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

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Important New Report on Essential Lawyering Skills

Posted on November 2, 2020 by John Lande

Ohio State Professor Deborah Jones Merritt and Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System Research Director Logan Cornett just published an important report, Building a Better Bar: The Twelve Building Blocks of Minimum Competence, based on insights from 50 focus groups.

They found that minimum competence consists of 12 interlocking “building blocks,” including the ability to interact effectively with clients, communicate as a lawyer, and see the “big picture” of client matters.

They propose 10 recommendations that courts, law schools, bar associations, bar examiners, and other stakeholders should consider in their efforts to move towards better, evidence-based lawyer licensing.

These include requirements that candidates for licensure should be required to complete coursework that develops their ability to interact effectively with clients and negotiate.

In addition, they recommend that candidates should be required to complete coursework that focuses on the lawyer’s responsibility to promote and protect the quality of justice and includes closely supervised clinical and/or externship work.

They include recommendations to use performance tests and restrict use of essay and multiple choice exams.

Here’s a summary of the report.  You might share it with your deans and curriculum committee chairs in case they haven’t seen it.

This brief summary doesn’t do justice to the insights from the report.  I’m sure that faculty are working like crazy in this year of living dangerously, especially at this point in the semester.  You might find it worth your time to spend an hour reading this report when you feel like procrastinating.

The report doesn’t include all my radical ideas for a negotiation school, but it clearly recommends moving in that direction.

I will discuss these ideas with Peter Robinson and Sukhsimran Singh in an upcoming event, They Should Call It Negotiation School, Not Law School, sponsored by the Pepperdine Caruso School of Law Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution.  It will be on Tuesday, November 10, at 1 PT, 2 MT, 3 CT, 4 ET.  Come join the conversation.

Filed under: Bar Exam, Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices & Externships, Best Practices and Clinics, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Best Practices, Diversity & Social Justice, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques | 1 Comment »

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

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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.

 

 

 

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World Mental Health Day and Multicultural Awareness

Posted on October 10, 2019 by Mary A. Lynch

October 10th is World Mental Health Day, instituted by the WHO to raise “awareness of mental health issues around the world” and mobilize “efforts in support of mental health.”  Many members of our profession, are challenged by depression, anxiety and other mental health disorders.  In 2016, the ABA created the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being partly in response to the increased ubiquity and pressure of the digital age.

The ubiquity of email, text and other technological advances, all of which make the advent of the fax machine feel downright quaint, have only exacerbated our legal responsibilities. The pressure is constant. And in the midst of taking care of everyone else, we all too frequently ignore our own stressors and health in the process.  Over time, the subtle adverse effects go unnoticed and mask the existing crisis …..

The Task Force was conceptualized and initiated by the ABA Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs (CoLAP), the National Organization of Bar Counsel (NOBC), and the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers (APRL). In August 2017, the Task Force released The Path to Lawyer Well-Being: Practical Recommendations for Positive Change (Wellness Study).  Many state bar associations – such as New York’s – highlighted the need for lawyer health. 

Law students, too, are subject to similar ubiquitous demands of the digital age while competing, learning, interning, seeking permanent employment, representing clients under supervision, and, for many, accruing debt. My law school, like many others, takes seriously the need to educate and support law students’ well-being and has been fortunate to receive funding from a loyal alum and board member for a Wellness Initiative. This week our Dean of Students and her office have planned a series of educational and supportive events.

Mental Health Week

Another project run by students partnered with alums helps with the economic stress of having to purchase professional clothing and suits. And our Center for Excellence in Law teaching sites provide links to self-help apps for students .

This focus on well being is not simply an administrative task. It is incumbent upon law teachers to discuss these subjects in doctrinal classes, seminars and experiential learning courses while mainstreaming ethics, professional identity and multicultural awareness into the curriculum.  Wellness intersects with several of my law school’s learning outcomes  for JD students. In particular, wellness and mindfulness are important tools in mitigating implicit bias and facilitating students ability to

Demonstrate an awareness and understanding of the knowledge, skills, and values necessary to be competent and effective lawyers in a multicultural world. (Albany Law JD Learning Outcome #6)

I experimented with linking the two in class this week. I started the class by reminding students that it was Mental Health Awareness week and the reading a poem by Mary Oliver to get them to slow down.  We also meditated for about 1 minute and 30 seconds by placing a raisin on our tongue and using that time to “Uni-task” by just focusing on the  smell, taste, feel and effects of saliva on the raisin.

We discussed vicarious trauma, implicit bias and how it affects Science.  For homework students had taken implicit association tests,   acquired some new cultural knowledge, read about transgender killings and viewed Hidden Injustice: Bias on the Bench.”  We then discussed how Implicit Bias might work against victims/survivors of domestic violence or privilege abusers which led into discussions of voir dire and Batson.  Students expressed surprise that judges cared about Implicit Bias and that NYS now requires a 1 credit CLE in Diversity and Inclusion. 

We ended class with discussing how to mitigate our own implicit biases.  This is where well-being and mindfulness come in:

  1. Reflection is a tool for mitigating bias. Emphasizing the importance of reflection as a life-long lawyer habit is something we teachers can embrace. Thus mindfulness is not only an important part of well-being, it is a tool to become a more competent lawyer.
  2. When we are tired and exhausted, we are more apt to rely on unconscious patterns, which swings the door wide open to implicit bias reactions and away from thoughtful and considered responses.

The students appeared to understand the connection and to acknowledge its potential. In the final moments of class, I led the students in a LION yoga pose. This was a real treat for me.  As the days get shorter and mid-semester stress hits, there is nothing better than seeing law students laugh at themselves (and me) as they loosen up their tight facial and jaw muscles.

How are you honoring Mental Health Awareness Week at your school or organization?  Do you see the link between mitigating bias and wellness/mindfulness?

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Disruptive Leadership in Legal Education

Posted on January 11, 2019 by Nicholas Mirkay

Nicholas A. Mirkay and Palma Joy Strand*

NOTE: This is an abridged version of the full essay available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3309981

“The act of leadership is not always comfortable.”[1]

Last spring, the Wall Street Journal unveiled “The Captain Class,” a new feature focusing on “the lessons and strategies of leadership.”  The inaugural column by reporter Sam Walker focused on leadership changes at Boeing over the last decade when its Board of Directors intentionally hired Jim McNerney, a “disruptive leader,” to redirect the company’s trajectory.[2]  “The company had been floundering, and the digital revolution was barging down the gangway.” The landscape for Boeing’s business had transformed, and Boeing needed to adapt.

Disruptive leaders who reorient institutional culture, Walker observed, necessarily “embrace conflict, are ruthlessly direct, and intellectually irreverent.”  Theoretically there is a “gradual way to renovate a proud old institution,” but change rarely unfolds that way.  Rather, “[h]istory shows that it usually comes down to one determined individual—someone who bursts through the door swinging a 7-iron.”[3]

While neither of us regularly swings a 7-iron, to our own surprise we recognized ourselves in the description of disruptive leaders prodding a proud old institution to evolve to meet a changing environment. Two years ago, both of us were full, tenured professors at the Creighton University School of Law.  We sought to position the law school as a leader in responding to the shifting and uncertain landscape that currently characterizes law, the legal profession, and legal education.  Because of institutional resistance to change, however, neither of us remains in our former positions.  One of us is now a tenured Professor of Law at the University of Hawaiʻi Richardson School of Law; the other is still at Creighton and still a tenured Professor of Law, but no longer in the School of Law. 

Legal Education is Ripe for Disruption

Legal education is ripe for disruption because the legal profession and law itself are ripe for disruption.  The crisis in legal education reflects an increasing mismatch between the limited services that law and lawyers provide and vast and acute societal needs for legal services. 

In addition, law has become increasingly attenuated from justice in the sense of contributing to the creation of “right relationships” between and among people.  Because law is inaccessible to most individuals, it is irrelevant to them except as they are subjected to bureaucratic regulation by the government.  Law has become a burden rather than a useful tool for people figuring out how to live together.  A significant proportion of students come into law school seeking to work for justice, yet law school and the legal profession too often send the message that justice is irrelevant.

Nontraditional processes that allow for coordination, collaboration, and conflict engagement and resolution have already overtaken courtroom and law office services.[4] Arbitration, mediation, restorative justice, collaborative governance, LegalZoom, negotiated settlements and regulation, and more were once secondary to litigation and other lawyer-dominated processes.  The balance has now tipped, yet the focus of legal education and the legal profession on lawyers obsessively grooms the traditional tail while ignoring the ever-evolving dog.

As a result, legal education is “at a crossroads…legal educators should be talking about an entirely new business model.”[5]  Law professor William Henderson, who analyzes the legal profession and legal education, concurs:  “Legal education and the legal professions are at an inflection point where traditional models of education and practice no longer fit the shifting needs of the market.”[6] In a recent speech on “The Future of Legal Education,” departing Brooklyn Law Dean Nick Allard described change in the profession as “inevitable” and warned that “clinging to the ‘business as usual’ status quo” is not a viable option.[7]  At the same time, Allard characterized the legal profession and legal academia as “always slow and even resistant to adaptation.”[8]

Lawyers need not be the only providers of legal services.  Doctors today work alongside not only nurses but other health care professionals with diverse training and diverse skills; these teams extend the reach of the health care system.  Similarly, with additional legal professionals, the work of lawyers could reach much further than it does at present.  There has been a recent uptick in the number of persons taking the LSAT[9] and applying to JD programs in law schools.[10] While this trend lulls law schools back into comfortable reliance on the JD, a few additional lawyers will not meet the pressing demand for legal services.

The Opportunities and Pitfalls of Disruptive Leadership

When we arrived at Creighton School of Law, one of us in 2007 and the other in 2011, each of us had been faculty members at other law schools.  We saw Creighton’s small scale and personal relationships in Nebraska as creating an ideal environment for innovation and for nimble responses to the documented lack of legal services in both urban and rural parts of the state.  We were energized by the opportunities presented at a small regional private law school with close ties to the local legal community and the state bar.  We were particularly excited by Creighton’s Jesuit mission of service to others and its expressed commitment to social justice endeavors to form graduates and benefit the community.  A new, yet already nationally-recognized program in Negotiation and Conflict Resolution provided in-house expertise in innovative approaches that complement and expand the effectiveness of traditional law.

Within two years, however, a cohort of fellow faculty members, drawn predominantly from the ranks of those with the most seniority, had negatively branded us “reformers” who were seeking to move students away from “real law.” Overall, our relatively mild exercise of disruptive leadership through leadership in strategic planning and assessment, which envisioned a robust Law School response to fundamental shifts in the legal landscape, was met with a level of blowback that neither of us could have imagined.

In the face of this resistance, which escalated into a personal attack and to which a fledgling University administration capitulated, both of us sought and secured other academic appointments.  The newly-hired dean was “invited” to move out of the administrative suite and into an office on faculty row after an unexpected sabbatical year.  The Negotiation and Conflict Resolution Program was transplanted to a Department of Interdisciplinary Studies in the Graduate School and its expertise and vision quarantined from the JD curriculum and students.

Academic Resistance to Change: Tenure, Academic Freedom, and Administrative Disinterest

Though legal education in the abstract may be ripe for disruption, disruptive leadership in a real-world law school setting is a tough and potentially perilous road.  Legal education is closely tied to the legal profession, and as long as lawyers have a monopoly on law, changes in legal education that respond to broader imperatives will face the challenge of not being “real law” because the entry to the legal profession lies exclusively through the straitjacket of the bar exam and admittance to a state bar.  Further, placement of legal education in universities subjects it to academic constraints that dampen potential change initiatives.

We see three characteristics of academia in general—characteristics that are not limited to legal academia—that contributed to resistance to our disruptive leadership and that are likely to ground resistance to disruptive changes in legal education generally.  The first characteristic is tenure.  Academic tenure, intended to protect and encourage open discourse, has the additional effect of protecting entrenched faculty and perpetuating institutional inertia.  The most seasoned and senior engineers at Boeing have less job security than the least productive tenured faculty member at an average college or university.  Tenure gives faculty members who resist change a powerful and easily wielded weapon:  They can choose to “not go gentle into that good night” but “[r]age, rage against the dying of the light.”[11] 

The second characteristic, related to the first, is academic freedom.  The lofty goal of academic freedom is to ensure the free and fair dissemination of views and ideas. But academic freedom can turn from shield to sword. The claim that academic freedom is being infringed can be used to challenge administrative efforts to monitor academic quality through program assessment.[12]   Even more troubling, “academic freedom has been claimed as an excuse for the most abusive and uncollegial behavior—shouting at colleagues, publicly berating students or staff members, defaming supervisors or other university administrators, shirking professional duties.”[13] 

Third, the imperatives of university administration and governing boards focus on raising funds and maintaining tradition rather than on responding innovatively to shifting economic and social dynamics.  University presidents spend a substantial portion if not a majority of their time fundraising,[14] often appealing to alumni,[15] whose views of the school necessarily look backward rather than forward.[16] University presidents and provosts may also lack essential knowledge regarding “research on innovation and their own role in the process”[17] as well as essential leadership skills, especially those related to change and conflict.  Nonprofit board members are accountable by law for fiduciary duties owed to the institution, but these duties are enforced only rarely by the Attorney General of the state in which the organization is chartered.

Law School Exceptionalism: Monopoly and Gender Dominance

The dynamic between university administrators and law schools is especially likely to be inhospitable to necessary changes.  For decades, law schools were cash cows for universities: Large class sizes and minimal hands-on clinical offerings led to law school revenues that supported other academic programs across campuses.[18]   Because of law school financial contributions, university oversight was relatively deferential, and both central office administrators and law faculty grew accustomed to laissez faire management.  Add in accreditation of law schools by the ABA, which until very recently did not even require meaningful assessment of JD programs, and you have a recipe for habits of non-accountability.  Moreover, university administrators may well be cautious about taking on entrenched and tenured law faculty who as lawyers might be expected to be relatively litigious, as we experienced. 

Two additional characteristics of legal education in particular contribute to militant resistance to disruption.  The first is the ABA’s monopoly on both the practice of law and the accreditation of law schools.  According to Professor Henderson, the legal profession is currently challenged by an environment in which “the cost of traditional legal services is going up, access to legal services is going down, the growth rate of law firms is flat, and lawyers serving ordinary people are struggling to earn a living.”[19]   Lawyers, who themselves are JDs and graduated from law schools configured to meet 20th-century needs, are in control of how legal practice is defined and regulated and of setting barriers to entry.  Lawyers wield “unauthorized practice of law” sanctions as a protection against competition despite the fact that much of the law that non-lawyers seek to practice is law that lawyers find tedious and unprofitable.[20]  

The effects of this monopoly are compounded by a second characteristic of law and legal education: a lack of diversity.  Law and legal education today remain highly gendered: Men and traditionally masculine norms permeate the profession and continue to dominate in law schools even as student enrollment approaches gender parity.[21] The two of us began collaborating as institutional leaders at Creighton as members of the School of Law’s Strategic Planning Committee.  Both of us had been elected by the faculty.  One of us (Nick) was Chair; the other (Palma) was a member who had served on the Committee for a number of years.  It was evident that we enjoyed working together and that we were a strong team.  After one contentious strategic planning meeting, a very senior (white male) member of the faculty made a point of warning Nick (via another colleague) that Palma was “emasculating” him.  A group that has been dominated by a single gender may resist a shift in gender dynamics as well as changes in practice initiated by more diverse decisionmakers.[22]

The Non-Ethics of Non-Disruption

Legal education is ripe for disruption, and disruptive leaders can challenge conceptual mindsets constructively, using technology and data analytics to map changing landscapes and reframe conversations about the future.[23]  In a changing world, adaptation allows organizations to not just hang on but to thrive. 

The casualties of law schools hanging on to the familiar are the students—the very people an educational institution exists to serve.  Is it ethical for law schools to mindlessly continue to train students for a profession that is shifting under everyone’s feet?  Is it ethical for the legal profession to wring its hands about “access to justice” while maintaining its protectionist posture?  Is it ethical for university administrators to pocket law student tuition dollars knowing that the debt those students incur is buying them an education that is unlikely to render them financially secure?  These are the unwelcome questions that disrupters in legal education should be raising – and that law and the legal profession should join in addressing.

* Director of Faculty Research and Professor of Law, University of Hawaiʻi Richardson School of Law, B.S.B.A. Saint Louis University (1989), J.D. University of Missouri (1992), LL.M. Georgetown University Law Center (1996); Professor of Law and Director, 2040 Initiative, Negotiation and Conflict Resolution Program, Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, Creighton University, B.S. Stanford University (1978); J.D. Stanford Law School (1984); LL.M. Georgetown University Law Center (2006).  We thank colleagues, past and present, who reviewed and commented on this essay.

[1] Sam Walker, One Leader Sent Boeing Into a Hurricane; Landing It Was the Next Guy’s Job,  The Wall St. J. (2018) https://www.wsj.com/articles/one-leader-sent-boeing-into-a-hurricane-landing-it-was-the-next-guys-job-1524821400.

[2] Id.

[3] Id.

[4] See, e.g., Oralandar Brand-Williams, More disputes in Mich. settled through mediation, The Detroit News (2018), https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/wayne-county/2018/03/29/mediation/33406027/; and https://thelawdictionary.org/article/what-percentage-of-lawsuits-settle-before-trial-what-are-some-statistics-on-personal-injury-settlements/.

[5] Huffman, supra note 4.

[6] Bill Henderson, What signal are legal employers sending to legal education?, Legal Evolution (2018), https://www.legalevolution.org/category/legal-education/.

[7] Paul Caron, Allard: The Future of Legal Education, TaxProfBlog (June 20, 2018), http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2018/06/allard-the-future-of-the-legal-profession.html.

[8] Id.

[9] Debra Cassens Weiss, Increase in LSAT test takers seen as evidence of ‘Trump bump,’ ABA Journal (2017),http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/increase_in_lsat_test_takers_is_seen_as_evidence_of_trump_bump.

[10] Karen Sloan, Number of Law School Applicants Surges, Especially Among High Scorers, Law.com (2018), https://www.law.com/2018/07/30/number-of-law-school-applicants-surges-especially-among-high-scorers/.

[11]Dylan Thomas, https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/do-not-go-gentle-good-night.

[12] Timothy Reese Cain, Assessment and Academic Freedom: In Concert, not Conflict (Nov. 2014), http://www.learningoutcomesassessment.org/documents/OP2211-17-14.pdf.

[13] Gary Olson, The Limits of Academic Freedom, Chron.  of Higher Educ. (2009).

[14] Mitchell Wellman, 3 things college presidents spend all their time doing, USA Today (2017), http://college.usatoday.com/2017/01/27/3-things-college-presidents-spend-all-their-time-doing/.

[15] Rick Seltzer, Giving to Colleges Rises by 6.3%, Inside Higher Ed (2018), https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/02/06/personal-giving-pushes-donations-colleges-and-universities-new-level-2017.

[16] Robert M. Diamond, Why Colleges Are So Hard to Change, Inside Higher Ed (2006), https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/09/08/why-colleges-are-so-hard-change.

[17] Id.

[18] Megan McArdle, Law School Enrollments are Plummeting. What Happens Next?, Daily Beast (2013), https://www.thedailybeast.com/law-school-enrollments-are-plummeting-what-happens-next.

[19] William D. Henderson, Legal Market Landscape Report (July 2018), https://taxprof.typepad.com/files/henderson.pdf.

[20] See, e.g., Roy Strom, California Bar to Consider Changes to Nonlawyer Ownership Rules, The Am. Law. (2018),https://www.law.com/americanlawyer/2018/07/23/california-bar-to-consider-changes-to-non-lawyer-ownership-rules/.

[21]See, e.g., American Bar Association Commission on Women in the Profession, A Current Glance at Women in the Law (January 2017) (legal profession), https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/women/a-current-glance-at-women-in-the-law-jan-2018.authcheckdam.pdf; Dara Purvis, Female Law Students, Gendered Self-Evaluation, and the Promise of Positive Psychology, 2012 Mich. St. L. Rev. 1693 (legal education).

[22] See generally, Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, et al., Presumed Incompetent (2012).

[23]Disruptive Leadership: A Recipe for Success, The Wall St. J. (2018), https://deloitte.wsj.com/cio/2018/07/09/disruptive-leadership-a-recipe-for-success/.

Filed under: academic freedom, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Catalysts For Change, Disruptive Leadership | 2 Comments »

More Thoughts on the Post-Millenial Generation of Students Arriving in Law School

Posted on September 7, 2018 by Ben Bratman

In two thoughtful posts from last month, here and here, Shailini Jandial George and then Andi Curcio and Sara Berman offered specific and practical suggestions of ways that we as legal educators can reach the post-millenial generation of students through our teaching. These posts bring to mind Professor Jean M. Twenge’s recently published book iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy—and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood.  Twenge is probably the pre-eminent generational researcher in this country, and her empirical findings reported in the book have profound implications for legal education. What’s more, those implications are here now. Twenge defines the post-millenial “iGen” (sometimes referred to as Generation Z) as those born between 1995 and 2012, meaning the oldest among them are approaching their mid 20s—the average student age at most American law schools. In Twenge’s words, “[t]hey grew up with cell phones, had an Instagram page before they started high school, and do not remember a time before the internet. They are different from any generation that came before them.”

One concerning and challenging implication for legal education relates to the role law schools should play in inculcating basic norms of professional behavior, especially those of importance to interpersonal interaction. Given that they have spent an enormous percentage of time during their formative years on social media and elsewhere in the virtual world, most of today’s law students (those in their early to mid 20s, at least) have far less interpersonal experience than previous generations had at the same age. Speaking more broadly, as Twenge’s research reveals, they have largely avoided or deferred grown-up responsibilities that previous generations were tackling often in their teens. Much of Twenge’s research focused on high school and college students, considering such responsibilities as learning to drive, moving out of the house, and gaining financial independence. Still, as we teach and mentor law students in their early to mid 20s, we must consider what other grown up responsibilities and behaviors that we expect of legal professionals can no longer be taken for granted.

In a recent survey conducted by the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS), a wide array of legal employers ranked the legal skills and professional competencies and characteristics that they believe new lawyers most need to succeed. (The study’s results are reported here. There is also a detailed accounting of the results and an explanation of the study’s role within IAALS’s broader project in the summer 2018 edition of The Bar Examiner, pp. 17-26.) The results revealed that legal employers value foundational characteristics and competencies much more than they do foundational legal skills. Among the top 20: Arrive on time for meetings, appointments, and hearings; Treat others with courtesy and respect; Listen attentively and respectfully; Promptly respond to inquiries and requests; and Exhibit tact and diplomacy. The only specific legal skill that reached the top 20 was legal research.

If we in legal education have been presuming that our arriving 1Ls possess these basic types of competencies, or at least understand their importance, I am not at all sure that we can do so any longer. The visceral reaction for so many of us, no doubt, is that it is not the job of a law school to teach students these and other very basic norms of interpersonal relations for professionals. Imagine some variation of “they should have learned that in college or high school or from their parents” or “they’ll learn the hard way in their first summer legal job.” Given legal education’s obligation to the profession that it serves, we ought to move past those mindsets. I recognize that many in legal education have done so, and I recognize that many law schools have developed programming or courses on different aspects of developing a professional identity. But professional identity, at least as it was discussed in the Carnegie Foundation’s Educating Lawyers, relates more to appreciating one’s role as a legal professional in society more broadly. It takes on a moral component. That remains important. What I raise here, however, is more behavioral and foundational: Meet deadlines, arrive on time, respond to inquiries promptly, be tactful and diplomatic with others, etc., etc.

In my 1L Legal Analysis & Writing course, I seek to instill professional behavioral norms through various course policies, all explicitly stated in my syllabus, concerning compliance with deadlines, punctual attendance at class and scheduled meetings, civil and respectful interaction with classmates and me, timely and good faith completion of ungraded exercises, etc.  A percentage of each student’s grade depends on how well he or she meets these professional standards. Two of my students missed their first deadline for an ungraded exercise last week; neither had any kind of explanation. Consistent with the underlying professionalism theme of my course, I informed these students that such behavior, if repeated, would fail to meet my professional standards, just as it would fail to meet the professional standards of any legal employer.

It will be interesting to see if and how Twenge’s findings manifest themselves in the current and future 1L classes. I strongly recommend the book; it provides an excellent foundation for putting a variety of possible student behaviors into context.

Filed under: Best Practices, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

New Research on Law-Student Resiliency

Posted on August 22, 2018 by Carrie Sperling

Student resiliency and well-being are on-going concerns to the legal education community. Counselling, academic support, and activities like yoga have been introduced in law schools to address these concerns. Although these strategies are undoubtedly beneficial, a recent research paper suggests that legal educators may have an additional, all-encompassing solution under their noses – the cultural mindset we create in our classrooms.

In the paper The Jury Is In: Law Schools Foster Students’ Fixed Mindsets, Susan Shapcott, Sarah Davis, and Lane Hanson suggest that the law school experience promotes fixed mindsets in law students. Many educators are familiar with Carol Dweck’s work and the concept of mindsets; when students perceive intelligence as an innate trait that one either has or doesn’t have, this is a referred to as a fixed mindset. At the other end of the spectrum, perceiving intelligence as something that develops with effort, strategy and time is referred to as a growth mindset.

The authors reported that third year law students’ mindsets were significantly more fixed than first year students’ mindsets. How does this relate to resiliency and well-being? Quite simply, mindsets are predictive of students’ goals and resiliency to challenges (an inherent part of law school). As students’ mindsets become more fixed, they are more likely to adopt goals intended to demonstrate how smart they are. Consequently, they are less likely to ask for help when they most need it, they will perceive professors’ feedback as judgement, and they may interpret mistakes as evidence that they just don’t have what it takes to succeed. Not only are these behaviors motivationally problematic, they are problematic for mental well-being.

Across a range of fields, growth mindsets are associated with adaptive learning strategies and mentally healthy behaviors that promote well-being and resiliency. So arguably, this is the culture that we should be focused on developing in law schools. However, as Shapcott, et al., report, the opposite may be happening. The longer students are exposed to law-school culture, the more fixed their mindsets become. Therefore, it is time to recognize that there is something adrift in our culture. Furthermore, we cannot simply focus on students’ mindsets without reflecting on the role we as educators play in influencing them.

Students’ well-being won’t change much until law schools work to change the culture from within. Law school classrooms that help students develop growth, not fixed mindsets will do more for students’ resiliency and long-term growth. This starts with faculty members reframing how intelligence and lawyering skills are described (they are learned skills, not innate gifts). When faculty share their own vulnerabilities and struggles to grasp concepts, they create a classroom culture where students are less afraid to ask for help. And when professors give accurate feedback intended to teach students how and what is required for them to improve, rather than simply judging their intelligence, they will help create a growth-mindset culture that reduces students’ stress and increases their strategies for manage their learning experience.

Filed under: Best Practices & Setting Goals, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, First Year Law School Innovations | 1 Comment »

The Kids Are Alright

Posted on March 29, 2018 by Ray Brescia

Regardless of your position on gun regulation, the work of the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, the latest victims of yet another act of senseless gun violence, has to be inspiring, if not a little humbling.  They are putting adults to shame, literally and figuratively.  Their eloquence, passion, and even their social media smarts, are creating a moment of reckoning in this country.  The so-called “adults in the room” cannot hold a candle to these students’ capacity to mobilize, empathize, reach across difference, and move a nation to action.

Many seem surprised by this. As an educator who teaches many millennial law students, I am not.  I see my students accomplish amazing things, and am constantly inspired by their intelligence, willingness to roll up their sleeves, and go to work.  Moreover, as a former law student myself (although, admittedly, nearly three decades ago), I saw students work together in the face of resistance, and the stories I have read about the work of the Parkland students and the thousands more who have taken up this fight resonate and are reminiscent of work that has occurred and will continue to occur, carried out by eager and passionate students who won’t take no for an answer and continue to “Call BS” when necessary.

What we are seeing in action is perhaps the greatest student project ever undertaken.  From the outside looking in, it looks like the students are working collaboratively and sharing the spotlight among themselves and with others outside their immediate circle.  They appear incredibly supportive of one another, are pressing ahead in support of a cause larger than themselves though grounded in their personal experiences of tragedy, and are reaching out to others to build bridges across geographies and communities. They are accomplishing slow and steady wins that help to build momentum, sustain their energy, and create confidence to take on the next challenge. In short, they are doing all of the things that a group needs to do in order to produce meaningful change.

In academia, many fear the group project.  But it is how the world functions, and how humans have been operating for millennia.  In fact, our capacity for cooperation is probably what makes us human.

Such group activity can also can have its downsides, and not just in terms of the free rider who benefits from the work of others.  Rather groups can take on a life of their own, and distorted and harmful collective understandings can emerge as a result.  In the wake of the collective tragedies of Nazism and Stalinism, “groupthink” became a source of serious academic study. But on the brink of World War II, Hungarian sociologist Karl Mannheim wrote about how industrialization and urbanization was impacting our collective capacity for this sort of groupthink as follows: “life among the masses of a large town tends to make people much more subject to suggestion, uncontrolled outbursts of impulses and psychic regressions than those who are organically integrated and held firm in the smaller type of groups.  Thus industrialized mass society tends to produce the most self-contradictory behavior not only in society but also in the personal life of the individual.”

The students of Parkland and the many others who are emerging into the broader spotlight are organizing themselves at the local level, school-by-school and community-by-community, and helping the rest of us see the disastrous and ruinous groupthink that has captured the collective imagination around gun control.  And they are doing it in remarkable ways, sustaining their collective energy in the wake of tragedy.

Recent research into how groups can work effectively, carried out by Google in what it called “Project Aristotle,” identified a series of common components in effective groups, including the following:

  • Dependability: getting things done on time and accurately;
  • Structure and Clarity: having clear goals and clear roles;
  • Meaning: the work is personally important to the team members;
  • Impact: team members think their work matters and will bring about change;
  • Psychological Safety: team members feel safe to take risks and be vulnerable in front of others.

From the outside looking in, the Parkland students and the many others who have been working for meaningful responses to gun violence who have gained greater attention because of the Parkland tragedy, appear to meet these criteria for successful groups.  They pulled off hundreds of simultaneous rallies across the country in a matter of weeks.  They could not have done so had they not had some structure and clarity to their work, did not see the importance of their work, and did not derive meaning from it.  And it would appear that they are incredibly supportive of each other, both within their own groups and in relation to each other.  For example, during Saturday’s march in Washington, when a student, Samantha Fuentes, who was wounded in Parkland, was addressing the crowd, she paused a moment, turned away from the lectern, and vomited.  Other students rushed to her side, urged her to keep going.  She emerged from being doubled over to proclaim: “I just threw up on international television and it feels great!”

The students leading this campaign should be an inspiration to everyone who wants to bring about change, and can help us understand how we can do it collectively, because it is in such group efforts that real change is possible. I have written about my own experience as a law student working on a case, brought by a law school clinic, that challenged the U.S. government’s treatment of Haitian refugees in the early 1990s, a case which ultimately went to the Supreme Court.  In ways that echo the work of the Parkland students, but by no measure on the same scale or with the same impact, the team effort there, led by students, invoked many of these themes as well, and can help show how law schools can harness the collective capacities law students have for bringing about change.

In an oft-quoted phrase, Margaret Mead said to “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”  How such groups should actually go about doing that is another question, and the Parkland students and the thousands of others who have been inspired by their work, or who have finally gotten the attention they deserve, may just show us the way.

Filed under: Best Practices and Clinics, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Best Practices, Diversity & Social Justice, Catalysts For Change, Diversity & Social Justice | 1 Comment »

Experience with Peer Support, Peer Review and Feedback on Teaching?  

Posted on September 25, 2017 by Mary A. Lynch

We are all familiar with engagement in peer review of scholarship. Law faculty culture prioritizes peer input and review of scholarly ideas and articles. Sending drafts of articles to colleagues for feedback, “workshopping” preliminary ideas, and vetting scholarship is part and parcel of the work we do. We visit other schools, make presentations and attend conferences because we value peer discussion and  input. It is the basis by which we create and communicate knowledge.

I don’t believe, however, we have a similarly pervasive culture for formative peer review when it comes to teaching in law schools, although such culture exists at other higher education institutions. According to The University of Texas Faculty Innovation Center, an academic culture which prioritizes informed peer collaboration, review and input on teaching benefits everyone,

Good teachers continually learn and develop. Peer Review, which combines the examination of course materials with in-class observations and collegial discussion, helps prompt this learning among faculty. Ideally, these interactions and conversations can create opportunities for us as colleagues to reflect on and adapt our teaching practices in order to become better teachers and increase student learning.

Northeastern University Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning through Research recommends a four step process:

  • Initial conversation between the observer and the observed
  • The observation itself as an informal data collection and distillation process
  • Follow-up conversation in which the observer shares the observations and collaborates with the observed teacher in any kind of brainstorming or troubleshooting that the observations invite.
  • Reflective summary written by the observed instructor, integrating what was learned from the process and how this will influence future teaching.

Vanderbilt University’s Center for Teaching includes the goal of “enabling more intentional and mutually supportive communities of scholar teachers.”

It is true that we have made some progress in elevating the role of teaching in law schools in the past decade. Legal Education certainly woke up to the need for a culture change around curriculum and teaching following the publication of Best Practices for Legal Education  and Educating Lawyers.  The economic downturn heavily affected the admission process and the need to focus on student learning. ABA requirements regarding student learning outcomes also redirected attention and resources towards what students actually learn while in law school. Moreover, organized efforts such as the Institute for Law Teaching and Learning  and the AALS Section on Teaching Methods  have converted many to the idea that teaching and learning are matters worthy of scholarship, innovation and peer discussion.  Places like this blog and others support exchange of ideas, methods and innovations.

It is also true that as far back as 2008, pioneering legal scholars Gerry Hess and Sophie Sparrow studied factors which encourage or assist the professional development of law teachers including peer observation. So there are many resources available to improve teaching in law schools. Yet, across the academy, are we truly immersed in a continual process of formative feedback for law teachers? If so, the web shows little evidence of it.

I think some of the culture gap is explained by the fact that historically peer review of teaching only happened during a promotion and tenure process that resulted in an up or out decision by the faculty — hardly a formative approach. A voluntary formative program of peer support and review – not used for personnel decisions – should allay those fears.  Appropriate concerns about interference with academic freedom in the classroom might explain some of the culture gap. Except that, even more concerns about academic freedom arise with respect to peer input into “controversial scholarship,” since draft writings can be more easily captured and reproduced than can observations of a single class session. What I think explains the gap, instead, is that we have not properly trained or equipped law faculty with the tools and methods for conducting and receiving helpful peer observations.

At Albany Law, we have promoted a culture of inquiry around teaching and learning for many years now — colleagues sit in each others classrooms from time to time, our Academic Dean prioritizes teaching support, our Center for Excellence in Law Teaching showcases teaching ideas and invites collegial discussion through teaching workshops, and our Director of Online Learning and Instructional Technology facilitates flipped classrooms and other innovations. What we haven’t done is formalize a voluntary peer support and review program. This year, we are planning to revisit our very loose approach and learn from the ever evolving resources and experimentation of others.

So readers, contributors and chance internet searchers, please post here what if any processes have you implemented to support peer observation of law teaching? Is it a voluntary program as we envision at Albany? How has it worked? Or, if you have an opinion about faculty peer review programs, let us know what you think!

I hope to compile the results and report back later in the year!

P.S. If you are more comfortable with e-mail than a blog comment, feel free to contact me at mlync@albanylaw.edu. 

Filed under: academic freedom, Best Practices, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Teaching Methodology | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments »

Dealing with Causes as Well as Symptoms of Law Students’ and Lawyers’ Lack of Well-Being

Posted on August 21, 2017 by John Lande

The National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being just issued its report, The Path to Lawyer Well-Being:  Practical Recommendations for Positive Change.

It’s a thoughtful, constructive effort to address problems that lawyers face in practice and to promote their well-being.  It deals with serious issues including substance abuse, mental health problems, and suicide.  It includes recommendations for better education, fostering collegiality and civility, enhancing lawyers’ sense of control, mentoring, and systematic monitoring colleagues’ well-being, among many others.  It addresses legal education, recommending adjustment of the admissions process to promote well-being, detection and assistance of students experiencing problems, addressing of issues of well-being in professional responsibility courses, and provision of onsite counselors, among other things.

An appendix suggests topics for educational programs, including conflict management.  This section reads, “Our legal system is adversarial—it’s rooted in conflict.  Even so, lawyers generally are not trained on how to constructively handle conflict and to adapt tactics based on context—from necessary work-related conflicts to inter-personal conflicts with clients, opposing counsel, colleagues, or loved ones.  Conflict is inevitable and can be both positive and negative.  But chronic, unmanaged conflict creates physical, psychological, and behavioral stress.  Research suggests that conflict management training can reduce the negative stressful effects of conflict and possibly produce better, more productive lawyers.” [Footnotes omitted in this and subsequent quotations.]

Dealing with Causes of Law Students’ Problems

I believe that many students’ and lawyers’ problems are caused by law school and legal practice.  To the extent that’s so, treating the symptoms will not fundamentally deal with the systemic causes of the problems.  Rather, significant changes in the nature of legal education and practice – not merely dealing with the symptoms – would be necessary to prevent many of these problems from arising.

I recently wrote a piece, Escaping from Lawyers’ Prison of Fear, in which I examined lawyers’ fears about negotiation and a long list of other things.  I summarized evidence that “the law school experience often is highly stressful and stimulates fear-related responses.  Patterns of fear initiated in law school can persist and grow as students move into legal practice. … Several studies have found that law students ‘consistently report more anxiety than the general population. … Although some students obviously thrive in law school, for others, law school is an experience of ‘fear and loathing.’ … During law school, [] symptom levels are elevated significantly when compared with the normal population.  These symptoms include obsessive-compulsive behavior, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, hostility, phobic anxiety, paranoid ideation, and psychoticism (social alienation and isolation).  Elevations of symptom levels significantly increase for law students during the first to third years of law school.   Depending on the symptom, 20-40% of any given class reports significant symptom elevations.  Finally, further longitudinal analysis showed that the symptom elevations do not significantly decrease between the spring of the third year and the next two years of law practice as alumni.”

“It is not clear what causes law students’ distress. Theorists have suggested various features of legal education may be causal factors including ‘overvaluing theoretical scholarship and undervaluing the teaching function, employing generally unsound teaching and testing methods, and emphasizing abstract theory rather than providing practical training.’  In particular, some things causing distress may include an intimidating Socratic teaching method, novelty of the subject matter, ambiguity of the law, heavy work load, competition, lack of grades in most courses until the end of the semester, feelings of isolation, de-emphasizing personal relationships, ignoring emotional reactions, and reluctance to get help.  Some have compared the first year of law school to ‘military indoctrination’ in which instructors intimidate students, who are ‘stripped naked, so to speak, so that [they] may be remade’ as lawyers and, as a result, become passive and fearful.  Some scholars argue that legal education trains students to ignore their own values, which undermines their self-confidence.  For example, Dean Edward Rubin argues that lawyers experience ‘ethical stress’ where ‘lawyers [and law students] are required to be insincere, to speak words they themselves do not necessarily believe.’”

The Task Force Report recommends that faculty “assess law school practices and offer faculty education on promoting well-being in the classroom.”  It cites Larry Kreiger and Kennon Sheldon’s research suggesting that “potential culprits that undercut student well-being includ[e] hierarchical markers of worth such as comparative grading, mandatory curves, status seeking placement practices, lack of clear and timely feedback, and teaching practices that are isolating and intimidating.”

The Report recommends “that law schools assess their classroom and organizational practices, make modifications where possible, and offer faculty programming on supporting student well-being while continuing to uphold high standards of excellence.”

If law school faculty and administrators want to take serious action to prevent law students’ mental health problems and lack of well-being, they should conduct a careful examination of features of their programs that unnecessarily contribute to these problems.  Students with manifest problems are like canaries in the coal mine for a much larger group of students who experience great stress but whose problems do not manifest outwardly.  Thus dealing with fundamental causes of students’ problems could benefit a large portion of the student population.

As I wrote in connection with the Stone Soup Project, students may do better if they feel that their studies are relevant to professional goals — and fun.

Obviously, no set of measures dealing with causes or symptoms would completely prevent students’ problems.  And there is a long list of pressures inhibiting law schools from making substantial changes in their educational practices, so change would be hard.  But changing the law school environment – and not only addressing individual students’ issues – might be necessary to effectively address the cause of many students’ problems.

Dealing with Causes of Lawyers’ Problems

Most lawyers’ work is stressful.  Litigation is inherently adversarial and transactional work involves efforts to gain competitive advantage.  So the stress of constantly being immersed in conflict is unavoidable to some extent.  But not completely unavoidable.

Some lawyers view their roles as problem-solvers and, as such, seek to de-escalate conflict whenever appropriate while always providing diligent representation.  Even these lawyers need to fight hard when dealing with untrustworthy adversaries.  But they do so only when needed.

The culture in some practice communities is generally adversarial.  Acting tough is the default and the norm, not something that lawyers do to deal with a few exceptionally problematic cases.

This culture seems unnecessary and counterproductive both for clients and lawyers.  I believe that changing this culture would substantially improve lawyers’ well-being.  This is not merely being civil, which is good but doesn’t fundamentally change lawyers’ approach to their work.  Rather, this involves a legal culture where problem-solving is the norm for the way that lawyers serve their clients.  My book on lawyering with planned early negotiation is one of many efforts encouraging this approach.

As with changes in legal education, changing legal practice culture is not easy nor a complete solution to the problems.  But I think that seeking such changes is worth the effort.  Hopefully, such changes would produce better education and client service – with the side-effects of improving law students’ and lawyers’ well-being.

Filed under: Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Catalysts For Change, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Looking Beyond the Trends: Who’s Our Curriculum Really For?

Posted on September 16, 2016 by Pam Armstrong

Just catching up on my summer reading and I came across a short piece titled, “My Best Marketing Advice for Lawyers,” by John H. Fisher, Esq.  In the article, Attorney Fisher responds to an inquiry for his best marketing advice by saying: “Identify your ‘Ideal Client’ and nurture and cultivate the relationship with your Ideal Client through a series of educational and informative newsletters, speaking events, books, and social events.” 1  This three-step plan: paint a picture of your ideal client, attract your ideal client, and nurture the relationship with your ideal client was clear, linear, and supported with some truly clever and constructive examples of providing best tips and advice – for your referral partners. The article concludes that this plan has the power to change law practices, create goodwill, and perhaps make the actor a “mini-celebrity among peers.”  Apropos of the previous blog, such advice seems consistent.  And, to be fair to Mr. Fisher given what follows, he was posed the question, and we are still in the post “failing” law school phase.

 

Two of several things that give me pause here, are in who is assumed to be the “ideal” client and how we are affecting our students’ priorities when we offer and even encourage them to take “law” school courses in economic trends in the legal profession and personal finance.  The apparent underlying assumption of both articles is that the “ideal” client is someone who will financially advantage the lawyer, and/or that the wealth of our profession and ourselves is worthy of credit in a school devoted to the study of law. Understanding that making a living is important, I’d note that there are no major stories about whether lawyers make a “living wage” either here2 or in other nations, or of lawyers who cobble together several jobs over the long-term to support themselves or a family.  But I did, however, recently listen at a ceremony where the head of a non-law institute spoke eloquently about the goal of that educational institution as doing justice and having their faculty involved in field-work toward helping others establish workable justice systems.  Non-lawyers.

 

Whenever students struggle with understanding a statute or regulation and where I sense a disconnect, I encourage asking who benefits from a policy or something being advocated.  Then, recognizing how easy it is to go along with an idea that is being advocated when it is self-benefitting, I encourage students to ask who is left out and, if appropriate, why we continue to allow others’ priorities to be that determinative.

Filed under: Best Practices, Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques | 4 Comments »

Learning and Teaching – the Progression

Posted on August 8, 2016 by Steven Friedland

I have become interested in progression and ordering lately.  Not so much with chickens and eggs, but more with respect to progressions used in the classroom.  Traditionally, I would start a class with a case and deploy it to open up an area of substantive law, utilizing questions, problems, canons of interpretation, and other cases to explore the meaning of concepts presented in the initial case or topic. The substantive areas depended on the course and ran from appurtenant easements (Property Law), to impeachment by prior untruthful acts (Evidence), to searches incident to lawful arrests (Criminal Procedure). My interest in ordering made me aware of the fact that I approached each class with a duality of teaching and learning.  Teaching usually was first in my progression.  The spotlight was on me as the teacher; I opened and conducted the class and then ended it when time ran out. I had many assumptions.  I assumed student motivation existed; that students started, followed, and ended the class with me; that students had effective practices of adding information to their understanding; and that students readily retrieved the information when needed.

But I wondered what would happen if I reversed the norm of ordering?  What if I placed learning first in the progression, especially in reference to motivation?  Motivation in law school is a lot like a roller coaster (at least it was for me) – it ebbs and flows quite a bit, sometimes within the same day. Motivation is often invisible to the classroom, but weighs heavily on learning.  Early in the first year there is a surfeit of it, and by the third year, well, lets just say there is not as much of it.

This reversal of progression, with learning first, changed a lot for me in the classroom.  In the past year or two, it has allowed for more variation, for greater focus on student improvement, for more experiential “doing” as part of basic courses, and for more direct consideration of student motivation.  For example, in this new progression, students fill out cards explaining what motivates them to learn the most and the least. Students also start each class by indicating where we are in the tapestry of subject matter – something they were used to me doing.  Since experiences often are helpful motivators, many more experiences are blended into the course — students now interview real world participants in law (e.g., police officers in a Criminal Procedure course) or Evidence (trial lawyers) and create short but deep PowerPoint presentations or videos in all courses about a point in the course that was worth further exploration.  These presentations served to recap what people had learned and to offer a combined “outline” of sorts for exam preparation.  Further, classes now end (at the students’ request) with a brief synopsis of what we did, to see if everyone finished around the same place.

In all, I found that focusing on learning generally, and motivation in particular, were very worthwhile.  I enjoyed the new way of guiding the course even more than I did the old.   There were different assumptions made, but I think they were more accurate.  Priorities can inform progression.

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Teaching Methodology, Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

AALS Video Series on Law Teaching

Posted on June 30, 2016 by rebeccaharp

Recently, a fellow blogger sent us a very helpful tool, that we wanted to share with our readers.  Last year, during the 2015 AALS Clinical Conference, a series of informative videos was created for law professors about the complications associated with law teaching.  The entire series is about an hour long, with each individual video being only about 5 minutes long.  These videos address some of the important pedagogical issues that law professors are currently grappling with, such as assessment, adding experiential learning to doctrinal courses, reflection, and technology.

This in the link to the entire series:

Filed under: Best Practices, Best Practices & Setting Goals, Best Practices and Clinics, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, First Year Law School Innovations, Teaching Methodology, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Valuing Faculty Committee Work

Posted on June 13, 2016 by Patricia Salkin

In “Incentivizing and Assessing Committee Work Contributions, Why Now?” Professors Andi Curcio & Mary Lynch suggest that changes in legal education models necessitate re-thinking law school committee work responsibilities and rewards.  Their article  is a worthwhile read for anyone who believes the current system of committee workload allocations needs to change. Below is their abstract.

Faculty scholarly productivity reaps tangible internal and external rewards while the “reward” for excellent faculty committee work performance often is additional committee work. Some faculty members perform substantial committee work while others spend little time on institutional service, leaving them more time for scholarship. Despite equity issues, this system maintains the faculty self-governance model integral to academic freedom, and the necessary service work gets done. This article suggests that this traditional workload distribution model may be unsustainable. Innovations in legal education brought about by financial pressures, declining enrollments, and new accreditation standard requirements will result in increased committee workloads while reductions in full-time faculty at many schools leave fewer faculty members available to do that work. Those currently doing the lion’s share of the work may be unable, or unwilling, to take on more committee work. This article examines methods for avoiding an institutional governance crisis.

Grounding the discussion in social science literature, it explores ways to more fully engage all faculty members in committee work by creating accountability structures via smaller committees, peer evaluation of committee work contributions, and rewards for extraordinary service work. It posits that peer evaluations of committee work set normative standards and provide tangible evaluative tools, potentially changing cultural expectations about committee work participation. The article discusses the benefits and potential pitfalls of faculty committee work peer evaluations, provides a sample evaluation rubric, and sets forth a roadmap for implementing a committee work peer evaluation program. It also examines ways to encourage committee work stalwarts to continue their extraordinary service via a reward system. Amongst the rewards discussed is a year’s release from committee work responsibilities to allow for more time for scholarly pursuits. Throughout, the article suggests ways to engage more faculty in the work necessary to maintain thriving self-governing educational institutions in today’s changing legal environment.

Filed under: Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness | Comments Off on Valuing Faculty Committee Work

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