The following post comes to us from Tom Guernsey:

In the early 90s, as an associate dean at the University of Richmond School of Law, I attended the first Conclave on Legal Education held by a state bar association. The conclave brought together leaders in the bench, bar, academy, and bar examiners to discuss the future of educating lawyers. The setting was spectacular, Wintergreen, an upscale ski/golf resort in the western part of Virginia. The setting was perfect: serene, isolated, informal, just what you would want for a serious conversation about the status and future of the education of lawyers among the four major players. I joked later that it was fun. The practitioners dumped on law schools, the law schools dumped on practitioners, both dumped on the bar examiners. Everyone was polite to the judges.

Fifteen years later, in the spring of 2007, having been a dean for 11 of those years, I attended another conclave at an airport hotel in Chicago, organized by the American Bar Association’s Council on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar.

The conversation was depressingly similar. Law schools were not teaching students to practice law; faculty scholarship was impractical; new faculty did not have enough practice experience, yada, yada, yada.

This conversation is still going on and law schools are taking the brunt of the criticism for failing. The reality is, however, that the bench, the bar and the bar examiners are equally to blame for law schools not making the innovative changes needed. Brian Z. Tamanaha’s Failing Law Schools is especially critical, of course, of the faculty and two parts of the bar that regulate legal education. Surprisingly, at least to me, there is scant attention in Failing Law Schools, or anywhere else, to what is one of the biggest impediments to curricular reform – the bar examination and the related matter that state high courts requirements make meaningful curricular reform difficult.

The ABA may accredit  law schools for Department of Education purposes, but it is typically the case that state high courts, separate and apart, that have delegated to the ABA the accrediting function for the purpose of who can take the bar examination. In some state, such as New York, the high court also imposes regulations more strict than the ABA.

The fact is, no matter what else a law school sees as its mission, its students and alums see the primary goal as preparing students to pass the bar examination. I think this is reasonable. What I think is unreasonable is to create bar examination requirements and additional state high court regulations that stifle creativity that everyone seems to be demanding from “failing law schools.”

The most obvious example is the number of subjects tested on the bar exam. I am not arguing that we do away with the bar exam, or substitute some other credentialing process (though I could). My point is simply that given the continuation of the typical bar exam, subject matter coverage is too broad, resulting in serious constraints on meaningful curricular reform.

In New York, 19 subjects are tested on the exam. Because the six multistate topics are also covered on the essay, students must learn both New York law and general principles (or federal rules). For example the multistate tests the Federal Rules of Evidence while the essay portion tests New York evidence law. Students not surprisingly feel the need to take these courses (and in many instances are required to take the courses). At Albany Law School, to cover all of this material requires taking courses that at a minimum total 65 credit hours. In addition, students need to take at least 10 additional credits to cover mandated writing and skills courses. So what are we left with to be creative? Somewhere between 10 and 15 credit hours, depending on how many minutes in excess of the ABA required 58,000 the school requires.

I’m just suggesting that you don’t need 19 subjects (six of which you have to learn twice) to test an applicant’s ability to do doctrinal analysis, especially when it means law schools end up with precious little time to do other things we are criticized for not doing.

 

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I am sitting in Denver on a beautiful sunny Saturday and not wishing I was outside hiking.  That is because the energy, ideas and information being shared and built upon at the Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers (ETL) Conference is givng me hope and optimism about the way out of the “crisis” in  legal education.

For those of you who are thinking, what is ETL?  Basically, the University of Denver’s Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System has the mission of advancing the civil justice system so it is a more accessible, efficient and accountable system.    One of their projects is Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers (ETL)  http://EducatingTomorrowsLawyers.du.edu .  ETL was  launched in august of 2011 and intends to “leverage the Carnegie model … to align legal education  with the evolving needs of the profession by providing a supported platform for shared learning, experimentation, ongoing measurement, and collective implementation.”   ETL fills a  vacuum for those of us who have attempted to implement the 2007 initiatives of Best Practices and Carnegie and have been faced with questions such as : What data is available to guide decisionmaking? Are there models out there? Can groups of law schools provide financial and structural support for collaboration and sharing of ideas?

This weekend’s conference focused on  formation of Professional Identity.   DU Law’s David Thomson challenged us on the need to create situations and spaces where that reflection and formation can occur.  He posits that we can’t TEACH another to form THEIR identity but we can design structured experiences in doctrinal courses which engage students in the reflective process from which formation occurs. Bill Henderson of Indiana’s Maurer School of Law tackled head on the structural changes occurring in the legal profession in a historical and data driven analysis which suggests there is indeed opportunity for future employment in the new economy.  However, we need to  expand our conception of legal education and re-prioritize  if we hope to   provide the equip our students with the tools for “making a living” in the new economy.  Daisy Floyd focused participants on how to start (in the first year of law school)  engaging students in a process geared toward the development of practical wisdom and the lifelong pursuit of further professional wisdom.

One interesting reflection: I got the sense that religious and mission-driven schools had less trouble engaging their communities on the issue of formation as an explicit curricular goal.  A knee jerk liberal reaction (of which I have some)  could be that such schools are really just proselytizing  instead of teaching professional secular values.  However, the dialogue and exchange was so rich at the conference that I am leaving with a renewed sense of how important it is for secular schools also  to profess their  intention or mission with respect to value formation and commitment to a curriculum in which students engage  in the practice of acquiring practical wisdom.   Developing practical judgment in an ethical context seems tied to  identifying and reflecting iupon  one’s own moral as well as ethical reactions and also listening to and understanding the reactions of others.

I’d love to hear the thoughts of others who attended and will also note when video or other materials are available from the conference.

UPDATE: Please find the materials for the conference here

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Lippman Unveils Rule Detailing Bar Admission Pro Bono Mandate, New York Law Journal

By Joel Stashenko and Christine Simmons

Details of the new 50-hour pro bono requirement for applicants to the New York bar were unveiled yesterday by Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman.

Specifics of the program announced in May were eagerly awaited by law schools, public interest groups, bar associations and other members of the bar. They were announced by Lippman at a press conference at New York University School of Law.

The first-in-the-nation requirement will take effect immediately for first- and second-year law students, who will have up to 34 months to fulfill the mandate. Current third-years are exempt.

Starting Jan. 1, 2015, every applicant to the bar will be required to fulfill the requirement.

“I firmly believe that this will set the pace in the country,” Lippman said in an interview. “On every level it makes sense, for new lawyers, for the profession as a whole, for the legal services providers, for the judges. So I am really upbeat about it.”

Under the rule, 22 NYCRR §520.16, qualifying pro-bono work must be law-related.

“If you build houses for Habitat for Humanity, that doesn’t count,” Lippman said. “But if you do legal work for a non-profit like Habitat for Humanity, that could count.”

Approved pro bono work includes legal services for people of “limited means”; not-for-profit organizations; individuals or groups seeking to promote access to justice; and public service in the judiciary and state and local governments.

The work must be performed under the supervision of a law school faculty member; an admitted attorney in good standing; or, in the case of a court system clerkship or externship, by a judge or lawyer employed by the court system. Participation in law school clinics for which students receive credit would count.

“We believe the clinics are the best places to get that experience and it would be foolish to ignore the one place where you know you have the supervision that you need in well-organized programs,” Lippman said. “To ignore that, to us, it would have been sheer folly.”

Services may be completed in any state or U.S. territory, the District of Columbia or any foreign country.

“It is logistically too difficult to require everyone to come into New York and to mandate them to do it here,” Lippman said.

Recommendations for the operation of the new requirement were developed by an advisory committee chaired by Court of Appeals Judge Victoria Graffeo and Alan Levine, a partner at Cooley.

‘User-Friendly’ Requirement

While most of the required pro bono work entails civil legal services, Lippman said donating time to providers of criminal legal services would be acceptable.

“We didn’t want to have a plan that raised tremendous obstacles,” he said. “We wanted to make it user-friendly while keeping with the purpose of this, which is to close the justice gap in New York.”

Hannah Arterian, the dean of Syracuse University College of Law, who was not at the press conference, said the requirement is likely to create more work for law schools who will be expected to expand clinics and other pro bono programs.

“Given what is on everybody’s plate and pressures that law schools are under with respect to the tuition issues, this is a whole other level of responsibility that the law schools have to take on,” she said.

Lippman said one reason why the requirement is not applicable to third-year students is to give the schools “a little bit of time to make sure the opportunities were there.”

Anthony Crowell, dean of New York Law School, announced yesterday that his school has created a new Pro Bono Initiative to put New York Law’s clinical and experiential learning programs in line with the new mandate.

“Expanding clinical and experiential opportunities has been a priority of mine since joining the law school,” Crowell said in a statement. “Our new Pro Bono Initiative provides NYLS with an excellent opportunity to showcase its ability to be nimble and build best-in-class programs to further the goals of access to justice as we train the next generation of lawyers.”

Steven Banks, attorney-in-chief of the Legal Aid Society of New York City, said at the press conference that “a whole crew of people” at his agency were waiting to manage participants in the program.

“Is it going to be perfect? Probably not,” he said, adding, “We’re going to proceed and try to make a difference in our clients’ lives.”

William Kransdorf, director of the NYC Bankruptcy Assistance Project at Legal Services NYC, said the requirement will not create additional burdens for his group, but he predicts it might for other legal services providers.

“Very commonly the lawyer who wants to give pro bono time needs training to be able to do something useful. So people who want to provide these pro bono opportunities are often scrambling to provide training, supervision and in this case they now need to provide certification of hours,” he said.

He said if the 50 hours are spread out during three years, around 16.5 hours a year, it may not be enough, considering the time spent on supervising and training.

“You’ve got to look at how much time is spent supporting that pro bono work,” he said.

Two law students who spoke at the press conference praised the new requirement. But another had some concerns.

Jacob van de Velden, an L.L.M student at NYU Law, asked if a student-driven mediation program, in which students report to other students on their work, would qualify.

Levine said it would not.

“What you’ll find is the law schools that have student-driven programs will be connecting law professors or adjunct professors to those programs in order to provide the level of supervision that will comply with the rule,” Levine said.

New York City Corporation Counsel Michael Cardozo Corporation counsel said yesterday in a statement: “I am very pleased that in Judge Lippman’s commendable continuing efforts to encourage pro bono work, he has recognized that ‘pro bono service’ should be broadly defined to include work at government law offices. Given the difficult economic realities faced by municipalities, pro bono law students working for the government can make a big difference, while at the same time gaining valuable hands-on experience.”

Benefit to New York

About one-third of the 10,000 new lawyers admitted in New York each year are educated in one of the state’s 15 law schools; another one-third in law schools outside the state; and one-third come from outside the United States, according to the advisory committee’s report.

The requirement will not apply to the approximately 160,000 lawyers the American Bar Association said are already admitted in the state. It also does not apply to lawyers seeking admission through motion who are already admitted in another state and do not take New York’s bar exam.

The rules expressly prohibit partisan political activities.

It is estimated that civil legal services providers in New York turn away as many as eight of every nine people seeking their assistance due to a lack of resources, according to a task force on legal aid formed by Lippman.

Even with the allowances for out-of-state pro bono work, programs in New York will abe the biggest beneficiaries of the new plan, Lippman predicted in an interview.

“I think the vast majority of it will be done in New York,” he said. “So many of the students are New Yorkers or are in New York law schools. So many of the kids who are residents and who go to out-of-state schools want to work here so they come back each year.”

The New York State Bar Association did not take an official position on the requirement.

Seymour James Jr., president of the state bar, said in a statement that the new requirement will benefit low-income New Yorkers by making more legal services available to them while also giving law students practical experience and an appreciation for “doing the public good.”

James said that since the new requirement will demand a coordinated effort by law schools, legal services providers, the court system and the students themselves, he was pleased the plan will not be fully implemented until 2015. He also praised Lippman for giving prospective lawyers flexibility by allowing them to fulfill the new mandate with pro bono programs in other states and territories and foreign countries.

Lippman said the bar has been “generally supportive” of his initiative, but he acknowledged that some members “were worried that the rules could be a harbinger of the future,” when a pro bono requirement would be imposed on practicing lawyers.

Lippman said New York lawyers already do their share of pro bono, donating more than 2 million hours providing legal services to the poor. He said he opposes mandating pro bono participation.

Mandatory pro bono “is difficult, if not impossible, logistically because of all the many kinds of lawyers in New York, and some of them are just getting by,” Lippman said. “To me, this is the best guarantee against mandatory pro bono because you are instilling that culture in a new generation of lawyers. They will have it from Day One.”

Several members of the judiciary attended yesterday’s press conference, such as Bronx Supreme Court Justice Douglas McKeon.

While not all the mechanics of the program have been worked out, McKeon said in an interview, the requirement is needed.

“The significant part of this morning is that we now consider a legal education as one that embraces and includes programs that bring the justice system alive to those who would ordinarily be without legal representation,” he said.

The particulars of the new rule were approved Sept. 13 by the Court of Appeals, as well as by the court system’s Joint Administrative Board.

Lippman first revealed his intention to institute a pro bono requirement during his State of the Judiciary address in May (NYLJ, May 2).

Applicants to the bar after Jan. 1, 2015, must file an affidavit of compliance demonstrating that they have met the pro bono requirement.

It will be the responsibility of the character and fitness committees within the Appellate Division to verify that applicants have met the requirements, Lippman said at the press conference.

For questions on the new requirement, contact ProBonoRule@nycourts.gov or 1-855-227-5482.

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As a generally optimistic person, I avoided using terms like the “lost generation” for law grads since 2008 because it seemed such a defeatist term.   In addition, I thought I started to see some signs of employers being more partriotic and brave by embracing opportunities to hire my students and former students.   However, an August ABA Journal article gave me  pause.  What do you think?

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On July 31, 2012, outgoing ABA President Bill Robinson, in response to scrutiny by the media and concern expressed from inside and outside the profession, announced the formation of an 18 member taskforce to study the future of legal education.  http://www.abanow.org/2012/07/aba-president-names-task-force-on-the-future-of-legal-education/ Then, last week, many state and national journals reported on the proposed work of the taskforce and its two year charge while the Chair of the taskforce, Randall T. Shepard, former chief justice of the Indiana Supreme Court and current executive in residence at Indiana University’s Public Policy Institute, conversed with a Wall Street Journal (WSJ)  reporter on the  Journal’s law blog http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/08/10/law-blog-fireside-chairman-of-aba-task-force-on-legal-education .

Reading that blog interview, I was heartened to read comments by Chair Shepard which put the “business model” attacks which have dominated the public discourse for the past year or so in a broader context.  This broader context, I think, is more likely to result in lasting and less reactionary change.  For example, he emphasized that legal education reform efforts did not originate with the recent economic crisis and that ongoing change has occurred within law schools over the last 15 years.  At the same time, he forewarned that many within law schools believe there are “interesting opportunities for further change.” He also notes that

“the most dramatic change in the American legal education in the last 15 years has been expanding the opportunities students have for real life experiences in clinics and internships. Everyone I know thinks that’s a good thing and it has made a difference.”

I was also impressed by his thoughtful response to suggestions that the way to better prepare law students for practice is for most law schools to train their students on regional matters and local or state laws.   Shepard made clear that the current and future practice of law is not as parochial as such proposed solutions suggest.

According to Shepard, his taskforce will issue a report and recommendations to the ABA at the end of the two years. A few questions and reflections about the work of this taskforce spring to mind:

1) Do we need a new taskforce? Do we need a new report?

2) How will this taskforce coordinate with the ongoing work of the Standards Review Committee? Is its creation an admission that the work of that committee has failed? Or is it a suggestion that a different or supplemental approach is needed?

Reading this piece also reminded me that there are schools out there that have tackled the idea of better preparing students in a systematic manner.    We should recognize the hard work done by many unheralded schools to focus on students’ learning outcomes and their professional development. I would like to see more media and public focus on those schools, that hard work, and those results.

For example, this past April, I had the pleasure of presenting at a faculty workshop at William Mitchell College of Law coinciding with the publication of its Law Review’s edition of “Contemporary Issues in Outcomes- Based Legal Education.” (http://www.wmitchell.edu/lawreview/Volume38/)  My written contribution to the symposium edition, “An Evaluation of Ten Concerns About Using Outcomes in Legal Education” formed the basis of the workshop.    However, William Mitchell faculty are so immersed in outcomes evaluation and so savvy about good teaching techniques that the “presentation” turned into a collaborative discussion.   As a faculty and through a number of committees,  William Mitchell has focused on professional writing outcomes by  mapping the curriculum and developing a first year Proficiency test.   Last year, the law school ran a Pilot Program in one of their first year sections intended to , among other goals,  1) define outcomes for each first year course and the first year curriculum as a whole, 2) introduce students to a range of critical doctrinal foundations, 3) integrate skills, doctrine and professionalism in each first year course, and 4) coordinate a series of first year lawyering/legal writing assignments with the doctrinal courses.   At the time I visited, a report on the program was available.  Student feedback was positive and the committee with oversight for the program recommended its continuation and eventual expansion to the entire first year class.  In another example, William Mitchell faculty identified a list of skills and professional attributes recommended for professional practice and provided information for students on how competency is developed over time from introductory to intermediate to advanced development.

I know that the kind of progress I describe in this post is not the kind of dramatic assertion that will garner headlines or create an outpouring of blog comments beyond our circle of interested educators who want to do better and who “labor in the vineyard.” However, despite the lack of national headlines, I really believe that the thoughtful, painstaking, creative and labor intensive work with which William Mitchell faculty are engaged is where the real story lies. Can we ensure that those who pay for and attend law school are given value, learn professional development skills and gain an understanding of what they already can do well versus what they still need to learn? In other words, in the words of Carnegie, are we truly and effectively Educating Lawyers?

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For those of you who are familiar with this blog, you may notice a new link for the “Legal Education, ADR, and Practical Problem-Solving (LEAPS) Project.”

A brief description of LEAPS from Jim Hilbert at William Mitchell College of Law follows:

LEAPS is a project of the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution’s Law Schools Committee. We have recently launched the website and initiated what we call a “community organizing” effort to encourage faculty to talk with colleagues at their law schools, as described on the “engaging colleagues” page of our website. This project is devoted to increasing instruction in practical problem solving in legal education by integrating it into the curriculum in various ways.

If you have a chance, take a quick look and let the readers know what you think!

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Perhaps it is because this blog has been discussing the need to change since 2009, so many of our contributors have been working to reform and improve legal education for decades and the Carnegie Report and Stuckey’s BEST PRACTICES FOR LEGAL EDUCATION both celebrated 5th birthdays earlier this year.   Maybe it is because our faculty and administration spent Friday evening gathering with our graduates at a Dean’s reception to provide support and succor to our July Bar Exam takers.   Whatever the reason, I can feel myself becoming very frustrated with the constant barrage of  johnny-come-lately and unproductive descriptions of the legal education crisis.

Being a strong  and longstanding advocate for reform of legal education, shouldn’t I be feeling  triumphant, or at the very least,  justified that what we warned about came to pass, that people are finally paying attention?  Instead what I feel is extremely protective of my current students, recent graduates and other poor souls who read each new assaultive journalistic “contribution” with fear, depression and hopelessness.  This morning , when many of us opened our NYT Sunday Review – in textured paper form or in handy  online edition – we were faced with Sunday Observer Lincoln Caplan’s piece “An Existential Crisis for Law Schools”  and his opening line “July is the cruelest month for recent law school graduates.”  

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/opinion/sunday/an-existential-crisis-for-law-schools.html?_r=1&ref=opinion Caplan notes that state bar exams scheduled next week are “make or break” affairs.   He then goes on for the next ten paragraphs repeating the oft-told story about how the economics of  legal education has changed for the worse and quoting Dean Frank Wu of Hastings Law:  “This is Detroit in the 1970’s : change or die.”

I think what is really cruel is publishing this piece right before anxious law graduates need to summon up all their positive energy to take an exam which in NY has 22 subjects and for which one must take an expensive bar course to learn the “gaming” of how to pass this test.   I think it is cruel to blithely assert that law schools fail to “train lawyers for public service or provide them with sufficient preparation for practical work” in that same article when this is the time to ask why doesn’t the bar exam have a clinical component or why don’t we have a public service or practical alternative to a largely multiple choice test?  If we really want to train civic professionals who deal with real people would we not make the examination of who becomes a lawyer more like the practice of law?  I am more interested in hearing about the practical opportunity this “crisis” gives us to change the outdated practice of written bar exams.  Maybe then, July would become a time of challenge – to demonstrate recent law graduates skills, values and knowledge -rather than cruel ritual.

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This next blog posting comes from Professor Nancy Cook:

The ABA’s Standards Review Committee is considering significant changes to the standards governing legal education relating to security of position. Tenure, even for those long protected in the legal academy, is on the line. CLEA and ALWD are on record as being in opposition to the abolition of tenure (or tenure equivalency) for not only the long-protected, but for all full-time teaching faculty. This is, in the eyes of many liberals, a question of fairness and equality.

Not all self-described lefties are quite so sure. Natural would-be allies hesitate about a system of job security that would open the doors to certain full-time faculty primarily on the basis of one factor: scholarship. Concerns center primarily around questions of the nature of the university. If, as many (if not most) people believe, the university is essentially a place where knowledge is developed and disseminated, then, the argument goes, employment protection (and certainly faculty governance) should be reserved for those who actually engage in the development and dissemination of knowledge. The means by which knowledge is developed and disseminated is scholarship, published in respected journals. A corollary to this argument is that tenure protects academic freedom by ensuring that those who publish unpopular views (historically, where truth lies) are not put at risk of losing their employment for expressing those views

I share with the many the belief that the university is a place where knowledge is to be grown, preserved, and shared, and that the development of knowledge should be nurtured and protected. But I take issue with the idea that knowledge is only evidenced by and disseminated via a particular brand of scholarship (see blog posting of October 10, 2010). It also seems ridiculous to assert that academic freedom only applies in controversies over what someone has written. Certainly, faculty who put themselves on the line by representing unpopular clients or pursuing truth through unconventional pedagogies are equally worthy of a shield against disgruntled employers, board members, and local citizens.

There is still more to this debate though. The university’s role as both guardian and generator of knowledge, concededly its primary function, is not accomplished only through the research and scholarship of its academic faculty. It is also accomplished through education and service. Typically, in law schools, these three functions – scholarship, teaching, and service – make up a triangle by which the university’s aims are meant to be achieved. Reliance on scholarship – and more particularly, on publication — as the top-heavy angle of the triangle has skewed this conversation about security of position. The privileging of scholarship is the elephant in the room whenever discussions about tenure, faculty governance, and appointments processes take place.

The role of teacher, vis a vis student, is to draw out knowledge. That is the etymological root of the word “education,” and it is at the heart of what we have come to call the “Socratic method.” However successful we may be in this role as teachers of students, we seem to lose sight of its value in our dealings with each other. We tend not to act as educators – drawing out knowledge and truth – in our peer group. It seems to me we have it backwards; we are using publication as the keystone, when we should be using education

The reliance on publication as evidence that knowledge is being created and disseminated needs re-examination. Clearly, this focus denigrates the other points of the triangle, teaching and service. As with our tripartite democratic government, the university academic triad is meant to provide balance that benefits the whole enterprise. The spirit of the university triangle is one of integration. Each part of the triangle supports the other two parts. It is true, as many have noted, that scholarship makes us better teachers; but it is also true that service makes us better scholars, that teaching improves our performance as public citizens, and so on. Too great an emphasis on any one part of the triangle carries risk.  With the over-weighting of scholarship, the risk is that our publications will be overly formulaic, exclusive, risk averse, and dishonest, thereby taking us away from our central mission of discovering knowledge and pursuing truth.

More significantly, in my view, this overemphasis on scholarship is not true to the spirit of education. Again I return to the idea that the method by which universities operate in pursuing truth and gaining knowledge is that of drawing out.  Certainly scholarship succeeds best when it does more than inform — when it, rather, draws a response from readers and provides the path by which readers possess their own understanding of ideas and principles and come to own knowledge for themselves. Teaching and service are also part of the educational process. Our colleagues, like our students, have been chosen for their commitment to learning and for their ability to contribute to the knowledge enterprise. Whatever policies we put in place to maximize the potential for sustaining this enterprise needs to honor the ability and commitment of each, and should provide the space and opportunity each needs to succeed.

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The next meeting of the Standards Review Committee  will be on Friday, July 13, 2012 and Saturday, July 14, 2012 in Chicago at the American Bar Association.   The Schedule for the Committee Meeting indicates that the following topics will be discussed and reviewed for consideration:

• Chapter 2 (Except 206 (c) & 211-213): Organization and Administration-Second Consideration
• Chapter 3: Program and Legal Education-Second Consideration
  Proposed Standard 303 (Current 301-6): Regarding Bar Passage Rates
• Chapter 5: Admissions and Student Services-Second Consideration
• Chapter 6 (Except 603 (d)): Library and Information Resources-Second Consideration
• Chapter 7: Facilities-Second Consideration

The meetings will begin at 8:30 a.m. on Friday and end at 12 p.m. on Saturday.

A tentative schedule for the July meeting, as well as upcoming meetings can be found here.

The address of the American Bar Association in Chicago is:

American Bar Association
321 North Clark Street, 21st floor
Chicago, IL 60654-7598

If you need accommodations, please contact the Amalfi Chicago located at 20 W. Kinzie, Chicago, IL 60654. The rates for a single/double are $189, plus tax (15.4%).

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It is no surprise that with growing advances in technology the context of the legal profession has begun to change and evolve. For a student entering her third year of law school, I find this trend both intimidating and exciting. Not a day goes by without me digging through my purse every five minutes for my Iphone or frantically pulling up a school email on an Ipad. Students today, including myself, are attached to this technology, and because of this reliance, the future of the legal profession is drastically changing. In Jon Garon’s article, Legal Education in Disruption: The Headwinds and Tailwinds of Technology, he addresses these changes and technological attachment and how they will forever affect the practice of law. Lawyers today, Garon explains, rely heavily on technology: submitting court documents digitally, responding to client emails from their iPhones, and locating clients on social media networks. Just yesterday, a close friend was recounting her day in a city court where an attorney conducted his entire caseload from his Ipad. In addition to that, not only can the state penal code, criminal procedure law, and vehicle and traffic law be found via an App from Itunes ($5.99 each), but entire case files can now be converted to be available on a tablet and subsequently, emailed to the court clerk.  It seems that this will lead to a balancing act where the technically savvy lawyer will prosper by harnessing this technology and mirroring that with the ability to provide adequate services to their clients. While I somehow find this “balance” calming, I can understand why those practicing law for several years can see this change looming on the horizon with both anxiety and nervousness.

Garon also explains that in today’s world there are plenty of “self help” remedies that can be found online, giving consumers legal products which require no actual contact with a lawyer. Out of curiosity, I googled “legal documents” and over 34 million results popped up, with the first page consisting of free downloadable forms (with suggestions for leases, promissory notes, and living wills). Garon states that the legal education must respond to the changing times, and must follow closely with the development of technology. It is particularly scary to a third year law student that the skills I am being taught in class and in my internships can simply be replaced by typing into a search engine. Professors and faculty must find a way to teach both the traits that can be found in successful lawyers, while balancing with business practices and technological advances in “forward looking practices.” The classes that seem to prepare law students the best are the ones that see these challenges and obstacles that face students, like myself, and grasp at the chance to show us how we can navigate through these changing times.

Garon ends his article with the question, ‘If not now, when?” While I understand that this question is directed towards faculty and staff at law schools, it is my belief that law students need to answer this question as well, for one day (very soon) we will also be practicing attorneys. Through embracing these constant changes in technology and combating these changes with teaching “intentionally rather than inductively,” law schools will be able to provide the best legal education possible and begin to transform the profession into a modern and technologically sound resource.

Here is the abstract:

“By harnessing improvements on communications and computational systems, law firms are producing a revolution in the practice of law. Self-help legal manuals have transformed into sophisticated interactive software; predictive coding can empower clients to receive sophisticated legal advice from a machine; socially mediated portals select among potential lawyers and assess the quality of the advice given; and virtual law firms threaten to distintermediate the grand edifices of twentieth century Big Law. These changes may profoundly restructure the legal practice, undermining the business model for many solo and small firm practices.

This paper focuses on the implications of these profound disruptive changes. It looks at the expectations the market may place on future lawyers and by extension the training necessary for lawyers entering the practice of law. The final section reflects a suggested curriculum and programmatic redesign, highlighting one possible future legal educational model, complete with acquiescence to existing constraints found in American Bar Association and other accreditation regimes.”

A working draft of the article can be found here.

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A primary challenge in implementing legal education reform is asking institutions and their stakeholders to trust and have patience. Real reform, as described in Educating Lawyers and in Best Practices for Legal Education requires, in my humble opinion, prioritizing the long-lasting rewards that come with inclusive process, comprehensive analysis, thoughtful deliberation and time-intensive collaboration. I see these as the necessary ingredients for real reform. It also involves dealing with what Judith Wegner calls legal education’s “Wicked Problem.” (see previous blog post here)

However, sustaining the energy and commitment to create real reform, or even believing that such energy and commitment can be sustained, seems an impossible hurdle in some settings.

Professor and Dean Michael Cassidy offers in the September 2012 edition of the Boston College Law Review “an interim approach,”:

My goal in this essay is to offer a “self-help” remedy for faculty members and administrators interested in responding to the Carnegie Report’s call for greater emphasis on experiential education, but uninterested in waiting for the committee deliberations, reports, faculty votes, and tough resource trade-offs that lie ahead. We drag our heels at our own perils, and to the serious disadvantage of our current students. What follows is a description of nine changes that individual faculty members and deans can make now to improve the professional education of law students. While each initiative when viewed in isolation may seem modest, collectively they could have a huge impact on our programs.

The steps outlined in the article which can be found on SSRN here include exposure to foreign law, additional career path courses, as well as law practice management courses, and holding professional formation retreats for students, faculty and alums to discuss the values of the legal profession. These “retreats” would allow students to explore what it means to morally and ethically be a lawyer. Cassidy explains that the first five recommendations, which are pedagogical in nature, require changes by the individual faculty member, and can be found in some of the best law classrooms and employed by the best law professors in the field. The remaining recommendations require work from both students and Academic Deans to improve and expand on current practices in law schools. He concedes that his most “controversial” step is the ninth: that when looking to hire new professors, special attention should be paid to the amount of practical experience these new hires have in the field.

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A recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education discusses research that shows our efforts to make it easier for students to process course materials may be less effective in promoting learning. This article is worth a read and connects research about learning with some of the teaching methods many of us already use. I could see using some of this information to explain to students why course materials are NOT being made as though to spoon feed them what they need to know. (The first study referenced in the article seems to equate learning with memorization, but law students also must spend significant effort memorizing, whether to excel on traditional exams or, ultimately, to pass the bar.) Also, those of us who struggle with less-than-perfect classroom slide presentations may take some comfort – wacky fonts may be a better tool than we thought!

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