Best Practices for Legal Education

For a more current list, please visit the CELT website

June 23-24, 2009 – “Implementing Best Practices and Educating Lawyers: Teaching Skills and Professionalism Across the Curriculum”
Sponsored by the Institute of Law Teaching and Education of Gonzaga University School of Law. This conference will explore techniques for teaching skills and professionalism across the law school curriculum. Building on the energy generated by the publications of Carnegie’s Educating Lawyers and CLEA’s Best Practices for Legal Education, the Institute’s summer conference will provide a forum for dedicated teachers to share with colleagues innovative ideas and effective methods for modern legal education.

 June 7 – 9, 2009 – 3rd Annual Indian Law Clinics and Externship Programs:  Symposium and Workshop
Sponsored by UNM School of Law and University of Denver College of Law, the goal of this gathering is to allow Indian Law Clinics, and other clinicians working with minority populations to work in solidarity on Poverty Law and community lawyering issues, to discuss our shared mission and differing perspectives, and to support new ideas.     
Where:  Isleta Casino & Resort, Pueblo of Isleta (South of Albuquerque, NM)
Contacts:  Professor Chrsitine Zuni Cruz, UNM School of Law – zunich@law.unm.edu ; Professor Aliza Organick, Washburn University School of Law – aliza.organick@washburn.edu ; Professor Barbara Creel, UNM School of Law – creel@law.unm.edu .

Check back soon for materials from this conference!

March 6 – 7, 2009 – University of Maryland School of Law hosted a national conference on Best Practices in Clinical Legal Education. The conference gathered educators to explore and summarize the best practices discussions taking place all over the country and in the academy in response to the recently published Carnegie Report Educating Lawyers, and Best Practices for Legal Education by Roy Stuckey. Programs that are implementing the reports’ recommendations were explored.January 7, 2009 – AALS Section – Teaching to the Entire Class:  Innovative and Effective Instruction to Engage Every Student

September 5 -7, 2008 – University of Washington School of Law has agreed to host a conference addressing efforts to implement the insights from Best Practices and Educating Lawyers. The conference will be entitled Legal Education at the Crossroads: Ideas to Implementation. 

• Conference Materials
• Supplementary Materials

July 24-25, 2008 – Michigan State University College of Law hosted the Great Lakes Symposium on Clinical Scholarship & Best Practices.  This conference “initiated a dialogue among clinical educators in an effort to enhance the clinical experience for all participants,” while allowing clinicians to identify appropriate clinical scholarship opportunities and best practices for clinical legal education.  The program  provided a forum for clinicians to share experiences, teaching and research methods, and recent innovations in clinical education. 

June 19-21, 2008 – University of Maryland School of Law  hosted the annual CALI conference (Conference for Law School Computing).  This year’s theme was “Transforming Legal Education.”  The keynote speaker was Paul Maharq.

June 12-14, 2008 – University of New Mexico School of Law & The Southwest Indian Law Clinic hosted the Second Annual Indian Law Clinics & Externship Program Symposium entitled, Moving towards Best Practices for Indigenous Representation: “Listening to our Communities, Assessing our past, Reframing our future-clinical methodology, pedagogy, and curriculum design”

This event was designed for clinicians or extern program supervisors training future lawyers to represent Native peoples, those who work with tribes or in Indigenous communities, lawyers who work with clinics to deliver legal services to these communities, and other community lawyering clinicians.  It was held at the Tamaya Hyatt Resort at Santa Ana Pueblo, New Mexico, just 20 minutes North of Albuquerque, NM.  

The Indian Law Clinic and Externship Symposium is funded by institutional donations and registration fees. Your support is greatly appreciated and necessary for continuing our work. . Co-Sponsors of this event include: Tribal Law Practice Clinic; Washburn University School of Law; University of Denver, Sturm College of Law; Arizona State University, Sandra Day O’ Connor College of Law.

March 28 – 29, 2008 – CUNY School of Law – Haywood Burns Conference – “Teaching Law in a Multi-cultural, Multi-lingual Context.” 

CUNY School of Law and the Center for Diversity in the Legal Profession hosted the 2008 Haywood Burns Conference.  Among the topics presented: providing access and diversity through Pipeline programs; the immigrant experience in law school , understanding the multiplicity of “cultures” within law students; clinical approaches to multiculturalism from the perspective of faculty, student, and client; strategies for reaching first-year students in the small or large classroom. 

March 21, 2008 – American University Washington College of Law hosted “Innovations in First Year Curriculum.” Affirmation of the importance of rethinking the first year is evident in the Carnegie Foundation Report issued in 2007, the Best Practices for Legal Education project, and most recently in the Session at the Annual Meeting of the AALS in January 2008 (Reassessing Our Role As Scholars and Educators in Light of Change).This event brought together academic leaders to discuss some of the dynamic changes in theory and pedagogy related to the first year experience.

February 20-23, 2008 – Georgia State Law School hosted an International Conference on the Future of Legal Education. The conference focused on two questions: 1) if one was starting a new law school, how would one incorporate the recommendations of the Carnegie Foundation’s report on legal education, and 2) how might an existing law school transform itself into the kind of law school envisioned by Carnegie?  For further information, visit the conference website at http://law.gsu.edu/FutureOfLegalEducationConference 

January 4, 2008 – Plenary session at AALS on “Rethinking Legal Education for the 21st Century” featuring Edward L. Rubin (Vanderbilt University Law School), Vicki C. Jackson (Georgetown University Law Center), Robert Mac Crate, Esq. (Senior Counsel, Sullivan and Cromwell), Martha L. Minow (Harvard Law School), Suellyn Scarnecchia (University of New Mexico School of Law), William M. Sullivan (Senior Scholar The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching), Judith W. Wegner (University of North Carolina School of Law). (Outline) (podcast)

December 7 & 8, 2007 – “The Legal Study Project” held its first meeting of the ten law schools (CUNY, Dayton, Georgetown, Harvard, Indiana-Bloomington, New Mexico, NYU, Stanford, Southwestern, and Vanderbilt) at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation on the Stanford campus.

December 6- 7, 2007 – 1st Annual Upstate/Western New York and Beyond Regional Clinical Conference: “Forming a Regional Community to Share and Define Best Practices”,  Syracuse University  College of Law :  The conference explored and critically examined issues raised in the new Carnegie Report, entitled “Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law,” and the Clincial Legal Education Association’s (CLEA) “Best Practices for Legal Education:  A Vision and a Road Map.”

November 9, 2007  –The Mercer Law Review hosted a symposium on The Opportunity for Legal Education.

November 2-4, 2007 – Legal Education at the Crossroads, Ideas to Action, Part I: On November 2-4, a conference of 57 reform-minded law school deans, associate deans, clinical teachers, traditional teachers, legal writing teachers, and academic support people discussed how to implement recommendations for improving legal education contained in two recently published books. Educating Lawyers was published by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and Best Practices for Legal Education was published by the Clinical Legal Education Association. Both books call on law schools to implement significant, fundamental changes in what they teach and how they teach it.

 The by-invitation-only conference, Legal Education at the Crossroads, Ideas to Action, Part I, was planned and facilitated by the primary author of Best Practices for Legal Education, Professor Roy Stuckey, University of South Carolina School of Law; and one of the authors of Educating Lawyers, Professor Judith Wegner, University of North Carolina School of Law. Professor Wegner delivered the keynote address, but most of the conference time was spent in small group discussions followed by group reports and discussions. Before legal education can be substantially changed, three questions must be addressed: why? what? and how? The Crossroads Conference participants did not discuss why legal education should be reformed because they all understood the need for it. They also did not spend much time discussing what needs to happen, because Educating Lawyers and Best Practices for Legal Education explain what law schools need to do to improve the quality of their students’ educational experiences. Most of the conference discussion focused on how the recommendations of the books could be implemented. It was agreed that one need is to develop and disseminate models of best practices—program design, syllabi, materials, computer applications, and demonstrations of effective pedagogy. Various ideas for improving law teacher training were also discussed.