Best Practices for Legal Education

The following post comes to us from Professor Nancy Cook

I am typing this with my left hand, although I am not left handed. A recent fall on the ice which has rendered my writing hand dysfunctional for a few months is the reason.

Many times in the past month, I’ve thought back on a story I heard literary Nobel laureate Toni Morrison tell some years ago. She had experienced a similar fall, and she described how, as she was falling, she very consciously moved to protect her hands, the primary tools of her work. This protective move did save her hands, although it meant serious injury to other limbs. Amazingly, during the few seconds it took to fall, Morrison was also consciously and deliberately formulating the narrative of the event, reaching for language, even as she was hiding her hands behind her back.

I confess I made no attempt to save my writing hand as I fell, nor did I have any conscious thought of the story that was unfolding. But I think about the event now, and often, and about Toni Morrison’s instinctual actions. Writing for me now is difficult, slow, sometimes painful. I am aware of the losses that accompany this injury: loss of expression, loss of connection, loss of reflection, loss of insights taking shape in language. And I’m reminded of a phrase from another great wordsmith, Joni Mitchell: You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.

What’s “gone,” temporarily, is the ability to fully indulge in a writing habit I knew I had, but the value of which I didn’t truly appreciate. Yet even as I grow frustrated from the inability to indulge, I grow clearer in the belief that observational and reflective writing is a habit to foster. For lawyers, especially.

One reason I make this point here, in our Best Practices blog, is that I can see how non-analytical, creative, experientially reflective writing serves as a counterweight to our training. It balances the inclination to make a point, to reduce observations, stories and insights to talking points or bullet points or power points, to get to the bottom line, or encase thoughts in a “brief,” a memo, an outline, an argument. As lawyers, we may take pride – and rightfully so –in our ability to cut to the quick or clarify complex material in a pithy way. But the literary path is different. In poetry, for example, an epiphanic poem leads us gradually to meaning; it doesn’t blast us or knock us over the head with someone else’s discovery. An “Aha!” moment is not a “Eureka!” moment, and may not be a moment at all; understandings sneak up, come into consciousness quietly. Similarly, story operates at its own pace. It functions to guide someone, over time and pages, to a new place.

We benefit from this kind of reflection and slow-motion analysis.

Lately I have had the good fortune of getting together regularly with two good friends and supportive colleagues. We read each other’s experiments in writing about law, lawyers, the legal system, and social justice. Our literary explorations might not be regarded as tenure-worthy in most institutions, but the value of our work to the profession and our own professional development would be hard to deny. By going through a process of recovery and discovery, eschewing research in favor of interrogation, we find ourselves opening doors to analysis.

And so I choose to use this forum to remind us of the value of those other habits of writing and reflection, and to share information about just two ways experiential teachers can nurture their writing habits. CLEA has resurrected its Creative Writing Competition, and judges are now in the process of reviewing the approximately 50 entries of poetry and prose submitted that reflect on law and justice. A number of the entries will soon be found on the CLEA website and in the newsletter; there will be an opportunity to hear winners read and share other creative works in San Juan in May. In July, CLEA and the Legal Writing Institute will host the 4th Applied Legal Storytelling Conference in London. More information about this much lauded conference can be found on the CLEA and LWI websites.

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Like many in legal education, I have been obsessed with reading everything I can get my hands on regarding: 1) the restructuring of the demand for legal services in the “new economy” and 2) hmmm, what is a less negative word than “crisis” or  “tsunami?”,  ah yes,  the – “revolution” in legal education formed  by the combination of student debt , fewer JD jobs, and  plummeting admissions.  “Must” readings include, Bill Henderson’s analysis of the restructuring of the market for legal services  (see Henderson’s blog post here and article here ),  the Law School Admission Council’s LSAC Volume Report 2013 (with data as of January 3013), Dean Frank H. Wu’s letter to the ABA Taskforce (see ABA post located here and Dean Wu’s letter here) and Richard Susskind’s newest book “Tomorrow’s Lawyers.” The bottom line trends are: 1) law schools will be fewer, smaller, and, other than the top 14,  less lucrative; and 2) those with law degrees need to possess more than  just the traditional trademark tools of critical reasoning, substantive and procedural knowledge, and understanding of the attorney-client relationship.   In short, in order to survive, law schools need to re-imagine their identity, structure, cost-to -value ratio, and resource allocation to meet the demands of the new economy.  And when doing so, they must equip students and graduates for a broader, more creative, more collaborative and more entrepreneurial use of their law degree.

This combination of reduction in class sizes and the need for law graduates to have more well-rounded skill sets to compete for “new economy” jobs has already and will continue to affect law school curricular offerings, organization and priorities. In particular, legal education’s   traditional understanding of the actual and relative cost of clinic courses is dramatically changing in this cost-value economic model.  What do I mean? Deans (and their admissions and career planning directors) often state how they really want more clinical experiences in which students assume the role of the lawyer under good supervision.   However, the narrative continues, in- house clinics and well supervised and designed externship/field placements courses just “cost too much” compared to the low cost of putting a faculty member in front of a class of 50-100 students and letting them have at it! In other words, the old narrative holds that the actual “cost” of clinic courses is not about express value to the students, alums, and employers, but its relative cost vis– a– vis the traditional Socratic classroom.

Over the past decade and particularly since the global recession, that narrative has broken down, as law schools compete with each other to be the most bold and “innovative” in  re-structuring their curricula or creating an entirely  “experiential” third year .  And economically, that has made much sense.  As admission numbers plunge  so does the faculty student ratio and, thus,  the relative costs of making law schools focus more on the development of its students has radically declined.  In addition, clincal faculty and programs have had to evolve beyond the early days of replicating legal services or public defender offices and have matured into educational programs with expanded subject matter and  skills focus and beyond traditional representation and litigation models.

However, many in legal academia have not advanced their thinking to keep up with the new economic analysis.  In fact, I would recommend that all concerned with the future of legal education and its cost read  Professor Peter Joy’s wonderfully helpful 2012 article THE COST OF CLINICAL LEGAL EDUCATION (also here) as well as the charts and appendices connected with Professors Liz Ryan Cole and Nancy Maurer’s piece on field placements and externships found at 19 Clinical Law Review 115, 155-161 (2012)   I fear that many in legal education still shake their heads and  regretfully and sincerely but quite  inaccurately echo the outdated analysis that in these troubled times , “clinics cost too much”.  The relative faculty/student ratio is changing everywhere and that is making appropriately designed and updated clinical courses less “expensive” every day under any cost-value ratio and even under the reductive and incomplete “relative cost” analysis.

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The following post comes from Professor Carolyn Grose:

The Clinical Law Review will hold its next Clinical Writers’ Workshop on Saturday, September 28, 2013, at NYU Law School.

The Workshop will provide an opportunity for clinical teachers who are writing about any subject (clinical pedagogy, substantive law, interdisciplinary analysis, empirical work, etc.) to meet with other clinicians writing on related topics to discuss their works-in-progress and brainstorm ideas for further development of their articles. Attendees will meet in small groups organized, to the extent possible, by the subject matter in which they are writing. Each group will “workshop” the draft of each member of the group.

Participation in the Workshop requires the submission of a paper because the workshop takes the form of small group sessions in which all members of the group comment on each other’s manuscripts. By June 30, all applicants will need to submit a mini-draft or prospectus, 3-5 pages in length, of the article they intend to present at the workshop. Full drafts of the articles will be due by September 1, 2013.

As in the previous Clinical Law Review Workshops, participants will not have to pay an admission or registration fee but participants will have to arrange and pay for their own travel and lodging. To assist those who wish to participate but who need assistance for travel and lodging, NYU Law School has committed to provide 10 scholarships of up to $750 per person to help pay for travel and lodging. The scholarships are designed for those clinical faculty who receive little or no travel support from their law schools and who otherwise would not be able to attend this conference without scholarship support. Applicants for scholarships will be asked to submit, with their 3-5 page prospectus, by June 30, a proposed budget for travel and lodging and a brief statement of why the scholarship would be helpful in supporting their attendance at this conference. The Board will review all scholarship applications and issue decisions about scholarships in early July. The scholarships are conditioned upon recipients’ meeting all requirements for workshop participation, including timely submission of drafts.

If you have any comments or suggestions you would like to send us, we would be very happy to hear from you. Comments and suggestions should be sent to Randy Hertz at randy.hertz@nyu.edu.

— The Board of Editors of the Clinical Law Review

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Good Morning, Bloggers!!

I don’t know about the rest of the world, but this morning in Albany, New York, it was a warm 2 degrees when I got in my car. What is a better way to stay warm than to take a brief moment to peruse through this Invitation to Comment–Task Force? If that sounds like something that interests you (as it should), why don’t you grab a cup of coffee or a cup of tea and sit down for a moment. We would like your ideas, your comments, and your thoughts in regards to improving legal education to counter the economy, changes in the profession, and shortcomings in the current state of legal education. Please take a moment to look over this, and if you have any ideas, go to the task force web site and let them know what you think!!

You can find a link to the Invitation to comment below!

Invitation to Comment–Task Force

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For those of you who aren’t on the lawclinic listserve, I’d like to share with you a fascinating thread on the list this week demonstrating just how tech-savvy we’re all becoming, and also how the concept of Best Practices in Legal Education is an ever-broadening one.

Kim Diana Connolly [(kimconno@buffalo.edu, Vice Dean for Legal Skills; Director, Clinical Legal Education; Director, Environmental Law Program; Of Counsel, Environmental Law Clinic] was inviting list members to a newly-forming Law Clinic Computing in the Clouds Best Practices Task Force, a result of her experience drafting a cloud-computing protocol for Buffalo’s clinical program. The project for the Task Force is to tackle the issues relating to cloud computing that have been raised on the list, from email and smart phones to file storage and management systems, etc. Kim reported that developing a protocol had been a significantly more complex undertaking than first anticipated. Students, faculty, and now the IT department have become involved in the project. For public law schools, the complexity is enhanced, as they are subject to Freedom of Information requests.

Our experience in the UMass clinics is a similar one; it has been complicated and time-consuming to determine both the professional and practical aspects of joining “the cloud.” Where does encryption come in? With which University-based teams should we coordinate? What’s the cost? How much time is involved? So I was grateful to learn that we can join with a group of other clinicians struggling with precisely the same issues. Its good to know that WE’RE NOT ALONE. Kim has suggested starting a separate discussion group to share research and perhaps develop a “best practices” document for use by the clinical community.

Her post immediately received many responses. Clearly this is an issue of significance to many in the clinical world; the interest, though, is not limited to law schools, as yesterday I received an email from the ABA inviting me to a free session on “ethically moving your law practice to the cloud.”

If you are interested in joining the discussion and ad hoc Task Force, Kim’s invited us to email their Clinical Program Paralegal Elisa Galloway at elisagal@buffalo.edu.

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Many law professors have developed teaching materials and designed courses that use some or all of the recommendations of the Carnegie Report Educating Lawyers and of the Best Practices for Legal Education (Best Practices) report.    Those who have worked to bring the powerful ideas of these reports into practice may have the false impression that everyone in the legal academy knows about the availability of these materials and resources.  In addition, the 25 law schools that have partnered in the initiative of the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, called “Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers,” http://educatingtomorrowslawyers.du.edu/  (ETL) may also assume that other law schools are aware of the degree to which these 25 schools have committed to the Carnegie/Best Practices method.   For instance, every one of these schools has revised their strategic plans and curricula to intentionally incorporate the Carnegie and Best Practices recommendations.  But do other law schools know about the progress made in developing teaching materials and in the collaboration fostered by ETL?

Recent blog posts and conversations with law professors have led me to realize that many schools and/or professors have not had the opportunity to appreciate these developments.  Plenty know about Carnegie’s recommendations, but too few know of the steps taken, since the report, to implement it.   Major legal publishers have developed materials to allow professors to teach both skills and value formation in doctrinal courses.  Lexis/Nexis took the approach of providing supplements, in its “Skills and Values” series, which can be used with a traditional casebook.   The co-directors of the Institute for Law Teaching and Learning, Professor Michael Hunter Schwartz and Professor Gerald Hess, developed with Carolina Academic Press a series of casebooks in the “Context and Practice Series” designed to teach in the method recommended by Carnegie    Each of the books includes material to allow for the traditional method of teaching—teaching analytical skills through question and answer, etc.  The casebooks are novel in their integration of a variety of lawyering tasks to reinforce legal concepts.   The task may range from drafting a sophisticated contract to preparing a discovery plan to allow a party to prepare for summary judgment and for trial.    With the leadership of Professors Schwartz and Hess, and the reality that the authors in the series are all those who have written and spoken widely on educational methods, these books provide some of the best ideas for teaching doctrinal subjects in a way that will enhance the classes.   Finally, the Carolina Academic Press series is also unique because every book chapter “professional identity questions” that encourage students to reflect on value questions that arise in specific practice scenarios.  In addition to the Lexis/Nexis and Carolina Academic Press series, West Publishing is reportedly going to be releasing a series that incorporates the Carnegie methods.

Some, perhaps many, professors are wary of moving to a Carnegie method.  Here are some likely questions behind the hesitation:  Won’t everything Carnegie suggests cut into my course coverage?   I already have a method developed for teaching and the Carnegie sounds as if it will require more work?   Are the skills that Carnegie suggests the kind of tasks that would make my teaching more of a “trade” type of class than legal analysis?  Would I be indoctrinating students into my own values by seeking to have them reflect on these professional identity questions?

These kinds of questions are worth discussing. The problem is that those who have the questions often have not spoken with their colleagues who are using the skills and value formation method, and vice versa.   As we move forward, professors who have questions ought to at least inform their decisions by talking to those who have taught using either of the approaches.  And those who have developed experience can be more proactive about sharing it.  As noted, 25 law schools have faculty that are already teaching through one or both methods.  For example, see the course portfolios on the Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers site, http://educatingtomorrowslawyers.du.edu/course-portfolios/, with explanations courses that include one or both of the skills and values approach.    Talking with one of these professors would be a good start for someone who wants to have more information with which to consider the above questions.  Those who ask may be surprised to find that some preconceptions may be inaccurate.   For instance, most professors employing skills as part of their courses are not using “easy” tasks.  Instead, the exercises require sophisticated skills that reinforce students’ grasp of how a legal concept applies to practice, its strategic importance, etc.   I was encouraged, and as a result, encourage others, to start with modest changes in a course during one semester, rather than revamp my course completely.  If the professor finds that these methods make one’s class a better learning experience for the students, and more enjoyable for the professor, he or she can choose as I did to try more changes in a later semester.  Or not.  The point is that a professor, if she has questions, ought to at least make an informed decision by talking with those who have experimented with implementing the recommendations.

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It is December in America.  I am saddened by the violence of and in our world.  I am resistant to the commercialized obligations of “the Hoilidays”. And I long for time to reflect upon the darkness so that I can move forward into the light.

I know that this December frustration and sadness will pass. Although the longest night of the year is just upon us, unlike my ancestors, I do not doubt that the sun will come again and that the days will become longer.  I know that despite my pre-solstice grumblings, I will treasure the exchange of love. friendship and care that accompanies meaningful moments of human connection at this time of year.  I know that from the darkness , there will be light —  whether from a winter sky stuffed with stars, Advent wreaths, Juul fires, Shabbat lightings,  twinkling Christmas trees,  Chawmos bonfires,  or a child’s flashlight (hidden under the covers for continued reading of a favorite gift).

Reflecting on the darkness that seems to surround us in legal education is another matter. I wonder  “ will the students come back?”  Will the pool of those applying to law schools  simply become perpetually smaller?   Certainly, bashing  law schools has continued to have traction over the past year.   And given the grim overall  admissions data the  “trending” message does seem to be   “Why would anyone go to law school?”

Here too, however, we should not confuse tough times or dark days with inevitable extinction of all light. The information about law school debt-salary ratio is no longer “newsworthy” despite continued rants .  The “law schools are evil”  narrative is now overused, often exploited , and certainly reductive.   What is more likely to be newsworthy are calls for some balance in the bashing. See Is It Worth It? and Law School Placement Ethics. Attention is finally being given to thoughtful analysis such as that contained in Dean Frank H. Wu’s letter to the ABA Taskforce on the future of legal education. See Practice of Legal Education and The Problem With Legal Education.

Long before the publication of Failing Law Schools, before the filing of  lawsuits over student consumer issues and fraud, and before the media’s heightened if not histrionic scrutiny of law schools,  many thoughtful voices  such as those contained in the 1960’s CLEPR recommendations, the 1979 Crampton Report,  the 1997  MacCrate Report,  the 2007 Carnegie Report and CLEA’s Best Practices for Legal Education had cautioned legal educators.   They warned first  that law schools had lost their way, and second,  that legal education needed to become more innovative, responsive , collaborative and intentional.   Although one could view the litany of reports as proof that the previous report had no effect, that is not the case.  Legal education has changed in many, many ways since 1960. It just hasn’t changed enough.

More than not changing enough, legal education, like most of America and like the legal profession itself,  “lost its way” during the economic boom.  And legal education did so, in my opinion, because it lost sight of its most treasured asset – the responsibility to guide the formation of people who serve as civic professionals and leaders.

Redemption seems to me be a good place to focus for 2013.  And I’m not talking about the Christian definition of redemption or the Christian movement to redeem law schools or law.  I’m talking about the universal concept of redemption  which involves admitting failings, making amends and recommitting to the journey.  The Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s  first definition of “redeem”  involves buying, repurchasing or winning back. The second involves:

2.  to free from what distresses or harms: as

a.  to free from captivity by payment of ransom
b.  extricate from or help to overcome something detrimental
c.  to release from blame or debt: clear
d. to free from the consequence/consequences of sin

It is the third definition that best describes the process of redemption and this Blog’s focus since  it’s inception:

3.  to change for the better: reform

For 2013, I want to hear how law schools are redeeming themselves or plan to do so.  How have we changed for the better?  How are we extricating ourselves from what was harmful and detrimental to students, the profession and society?  How are we “saving our souls”? I look forward to hearing these stories of illumination.   Peace and Joy to all our Blog readers!

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A possible head start for law students
Karen Sloan
The National Law Journal
12-03-2012

A luncheon for third-year law students during spring 2011 got law professor Gabriel Chin thinking. The gathering at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law should have been full of excitement and promise for those about to embark on new legal careers, he thought. The reality was a bit different.
“It really was kind of anti-climactic,” Chin said. “Instead of being the beginning of a new thing, they still had to take the bar. Medical students take their boards while in school, so graduation is a major transformative moment. I thought, ‘Something like that could work in the law school context.’ ”
Chin’s epiphany led to a proposal backed by all three Arizona law schools to allow 3Ls to sit for the bar during the February before they graduate, rather than making them wait until after graduation. The Arizona Supreme Court is slated to consider the proposal on December 5. If the court approves, Arizona would be the only state that allows students to take the bar exam midway through their final school year.
The idea is to move students into practice as quickly as possible, said Arizona law dean Marc Miller. Waiting means more debt for graduates and eliminates them from consideration for jobs that require bar admission. “This will essentially reduce the cost of a legal education by five months,” Miller said. “It’s a direct response to changes not only in the hiring markets but the rising cost of tuition.” Beyond that, the proposal presented an opportunity to experiment with the third-year curriculum, much maligned for its lack of practical training, he said.
Miller and associate dean Sally Rider met with Arizona Chief Justice Rebecca White Berch to talk over the concept not long after Chin, who has since moved to the University of California, Davis School of Law, proposed it. Berch was encouraging but cautioned that any proposal would need the support of the state’s other two law schools. Miller’s next phone call was to Doug Sylvester, dean at Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law.
ECONOMIC BENEFITS
“I immediately thought this was a great idea,” Sylvester said. “I knew we would have to think long and hard about how we would admit students [to an early bar program]. For me, the economic benefit for students is great. Anything we can do in a soft market to get more people jobs quickly is something we want to pursue.”
He noted that the Phoenix legal market lacks many of the large law firms that hire students a full year before they graduate; rather, it comprises small and midsize firms that only hire admitted lawyers.
By January, the two public law schools and the Phoenix School of Law had submitted an initial proposal to the Arizona Supreme Court. Students would be allowed to sit for the February bar exam as long as they were due to graduate within 120 days of that date and had been certified by their respective law school as prepared for the test’s rigors. The students would not undertake a traditional course load in January or February; instead, they would take a bar preparation course. The remainder of their time in school would consist of nontraditional courses designed to help them enter practice, including clinics, externships or classes covering law office management or professionalism.
The concept has support from students. The University of Arizona’s Law Student Bar Association wrote to the Supreme Court urging adoption. “We also like the ability to start practice immediately after graduation, rather than having to wait until late in the year to be able to practice or start looking for work,” they wrote.
Erica Moeser, president of the National Conference of Bar Examiners, had endorsed the concept as early as 2009, arguing that students who fail the February exam during their third year would be able to retake it in July, following graduation. She also welcomed the chance to overhaul 3L curricula and ease student debt loads amid a tough job climate.
Not everyone in Arizona was sold on the idea, however. The state Supreme Court’s Attorney Regulation Advisory Committee in May asked the court to reject the proposal, citing concerns that students would be overwhelmed trying to complete school and pass the bar exam at the same time. The committee noted that other states, including Missouri, Oregon and Virginia, had tried and abandoned the idea because they found it “disruptive and distracting.” Georgia, for example, began allowing 3Ls to take the February bar during the 1970s, but ended the practice in 1995 after concluding that students were spending more time studying for the test than attending classes.
“My fear is that it will negatively impact the third year of the educational experience and essentially turn the third year into a bar prep course,” said Arizona assistant secretary of state Jim Drake, who sits on the committee. “I don’t think that’s the right way to go. I see this more as a marketing idea.” Getting students admitted to the bar sooner can only help the law schools’ rate of placing graduates in legal jobs, and thus their U.S. News & World Report rankings, he added.
Both Miller and Sylvester discounted Georgia’s experience. For one thing, law schools there did not modify their curricula to help students balance exam prep and class work. Moreover, the economic circumstances are vastly different. “At that point in time, applications to law school were going up; demand was going up,” Miller said. “Law schools were in a golden era — they could get tuition dollars and outside support. They could hire faculty and give scholarships. This is a wildly different era both for legal education and legal practice, and we think we’re responding to this era, now.”
The Arizona Supreme Court put off the proposal in August and submitted 10 questions to the law schools, seeking clarification about how they would identify eligible students and manage the program. The schools clarified that students would have to have completed 90 percent of their required credits; would be restricted to two semester hours of course work in January and February as they prepare for the exam; and could only have eight semester credits left to complete following the exam. (Typical course loads range between 14 and 17 credits, administrators said, although 3Ls often take fewer hours during their final semesters.) The students consequently would have to squeeze larger course loads into their 2L years.
DOUBTS ASSUAGED
The revised proposal was enough to assuage the advisory committee’s doubts — in November, it endorsed the concept in a 4-3 vote, although Drake said he and three other opponents were unable to attend the meeting.
Even if the court signs off on the proposal, not all students will want to take the bar exam early. The University of Arizona recently polled 2Ls and found that 44 students — 32 percent of the class — would sit for the bar exam in February if that were possible. Administrators at Arizona State likewise anticipate a relatively small percentage of students would opt in.
The fact that Arizona earlier this year became one of seven Uniform Bar Exam (UBE) states creates an interesting angle to the discussion. In theory, 3Ls seeking admission to any UBE state could take the February bar in Arizona, assuming they meet the coursework criteria, and be admitted as soon as they graduate. However, different states have different admissions rules, and not all UBE states would necessarily recognize a bar exam taken before graduation, Miller said.
If Arizona does begin allowing 3Ls to take the exam early — potentially as early as the February 2014 sitting — Chin expects other states to take notice. “I haven’t met anybody who thinks students aren’t ready to take the bar after five semesters,” he said. “Given that, why do we make students incur this additional expense? I think there will be a lot of interest from other states looking to follow suit.”
Karen Sloan can be contacted at ksloan@alm.com.

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Since I was a little girl, the only thing I wanted to be when I grew up was a lawyer. Not just any lawyer either-a trial attorney that was in a court room every day. There was no chance I would be a doctor (I hate needles and pass out when I see blood), a veterinarian (like my little sister who is much better at that science stuff), or even a corporate executive (how does someone even do that?!). Law was my career choice from the beginning, and I have had no problem admitting that to anyone who will listen. Lately, however, I have received the same response from people when telling them what I do with my life and why I wanted to go to law school. Why would I go to law school when I will not be able to get a job and when I will come out with more debt than buying a new home? After hearing it every single time, one has to start wondering if it really is worth the time and the effort.

While reading Dean Lawrence Mitchell’s Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, “Law School is Worth the Money,” I found myself nodding in agreement while reading about how discouraging the media has been when it comes to the prospect of law school. There are entire websites dedicated to lower tier law schools, blog posts that destroy the desire to even google your law school, and op-ed pieces that make students feel they are wasting their time. The article appropriately explains that prospective students believe it is “irresponsible” to attend law school, and that these irrationalities have begun to prevent possible students from even trying to wait it out for the three years. Everyone knows the job market is, for lack of a better word, unfortunate, and everyone knows that graduate school costs money, but that should not discourage prospective law students from even trying to brave the murky waters. To me, that seems like a slippery slope that would never end. Soon it will be “College costs money, so let’s wait it out and see if it’s worth it at some point.”

Dean Mitchell asks in his article, “What else will these thousands of student who have been discouraged from attending law school do?” and I think that is an excellent question. For students like me, it was law school all the way; I would not have been happy anywhere else. Where else will these students go? Are they destined to walk the earth without purpose or in dead end jobs? Dean Mitchell explains that this is an investment in your future. Being a lawyer is not a first job at Bloomingdales selling expensive jeans to customers (Yes, at one point I did that!), it is a career that will always be a necessity. Everyone has a crazy uncle who has a few too many speeding tickets, or a grandparent who needs their will drafted. If anything, law school is teaching you invaluable skills that cannot be measured by the amount of money on the tuition bill.

Walking through the hallways during finals time seems to be something I can only describe as stressful. Students are worried about doing poorly on an exam, which will cause them to get a bad grade, which will cause them to not get an interview, which will cause them to not get a job. I can absolutely see how this would be discouraging to someone who was considering studying the law, but there is something to remember. If you want to be a lawyer, BE A LAWYER. GO TO LAW SCHOOL. In twenty years, you do not want to look back and say, “Hey! Maybe I should have gone to law school to become a lawyer!” There is nothing more satisfying than the first time you get to stand up in a courtroom and say, “Yes, your Honor.” That feeling is something I hold on to every time I think about finals or debt, and that is exactly what I think that Dean Mitchell is talking about in his article. It is not “irresponsible,” it is exactly what you are supposed to be doing, and if that is what you want to do, then law school it is!

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During my Thanksgiving break,  I had the opportunity to reflect on some similarities in situation of my students and my almost 80 year old father.   Fifty-nine years ago, on  Thanksgiving Day, he emigrated to NYC and arrived earlier than expected and at the wrong airport.   A stranger, a military man, extended kindness, direction and coins for a telephone call so that my father could properly connect with his immigrant family in the Bronx.  I only heard the details of this lonely and unsettling arrival recently.  Usually, my Dad  emphasizes how he thought all the fuss of parades and bounteous food were in his honor or that “Americans always ate like kings.”

Like my father, my wonderful students persevere, dream and work hard despite the consistent dire predictions from “johnny-come-latelies” and panic-inducing  pundits that legal education and the profession will never recover and go back to “the good old days.”  My Dad left poverty-ridden Ireland because there were no jobs or prospects.  He had  little in his pocket but similar hope ,  a loving immigrant family in the Bronx,  love of new ideas,  and appreciation of humanity, both in  its goodness and frailty.   My Dad’s world, America and the globe itself has changed drastically since 1953, just like legal education, the legal profession and the global economy have changed drastically of late.  So what lessons could I derive from one Irish immigrant’s experience of change in America?  My Dad is suprisingly open to cultural change, to difference , and to new ideas, despite his age and orthodox upbringing.  Change brings him  not only the understandable reactions of  uncertainty and some trepidation, but excitement.  He knows that how one responds to change  is ultimately determinative of happiness.  That perspective I can certainly share with my students,  and perhaps work with them more on acquistion of skills related to adaptability.

In addition, my thanksgiving musings led me to  meditate a bit on how to join my Dad’s wisdom with lessons for those of us facing what seems like negative change in legal education in the United States.    Here’s some good things to be grateful about potential changes in legal education:

1.  It forces us to define the “value added” that students obtain from a legal education.

2. It forces us to be more organized and thoughful about what we hope to do for students in our classes, our curriculum and our institutions.

3. It demands that students play a more mature and active role in determining what they hope to gain from law school and how much they are willing to pay for it.

4. It gives faculty the opportunity to learn new methods of instruction, new theories about learning, cognition,  and the  brain as well as new ideas about what a modern legal education could encompass.    (think about legal ed reforms current rise in popularty including by elite institutions – the johnny come latelies.)

5.  It  can help redeem the profession — by shaking out the old elitist, untested assumptions and force the profession to become more connected to its justice and civic roots.  (Think the rise of pro bono and preparation of folks who serve people instead of simply sorting students for corporate or corporate law  hiring and leaving all other students to learn at the expense of the interests of their early career clients …..)

6.  It has married the interests of those who wish for a more inclusive profession with those who ask for more accurate and scientific gatekeeping to the profession through the LSAT and the Bar.  (think the Schultz-Zedeck study and its pervasive appeal).

7.  It has forced legal educators to focus on preparing students for the new economy instead of the old economy.  (think Bill Henderson’s work at Indiana!)

While I am hopeful and see opportunity in the crisis, I am not Pollyanna.  Thus, I must mention the newest press releases from the ABA Accreditation work.    The latest news from the ABA Standards Review Committee (SRC) process  is that rather than having the SRC submitt a package of revisions that interlock  and make sense as a whole to the Council of the Section, it seems now that individual  issues and sections will go up in an arbitrary piecemeal fashion. Those of us following the proposed revisions will have to be vigilant as each new proposed revised section gets sent up.  At first blush, it seems that this will make it even harder for law schools in a difficult economic climate to plan and budget to meet the unconnected, evolving, and  ever changing standards.  Do you agree? Am I missing the good news here?

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/aba_committee_approves_proposed_changes_in_law_school_accredition_standards/?utm_source=maestro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=weekly_email

So how do I react with wisdom to this latest news?  I remain grateful for my inspiring Dad and students who fill my life with richness, purpose and reward.   I am going to try hard, as my Dad would want, to be hopeful  and understanding of what the heck is happening with the ABA Standards work, but that might take a “Holiday Miracle” worthy of the Lifetime Channel!

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The following post comes to us from Professor John Lande, Isidor Loeb Professor Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of Dispute Resolution, University of Missouri School of Law:

The University of Missouri’s Center for the Study of Dispute Resolution recently held a symposium, entitled “Overcoming Barriers in Preparing Law Students for Real-World Practice.” The symposium focused on what law firms and clients need from lawyers and what law schools can do to better prepare students to fulfill those needs. Lisa Kloppenberg, the former dean at the University of Dayton, gave the keynote address, entitled Training the Heads, Hands and Hearts of Tomorrow’s Lawyers, which described Dayton’s robust curricular reforms and includes suggestions for other schools. Prof. Clark Cunningham presented what may be surprising findings from multiple studies about what clients do and do not want from lawyers. Judge Solomon Oliver Jr. and attorney John Philips gave their perspectives from the bench and bar about the most important skills for lawyers to have. School of Education Professor David Moss gave a broad overview of curriculum theory and the “hidden curriculum” that law schools implicitly teach. Prof. Judith Welch Wegner focused on the process and elements of curricular reform, using analogies to architectural features of cornerstones and curbcuts. Prof. Barbara Glesner Fines talked about the importance of focusing on what instructors believe is critically important for students to learn and, particularly on integrating legal research instruction in upper level courses.

The symposium website includes draft papers, powerpoint presentations, and videos from the symposium. The symposium will be published in the University of Missouri’s Journal of Dispute Resolution.

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This next post comes to us from a new blogger on the Best Practice’s Website, Benjamin Madison, a Professor of Law at Regent University School of Law:

In The Bramble Bush (1930) Karl Llewellyn observed: “It is not easy to turn human beings into lawyers. Neither is it safe. For a mere legal machine is a social danger. Indeed, a mere legal machine is not even a good lawyer. It lacks insight and judgment.” Over seventy-five years later, two studies—Best Practices for Legal Education and the Carnegie Institute for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning’s report, Educating Lawyers—reached remarkably similar findings. Both studies concluded that law schools’ preoccupation with the analytical side of lawyering has produced a growing number of “legal machines.” The recent studies do not label modern law graduates “legal machines.” However, their description of the modern graduate—analytically sharp, but jaded and indifferent about values—sure sounds like the same type of lawyer Llewellyn feared.

Llewellyn goes on in The Bramble Bush to explain how the last two years of law school should be used to return students’ “common sense” and to “bring [their] ethics out from ether.” He apparently assumed that, by studying more specialized areas, students would naturally move away from strict logic to a blend of legal reasoning and social concerns. Llewellyn did not explain how law professors should cultivate this transformation. And the question of how to do so, though at times raised previously as an issue in for instance the ABA’s McCrate Report, has not been thoroughly addressed until the publication of the two 2007 reports. The Carnegie Institute in Educating Lawyers and the Clinical Legal Education Association’s in Best Practices for Legal Education comprehensively examined and surveyed law schools, students, lawyers, and judges about the state of legal education. The reports echo each other in many respects, particularly on the need to cultivate in law students the need to develop as whole persons.

Unfortunately, the reports conclude, law schools are failing in this goal—and have been failing for some time. Educating Lawyers and Best Practices describe empirical studies describing interviews with law students when they entered school, at regular intervals thereafter, and finally when the same students graduate. These studies reflect that most law students enter law school with ideals, passion, and goals aimed at helping others. These values, however, are steadily excised as the student progresses through law school. The primary reason students’ ideals, values, and passion are lost, the reports note, has to do with law schools’ exaggerated emphasis on legal analysis. The prevalent method of emphasizing logic and dismissing students’ concerns about justice and principles as, at best, less significant and, at worst, irrelevant to legal analysis leads law students to an obvious conclusion—they should value legal analysis as their “key” to success and abandon their ideals and values as naïve dreams. The reports explicitly recognize that an educational approach that produces such results—intentional or not—damages students, sometimes irretrievably, and clearly affects the manner in which they practice law. To be sure, the reports do not urge schools to dispense with legal reasoning. They do, however, encourage law schools to balance the emphasis on logic and analysis with a recognition that formation of a professional identity will be as important in law school as developing analytical and lawyering skills.

Indeed, perhaps the boldest of the proposals is Carnegie’s recommendation that law schools spend one-third of the law school experience helping students explore their values and how those values will translate into the way they practice law. Developing a “professional identity” is Carnegie’s term for the process that would then take place as law students (a) develop a sensitivity to the profession’s values and to their own values and (b) engage, in the law school setting, situations that will test their adherence to the values to which they aspire. Their professors can foster students’ efforts to form a professional identity by presenting the students with practical legal scenarios that raise a conflict in values, and then by encouraging students to explore and resolve the value conflict. Reflection, it seems, is a key to the process of forming a professional identity. Without such encouragement, many students will go into practice with a vague sense of “what a lawyer should be.” Conversely, with intentional cultivation of students’ values and identity, a student can decide “what kind of lawyer the student wants to be.” In short, the process of cultivating a professional identity will lead students to emerge from law school not only with a sense of the profession’s values and their own values, but also with an awareness of the situations that will tempt them to compromise their values.

As Mary Lynch observed in her 10/21/12 blog, organizations such as Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers (headed in part by William Sullivan, the lead author of Carnegie’s Educating Lawyers) are helping law schools and professors engage the process of encouraging students to develop a professional identity. Moreover, we are now seeing more teaching materials designed to allow professors to integrate teaching methods that address professional identity formation into their courses. Anyone interested in this development in legal education should contact Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers and consider joining that consortium or, at the least, discussing with professors in the member schools how one can begin the process of helping students maintain their values and ideals, even as they learn to think like lawyers.

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