Posted on October 27, 2008 by Antoinette Sedillo Lopez
My colleague Alfred Mathewson always makes me think. He came back from the American Bar Association Bar Exam Passage conference last week. He had attended the Crossroads conference at the University of Washington too. He had some interesting observations. He said there were several schools that were creating “tracks” for students in the lower end of the class rank to focus them very specifically on legal analysis skills. Continue reading →
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Posted on October 16, 2008 by karenalash
If it’s fall, then the US News & World Report law school rankings ballots are arriving in law professor mailboxes everywhere. More specifically, clinic directors are receiving the separate clinical specialty ballots (as are teachers of the other separate specialty rankings), and four members of every law school faculty will get the annual “peer assessment” survey, the results of which constitute a whooping 25% of each school’s score for the OVERALL and most influential ranking. Continue reading →
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Posted on October 6, 2008 by Carolyn Grose
Thanks to our friends at the Clinicians With Not Enough To Do blog for finding this:
Print: Due Processors: Educators Seek a Digital Upgrade for Teaching Law – Chronicle.com
By PETER MONAGHAN
Seattle
In 1871, Christopher Columbus Langdell, a prominent jurist who had joined the law faculty at Harvard University, hit on the idea of compiling thick, imposing “casebooks” with hundreds of appeals-court rulings on particular areas of law–contracts, constitutional law, torts, and other areas. Continue reading →
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Posted on September 23, 2008 by vmerton
So, Deborah Rhode’s Best Practices in Law Schools Survey just hit my school, probably yours too. Brilliant concept, superb execution. Very excited about the potential impact of delivering real, solid, accurate information to USNWR respondents. Not trying to compete with USNWR, but to subvert it, if you will. All good. So affirmatively seek out your academic dean or other relevant administrator and inquire, what’s up with the Best Practices Survey? Don’t let it fall behind the decanal desk. Obviously, it will only have clout if the participation is broad enough to make its data meaningful. Continue reading →
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Posted on September 19, 2008 by dmaranville
Back on June I2, I noted that lots of folks are thinking about what processes are most likely to produce successful curricular reform.
At the Crossroads Conference, we had a very interesting plenary on “Institutional Processes for Curriculum Reform”. Great introductory comments from Mike Schwartz of Washburn. The panelists? Rod Smolla, the new Dean at Washington & Lee. You’ve probably heard that they’re implementing a new “all experiential” third year. Jim Moliterno, the guiding light behind William & Mary’s twenty year old “law office” program. Not to mention lengthy comments from the audience by Ed Rubin about Vanderbilt’s extensive efforts. Click here for podcasts and materials.
The core message: one size does not fit all, pay attention to the openings and dynamics are your school. The three examples just cited resulted from radically different processes.
Process was a theme in other sessions, as well: Gerry Hess’s presentation (Theme 6: Whole Curriculum Reforms Showcase) was up to his usual standards and covered both substance and process for Gonzaga’s recent reforms, print materials, p. 85.
In a workshop on the same subject, teams from William Mitchell, print materials p. 19, and Georgia State focused on different aspects of the reform process , including the messages implicit in the rhetoric we use. To what extent are the labels for different type of teachers necessary, or destructive, especially for schools that are fortunate to have overcome the status differentials that often accompany these differences?
Many questions. No easy answers. Let’s keep sharing experiences.
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Posted on September 17, 2008 by dmaranville
For a number of years I’ve taught a course on Access to Justice that satisfied the externship classroom component requirement. Because we are restructuring our externship program, when I taught the class spring quarter the students who were taking the class only to satisfy the requirement were moved to our new externship course.
Not surprisingly, the class drew a number of students who are planning public interest careers. But it also drew others who have made the decision to work at a firm, but want to be engaged in pro bono public service work. Many of the students were especially drawn to the portions of the course in which we talked about the law school experience and the way it shapes students career aspirations.
As I noted in my post on July 10 I’ve been struck by how hungry many our students seem to be for such conversations. Hungry for Carnegie’s “apprenticeship of professional formation,” I think. Both ideas and action on how to weave these issues into the curriculum still seem woefully undeveloped.
Note: For the last several iterations of the course, I’ve used parts of Mahoney, Calmore, and Wildman, Social Justice: Professional Communities and Law, including Chapter 4 on Personal Identity, Role, and Values: Becoming a Lawyer, Staying Yourself. I highly recommend it.
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Posted on September 16, 2008 by dmaranville
As you’ve heard from already heard from Carolyn Grose, the conference held at the University of Washington School of Law in early September on Legal Education at the Crossroads: Ideas to Accomplishments: Sharing New Ideas for an Integrated Curriculum was a great success.
I can’t resist reciting the full title of the conference, because it really captures what we accomplished. Ideas large and small, new and not so new. (The not-so-new is a good thing, by the way, as it represents efforts that actually stuck over time, no small achievement. ) Lots of materials explaining what, why and how folks are implementing their ideas.
We’ve created a website for the conference at http://files.law.washington.edu/open/Crossroads_Conference/.
At the top of the page you’ll find links to the materials submitted before the conference, additional handouts and other materials brought to the conference, and session podcasts. Lots of great and very usable stuff! I can personally plug the materials brought by Wisconsin’s David Schwartz (Theme 3: 1L Reforms Supplementing the Cognitive Apprenticeship) and Roberto Corrada (Theme 5: 2nd and 3rd Year Reforms). But I’ll be gradually working my way through the materials for the sessions I wasn’t able to attend.
We recorded almost all of the sessions — 9 for each time slot, as many as our technology would allow. So if you weren’t able to attend — or attended but want to check out some of the other sessions — check out the podcasts. The technology gods were fickle, as usual, so quality varies. (They’re all posted currently, but we’ll gradually remove the bad ones. Feel free to give us a heads up about any that should be deleted.) Thanks to Harold Daniels of our UW Clincal Law Program staff, who has been working hard to get everything posted, and Sarah Walsh who is reviewing the podcasts.
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Posted on September 12, 2008 by Mary A. Lynch
The New York Bar Association’s Committee on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar invited me to present to them on Best Practices — the book, the BLOG and the movement! I did so this past Wednesday September 10th. Committee members were very interested and asked many questions. Some members were concerned that Best Practices’ call to teach professionalism “pervasively” throughout the three years would lead to less professional responsibility actually being taught. That committee member argued that many traditional faculty don’t really care what the rules are and don’t want to raise such issues in property, torts or contracts. Other members noted that teaching pervasively doesn’t mean eliminating the basic ethics course but adding to it. Another concern raised was that many/most current faculty members have little practice experience and recent hiring trends have emphasized scholarship over practice experience.
The discussion was wonderfully robust and rich. I provided a few ideas: 1) hiring – I gave as an example my school, Albany, where we have included in our hiring criteria “teaching in accordance with Best Practices”; 2) current teachers – I spoke a bit about the opportunity for co-teaching between adjunct practioners and traditional faculty or clinical faculty and traditional. In addition, we discussed the use of simulations, small groups and other teaching methods. One committee member expressed concern about creating “striations” of law schools or graduates; in other words, one would graduate only being able to perform in a particular area of law. Other members found this to be an argument that has been used too often to ignore the basic skills and competence we know all lawyers need. The committee also engaged in discussion about how the bar exam seems to fly in the face of the Best Practices approach. The questions was raised: how can you prepare students for practice using more formative evaluations and outcomes assessments but then demand these same students take the bar exam before practicing? The committee noted that another Bar committee was studying the bar exam and that information should be exchanged between both. We also discussed the ABA’s Outcome Measures Report.
I hope the Committee’s final question will trigger interest on this BLOG. How SHOULD Bar Association’s go about trying to participate in the Best Practices/Carnegie movement? Should they survey their members to find out what concrete, criteria-based skills law graduates should possess upon graduation? Should they look at what England, Scotland and Australia has done and see if it matches what US lawyers need?
I suggested that, at the very least, members query their alma maters about Best Practices and that they consider these issues when hiring graduates. I also promised to keep in touch and communicate ideas from the Best Practices project folks! I feel that there must have been so much more I could have encouraged the committee to do. What are your thoughts? I’d truly appreciate suggestions and discussion.
Mary Lynch, Editor
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Posted on September 6, 2008 by Antoinette Sedillo Lopez
I just saw that the Outcome Measures Report is posted on the ABA web site. The Outcome Measure Committee was chaired by Randy Hertz and is a tour de force. The Report cites Best Practices and the Carnegie Report extensively, it then goes on to look at legal education in other countries, accreditation in other disciplines and regional accreditation standards for universities and colleges. The Report concludes that the ABA accreditation standards should be less “input driven” and more “outcome driven”. It even begins to consider the costs of this shift in accreditation standards. Check out the report!
http://www.abanet.org/legaled/
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Posted on August 31, 2008 by Antoinette Sedillo Lopez
In Ireland recently, my family and I went on a tour with Denis Ryan, a Celtic folk musician, historian and tour guide. He took us on an anthropological tour of the Dingle Peninsula. We showed us the Ogham stones, Dun Beag, a fort built in 500 B.C., beehive huts in Faran, the Reasc Stone, the Gallarus Oratory, Ventry Castle and Fitzgerald Castle. A good part of the tour demonstrates Continue reading →
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Posted on August 12, 2008 by Darlene
Here’s the abstract from David Thomson University of Denver Sturm College of Law:
Legal education is at a crossroads. As a media saturated generation of students enters law school, they find themselves thrust into a fairly backward mode of instruction, much of which is over 100 years old. Over those years, legal education has resisted many creditable reports recommending change, most recently those from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and the Clinical Legal Education Association. Meanwhile, the cost of legal education continues to skyrocket, with many law students graduating with crushing debt they have difficulty paying back. All of these factors are likely to reach a crescendo in the next few years, setting the stage for a perfect storm out of which can come significant change.
But legal education has successfully resisted systemic change for many years. Given that dubious track record, the only way significant change can reasonably be predicted is if something is different this time. Fortunately, there is something different this time: the ubiquity of technology. Since the MacCrate report in 1992, the internet has achieved massive growth, and a generation of students have grown up with sophisticated and pervasive use of technology in nearly every facet of their lives.
This book describes how the perfect storm of generational change and the rising cost and criticisms of legal education, combined with extraordinary technological developments, will change the face of legal education as we know it today. Its scope extends from generational changes in our students, to pedagogical shifts inside and outside of the classroom, to hybrid textbooks, all the way to methods of active, interactive, and hypertextual learning. And it describes how this shift can – and will – better prepare law students for the law practice of tomorrow.
Check out the book’s companion blog also.
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Posted on July 27, 2008 by Antoinette Sedillo Lopez
Jay Pottenger from Yale and Beryl Blaustone from CUNY gave two of the keynote presentations at the recent International Clinical Conference in Ireland. The theme of the conference was “Lighting the Fire: The Many Roles of Clinical Legal Education”. (Wonderful conference by the way, kudos to the organizers!).
An exciting thing about the American presentations was the leadership,,, from MacCrate, to Best Practices and Carnegie. And, while we complain that law schools in the U.S. have not implemented MacCrate as you would expect from such an important report, nearly every law school in the U.S. now has some form of client-service clinic. It turns out that an important report was published in the United Kingdom by the Lord Chancellor’s Committee for Education and Conduct in 1996 and was followed in 2001 by the Law Society of England and Wales proposing a new legal educational framework to teach law students knowlege, skills and ethics. In the wake of these two important reports, some law schools in the United Kingdom responded by including more simulation courses in the curriculum. Professor Pottenger’s presentation focused on the superiority of client-service clinical models to simulation programs, particular in imparting training on ethics and building on student motivation. Professor Beryl Blaustone did a masterful job of demonstrating her techniques for providing meaningful feedback to students in a client- service clinical program. Her technique of asking the student to identify their own issues with their performance and using that as the springboard for the feedback session is very effective. Her presentation demonstrated that there are simply some things that can only be taught through the supervison and feedback process in a client-service clinic.
This two-day conference included a wealth of papers and from many jurisdictions addressing the philosophy and techniques of clinical legal education in law schools in many countries. It was a stimulating conference and the Best Practices book was often mentioned. I was really proud of the leadership that American clinical legal teachers demonstrated at this important conference. And the two keynotes by Beryl Blaustone and Jay Pottenger did all clinical teachers from the United States proud! The conference web page is here: http://www.numyspace.co.uk/~unn_mlif1/school_of_law/IJCLE/
Next year’s International Clinical Conference will be in July in Australia!
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Posted on July 25, 2008 by Roy Stuckey
Do “bar courses” make a difference? Perhaps not, according to data from a recent study. If the data are correct, what are the implications for law schools?
A June, 2007, Journal of Legal Education article reported that an empirical study at one law school determined that bar passage rates were not affected by taking “bar courses” for students in the first, second, or fourth quartile of their class. Douglas K. Rush and Hisako Matsuo, Does Law School Curriculum Affect Bar Examination Passage? An Empirical Analysis of Factors Related to Bar Examination Passage During the Years 2001 Through 2006 at a Midwestern Law School, 57 J. Legal Educ. 224 (June 2007).
The study was limited to one school, and the results may be different at other schools. Irregardless, the findings of this study should motivate every law school to ask, “How can we improve our efforts to prepare our students for the bar examination?” Continue reading →
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Posted on June 23, 2008 by Antoinette Sedillo Lopez
Since I shared the first couple of emails in the current debate at UNM about laptops, I asked Alfred Mathewson if I could share his response. He is working on using the lap tops as a teaching tool!
“I am probably moving in the opposite direction of most of my colleagues here and in most law schools. I am experimenting with the laptops. While I am concerned about the extent to which they may be used to distract students, I think we must conceive of laptops as something more than notepads. In many classes, notetaking is the only pedagogical use of the laptop. I have been experimenting with other uses in the classroom. If the laptops are going to be in the classroom, we should make use of them. I am currently reviewing an online interactive casebook for Civil Procedure in case I teach it again. In Contracts this fall, I plan to experiment with bringing my laptop to class rather than using the big screen for Power Point presentations. I will use a TWEN course site. They will be able to annotate the PowerPoint but they will have no need to spend course time copying the slides. They will, however, have to use the laptop to see the PowerPoint. As I see it, we must prepare students to practice in an era far more technologically advanced than the one in which we were educated.”
Filed under: Teaching Methodology, Technology, Who is Using the Best Practices Book? | Tagged: laptops in the classroom | 2 Comments »
Posted on June 22, 2008 by Antoinette Sedillo Lopez
My colleague Rob Schwartz is addressing the laptop issue in New Mexico this summer while teaching in the Pre Law Summer Program for Indian Students (PLSI) run by the Indian Law Center. Here is his response to Sergio Pareja’s email (described in my last post). Continue reading →
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Best Practices for Legal Education 