Best Practices for Legal Education

Many of us have spent decades critiquing the bar exam, and particularly the MBE’s multiple choice question content and format. In How to Build a Better Bar Exam, a short essay written with Professors Carol Chomsky and Eileen Kaufman, we discuss two law licensing exams that provide concrete examples of how to address some of those critiques.

Abstract

Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off on Concrete Suggestions for Bar Exam Reform

By Sara Berman and Andrea[Andi] Curcio

Today’s students are more diverse, raised on the Internet and social media, used to skimming rather than reading closely, communicate via texts, tweets and gifs, and often learn from youtube videos. Many students grew up with helicopter parents who continue to make decisions for and intervene on behalf of their adult children. So, how do we reach these students and help them become professional, responsible, ethical, good lawyers?

Below, we provide three teaching tips for the new academic year. These are not global solutions. Instead, they are simple, easily implementable suggestions that may help address certain aspects of the significant, complex, and nuanced challenges the academy faces in effectively educating today’s students.

I. Belonging/community creates success

Claude Steele and Josh Aronson educated us about stereotype threat and its negative affects on student performance. As one group of researchers notes, “one consequence of negative stereotypes is to cause people to wonder if they will be fully included and valued in an academic environment.”

The literature suggests that feeling one does not belong triggers a series of stress reactions that may affect motivation and academic success, as well as physical health and psychological well being.

While schools need to develop structures that create a sense of community and belonging for all students, faculty can take some simple steps to create a sense of belonging in our classrooms. As researchers note, one of the first steps is to correctly pronounce all students’ names.

The Importance of Learning to Pronounce Names

Correctly pronouncing a person’s name indicates a respect for that person and provides a clear signal that the person “belongs” in your classroom. Consistently mispronouncing names sends the opposite message.

Some faculty members may avoid calling on students with names they find difficult to pronounce because they don’t want to embarrass themselves or the student. While students may fear being called on, they also expect it. Not calling on students sends a message that those students do not belong in your classroom or in law school.

Finally, students get to know one another when they hear each other called on by name. When you correctly pronounce a student’s name, his or her colleagues will do the same. This facilitates out-of-class socialization, including forming study groups.

Tip: Pass out index cards and ask each student to phonetically spell his or her name.

On the first day of class, distribute index cards and ask each student to phonetically spell his or her name. Use the cards to practice pronouncing students’ names in your office, and use them when calling on students until you feel comfortable pronouncing their names. Invite students to let you know if you mispronounce their names and make notes on the card to help you get it right next time.

Making an effort to correctly pronounce all students’ names sends a message to your students that you care about them, that you are willing to learn that which is initially unfamiliar to you, and that all students in your class belong there.

II. Empower students to find their own answers

Many students have grown up with “helicopter parents” – parents described by one set of researchers as being “high on warmth/support, high on control, and low on granting autonomy”. As Professor Palmer notes, this type of parenting potentially produces law students with limited critical thinking and problem solving skills. It also means that some students enter law school, expecting the same level of assistance from faculty as they got from their parents.

Many of today’s students need training on how to become expert, self-regulated learners who engage in independent problem solving. Numerous articles, including those by Professor Palmer and Professor Ritter suggest ways to help law students develop into professionals able to think critically and engage in independent problem solving. Again, here we focus on just one easily implementable tip.

Tip: When a student asks or emails you a question, try not to be a “helicopter professor.”

Respond Promptly but Not Immediately

Instead of immediately answering, take a few hours to see if the student resolves the question on his or her own. (How many times have you received a second email from a student two minutes after a first saying that the student found the answer so “never mind.”)

Encourage The Student To Find The Answer

If a student does not resolve the issue initially on his or her own, engage the student in the process of finding the answer him or herself. You might use a technique similar to the Socractic method we use to help students discover and understand doctrinal complexities, asking the student to consider where he or she might find the answer.

Manage expectations by letting the class know that, as part of a deliberate plan to help them develop into problem solving lawyers, you will not directly answer questions that you have already provided answers to in class resources. (E.g. you will not tell them something that is in the syllabus.) Also let them know that they learn best if they figure out the answer to complex questions on their own and that you will help them by asking questions that challenge them to do that.

Recognize that Students May Need Guidance

When questions require searching beyond sources you have already provided (the syllabus and assigned texts and postings), recognize that students may not have a clue how to go about what seems like common sense research to us. Thus, consider recommending a specific treatise or encouraging the student to consult the research librarians. Then, invite the student to check back after their search if they still have questions or need further clarity.

Don’t Give In To Temptation

It may be hard to resist answering a question – especially when that answer is at our fingertips. It is almost always quicker to answer the question than work with the student as he or she tries to find the answer. Also, some faculty want to avoid seeming “mean”. Whatever the reason, try to avoid the temptation to automatically answer student questions. In the long run, answering questions rather than empowering students to find their own answers hurts more than it helps.

III. Push students to develop a command of legal terminology

Immersion in the language of law school has always been confusing, even for top students 40 years ago. Scott Turow, writing in his 1977 novel, One L, about his first year at Harvard law school describes learning what he calls “Legal” as “a second language.” Turow notes, “Legal bore some relation to English,” but it twists and turns in ways that make it resemble a “very peculiar” “dialect,” one in which even familiar words may have different meanings.

Today’s students are likely to find terminology even more challenging than students in prior generations as many modern students enter law school without a strong civics foundations. As Professor Flanagan notes, “College graduates are unprepared to master “thinking like a lawyer” because they lack the fundamental thinking, reading, and writing skills that form the foundation for learning in law school.” Though dictionaries are with them at all times (on omnipresent phones), they seem

to consult them less frequently than those of us who lugged around hardback copies of Black’s Law Dictionary.

Tip: Require students to create and record short [1 to 2 minute] videos in which they explain and contextualize important legal terms in plain English

Using Familiar Tools to Connect Fluency in Legal Terminology to Law Practice

Students all have cellphones and most record videos of themselves and their friends. This exercise uses those tools to help students create fluency and deeper understanding of legal terminology.

This active learning, plain English translation exercise will help the terminology stick because it requires first understanding the terms and then being able to explain them in context. It also contributes to professional identity and community building as students see and hear themselves, and each other, using words in an actual (simulated) lawyering context.

Encourage students to be creative, working alone or in pairs, and write and act out a “mini script” that simulates a conversation explaining and using the term in context with a lay person they might encounter in practice such as a potential future client, an IT person at their future law firm, a witness, juror, or non lawyer expert. Creating “real life” scenarios helps students understand that this exercise is not “busy work” but instead is a building block in learning critical lawyering skills.

For those students who need additional reasons to master “legalese” generally as well as the specific terminology associated with your course, remind them that mastery not only empowers them to get more out of, and connect on a deeper level with, their studies, it also will likely help them get a better grade on your final and help prepare them to pass the bar exam.

Use the Videos as A Class Learning Experience

You may require everyone to turn in one video, or decide to give extra or participation credit for completing a set of 5-10 such videos. The videos can help both the students making them and their colleagues.

Alert students to the fact that you will post their videos on a private YouTube channel, or on TWEN, BlackBoard or whatever online system you use for other class materials. Your IT person can easily show you how to do this.

While you could provide feedback on each video, or a sample of videos, another option is to post the videos to a class video library with a discussion board. This shows students their work is being seen. It also allows them to constructively comment on each other’s videos, and it creates an “online class dictionary.”

You may want to ask students’ permission to use their videos in future classes so that you can show the best clips to future students. (Most will readily agree and will probably take the exercise even more seriously knowing you plan to use them in the future, and they will likely appreciate that you are taking their work seriously too.)

IV. Share Your Own Tips

Each of the tips discussed above are relatively easy to implement and have a potential high payoff in student engagement and learning, community building, and the creation of professional identity. We know you have other tips and hope you will share those with all of us.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

I have written a lot about teaching millennials in my scholarship and prior posts. Now I’m realizing it is time to start thinking about the next generation that will hit law school: Generation Z (“Gen Z”). Gen Z was born between 1998 and 2016, so its oldest members are close to 21 years old right now. So, they will be in law school soon.

What can we expect from them? Gen Z has only known a world of terrorism, recession, racial unrest, corporate scandals, under-employment and uncertainty. They’ve also only known a world of portable devices, multi-tasking, social media, and complex social issues. Similar to millennials, technology has shaped their daily lives and their world view. They do not know of a time before the internet, they like to stream content, often in small bits, like through YouTube, and consume most technology on their phones and computers. While some of us, for example, may seek “how to” information in a brochure or pamphlet, or even an online manual, Gen Z will often look for this same kind of information on YouTube. They like to learn by seeing, not just reading or listening. Gen Z uses social media differently than millennials, as they are more aware of the public nature of their posts. Gen Z also embraces diversity. This may be because they are the most racially diverse generation in America. Members of Gen Z are also more likely to say they have friends of a different sexual orientation. Although they are too young to be thinking of marriage themselves, their preference for inclusion means they strongly support marriage equality.  They enjoy group work and collaboration, so long as they see the greater goal to be achieved by the work.

What does all this mean for teaching?  The experience of learning is important to a Gen Z student. They do not want to sit through a long lecture, when they can watch  the same content through multiple engaging podcasts, or videos. So, for educators, the question is, how can we engage this learner without compromising the educational process?

• Allow technology use to take advantage of their drive for self-learning. Instead of taking devices away in the classroom, incorporate them into activities that promote and teach searching for and recognizing credible information.
• Build a connection with students beyond the walls of the classroom. A Gen Z learner is constantly connected to their social network. Consider using social apps for questions. For some learners, this may be the most comfortable way for them to ask questions.
• Lastly, try breaking content down into sizeable bites. Capture their attention with visuals. Gen Z prefers microlearning, though you’ll need to remind them of the bigger context. Keeping it simple, but sparking their curiosity can hook them into paying attention.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

The new academic year will begin soon (yikes!) and you may be finishing your syllabi for the fall semester.

If you want to help your students get a better understanding of the real world of practice in a wide range of courses, you can include a Stone Soup Project assignment in your courses by having students conduct interviews and/or observe court proceedings.

In some courses, you might assign students to interview lawyers or professionals that lawyers often work with.  In many courses, you might assign students to interview friends or relatives to get clients’ perspectives, which is too often missing in legal education.  Stone Soup has been used successfully in clinical and externship courses as students conduct focused interviews of supervisors or clients.

Last year, the project has engaged about 1000 students in 40 classes covering 12 subjects, taught by 32 faculty from 25 schools in 3 countries.  This is an understatement because some colleagues have essentially used Stone Soup assignments for years, well before the Stone Soup Project started, and they aren’t included in these figures.  Although faculty used Stone Soup mostly in traditional ADR courses, they also used it in other courses including in access to justice, evidence, externship, and trusts and estates courses.

This post provides links to resources that make it easy for you to use a Stone Soup assignment.

This post describes how faculty could use Stone Soup assignments in 1L courses and includes model assignments tailored to contracts, property, torts, civil procedure, and criminal law courses.  In contracts, property, and torts classes, students may be able to interview friends or relatives about their experiences.  In civ pro, students (perhaps in groups) can interview lawyers about strategy in handling pleading, discovery, motions, or other civ pro issues.  In criminal law, students can observe court proceedings in criminal law matters.  This post suggests that faculty require students to do interviews in these courses (or court observations in criminal law courses) but not require students to write papers or be graded on these assignments.  It explains why – perhaps counterintuitively – students could get a lot of benefit from doing these assignments very early in a course, before they learn the legal rules.

This post suggests ideas for faculty to use Stone Soup assignments in 2L and 3L courses, with specific suggestions for administrative law, bankruptcy, business organizations, commercial transactions, consumer protection, employment discrimination, evidence, family law, insurance, interviewing and counseling, labor law, landlord-tenant law, pretrial litigation, professional responsibility, real estate, tax, and trusts and estates courses.  You could use Stone Soup in other upper level courses as well.  As with 1L courses, you may want students to conduct interviews or observations early in the course and without requiring students to write papers.

This post collects faculty assessments of their Stone Soup experiences, including the assignments that faculty used and discussion of what worked well and what they might do differently in the future.

Here’s a table identifying characteristics of Stone Soup courses and providing links to faculty assessments of the courses.  For each course, the table shows the class size; whether the assignment was required, an option, or extra credit;  paper length (if any); due date; percentage of the grade allocated to the assignment (if any); and whether the assignment was discussed in class.

This post provides specific suggestions based on faculty assessments.  Here’s some key advice based on faculty’s experiences.

This post provides a complete set of documents to help you plan a Stone Soup assignment.  It includes: (1) guidance in developing these assignments, (2) a general model for an interview assignment, (3) guidance for students in conducting and summarizing interviews, (4) a model invitation for an interview, (5) a summary of professional ethics rules about confidentiality (indicating that professionals can discuss case information if they don’t include information that could reasonably identify the parties), (6) model paper format, (7) two sample grading rubrics, and (8) a consent form for students who want to share their papers publicly.

This post includes exemplary papers from negotiation (5), trusts and estates (3), and evidence (3) courses.  These papers can give you ideas about what you might want students to do in papers for your courses and you could suggest that students might use certain papers as models for the kind of analysis you want them to do.

If you would like to use a Stone Soup assignment in one or more of your courses next year,  please email me to let me know which course(s) and semester(s) so that we can include you in an updated roster of Stone Soup faculty.

If you have any questions or would like to discuss how you might use Stone Soup in your courses, feel free to email me.

I hope you enjoy the rest of the summer.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off on An Easy Way for Your Students to Learn More about Actual Legal Practice

This past June, I had the pleasure of participating in the Integrating Positive Psychology into Legal Education conference at Suffolk Law School, organized by Professor Lisle Baker.[1] Each of the twenty or so participants in the conference were tasked with preparing a two-page “Advisory” as well as a nine-minute presentation, designed to improve student well-being.  I chose to write and present on Overcoming Procrastination.

In her terrific MOOC, Learning How to Learn,[2] and companion book, A Mind for Numbers,[3] Barbara Oakley shares a powerful technique for overcoming procrastination: the Pomodoro Technique, invented by Francesco Cirillo in the 1980s.[4]  Cirillo used a kitchen timer, shaped like a tomato, thus its name.  The technique is simple:

• If you find yourself avoiding work you should be doing, commit to spending 25 minutes working as intensely as possible on that assignment or project.
• Use a kitchen timer or app on your phone to time yourself.
• Before you begin the work, however, think of some reward (Ice cream? Web surfing? A walk in the park?) you will give yourself when the 25 minutes are up.
• And even if at the end of the 25 minutes you want to keep going—stop and give yourself that reward!

Oakley explains that when human beings are faced with assignments, projects, tasks that they aren’t intrinsically motivated to complete (like your students’ Contracts reading, or your tenure article, perhaps?), the pain center in our brain lights up.[5]  So we put off the task because few of us enjoy pain.  Instead, we look to do something that gives us pleasure.  Once we actually sit down and focus on the dreaded task, however, the pain often disappears.  As one expert has noted, “The dread of doing a task uses up more time and energy than doing the task itself.”[6]

And even if the task remains unpleasant, almost any of us can suffer for twenty-five minutes.  And then there’s the dish of ice cream, a walk in the park, or ten to fifteen minutes of guilt-free web-surfing!  Just anticipating that reward helps ease our suffering.

Furthermore, brief study sessions followed by a break improve our students’ learning and fix what they are focused on into their long-term memory, as it allows time for whatever they are studying to “sink in,” so that when they return to task, refreshed, they find they understand the material better than when they left it. That’s because breaks from task allow our brains to process what we are learning, or work on solving a complex problem, while we are focused on something else.[7]

Oakley, who readily admits to being a first-class procrastinator, says that science doesn’t yet know exactly why 25-minute increments work so well, but it is widely found that they do. But she offers certain caveats, useful to those of us among us who procrastinate, as well as our students.  First, sometimes it may make more sense to use somewhat longer periods of time, depending on the task.  Oakley also admits that if she finds herself in a state of flow[8] she may keep going, deferring her reward.[9]  She posits that it takes about 20 minutes for the anticipatory pain to dissipate, so by the time you are in the last five minutes, you may well find yourself in that rewarding flow state.[10]

Oakley emphasizes that one needs to stay focused on the time, not on the task.  By doing so, one can proceed more deliberately, and thus produce better results.[11]

The Pomodoro technique is widely used, with variations in its application.  In an excellent seven-minute video, Thomas Frank offers good, practical suggestions, such as keeping a list of whatever distractions come into our mind while we are in our Pomodoro session.  This moves the distractions from our mind to paper, thus facilitating our return to task.[12]

In a very entertaining 14-minute TED talk, blogger Tim Urban, a self-proclaimed master procrastinator, argues that leaving things to the last minute generally isn’t a problem for him when he has a deadline, but it definitely is when there is none.  Thus, it can be a major problem in achieving one’s long-term or life goals.  Nor does Urban suggest that he does his best work when he leaves it to the last minute, which he demonstrates with great humor.  If you decide to try the Pomodoro technique yourself, I recommend checking out Urban’s talk as your reward after working your intensive 25 minutes![13]

[1] R. Lisle Baker, Suffolk Law School in Boston, https://www.suffolk.edu/law/faculty/Lisle_Baker.php.

[2] Barbara Oakley, Learning how to Learn, https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn/lecture/Dci3o/a-procrastination-preview.

[3] Barbara Oakley, A Mind For Numbers (2014).  This book is useful for anyone interested in how the brain learns, retains, and retrieves information, whether you ever have the need to solve a complicated math problem.  It was one of two books on the science of learning our then new Dean, Harry Ballan, gifted to members of the faculty in December 2016; the other was Peter C. Brown, Make it Stick (2014).

[4] Francesco Cirillo, The Pomodoro Technique, Work Smarter, not Harder https://francescocirillo.com/pages/pomodoro-technique.

[5] Not a literal pain center, but we feel discomfort, and our primitive brain (our amygdala) seeks to avoid that discomfort.

[6] Oakley, supra note 3, at 85 (quoting Rita Emmett).

[7] To understand how and why that happens, and for many other excellent tips on improving learning, I heartily recommend Professor Oakley’s free Coursera MOOC and/or book.  See Oakley, Learning how to Learn, supra note 2; Oakley, A Mind for Numbers, supra note 3.  See also Pam Armstrong’s May 15, 2018 blog post on this site, Mixing It Up: Interweaving Lecture/Lesson and Retrieval Practice for Better Test Results.

[8] Barbara Oakley, Brain Training to Beat Procrastination with the World’s Easiest Learning Technique, The Big Think, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTQDaUQ9MAU (3 ½ minutes).

[9] Researchers at MIT have determined that studying in blocks of one hour—50 minutes of study with a ten-minute break is optimal for effective focus and learning.  Effective Breaks, Study Tips, http://uaap.mit.edu/tutoring-support/study-tips/tooling-and-studying/tooling-and-studying-effective-breaks.

[10] Oakley, supra note 8.

[11] Here there might be some disagreement between Oakley and the technique’s founder, Francesco Cirillo.  Cirillo does focus on the end product, and his steps include calculating how many Pomodoros one will need to accomplish a task, presumably by a set deadline.  See Cirillo, supra note 4.

[12] Frank notes that procrastination operates differently for different people.  For him, it’s only a problem getting started.  The Pomodoro technique helps him get over that hump.  Thomas Frank, How to Stop Procrastinating: The Pomodoro Technique, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0k0TQfZGSc.

[13] Tim Urban, Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arj7oStGLkU.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Small group work in large lecture courses can be very powerful. In my Professional Responsibility course this past semester, I had 74 students and many hailed from other countries. I wanted to get them talking to each other about the material, not just passively listening to me. Small group work so integral to law school clinical teaching that we rarely pause to break it down. But the use of small groups in traditional law school courses has been growing–see, e.g., this Harvard Law School blog describing the work of a fellow Penn State prof; and this piece on small group work in Professional Responsibility courses from Albany Law’s Center for Excellence in Teaching. In my Professional Responsibility course last semester, I started with two small exercises:

Problem-Based Group Exercise: Early in the term, I broke the 74 students into 10 random groups by doing an old-fashioned “count-off” around the room. Each group received a hard copy of a PowerPoint slide projected in the classroom, containing 2 multiple choice questions from my previous exams. Both questions were directly related to the material I had covered in the first half of class that day. I sent the groups to the 4 corners of our large room, and nearby empty classrooms and hallways, for 15 minutes of discussing the questions. Upon their return, I reviewed the questions and did straw polls for the correct answer(s). I explained the correct answers, and a lively dialogue ensued about why those were the “best” or “least bad” choices, which led into a test-taking discussion. What did I learn? Budget more time for the test-taking discussion, and reserve quiet space for each group in advance. Still, the student response was very positive overall.

Legal System/Self-Regulation Discussion: Near the end of the semester, I broke the students into 6 larger groups alphabetically by last name. I gave them hard copies of question prompts about ethical dilemmas and social justice posed by the day’s assigned reading. The prompt instructed them to prepare to report back to the entire class, in any way they chose. I gave them 20 minutes to discuss, and we took another 40 minutes for the report-back. Redundancy was a slight problem, but the variations in styles of reporting back were impressive. What did I learn? Giving two or three different prompts among the groups could reduce redundancy; and assigning the project in advance would give them time to produce more polished report-backs and enable absent students to participate.

The benefits of small group work in a law school classroom go beyond the obvious “active learning is more effective than passive learning.” Connecting with other humans to solve a problem affecting the larger group is a microcosm of the practice of law. Are you using small group work in your large courses? Do you assign point values to the group work? How far in advance do you announce it? Does it work better in first-year courses or upper-level courses for you? Drop me a comment about how you are finding strength in small numbers!

Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Written by Albany Law School Professor of Law Melissa Breger 

My colleagues Professors Gina Calabrese and Theresa Hughes and I wrote a law review article almost 15 years ago that still holds true today. The South Carolina Law Review 2004 article was entitled Teaching Professionalism in Context:  Insights from Students, Clients, Adversaries and Judges.

In the article’s introduction, we acknowledge, “professionalism holds various meanings and the contextual nature of professionalism requires a definitional reshaping as circumstances and players change.”  In writing the piece, we note that one of our goals is ascertaining a myriad of ways to teach law students about the concept of professionalism.  At the time, we were all three clinical law professors drawing from our years of teaching in a clinical setting, as well as our earlier years of law practice in New York City.

As one of many examples, we assert that in the same way patients respond to a physician’s bedside manner, lawyers and law students should work on what we termed their “bench-side” manner.  We drew our inspiration from a 1997 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and written by Dr. Wendy Levinson et al. – which studied scores of doctors and their patients and tracked which doctors had never been sued for malpractice.  In addressing Levinson et al.’s work, we noted:  

“Physicians who had never been subject to malpractice litigation were found to have engaged in significantly longer visits with their patients. Patients and families medical treatment resulted in a negative outcome were more likely to sue their doctor if they felt the physician was not caring and compassionate. Although the purpose of this study was primarily to guide malpractice risk prevention, it also serves as a tool for educating the physician by providing an apparatus for producing greater patient satisfaction. The Levinson Study identified the specific and teachable communication behaviors associated with fewer malpractice claims, including facilitating comments, using emotional tone, interest in patient opinions, and utilizing humor, warmth, and friendliness. The physician’s bedside manner is analogous to what we label the lawyer’s benchside manner.”

While we caution against borrowing the medical analogy wholesale, we note that there are certainly parallels that could provide useful in a legal education setting.  Law students should be regularly assessing communication skills and client expectations when representing clients, particularly those clients who are in crisis.  

As we approach that time in the summer, when we start to think about fall and teaching aspiring lawyers for a new semester, we should keep in mind the thought that lawyering reaches beyond just knowing the law.

You can read the article here 

Breger, Melissa L. and Calabrese, Gina M. and Hughes, Theresa A., Teaching Professionalism in Context: Insights from Students, Clients, Adversaries and Judges. South Carolina Law Review, Vol. 55, pp. 303-347, January 2004. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=566061

Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off on TEACHING LAW STUDENTS TO HAVE A GOOD “BENCH-SIDE” MANNER

Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Written by Patricia Baia, PhD, Albany Law School’s Director of Online Learning and Instructional Technology

Teaching to the iGen (iGeneration, Plurals or Generation Z, born between 1995-2012, the generation after Millennials/GenerationY) is upon us and the rapid growth in mobile technologies has caused their understanding of the lines between academic, professional, and personal uses to be blurred. Legal educators interested in engaging this generation and increasing their learning can spend some time reflecting on their characteristics and experimenting with new teaching tools outlined below.

The iGen cohort are characteristically known for their short attention span and anti-social behaviors. This generation never knew a day without a smart phone or tablet, choose Snapchat over Facebook, think email is old technology, might someday be diagnosed with a gaming disorder, and spend more time on digital devices than with humans. iGens may not know how to write in cursive; were never taught with a chalkboard; never used a typewriter, calculator, or a wall phone; or took a test using a bubble sheet and # 2 pencil. They have always voted by electronic ballot, will never be able to celebrate a birth of a child in a hospital with a smoke, and may never know the time and effort put into making a mixed tape. Yes, I did make many mixed tapes! I am Generation X (born between 1965 and 1980, sometimes listed as 1965-1979); that’s what we did.

It is interesting to think about how technology has changed the lives of this cohort. Particularly, what is the impact of constant technological interruptions on this group’s concentration and performance? (Rosen, 2010) What will this mean for higher education, teaching and learning, and engagement? The 2018 Horizon Report Preview is a great resource summarizing the upcoming trends, challenges, and developments in educational technology.

To reach the iGeneration, it is good practice to incorporate Multimodal Teaching and Active Learning (Jewitt, 2006) approaches in both traditional and online courses. Multimodal Teaching gives students the opportunity to learn material through many different (and a combination of) sensory modalities. These can occur in a thoughtful way throughout a course, in an individual lesson, or within an assignment. This may be attractive to the iGens and a way to leverage their understanding of content. Active Learning can be simply defined as students “doing”; involving students directly in learning rather than passively receiving. This technique may help the iGens to concentrate and focus in. Together, the combination of these two pedagogies may help target different learning styles and reach this smart phone generation in a way they are familiar with. What would also be cool, is if you could reach them through their digital devices. Faculty can try various tools to increase understanding, engage a large classroom, create a more active/engaging lesson for a difficult topic, incorporate formative assessments, check understanding, etc. I have a large bag of ideas and strategies I use to teach and share with Albany Law faculty during the instructional design process (National Education Association has a great resource for this). One product that recently has been helpful (Yes, I am gifting you a practical resource. You’re welcome!) is called NearPod. Faculty can import pdfs, images, and PowerPoints into NearPod then add interactive features such as polling, quizzes, open ended questions, and 3D objects. Teachers use the interactive NearPod live in class and then (ok, this is the cool part) students can synchronize it with their mobile device[s] (i.e. laptop, tablet, iPhone, etc.) and participate. This is a fairly inexpensive tool (Check out: here for pricing structure). There is even a VR (Virtual Reality) component!! Now I am excited!! Are you? Check out here and here to learn more. There are certainly many other solutions that can do the same thing, or that you may already be using, but I think the simplicity of this product (for both the professor and student) is a big pro. Start off with the free (silver) version and go from there. A con (since I do not have anything to do with this company, I must also give you the naysayer view), the pre-created, ready- to-teach lessons may not be applicable to legal education.

So keep engaging students and think about the next generation coming in. The iGens seem to be this socially and technology connected group of students, with a wide thirst for input. I can’t help but think of Johnny #5, the robot (yes, I am talking about the movie Short Circuit), “…input, need more input.” We can use multimodal teaching and active learning techniques in our classrooms to give them the “input”. If you have not done so already, start planning for this generation, they are coming to your classroom soon.

References:

• [dvidgreen]. (2010, November 21). Short Circuit – Who’s Johnny (home) [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3rhtSToXto Jewitt, C. (2006). Technology, Literacy, Learning. London: Routledge.
• NEA, National Education Association. Higher Education Best Practices – Teaching & Learning. [accessed June 21 2018]. Retrieved from http://www.nea.org/home/33508.htm.
• NMC Horizon Report Preview. (2018). 2018 Higher Education Edition. NMC Horizon Project/Educause. [accessed June 20th 2018].Retrieved from: https://library.educause.edu/~/media/files/library/2018/4/previewhr2018.pdf.
• Rosen, L. (2010). Rewired: Understanding the iGeneration and the Way they Learn. St. Martin’s Griffin.
• Twenge, J. (2018). iGen: the Smartphone Generation . [accessed June 20th 2018].Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA8kZZS_bzc.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off on TEACHING TO THE SMART PHONE (iGen) GENERATION

So many events recently have made me think about perspective – the point from which people view the world, and that perspective’s import.  Perspective in the public is antipodal in far too many ways. Yet, to me, it seems obvious that lawyers must have as part of their professional identity – character and qualities that distinguish lawyers as professionals –  a more open-minded world view because of their responsibility to the legal system. Clearly, that professional identity needs fostering. Yes, developing that professional identity while a law student, maybe even checking it later as a lawyer, is probably more challenging today than ever. As at least one author points out[i] and a quick look at the news shows, professionalism of lawyers is not at its best – from lack of civility to over-contentiousness and a willingness to distort facts to win at all costs.  The risks when lawyers lack or lose sight of a bigger picture remind me of Thomas Hobbes’s question about how society can exist at all when everyone is driven by self-interest or self-focus.[ii]  Those concerns are at least as troubling today for law schools and their current and future students especially where law schools are viewed more as businesses, and students come in bargaining not so much for opportunities in an educational program or to work with a gifted scholar or teacher, but to demand more money to attend a school.[iii]  This apparent focus on self-interest (and I mean the statement as an observation, not a judgment here) when juxtaposed against a lawyer’s broader professional purpose, inevitably creates a kind of social dilemma[iv] for students if not for lawyers. Now is surely a time when more is needed from law schools to help students cultivate perspective given their future role in the legal system.

Historically, similar concern about the role of lawyers have been raised. “The law is the witness and external deposit of our moral life,” wrote Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in 1897;[v] which was in part to say that positions advocated and law that results reflect who we are as a civilization and that as lawyers, we bear responsibility for more than our own interests or even our client’s results.  In this context, after noting how a lawyer’s training is principally in logic and judicial decisions written in the “language of logic,” Holmes wrote, “Behind the logical form lies a judgment as to the relative worth and importance of competing [] grounds, often an inarticulate and unconscious judgment, it is true, and yet the very root and nerve of the whole proceeding.”[vi] Then, to encourage education toward that judgment beyond “textbooks and the case system, and all the machinery with which a student comes most immediately in contact,” Holmes wrote, “I cannot but believe that if the training of lawyers led them habitually to consider more definitively and explicitly the social advantages on which the rule they lay down must be justified, they sometimes would hesitate where now they are confident, and see that really they are taking sides upon debatable and often burning questions.”[vii] In other words, Holmes considered legal education the place to develop a perspective that also looks to social consequences more broadly and, as part of professional responsibility, to consider and weigh the impact.

Justice Cardozo similarly wrote of the legal profession itself, “Membership in the bar is a privilege burdened with conditions. A fair private and professional character is one of them.”[viii]  The Model Rules of Professional Responsibility Preamble in turn, reads, “A lawyer, as a member of the legal profession, is a representative of clients, an officer of the legal system, and a public citizen having special responsibility for the quality of justice.”  And, the ABA requires law schools to establish goals for student competency in not only substantive and procedural law, analysis, research, communications, but also ethical practice skills to fulfill responsibilities to clients and the legal system, as well as to establish goals in “other professional skills needed for competent and ethical participation as a member of the legal profession[ix].”  By setting such standards, including cultivating diversity, the legal profession, through the American Bar Association and the law schools it accredits, has provided a professional standard that requires lawyers, to be aware of, consider, and weigh broader social contexts and values.

Set against history, the standards’ language allows the inference then that competent and ethical membership in the profession – professional identity – is “fair personal character” and something in addition to “ethics” – the minimum standard of conduct and professionalism or civility[x].  Professional identity needs to include the internalized ability and willingness to both be aware of one’s own perspective and its effect as well as to consider and assign value to societal consequences.[xi] This combination of private and professional character would be in line with that suggested by Holmes and Cardozo. A lawyer’s habitual awareness of perspective and its effect, followed by intentional decision-making coupled with an attitude of respect toward others and the legal system seem a good starting point as components of professional identity. [xii]

One tool among several[xiii] to help students appreciate perspectives on the road to professional identity is social value orientation. Social value orientation is a construct derived from values research that measures perspective or motivations that influence actor behavior in relation to other actors when the outcomes and resource allocation[xiv] of their interaction are interdependent – a psychological categorization of perspectives that may underly say, use of the Risk-Utility balancing test, for example.  Within the social valuation orientation (SVO) framework, there are several categories of orientations including individualistic (pro-self); cooperative (prosocial); competitive (also pro-self); altruistic; self-sacrifice; equalitarian, and nihilism.[xv] One author provides the following overview of several main orientations.[xvi]

1. Generosity:
   • Enhancement of Outcomes for Other
2. Pro-social Orientation:
   • Enhancement of Joint Outcomes (Cooperation), and
   • Enhancement of Equality of Outcomes (Egalitarianism)
3. Individualism:
   • Enhancement of Outcomes for Self
4. Competition:
   • Enhancement of Relative Outcomes in Favor of Self
5. Aggression:
   • Reduction of Outcomes for Other

The middle three orientations are most common, and discussion here is limited to those.[xvii]

Briefly, then, for this purpose, social value orientation can be viewed in two broad categories: pro-self and pro-social, [xviii] and within each of those two broad categories, researchers have paired traits:  cooperative (pro-social); individualistic (pro-self), and competitive (pro-self).[xix]  For anyone who has taught negotiations starting somewhere in the last century (!), these categories sound familiar as negotiation perspectives (competitive-cooperative; adversarial-problem solving).  Generally speaking, most people’s orientation ranges, and some studies indicate no one is fully altruistic or cooperative, for example. Researchers have conducted extensive measurements of social value orientation and preferred outcomes over decades using a variety of measures.  One such relatively straight forward personal assessment tool includes a set of questions where the participant selects from three options that allocate points between self and others. Different “incentives” may be included.  For example, participants may be told that the more points they accumulate, the better for them and that the same is true for the “other.”  They may be told that the greater the difference in point spread, the better.  The measurement tool might look like this[xx]:

For each of the nine choice situations below, circle A, B or C, depending on which column you prefer most. Please proceed in the order the choices appear. (only three choice situations are given here.)

After nine such choice situations, the participant tallies up points – one per choice situation and then compare with the chart above.  Outcomes where six or more of the nine choices result in a point difference between self and other that most favors self is considered a “competitive” preference. (pro-self) Outcomes where six or more choices result in the most points or highest point outcome for self, represent an individualist preference.  (pro-self) Finally, outcomes where six or more choices result in equal distribution of points represent the cooperative or prosocial preference. Using a tool such as this, students, then, could be introduced to their own social value orientation by self-assessment. Of course, social value orientation varies by person and can vary by situation, so the object here is for students to become conscious of and pay attention to these perspectives. Notice, too, that social value orientation is not meant to address directly moral, religious, or other specific values. Social value orientation is meant to measure self-versus-other orientation as a base line. This base line can then be used to help students to see such orientations at work in the law and world and to begin their own professional identity development.

Social value orientation study is not new; it has been widespread for over forty years, though primarily in other social sciences. Social value orientation has been the subject of extensive empirical research in different settings ranging from public games to negotiations.[xxi] Research has also been conducted on how detection of another’s SVO can influence one’s own cooperation-competition behavior which for lawyers suggests a potential for losing oneself.[xxii]  On one extreme, for example, one who is highly competitive – perhaps considered aggressive, when confronted with what was perceived as the lack of another’s cooperation, responded with even greater competition.  The SVO categories are not nearly as rigid as they appear, and, like most things in social science, are open to interpretation. For example, zealously advancing a client’s agenda may be viewed as pro-self if the agenda is shared and part of the purpose is to earn the fee or if client stands in for the “self.” On the other hand, such representation may be considered prosocial because it is done for the other – the other being the client. This layer of assessment made be done even before considerating whether the result of representation will be prosocial or pro-self.  The study of SVO opens a door using shared language to examining perspective as a precursor to fostering further professional identity education.

At least one author who is a law professor[xxiii], Rebecca Hollander-Blumoff, has recently written in depth on social value orientation and the law from the perspective of connecting social value orientation to doctrine in corporate law, contract law, and family law.[xxiv] One of the several great take-aways from that article is the idea that social value orientation can be used as a discussion tool in substantive law courses to encourage students to consider context in understanding the development of law and to assess their own perspective and choices using a shared framework.  Social value orientation awareness and examination can happen in all classes and have the potential to broaden student’s minds to that bigger picture needed to be active members in our profession.  Such examination could lead students to be more conscious of their and others’ preferences and perhaps to re-examine choices in that light.  This awareness and re-examination are part of professional growth.  And, at some point, our integrity may require us all to re-check our social value orientation.

With more law school applicants coming to law school from business and other narrowly-focused specialty degrees and without a broad background in liberal arts or the humanities, we may be the last opportunity for students to be exposed to the kind of self and other examination needed for students to look out, rather than in. Our students then may be in a better position to more consciously develop qualities that prompt them to recognize their and others’ “unconscious [personal] judgment” and then use professional judgment considering broader societal impacts to have that “fair personal and professional character” necessary to fulfill our profession’s purposes.

At any rate, simply considering whether a given decision is pro-self or prosocial is an interesting exercise and worth taking a moment this summer to try[xxv].

[i] Debra Moss Curtis, “’No Shots, No School, No Kidding’: The Legal Profession Needs a Vaccine to Ensure Professionalism,” 28 U. Fla. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 1, 4 (2017).

[ii] Leviathan (1651)

[iii] I have not lost sight of student debt and its consequences. I also recognize there has been an uptick in law school applications since 2016 and hope that uptick is a sign of interest in participating in our legal system as a social institution more than as a means of making money – especially because until this year, students have had substantial debt at the same time few law firms had given substantial raises.

[iv] A social dilemma is a situation in which the interests of the collective and its individual members clash. In these situations, individuals typically are tempted to take actions that favor (sometimes even maximize) their short-term egocentric interests. However, if all group members adopt such behaviors, the group suffers since all its members are worse off than they could be by endorsing alternative prosocial actions that favor (sometimes even maximize) the collective interest.  Study of social value orientation can make these choices and consequences apparent.

[v] Oliver Wendell Homles Jr., “The Path of the Law,” 10 Harv. L. Rev. 457 ___ (1897).

[vi] Id. at ___

[vii] Id. at ____

[viii] Matter of Rouss, 221 N.Y. 81, 84 (1917) (citing Selling v. Radford, 243 U.S. 46, 47 (1917).

[ix] ABA Standards 301a and 302 a-d.

[x] At least two authors have suggested that law schools consider a person’s values (not in the sense of left or right), but in the sense of ability to integrate standards of norms and conduct beyond those merely required by ethics rules.  Marjorie Shultz & Sheldon Zedeck, “Predicting Lawyer Effectiveness:  Broadening the Basis for Law School Admissions Decisions,” 36 Law & Soc. Inquiry 620 (2011).

[xi] Model Rule of Professional Responsibility 202 – Counselor states: In representing a client, a lawyer shall exercise independent professional judgment and render candid advice. In rendering advice, a lawyer may refer not only to law but to other considerations such as moral, economic, social and political factors, that may be relevant to the client’s situation.” Although, the comment indicates a lawyer is not expected to give such advice unless asked by a client – an expectation that may warrant re-examination.

[xii]Early literature has touched on this combination when referring to cognitive bias and game theory, but social value orientation measures a more complex combination of factors.

[xiii] Just a few other examples include: helping students understand their intrinsic value system through mindfulness. Jan L. Jacobowitz, “Cultivating Professional Identity & Creating Community:  A Tale of Two Innovations”, 36 U. Ark. L. Rev. 319 (2014); finding happiness or personal value in being a lawyer, Steven Keeva, Transforming Practices – Finding Joy and Satisfaction in the Legal Life (2002); Lawrence S. Krrieger & Kennon M. Sheldon, “What Makes Lawyers Happy?: A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Professional Success,” 83 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 554 (2015); and habituating a commitment to purpose and professional development, several articles from the Georgia Symposium on Ethics and Professionalism in 68 Mercer L. Rev. 583 (2017), including Timothy W. Floyd & Kendall L. Kerew, “Making the Path from Law Student to Lawyer:  Using Field Placement Courses to Facilitate the Deliberate Exploration of Professional Identity and Purpose,” 68 Mercer L. Rev. 767 (2017) and Neil Hamilton, “Off-the-Shelf Formative Assessments to Help Each Student Develop Toward a Professional Formation/Ethical Professional Identity Learning Outcome of an Internalized Commitment to the Student’s Own Professional Development,” 68 Mercer L. Rev. 687 (2017)(with some great ideas for lessons).

[xiv] Preference for resource allocation and value assigned to potential outcomes of that distribution is the main focus of social value orientation study.  Resources are broadly defined and can include economic resources, but also such things as access to legal process, and perhaps the legal process itself.  The studies focus on outcomes – not on a strategy for allocation. Although, understanding social value orientation and the growing research on how the interplay between the parties prompts cooperative and competitive behavior in the other may provide a basis for strategy or to alter or adapt preferences. The studies do not, however, focus on whether one’s religion, or custom or personal morality are somehow preferable, nor does it directly measure orientation to those types of values.

[xv] Wing Tung Au and Jessica Y.Y. Kwong, “Measurements and Effects of Social-Value Orientation in Social Dilemas,” 71, Contemporary Research on Social Dilemmas (Suleiman et al eds 2004); Paul A.M. van Lange, “From Generosity to Aggression, Five Interpersonal Orientations Relevant to Social Dilemmas,” 3-9 Contemporary Research on Social Dilemmas (Suleiman et al eds 2004).

[xvi] Paul A.M. van Lange, “From Generosity to Aggression, Five Interpersonal Orientations Relevant to Social Dilemas,” at 9.

[xvii] Aggression – tendency to purposefully minimize outcomes for the other.

[xviii] Au & Kwong, at 71.

[xix] Id.

[xx]See, e.g., Ryan O. Murphy et al “Measuring Social Value Orientation,” 6 Judgment and Decision Making 771-781 (2011).

[xxi] Research in social value orientation considers many permutations and situations – integration of the orientations, consequences when competing orientations intersect, underlying relationships of participants, incorporation of other considerations such as risk preference or risk aversion, trust and trustworthiness, “tit for tat” strategies, effect of uncertainty, relationship between leader and group member, just to name a few.  This entry is meant solely to introduce the very basic concept of social value orientation.

[xxii] I’d note that one who is individualistic to the point of aggression is most likely to ramp up competition in the face of anything other than complete cooperation in the other.

[xxiii] Most material written on social value orientation comes from other disciplines and much of that comes from Europe.

[xxiv] Rebecca Hollander-Blumoff, “Social Value Orientation and the Law,” 59 William & Mary Law Review ___ (2017).  This is a great, in depth article.

[xxv] Figuring out social value orientation is a little like assessing body language in, say, your classroom for a new set of students – the results are fascinating if not distracting.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off on Considering Social Value Orientation as Part of Developing Professional Identity

As law schools engage in outcomes assessment a key question involves how to collect institutional data on student achievement.  In A Simple Low Cost Institutional Learning Outcomes Assessment Process, I suggest one way to engage in data collection that requires relatively little additional law faculty time, relatively minimal expense, and does not require faculty to change how we teach or assess in our own courses.

Law school institutional learning outcomes require measuring nuanced skills that develop over time. Rather than look at achievement just in our own courses, institutional outcome-measures assessment requires collective faculty engagement and critical thinking about our students’ overall acquisition of the skills, knowledge, and qualities that ensure they graduate with the competencies necessary to begin life as professionals. Even for those who believe outcomes assessment is a positive move in legal education, in an era of limited budgets and already over-burdened faculty, the data collection necessary to engage in the new mandated outcomes assessment process raises cost and workload concerns.

To address those concerns, the article describes a process being used by Georgia State University College of Law [GSU COL] to collect institutional learning outcomes data.  GSU COL has developed a rubric method to assess a wide array of learning outcomes.

We modeled our process on work being done both by the American Association of Colleges and Universities [AAC& U] Values Rubrics Project and medical educators’ Milestones Project .  Those educators use rubrics to assess a wide range of nuanced skills such as critical thinking, written and oral communication, problem-solving, intercultural competence, teamwork, and foundations and skills for life-long learning.

Below, I briefly describe  GSU COL’s process for collecting institutional learning outcomes data.

The Institutional Data Collection Process

After identifying our institutional learning outcomes, we developed a five step institutional outcomes assessment process to collect data from GSU COL faculty.  The faculty data focuses on law student performance in various courses.

1. Draft rubrics

First, we engaged our assessment committee and, in some cases, ad hoc faculty committees, in drafting rubrics. The rubrics had to be general enough that they were usable across a wide range of courses and adaptable to various types of course assessments. To draft the rubrics, we looked to our own experience and other sample rubrics such as those developed by AAC&U and medical educators as well as those developed by legal educators.  The article’s appendix contains GSU COL’s draft rubrics for our eight learning outcomes.

2. Pilot test rubrics

Second, we identified courses that would use the rubric – courses where the skills being measured were already being assessed.  For example, for the basic legal knowledge and analysis outcomes, we chose first year and upper level doctrinal courses.  For self-reflection and client interaction outcomes, we chose clinics, etc.

We are pilot testing each rubric with faculty who will use the rubric and using their feedback to refine the rubric.  Because our assessment process is cyclical, each year, we pilot two rubrics and use two rubrics for actual data collection.  Thus, our rubric development process remains a work in progress and it engages a significant number of faculty members.  This helps ensure validity, engages faculty outside the assessment committee, and, hopefully, builds faculty buy-in.

3. Use the rubrics

Third, every year, we ask faculty in designated courses to assess and grade as they usually do, adding only one more step – completion of a short rubric for each student.  Most faculty members have said this process adds very little additional time to grading.

Given our different outcomes and the cyclical nature of our assessment process, each year, different faculty will use the rubrics.  For example, one year, legal knowledge and analysis rubrics will be completed by doctrinal faculty.  The next year, legal research and writing faculty as well as  seminar faculty who assign papers will complete rubrics focused on legal research and writing, etc.  Thus, we spread the workload and engage as many faculty members as possible in the institutional outcomes assessment process.

4. Enter the data

Fourth, we enter the rubric data from each course into a computer. This data entry process can simply involve an Excel spreadsheet, an SPSS program, or it can be more complicated.  For example, we worked with GSU university computer programming graduate school GRAs to develop software compatible with the university computer system to allow us to manipulate the data in numerous ways. We currently are working on developing the software program so that it can be used by other institutions.

5. Use the data to analyze student learning and make changes if necessary

Finally, we are using the data to prepare reports about institutional level student outcome achievement.  In order to increase the validity of our findings, our reports contain information collected from multiple sources. For example, for each institutional outcome we have data from the rubrics faculty complete and externship site supervisor evaluations. Additionally,  LSSSEE survey data has information relevant to many of our outcomes.  The results from all that data are included in the faculty learning outcomes assessment report.

This Fall, our faculty will discuss our findings on the first two outcomes we measured – legal knowledge and legal reasoning and analysis.  While I noted at the outset that the data collection process does not require faculty to change how we teach or assess, our discussions in light of the data we have gathered may lead us to collective decisions that  some of us will adjust our teaching and assessment processes in an effort to improve student learning.  That is the entire point and purpose of the learning outcomes measurement process. However, before we can begin that work, we had to figure out how to get  information that allows us to have informed discussions.  The steps summarized above, and described in more detail in the article, are one way to do that.

Other resources

The data collection method above can be used both to measure institutional and even course level learning outcomes.  However, multiple ways to collect data exist.  Other good resources with concrete data collection methodologies include Andrea Funk’s excellent book: The Art of Assessment, and Lori Shaw and Victoria Van Sandt’s seminal work, Student Learning Outcomes and Law School Assessment.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off on Gathering Institutional Learning Outcomes Data

The University of Missouri Law School started the Stone Soup Project about a year ago to incorporate more knowledge about actual practice in legal education.

Stone Soup contributes to a more balanced educational diet, adding context of disputes and more focus on parties.  Readings on legal doctrine generally are extremely acontextual.  Of course, students get value in reading excerpts of appellate case reports to learn about legal doctrine and analysis.  Similarly, students get value in reading about practice theory.

But I think that most law students get too little education about how cases actually look to lawyers.  In real life, cases are full of facts, evidence, uncertainty, risk analysis, interests, relationships, and emotions, which provide context that is systematically stripped out of most of our teaching materials.

And parties – central characters in lawyers’ work – typically are portrayed as cardboard figures who are included merely to demonstrate our teachings, not as the principals, who lawyers serve.

Readers of this blog know this.  People – maybe including you – have been saying this for a long, long time.  Indeed, this has been a major motivation for clinical and other practice-oriented instruction.

Stone Soup is another systematic effort to provide a more balanced educational diet for students by including more of these perspectives in our teaching.

How Stone Soup Works

Since we started the Project about a year ago, we have engaged almost 1000 students in 40 classes covering 12 subjects, taught by 32 faculty from 25 schools in 3 countries.

Faculty generally have assigned students to conduct interviews about actual cases and/or practitioners’ backgrounds, philosophies, and practices.  Some faculty assigned students to observe court proceedings or mediations.  You can tailor an assignment to fit your educational objectives.

Most assignments were in traditional ADR courses, but faculty also used Stone Soup assignments in other courses including Access to Justice, Evidence, Relational Lawyering, Resolving Community Civil Rights Disputes, and Trusts and Estates.  Faculty could use them in almost any course, such as Labor Law, Employment Discrimination, Professional Responsibility, Civil Procedure, and Criminal Law, among many others.

Stone Soup faculty assessed their courses, identifying what worked well, what students learned that they would not have learned without the assignment, and what faculty would do differently in the future.  Here’s a collection of their assessments.

Faculty consistently reported outstanding results that far exceeded our expectations.  Stone Soup has provided many benefits including:

• increasing students’ exposure to the real world of practice
• helping students develop critically-important interviewing and analysis skills
• identifying how theory does and doesn’t map well onto actual practice
• supplementing faculty’s knowledge, especially for faculty who haven’t practiced in the subjects they are teaching – or haven’t practiced at all
• increasing students’ and faculty’s enjoyment of the courses

Faculty who used Stone Soup assignments in their courses this year generally plan to use Stone Soup again with little or no change.

How You Can Use Stone Soup

The first year’s experiences yield some general suggestions for using Stone Soup.  In particular, faculty should require students to complete interviews or observations as soon as appropriate in a course, and should schedule time in class to discuss what students learned.  Discussing insights from these assignments early in a semester provides a base of experience that everyone can refer to during the rest of the course.

Here’s a table identifying characteristics of Stone Soup courses and including links to faculty assessments of the courses.  The table demonstrates the incredible creativity of faculty in tailoring assignments to fit their instructional goals and circumstances.  For each course, it shows:

• Class size
• Description of the Stone Soup assignment
• Whether the assignment was required, one option of an assignment, or extra credit
• Assigned paper length, if any
• Due date
• Percentage of grade, if any
• Whether the results of the assignment were discussed in class

Some faculty like the Stone Soup idea generally but wonder if it work in their courses or feel hesitant for other reasons.  This post identifies some colleagues’ concerns and responses to those concerns.  In particular, the assignments need not add much, if any, workload, students generally can find interview subjects without faculty assistance, and Stone Soup can work well in almost any law school course.

If you would like more information, you can read this report on the Project’s first year and/or get in touch with me.

If you would like to join the roster of colleagues using a Stone Soup assignment next year, please let me know the courses(s) and semester(s) in which you would use it.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off on How You and Your Students Can Benefit From Stone Soup Next Year

Do you have thoughts on how legal education can respond to a changing society? Are you using innovative teaching methods you care to share? Have you ever wondered what amazing intellectual and social justice work goes on at Penn State, even during football season? Do you love crisp autumn days with stunning foliage, in a unique college town smack in the middle of the Northeast Corridor? Then this year’s SALT conference is for you!

Join us at Penn State Law as we host the Society of American Law Teachers’ (SALT) 2018 Teaching Conference.  Registration is available here and the CFP is  here. “We are” looking forward to welcoming you to Happy Valley!

Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off on Deadline Extended! SALT Conference at Penn State Law