Just Imagine if You Were Trying to Get a Job as a Law School Teacher . . .

Posted on December 13, 2010 by vmerton

How would you prepare: 1) for the hiring process; and 2) for performing the job if hired?

Imagine, too, that your training and professional experience was as a lawyer: a professional problem-solver who depends on comprehensive, up-to-date research to become thoroughly familiar with the doctrinal and conceptual framework of any legal question you confront.

It’s that time of year again.  A succession of brilliant, credentialed, eager and charming faculty candidates, mostly young, are making their way through the process, culminating in the full day of small group interviews and the all-important “job talk,” rich with graphic slides and witty asides.  An enormous amount of time, on the part of both faculty and candidates, and not a small amount of money, are dedicated to this exercise.  And of course, the results matter profoundly to the schools’ future students and those students’ future clients.

Every candidate is poised and ready for the inevitable inquiry about his or her “scholarly agenda.”  All are well-versed about the “best” journals, how to entice student editors to bite, and which are the most strategically advantageous conferences and symposia to appear at.  They have assembled posses of high-profile mentors to whom they can direct the acknowledgments on their first pages.  As many have noted, it has become all but impossible for a mere lawyer, however accomplished and insightful, to be taken seriously as a faculty candidate unless s/he has already published a few major law review articles, and can convincingly describe a planned research trajectory of unremitting erudition and sophistication, emphatically not focused on problems in legal practice.  Especially in this market of shrinking firms, starving government, and defunded public interest, it is no wonder that law schools seem able to raise the bar for admission to the august ranks of academe higher, higher, and ever higher.

But exclusively, it seems, in terms of demonstrated capacity and hunger for the scholarly side of the professorial role.

How many of these candidates have significant teaching experience?  If they do, how many – unless being considered for a “special” slot — have taught anything other than a nonexperiential “podium” course or a specialized seminar as part of an LL.M.?

It’s one thing if a candidate has tried but never managed to land an opportunity to teach in any context, but does anyone on the Appointments Committee even ask whether, when, and how the candidate has decided that s/he wants to teach law students and prepare them for the effective and responsible practice of law?  Whether s/he has ever developed and submitted a course proposal or applied to work as an adjunct – and if not, why?  Ever been invited or sought to participate in a CLE program or a program for would-be pro bono lawyers?  Sure, rarely a candidate is asked to articulate his or her “teaching philosophy,” but no eyebrow is raised when the response is a vague or frankly vapid bromide about “varying the Socratic method with a few problems” or “I try to reach everyone in the class.” No specifics about the techniques to achieve these goals is proffered or expected.  The best-received answer often seems to be, “Well, I really try to involve students in my scholarship as much as I can.”

Certainly the candidates are right on top of “hot topics” in legal scholarship – many have already attended Law and Society conferences, frequent the most esoteric blogs, and can’t wait to start trading downloads and citations so they can ascend to an SSRN Top 10.  Wouldn’t you think, if you were being recruited for a position that ostensibly involves spending something like half your work-week as a teacher, that you’d also read some background material about the enterprise of legal/professional education?  Its history, its structure, its current issues?  And if you had, wouldn’t you want to demonstrate your solid grasp of these “hot topics”?  I have yet to hear a candidate express any familiarity with Best Practices for Legal Education (either the book or this blog), the Carnegie Report [Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law], The Law Teacher or its publisher the Institute for Law Teaching and Learning, the Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE), or even the MacCrate Report, let alone more esoteric subjects such as the ABA Curriculum Survey, now in the midst of update, or the proposed ABA standard on  outcomes assessment.  If a candidate is asked about some aspect of educational affairs during a group interview, faculty colleagues tend to react with dismay, casting displeased glances at the disruptive interrogator.

Yes, it’s true that the Appointments Committee will generally request the candidate’s teaching evaluations (the limitations of which deserve and have elsewhere received ample attention), syllabi, and classroom PowerPoints if available, but how often do those become the focus of discussion with the candidate or within the Committee?  Every publication of a candidate is scrutinized, but virtually never does a Committee seek arguably more illuminating embodiments of teaching prowess, such as examples of feedback on student essays and papers, grading rubrics, sample exams and “model answers”, evaluation or critique of student performance of lawyering tasks, or other assessment tools and supplemental course materials.  I have not yet had a chance to check out any of the official handbooks for candidates, such as Becoming a Law Professor: A Candidate’s Guide, by Brannon P. Denning, Marcia L. McCormick and Jeff M. Lipshaw, but I will be happily surprised if they suggest that candidates need assemble teaching portfolios of any significance.

Years ago, as an appointments committee chair, I added a step to the process: each called-back candidate not only gave a job talk, but taught a “class” the same day.  (No doubt others have made similar forays, I just don’t know of them).  To standardize, the assigned material was the same for all: a PR casebook excerpt on Jones v. Barnes, 463 U.S. 745 (1983) and related items on the allocation of decision-making authority between lawyer and client.  Any member of a law faculty should be equipped to teach a class in basic, non-technical legal ethics, right?  And while it lasted, no candidate ever complained or protested and most managed to deliver a respectable class that was at least as instructive to the observing faculty (who could also watch a video) and to the student volunteers, who had prepared just as they would for any class.  The students also provided verbal and written feedback to the Committee –- and, if the candidate asked, to the candidate too.  Most impressive to me, naturally, were the candidates who not only solicited comments about their teaching from students and faculty, but wanted a copy of the video.

Limited in scope as it was, there is much one could say about the value of incorporating such an element into the appointments process: the message it conveyed to our students, who felt they were contributing a unique and useful perspective and having a meaningful say; the message conveyed to candidates about the importance attached to quality teaching at this institution, which helped establish whether there was a “good fit”; the substantive discussions about what constitutes good, better or best teaching practices that were precipitated among our faculty as we debated candidates; and the fact that many a candidate became entranced with our students, candidly confessing that they were far more impressive than anticipated -– a strong selling point for the Law School.  (No, the students were not randomly chosen).

But, this experiment, which I guess is what it was, did not long survive changes in committee membership, the faculty, dean, president, and zeitgeist. I mention it, I guess, only to say: it is possible.

Clearly, this post will be labeled the lament of a malcontent.  I am not deluded that it will spark changes in the operation of either side of the meat market.  Candidates, like all evolutionarily successful species, whatever their private predilections, will continue to display aggressively the characteristics most attractive to their quarry, law school appointments committees — up to and including bound feet and peacock tails.  Those committees, in turn, will continue to do the bidding of faculty and administrators starved for the validation and other benefits associated with scrambling even a step or two up the almighty USNWR ranking.  Law school faculties will include ever fewer members expert in and enthusiastic about the professional art, science, and literature of teaching.

In related news, Stanford Law School has jubilantly announced that it has secured something under a million dollars to spend on a massive, long-term, multifaceted research study “to describe and understand the state of the profession, including trends and emerging developments.” “The study will seek to develop policy recommendations to help law firms adapt their business models to better meet the needs of their clients and of a rapidly changing legal market.  It will also consider the implications of these changes for legal education.”

The press release insists that the profession is undergoing transformative change. “On the surface, things look relatively unchanged . . . but firms employ thousands rather than hundreds of lawyers, with offices around the world and dramatically different partner/associate ratios. Hourly rates have soared, while clients are less willing to underwrite the training of new associates.  Legal work has become increasingly specialized because clients have more sophisticated needs and expectations, and technology and globalization have only exacerbated these trends. The demand for profitability at firms has increased the need to bill hours and this pressure-cooker environment has caused associates to hopscotch among firms.”

Conspicuously absent in the entire long project description is any mention of: the frighteningly pervasive and growing lack of lawyers for the poor, the working-class, the middle-class, and almost anyone else but the very comfortable, with concomitant deep discouragement of law graduates who wish to undertake this work; the widespread incompetence and ignorance of lawyers about basic legal tasks, including decent legal research and problem-solving, and basic responsibilities to clients; the failures of the fundamental licensing, assessment, malpractice, and disciplinary institutions of the profession; or any of the myriad other problematic aspects of our profession that are not the concern of the wealthy and the powerful.

California is a house burning down, or maybe a fireworks factory exploding, in terms of the paucity of services, assistance, and enforcement of civil and legal rights for its poor and middle-class.  It is hard not to think about what close to a million dollars in the hands of its estimable and frugal legal services organizations –- CRLA (California Rural Legal Assistance), the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley, etc. — would have meant in terms of, say, halting unlawful foreclosures that rob people of their property, their retirement security, their children’s inheritances and education funding, in a very real sense, their lives. That need is immense, and it is now.

I daresay copious articles will be the fruit of this generous grant, perhaps a book or two.

I don’t know what else to say. Except that working for genuine change in legal education bears painful resemblance to being an Obama supporter.  Which leads  (in my mind, anyway) full circle to: Obama’s Treasury Secretary won’t authorize allocation of a small fraction of TARP funds intended to help the “hardest hit” communities to legal services organizations representing homeowners fighting foreclosure.  Billions to bail out monster banks who can spend it on whatever — not a penny for legal aid. See “Treasury Blocks Legal Aid for Homeowners Facing Foreclosure,” by Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation.  Priorities.  Priorities, most of all your priorities in choosing who will execute your mission, tell you everything there really is to know about the nature of your enterprise.

Vanessa Merton

Filed under: Best Practices & Setting Goals, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Catalysts For Change | 1 Comment »

Learning From Our Students, Pt. 1 – Think Big, Think Smart, Make Change

Posted on December 6, 2010 by dmaranville

Last week I had the privilege of attending a presentation by two amazing ’10 UW Law graduates who founded The Three Degrees Project to address climate justice issues accompanying global climate change.    Jeni Barcelos and Jen Marlow (fondly known as “the Jens”) are every teacher’s  (and every social justice advocate’s) dream — smart, motivated, hardworking, visionary, persistent, endlessly resourceful, and, on top of all that, charming.

All very well.  You may ask, however, what do two young climate justice visionaries have to do with Best Practices in Legal Education?

The Jens’ presentation reinforced for me three lessons — lessons that we know, but may be prone to forget at times.  I’ll discuss the first in this blog, and defer the two others to later posts.

Lesson 1:  Think Big, Think Smart, Make Change.

Transforming legal education is a tall order.  No big news there.  Often enough I feel overwhelmed by the task and doubt whether my individual voice matters.   But it’s a small task by comparison with tackling climate justice on a global scale.  The Jens’ example reminds me that it’s the task that matters, not my own doubts or insecurities.  It’s good to think big.

The Jens not only think big, they think smart.  Amazing connectors, they pull together ideas and disciplines to create a comprehensive intellectual framework with the data to support it.   Using that framework, they reach out tirelessly to collaborators around the world.  And step by step, they move forward.  Isn’t that a lot like what we’re trying to do with Best Practices and related efforts to transform legal education?

Filed under: Catalysts For Change | 2 Comments »

ABA Curriculum Survey

Posted on November 14, 2010 by Antoinette Sedillo Lopez

The 2004 ABA Section on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar curriculum survey revealed a dramatic increase in clinical and legal skills programs. I am on the ABA Curriculum Committee and we are again surveying law schools about their curriculum. The survey has some new questions and some reframing of questions to get more detailed and specific information. This will tell us how schools are progressing on Best Practices. Please encourage your law school to participate in the survey as soon as possible!

This survey will track changes in legal education since the last edition was published in 2004, including detailed empirical information on such topics as: requirements for graduation, first-year curriculum, elective offerings, concentrations, and post- and non-J.D. degrees.

This second edition of the Survey also addresses academic support and bar preparation classes and alternative scheduling options, and provides detailed information on legal research and writing courses and professional skills offerings. This report will provide valuable information about legal education in America today, and comprehensive participation ensures both the validity of data and strength of information found within it.

The survey should be submitted it to the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar by December 15, 2010. Instructions are easy to follow, and the survey should take no more than 45 minutes.

The Curriculum Survey can be accessed at http://www.curriculumsurvey.org/. Instructions for accessing and navigating the survey, including information regarding UserID and password for your school can be found on the Section’s home page: http://www.abanet.org/legaled.

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Catalysts For Change, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Faculty Share Best Practices

Posted on November 5, 2010 by Darlene

On November 3, 2010, the topic of the weekly lunchtime Faculty Teaching/Scholarship workshop at Albany Law School was “Technology” and, specifically, how TWEN can add a new dimension to law school learning. Instead of providing a “how-to” workshop by me, the Instructional Technologist, we decided that it would be more useful for the faculty to hear from their peers.

I began the session sharing the results of a pre-semester survey which asked the faculty: Which Westlaw TWEN options do you use to enhance student learning? and Which options would you like to learn more about?

The responses to the 1st question indicated a preponderance of static content and a lack of opportunity for interactivity by students. The 2nd question pointed to an interest by faculty in hearing about discussions, wikis and embedding digital content.

During the next part of the workshop, six faculty members discussed their experiences using the following interactive TWEN tools:

  1. (Discussion) Forums
  2. Customized Polling (Surveys)
  3. Wikis

They focused on the advantages they saw in using that tool and shared lessons learned. The presentation with notes added (in red) is posted below:

All in all, the workshop was very well received. A survey has been posted to TWEN to solicit additional feedback.

More technology workshops of this type are planned.

 The next one  is scheduled for Feb. 2, 2011. The topic will be Digital Student Recording & Assessment.

 

Filed under: Catalysts For Change, Technology | 2 Comments »

Monsters in the Closet: My Fears about Curricular Reform

Posted on October 13, 2010 by Nancy Cook

When the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching had the good sense to publish its report, Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law (William Sullivan, Anne Colby, Judith Wegner, Lloyd Bond, Lee Shulman, 2007) on the heels of Best Practices for Legal Education (Roy Stuckey and Others, 2007), I was among those rejoicing. The two volumes speak volumes about legal education, and the academy was taking notice. Two great leaps forward for legal education! Now I find myself in a hubbub of workshopping and consulting with hundreds of others engaged in renovations, innovations, and reforms. Can the tipping point be far behind? Isn’t this a dream come true?

But as the initial euphoria wears off, I discover a few anxieties interfering with the dream.

Monsters in the Closet.
All changes and new beginnings carry risks, and the risks I see in the future of legal education take on the forms of familiar monsters. I’ve dubbed them Discoverers, Crusaders, and Regressives.

Discoverers. This doesn’t sound in monsterness, but here’s how I think of it: In lots of gatherings where curricular change is discussed, I hear things that suggest that experiential education is something that has just appeared out of the mists. At one gathering, for example, Harvard’s first-year Problem Solving Workshop – a three-week course in which classes of 80 students work through seven fact patterns – was presented as a “radical” innovation, a “revolution” in law school pedagogy. (See HLS website at law.Harvard.edu/news/spotlight/classroom/problem_solving.html) When I first heard about this “radical innovation,” I thought it was a good joke. But nobody was laughing. This is when the monster first appeared. I heard echoes of western Europeans boasting that they had “discovered” the American continents. And I know from my studies of history that if they claim it, they will try to tame it to their own purposes. That fear is worthy of a monster’s appearance.

Crusaders. No doubt I’m getting too political here, I’m dabbling in hyperbole. But there is a certain kind of enthusiast that scares me. Someone lights upon field placements as a valuable teaching method, which it surely is, but then quickly decides that it is THE valuable teaching method, and oh, by the way, it just happens to be a cheap substitute for in-house clinics. Or a mandatory first-year or third-year course with an experiential component is somebody’s idea of a one-size-fits-all educational unit that will satisfy ABA Standards (assuming the Standards continue to exist), and other initiatives or existing programs are abandoned. Or in a rush to give every student a meaningful experience, community needs and interests are brushed aside with the introduction of a massive service learning requirement that burdens the community and gives back little or nothing. Call me paranoid, but I can see that Crusader monster coming at me.

Regressives. Here’s something else in the talk I hear. I hear the benefits of Carnegie and Best Practices and Clinic in general referred to solely in terms of practical experience and skills. It’s not that I denigrate those things, but several generations of clinical, legal writing, and experiential teachers have advanced pedagogy and theory far beyond skills education and practical experience. The reach of experiential education goes much further. It involves the integration of knowledge with action and responsibility, an integration that comes about as a result of highly sophisticated teaching. (I hope others will offer more articulate explanations of this dynamic.) Practice skills is a beginning, certainly a focus that merits ongoing attention and development, and perhaps even the center of experiential education; but I hope we aren’t entering an era that ignores the many concentric circles of knowledge and experience that surround that center and have been developing for a very long time now. We aren’t really going to start entirely from scratch, are we? That fear is what has me waking from nightmares screaming “It’s not new!” and “It’s not simple!” and “Hey, there are experts in the house!”

In my calmer moments, there is still the dream that the hour of change has come, and that the change will bring something closer to the collective vision of legal education cultivated by these several generations of experiential faculty than the Monsters in the Closet portend. When I am rational enough to listen, my advice to myself is to throw in the DICE. DICE here is an acronym (a pedagogical trick). The initials stand for these buzzwords: Diversity; Intentionality; Competencies; and Engagement.

D.I.C.E.
D: Diversity. We could say that clinic (or, more broadly, experiential education) is a genre, with many subgenres that include: in-house clinic; field placement; policy clinic; hybrid clinic; legal methods, legal writing, simulation. This list is not definitive, and probably can’t be, since, as the genre experts tell us (yes, there are genre experts), genre is a fluid concept, historically and culturally situated. Still, it may be useful to identify elements of these courses and programs in order to organize and classify them into malleable categories with at least temporary boundaries. I offer a few thoughts about how to break down the variables that help define experiences at different schools. This is not meant to be prescriptive, just simple observations about what elements are present and more or less dominant in different programs.

Basically, I believe we are looking to provide a full menu for our students. The exact make-up of the menu is dependent on, among other things, the interests of faculty, faculty and student competencies, and student interests. Among the overall goals of experiential programs are experience-based learning; applied learning or contextualization; use of independent judgment; complex problem solving; and the integration of skills, values, and knowledge domains. With that in mind, some factors in course or program development might include:

Pedagogical Focus:
Doctrine
Skills
Professionalism (Lawyer’s Role and Professional Responsibility)
Policy/ Legal Process/ Systemic Analysis

Methodologies:
Role Play / Simulation
Research and Writing
Vicarious Lawyering
Mentoring Relationships
Small Group Work
Guided Reflection
Guided Discussion
Actual Practice

Complexity Factors:
How much teaching is done “in the moment”
Dealing with real consequences
Dealing with real relationships
Degree of Collaboration
Interdisciplinary coordination
Multiple fields of practice
Multiple problem-solving strategies and fora
Community or public engagement
Number and diversity of clients and issues
Ongoing nature of problems or issues

Additional Factors:
Level of predictability/ control over outcomes & consequences/ risk factors
Extent to which course direction is correctible
Extent to which faculty exercise selectivity in various factors
Contact with and decision-making responsibility with respect to clients
Level of faculty supervision, as well as of supervision in general
Extent to which social justice is a focus

Should faculties pick and choose among these elements, identify and rank the values inherent in them, and determine the likely outcomes or consequences of different configurations, they may begin to hone in on the types of experiential offerings that will work best at their respective institutions.

I: All this leads to the second buzzword: Intentionality. We may aspire to curricular wholeness, but intentionality recognizes the fact that we can’t do it all; we have to make choices. Choices ought to be thoughtful, and not based solely on the economies of the moment. If we want to keep the Crusaders at bay, we have to beware of the risk of presumed interchangeability: these subgenres are not virtually identical, to be reduced to some essentialist idea of practice experience. Four hours of trial advocacy isn’t the equivalent o f four hours of a housing clinic; externing in a prosecutor’s office doesn’t expose students to the same learning that preparing testimony for a legislative hearing on a criminal justice initiative does. ne isn’t necessarily better than another, but choosing one model over the other entails loss. In clinical methodological terms, we have to articulate goals, think consequences, clarify values, then make hard choices. Wholeness, moreover, isn’t necessarily linear. A lot of planning has to go into sequencing and coordination.

C: When making choices, one of the factors has to be Competencies. I am not speaking of the competencies we want our students to leave with; I am speaking of the competencies that faculty bring to teaching in the experiential forum. I’d venture to guess that in most schools, there are a lot of people who know a little about experiential pedagogy, but that few schools have large numbers of expert, experienced experiential teachers. This presents a good many challenges. There are those who know something, but don’t know they know it; those who think they know a lot but are mistaken; those who have no interest in knowing; those who would be interested if only they had the time or a safe way to learn; those who know a lot but whose knowledge isn’t noticed because of status hierarchies or time or geography; those who know everything about law teaching and can say without a doubt that experiential competency is not in the mix of “everything” there is to know. How to approach this? The evaluation experts have given us some tools. For example, we can chart rubrics for our own competencies the way we are being taught to chart students’ progress.

I can offer a sample of competency rubrics in Experiential Pedogogy (EP) (it’s based on an instrument developed for a Community-Engaged Scholars Project at the University of Minnesota; most of the credit goes to my colleagues in this project, Bill Doherty, Gail Dubrow, Cathy Jordan, and Tai Mendenhall ).

 Competency Level in Experiential Pedagogy (EP)   Knowledge/Theory      Practice/Skills     Integration of Theory            and Practice
               
             0                        		 Has minimal knowledge in experiential pedagogy Has no ability in essential practice skills Has no understanding of relationship between theory and practice.
1
Basic
Familiarity		 Has some familiarity with experiential pedagogy Has had exposure to and has observed skill sets or competencies successfully used in practice; has had some opportunity to practice skills; has interest in or exposure to skills utilized in context. Can recognize conceptually applications of integrated knowledge and theory in context; can identify basic principles of EP in their application.
2
Working
Application		 Is able to integrate and articulate diverse elements of EP knowledge/theory Effectively utilizes skill sets; consciously employs theoretical frameworks, models and methods of EP in practice or teaching. Can effectively apply theory to factual or practice context; is able to work with others in developing methodologies for teaching.
3  
Critical Analysis		 Has done critical analysis of and reflection on work of others using EP principles in the analysis. Has done critical analysis of processes, methods, or systems, including  proposals for change, through grant writing, political action, community education or similar initiatives.      Has done critical analysis of systems, policies, or institutions crossing academic and practice lines.
               4    Communication Has demonstrated ability to synthesize and engage in creative analysis by putting EP work into communicable form; has record of scholarly production in appropriate media or publications; has knowledge of and has successfully applied EP benchmarks, outcomes, and assessments. Has a record of successful experimentation in methodologies; is recognized for leadership in some circles of practice or teaching; is able to share and transfer skills and enhance capacity, through, e.g., teaching, faculty/ professional development, community building. Has engaged in successful collaborations across disciplines or fields of practice; works effectively to translate EP theory and methods into actions that have significant policy implications; is able to effectively describe the scholarly components of   the work.
             5

Demonstrated
Influence

 Can show demonstrable influence in professional spheres; is able to help those engaged in EP to thrive in an academic environment.              Can demonstrate impact on processes, methods or systems; successfully uses understanding of methods processes, and systems through service in spheres of influence such as RPT committees, board memberships, standards development groups.   Has been instrumental in effectuating systemic change or transforming practice paradigms; provides beneficial support to students, junior faculty and/or others engaged in establishing and developing EP courses or projects.

I’m not sure it can be reproduced here in a readable form, but I can say that it places experiential pedagogy (EP) competencies in three categories: Knowledge/Theory; Practice/Skills; and Integration of Theory and Practice. Each category is then broken down into competencies at five different levels: 1, Basic Familiarity; 2, Working Application; 3, Critical Analysis; 4, Communication; and 5 Demonstrated Influence. I am happy to share the chart with anyone who is interested. Development of and discussion around a competency chart like this could yield significant results. Ok, good luck with that.

E: Finally, we might be able to control the monsters in the closet by acts of Engagement. We need to talk, openly, honestly, often. The most successful innovations follow patterns of communication, leadership, conflict resolution. To give credit where credit is due, the Harvard 1L workshops do engage tenured, non-clinical faculty; if they have been having conversations across the teaching hierarchy, hats off to them. There are many schools taking those first steps, many of which involve boundary crossings. We all benefit if these beginnings lead to bigger structural shifts. It’s never easy and it takes time, but that’s what it will certainly take to keep the monsters away. Best Practices and the Carnegie report were great leaps forward. But it’s worth remembering that winning a battle isn’t winning a war. And winning a war is just the beginning of many battles to come.

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Catalysts For Change | Tagged: | 2 Comments »

AALS Sends Letter to ABA Urging Adoption of 3 Principles

Posted on June 10, 2010 by Mary A. Lynch

On June 1, 2010, the President of the AALS, H. Reese Hansen, wrote to the Consultant on Legal Education of the ABA’s Section on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar  concerning the ABA’s two year review of the law school accreditation standards.  (This review by the Section’s Standards Review Committee (SRC) is the subject of many previous posts – see www.teachinglawstudents.com  for descriptions of SRC proposals etc).

In his letter, President Hansen forcefully outlines three principles which the AALS recommends that the ABA adopt.  I have provided excerpts from the letter  with some brief commentary at the end:

AALS LETTER:

“…The first principle (emphasis added by ML) relates to a number of the changes that the Standards Review Committee has under consideration: “The Measure of  a Law School is the Quality of its Full-Time Faculty(emphasis in original).” One of the core values of the AALS is that its member schools value a faculty “composed primarily of full-time teacher/scholars who constitute a self-governing intellectual community engaged in the creation and dissemination of knowledge about law, legal processes, and legal systems, and who are devoted to fostering justice and public service in the legal community…….

….For these reasons, we are concerned about any revisions in the ABA Standards that might either undercut the basic structure of faculty governance of law schools by full-time faculty or weaken the academic freedom of faculty. Measures that would weaken or abolish the tenure and security of position requirements in the ABA standards are central to our concerns; such measures would inevitably contribute to a decline in effective faculty governance and undercut efforts to improve law school quality that only joint efforts by a dean and faculty working together can achieve. It is also unlikely that any substitute for tenure designed to protect academic freedom and faculty teaching programs will be as effective as tenure in protecting the internal balance of institutional governance or responding to external pressures law schools will certainly face. One example of outside pressure is the growing number of attacks some law school clinics have faced for representing unpopular clients. Preserving the principle of academic freedom is not only an AALS core value; it is an essential public value….

…. The second accreditation principle (emphasis added by ML) that we commend to you is:  “Don’t conflate clinical education with skills training (emphasis in the original).” The two ideas are quite different. One source of  the confusion is that any mental process can be reframed as a skill (e.g., the skill of critical thinking). Clinical education and skills training are, however, quite different teaching concepts. Skills training focuses largely on discrete, concrete and quantifiable skills, typically taught in single courses aimed at those skills. This training can be beneficial to students and is a useful component of a complete legal education. But lawyers must act skillfully and ethically in the world based upon complex knowledge. The challenge for legal education is to develop a way to frame a broad and deep commitment to professional knowledge and education that draws upon what the AALS sees as an intellectual project that incorporates rather than isolates the skill dimension of legal education….

Our third principle is: “Do No Harm.” “Do no harm” is the first principle in medicine and we commend it as a key principle of lawyer regulation as well. Trying to measure outputs without reliable techniques to do so, for example, runs a real risk of producing data that is more misleading than helpful.

Our focus here is the pending proposal for greater reliance on outcome measures. We all agree that verifying student learning is central to the educational process; determining what students have gained from their legal education is everyone’s bottom line issue. We also agree that inputs often are imperfect, only “second-best” measures of student learning. Setting aside the difficulty of distinguishing in all cases between input and output measures, it is surely reasonable to say that an input measure such as passing a class in trial practice is at least some measure of learning trial skills. The same can be said for passing a course in property law or civil procedure. Our review of the literature suggests that no one has yet documented significant, reliable or valid outcome measures that would better measure what law schools do. Inputs theoretically may be “second best,” but so long as output measures are unreliable, we are very concerned that the proposed shift to output measures may replace one system of quality control with one that is even less effective.”

End of Excerpts –  to view entire letter click on link to  CELT http://www.albanylaw.edu/celt

I agree generally with the principles which the AALS urges the ABA to adopt in reviewing law school accreditation standards.  Like the AALS,  I am concerned that the accreditation review process may be used as a tool to eliminate tenure or security of position and thereby undermine academic freedom.   Likewise, I am concerned that some of the Standards Review Committee proposals’ conflate clinical education with skills training and am delighted to see such a vigorous defense of the intellectual framework for  clinical education teaching.

As to the third  principle (“DO NO HARM”), it sounds wonderful – who could disagree?  It also addresses the concern of many thoughtful folks who have posited that the accreditation review process has been manipulated by some to advance a wholesale deregulation agenda,  eliminating academicians from the discussion of what’s important to teach – what outcomes are important –  and leaving these critical educational decisions to business administrators and the vagaries of the market .  It also addresses the concern of Deans who argue that emphasis on measuring outcomes will overwhelm law schools financially.  These are all important issues for the ABA to consider.     

However, if in reality “DO NO HARM” really  means “DON’T EMBRACE CHANGE”, then it is encouraging an outdated approach to legal education.   If this principle is interpreted to mean “DON’T IMPOSE ANY EXPECTATIONS”  on law schools with respect to preparing students to actually practice and serve the public, then we are right back where we started before Carnegie and Best Practices – not doing right by our students, our communities and our profession. There must be a way to advance legal education into (at least) the 20th century if not the 21st without doing harm.

What do you think?

Filed under: Catalysts For Change | 1 Comment »

ABA Curriculum Survey Coming!

Posted on May 24, 2010 by Antoinette Sedillo Lopez

Catherine Carpenter is chairing the ABA Curriculum Committee, which is gearing up for an update of its 5 year old curriculum survey. Last time the major curricular change was the increase in the number of clinical programs. It will be interesting to see how law school offerings have changed in the last five years and whether these changes are in the direction of best practices. Catherine has led the committee through the updating of the last survey instrument and we have added some questions that seem of interest.

Here is the timeline for the Committee:

June 15 – August 1 Test the Survey instrument with a group of 15 diverse law schools

August 1 – Sept 15 Revise the Survey instrument based on the feedback received from the testing group

Sept 15 – Dec 2010 Launch Survey to all law schools with a three month window to return the Questionnaires

Jan-July 2011 Analyze the data results and draft the narratives that accompany each section

Fall 2011 Prepare the Report for Publication

Be on the look out for it! The last report was very interesting and I think this one will even be more interesting for those who care about legal education.

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Catalysts For Change, Uncategorized | Comments Off on ABA Curriculum Survey Coming!

Imagine…Learning from Real Life

Posted on March 12, 2010 by Justin Myers

Students choose to enroll in law school. They arrive on the first day excited to begin learning the law.  Unfortunately, most students lose this excitement for learning somewhere on the road to graduation, and instead, turn their interest to actually practicing.  In a recent article, Critical Enculturation: Using Problems to Teach Law, Professor Keith Hirokawa of Albany Law School demonstrates how Problem-Based Learning (PBL) can push students to once again engage their education in law with passion — passion for their chosen profession and the subject matter at hand. 

Professor Hirokawa uses his land use planning course to illustrate the PBL approach, and provides several examples of activities that force students to tackle issues that the students could conceivably face as clients. The activities include: requiring students to determine whether she would be able to hang a shingle and open a solo law practice at her residence; turning the classroom into multiple zoning districts; and assigning students to advocacy groups to represent the interests of identified clients in case simulations.

Professor Hirokawa is not the only professor at Albany Law School who is writing about engaged teaching and innovative activities in scholarly papers.  Associate Dean Patricia Salkin (a frequent contributor to this blog) believes that courses in Land Use Planning can be the perfect ground for implementing the strategies of Best Practices. Dean Salkin states that “unique opportunit[ies] exist through the application of many “best practices” concepts for land use law faculty to lead the academy in reinventing curriculum and teaching strategies to better prepare students for the practice of law” in her new paper,  Practically Grounded: Convergence of Land Use Law Pedagogy and Best Practices, which is co-authored by John R. Nolon.

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

Of Business Models and Best Practices

Posted on March 9, 2010 by dmaranville

My dean just forwarded the announcement below about a contest/series of conferences & working sessions hosted by NY and Harvard Law Schools over the next year to generate ideas about new business models for law schools and concrete steps to implement them.  Though the announcement focuses on “business models,”  the first sentence on the webpage link is “Got an idea about the future of U.S. legal education? Think it’s time to go clinical? Or global? Or virtual?”

What’s the relationship between our law school business models and best educational practices?  Unfortunately, the first session conflicts with the Minnesota Experiential Renaissance Roundtable on April 9 and 10, so I won’t be able to find out by attending the conference.  Look forward to getting the skinny from the rest of you!

“New York Law School – April 9-10

Harvard Law School – October 15-16

New York Law School and Harvard Law School are hosting a year-long contest of ideas about legal education. The goal is to come up with operational alternatives to the traditional law school business model and to identify concrete steps for the implementation of new designs. The kickoff event is a two-day conference for educators, employers, and regulators at New York Law School on April 9-10, 2010, to identify problems, innovations and constraints, and to organize working groups to develop designs and strategies for implementation. Working groups will refine their ideas and reconvene for a second meeting at Harvard Law School on October 15-16, 2010. Final designs will be presented, with commentary, at New York Law School in April, 2011.

Interested? Questions? Please visit http://www.nyls.edu/futureed”



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

Clinical Theory Workshop 25th Anniversary Celebration and Conference

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Carolyn Grose

 Dear members and friends of the Clinical Theory Workshops:

             I’m happy to tell you that this year, 2010, marks the 25th anniversary of the Clinical Theory Workshop series. In honor of this birthday, I propose to throw a party – that is, to hold a conference – and I’m writing to invite you to participate.

             The theme of the conference follows from the nature of the occasion. We have been meeting to discuss works of clinical scholarship for a quarter-century, and along the way many of us have also written clinical scholarship ourselves. Our meetings have been fun; we are a community; but what have we discerned over the years? That’s the question for the conference. Put more formally, our theme will be: “Twenty-five years of clinical scholarship: What have we learned, and what should we work on next?”

             We will meet at New York Law School on Continue reading →

Filed under: Catalysts For Change | 1 Comment »

Best Practices for Legal Education in Monterrey, Mexico

Posted on February 14, 2010 by Antoinette Sedillo Lopez

The States in Mexico are, one by one, revising their criminal law and criminal procedure codes to change from an inquisitional, written system to an adversarial system with oral trials. Of course, this transformation is a major change in their legal culture. And, the law school leaders in Mexico understand that this shift requires that they change their approach to legal education. Lectures about legal doctrines made sense when lawyers were only called upon to prepare legal documents. Now that lawyers who represent criminal defendants will have to present opening arguments, direct examinations, cross examinations and closing arguments, law students need to develop different skills. I was very privileged to travel to Monterrey, Mexico with Professor Catherine Carpenter of Southwestern Law School to provide a training session about teaching to prepare students for the practice of law in an adversary system. The session was organized by Maestro Manuel Caloca at the Casa de la Cultura Juridica de la Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nacion (The House of Judicial Culture of the National Supreme Court).

This gave me a wonderful opportunity to talk about Best Practices for Legal Education. I pointed out that the whole book is available on line. As for our training, Catherine and I role played a Socratic class. She did a superb job of questioning me about a criminal case involving involuntary manslaughter. I tried to throw her a couple of curve balls, but she caught them and effectively tossed them back. She is an extremely engaging teacher in the best tradition of Best Practices and I was very pleased that she was the model of the Socratic Method. I then had the opportunity to talk about clinical legal education and skills training through use of simulations and in the tradition of leaning by doing, we used the case Catherine taught through the Socratic method to have them prepare a direct examination and a cross examination of the defendant. I was pleased to see how engaged and motivated they were. They had a lot of questions about teaching and it was obvious that they all care very much about teaching. One of the law teachers described how she used skits to get the students to learn about the adversary system and her students prepared videos of their skits that she can use to teach other students. I was also pleased to reconnect with a long time friend who is a professor at the University of Guanajuao, Juan Manuel Olvera. The mock trial team he coached from the University of Guanajuato recently won the national mock trial competition!

Catherine also presented her work as author of the ABA curriculum report and also some insights in her role as chair of the Accreditation Committee of the ABA. Of course, because Mexico’s legal education is a five year program after high school, the context is quite different, but the faculty was very interested in trends in legal education in the United States. And, that trend is actually consistent with Mexico’s reform: focusing on improving the preparation of law students for the practice of law.

We also met Luis Fernando Perez Hurtado who is the Director of a non-profit Center for the Study of Law Teaching and Learning (Centro de Estudios sobre la Ensenanza y el Aprendizaje del Derecho). His non –governmental organization’s mission is to improve legal education and he was very pleased to learn about the Best Practices for Legal Education. I wouldn’t be surprised if it is translated into Spanish. It is really exciting to think that the Best Practices “movement” might have a role in transforming legal education in Mexico. It will be intriguing to see how the adversary system develops in Mexico and how law schools change to prepare students for the change.

Filed under: Best Practices, Diversity & Social Justice, Catalysts For Change, International Initiatives and Models, Uncategorized | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

Updating Institutional Responses to Best Practices

Posted on February 2, 2010 by Mary A. Lynch

St. John’s U Law School Professor Gina Calabrese posted this query to the clinic listserv:  

“I’d like to hear from other clinicians whose schools are taking
steps to study and implement the Best Practices report.  What
is being done, what issues are being raised?” 

I think this would make a good public discussion.  We know that U of Dayton has created the “Lawyer as Problem Solver” Program (http://law.udayton.edu/prospectivestudents).  And,everyone has heard about Washington & Lee’s 3rd year reform. (http://law.wlu.edu/thirdyear).  

However, these schools are not the only ones engaged in change. Much energy and work and thinking and reform is occurring without fanfare or media attention – so here is your chance to share news about your school!

Let’s see if we can get at least 50 schools to report! I’ll start with ALBANY LAW: 

ALBANY – the Dean has established a Center for Excellence in Law Teaching to document ongoing reform and to support teaching and curriculum enhancement.  ( see www.teachinglawstudents.com and click on Albany Law Initiatives or go straight to http://www.albanylaw.edu/sub.php?navigation_id=1717 ).

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Catalysts For Change | 4 Comments »

Who are the “Best Law Teachers”?

Posted on January 14, 2010 by Justin Myers

In 2008, Michael Hunter Schwartz, of Washburn Law School, began soliciting nominations for a study of the Best Law Teachers in this country based on Ken Bain’s book, What the Best College Teachers Do (2004).  Professor Schwartz has recently enlisted Best Practices Blog contributors Sophie Sparrow of Franklin Pierce and Gerry Hess of Gonzaga as co-authors and investigators.

While more than 250 nominations have been collected thus far, there is only a short time left to nominate others at “Best Law Teachers.”  Deadline for nominations is April 1, 2010 (no joke).  Professor Schwartz and company have already begun studying several of the Best Law Teachers and expect to continue their examinations this spring. 

For general information about the study, a list of nominees, and a link to the nomination form, please go to http://washburnlaw.edu/bestlawteachers/.

Filed under: Catalysts For Change, Teaching Methodology | Comments Off on Who are the “Best Law Teachers”?

Washington & Lee’s New 3rd Year Curriculum

Posted on December 21, 2009 by Justin Myers

Washington & Lee has implemented a new third year curriculum focused on experiential learning.   The Washington Post covered this story here.   But more interesting is the ongoing conversation had on the Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog on whether the 3rd year of law school is really necessary.  See “Is W&L Already providing the 3L Experience of the Future?” .

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Catalysts For Change | Comments Off on Washington & Lee’s New 3rd Year Curriculum

How Far Will California-Irvine Go?

Posted on December 14, 2009 by Roy Stuckey

An article in the August, 2009, ABA Journal profiled the new law school at the University of California at Irvine which  was entering its first year.  The article reported some interesting things, including a claim that “it is designed to be among the most innovative law schools in the nation.”  Dean Erwin Chemerinsky was quoted as saying, “We have  the wonderful benefit of a blank slate and the chance to create the ideal law school for the 21st century.”  The article, however, was thin on details about plans for the curriculum.

The article reported that there will be a two semester “professionalism” course in the first year in which practictioners from many areas of practice will help students “gain a sense of the different kinds of work the profession does.”  First year students will also be required to conduct intake interviews for legal aid clients.  Two years from now, the school will require students to spend a semester in one of the eight planned in-house clinics.

So far, so good, but it is not clear how committed the school really is to innovative teaching or experiential learning.  There was no mention in the article or on the school’s website as to whether the school has clearly articulated its educational objectives or whether the program of instruction will progressively develop knowledge, skill, and values or integrate the teaching of theory, doctrine, and practice.

The Associate Dean of Clinical Education and Service Learning Programs, Carrie Hempel (formerly at Southern California) was quoted as saying that she gets the “chance to recruit a group of the finest clinicians in the country to come here and build their own dream clinical courses.”  Allowing people to come in and build their own courses does not sound like there will be a program of progressive learning into which these courses will fit.  Most unfortunately, the article makes it sound like there will be a group of people identified as “clinicians” rather than members of the faculty who happen to teach clinical courses.  I hope I am wrong.

It is not apparent that classroom instruction will be any more innovative or skilled than at traditional law schools.  The first members of the faculty were largely recruited from elite law schools, including Berkeley and Duke.  As a group, the faculty ranks 10th in the nation in ”scholarly impact,” and UC-Irvine intends to be considered an elite law school from the beginning.  All members of the faculty may be excellent teachers who are devoted to preparing students for practice, but there is no mention of this in the article or on the school’s website.

Will UC-Irvine’s law school really be an innovative place that can legitimately claim to be the ideal school for the 21st century?  I hope so, but it is too early to tell.  Meanwhile, if anyone has more details about the curriculum, please share it with us.

Roy

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Catalysts For Change, First Year Law School Innovations | 5 Comments »

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