on Enhancing our Syllabi

SRC Holds Robust Debate on Security of Position and Academic Freedom Proposals

Posted on April 6, 2011 by Kevin Ramakrishna


In the wake of the ABA’s Standards Review Committee (SRC) open forum in Chicago on April 2-3, SALT and CLEA issued an official report on the proceedings.  The report details the strong opposition to the SRC’s proposals on security of position and the negative impact on clinical faculty. 

Two proposals were up for debate. The majority proposal would “protect academic freedom by requiring each school to have a policy and set of procedures on academic freedom and a policy on law school governance”.  The second was the “minority” proposal which “would require not only a policy and procedure on academic freedom, but also that ‘all full-time faculty [have] a form of security of position sufficient to ensure academic freedom and meaningful participation in law school governance.'” 


Perhaps not so surprisingly, the “minority” propsal, in fact, garnered the most support at the forum. The majority of attendees expressed strong reservations regarding the proposed changes to security of position.  While the SRC initially sought a vote on the competing proposals, by the end of the weekend, that vote was not seen as prudent.  Instead, the committee deemed that more time was needed to consider alternate proposals.  Specifically, committee members urged for language from the minority proposal to be incorporated and for the SRC “to study proposals from CLEA and from the ABA Special Committee on the Professional Education Continuum, both of which also provide for academic freedom and a strong governance role for faculty supported by a requirement of faculty security of position. In addition, the subcommittee will consider ways to insure equality of treatment for clinical and legal writing faculty.”

 

Click here to read the report.

Click here for more information on the event from SALT.

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Catalysts For Change | 1 Comment »

Tales from the Assessment Trail

Posted on April 5, 2011 by glesnerb

Like many schools, here at UMKC Law we have been working steadily on our assessment plan.  After two retreats, six focus group meetings with attorneys, countless meetings and even more emails, we have narrowed our outcomes down to 126 skills and values outcomes.  Each faculty member has exercised their six “votes” on those outcomes that they would like to first target for comprehensive assessment across the curriculum. 

It will come as no surprise that outcomes in the category of legal analysis garnered the most votes.  Devising comprehensive assessment for this outcome will simply be a matter of some conversations to insure we agree on a shared rubric. 

But coming in a close second in the polling was the outcome “be able to listen actively.”   It is a fascinating outcome on which to focus.  Apart from courses providing clinical skills training, active listening isn’t taught as pervasively as is analysis.  Even less so do we regularly assess our students’ ability to listen actively.  When one considers the amount of time students sit in classrooms listening (or at least hearing), it seems there could be ample opportunity to test the “listening” part of active listening.  The empathy part, on the other hand, could prove to be a game changer in our curriculum development.

Our next task, then, will be to determine where we currently teach this skill, where else we will want to incorporate this teaching, and – perhaps most challenging of all – how we can assess the skills of the entire student body.  Somehow the image of massive piles of bluebooks, most of which say “What I hear you saying is…” doesn’t quite cut it.  Suggestions?

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices & Setting Goals, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques | 3 Comments »

Learning From Our Students, Pt. 3 – Effective Communication

Posted on December 14, 2010 by dmaranville

Lesson 3:  Communicating Complex Ideas Simply

The Jens’ presentation on climate justice reminded me of a third important lesson:  the importance, and possibility, of communicating complex ideas effectively.

The presentation includes, yes, a Powerpoint.  But not a text-heavy Powerpoint.  Rather, one with compelling graphics: an overview slide to introduce the subject and transition between five vertical bars representing their five-part framework for the basic human rights affected by climate change– health, food and water, security, equity, and justice.  Compelling photographs telling the stories of real people.  Maps and charts that illustrate their key points.

Roy Stuckey and his collaborators did important work in pulling together Best Practices in Legal Education.  They synthesized a significant amount of information on a broad range of topics in a format familiar to law teachers.  Not surprisingly, the book is not what you’d call “light reading’.  As we continue to “get the word out” about Best Practices, the Jens provide a great model for taking the next steps in effectively communication about Best Practices.

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Catalysts For Change | Comments Off on Learning From Our Students, Pt. 3 – Effective Communication

« Previous Page — Next Page »