Cultivating Self-Directedness among Law Students

Posted on October 20, 2017 by benjmad

The Legal Academy’s efforts to respond to the Carnegie Report’s call for more attention to the “third apprenticeship,” i.e., helping law students to develop a “professional identity,” continues to gain momentum.   I see that not only in increased scholarship on the topic, but also personally from taking part in presentations.   One in particular was a symposium last year at University of St. Thomas Law School, co-sponsored by three other schools that have promoted this movement (Georgetown, Pepperdine, and Regent) designed to measure how far legal education had progressed in the 25 years after the MaCrate Report first introduced the idea that legal education should including features such as professional formation.

Schools that have consistently shown an interest in pursuing ethical professional formation met at that Symposium and form “working groups” to continue, since then, to meet by Skype conference calls and develop assessment rubrics.   Because many law schools have been adopting learning outcomes that implicate formation of professional identity, see http://www.stthomas.edu/hollorancenter/resourcesforlegaleducators/learningoutcomesdatabase/learningoutcomes301c/, the working groups decided to develop the rubrics as a way of helping schools to have methods to assess progress in particular characteristics of professional identity formation.  I joined the workgroup on Self-Directedness, which includes Professor Neil Hamilton (St. Thomas), Professor Kendall Kerew (GA State), Professor Nicole Iannarone (GA State), Associate Dean Rupa Bhandari, Professor Ann Novak (Touro Law), and me (Regent Law).  Professor Kerew has organized regular video-conferences of our team to work on the rubrics, which we store in a shared site in the Cloud.

Self-directedness, in particular self-directed learning, is a skill that students (and lawyers) need. In his book Self-Directing Learning, Malcolm Knowles defines self-directed learning as “a process by which individuals takes the initiative . . . in diagnosing their learning needs, formulating goals, identifying the human and material resources for learning, choosing and implementing appropriate strategies, and evaluating learning outcomes.” (Malcolm Knowles, Self-Directed Learning 18 (1975).

Intrigued by this concept, my colleague Natt Gantt and I surveyed students at a number of schools in two sets of surveys to highlight the significance of self-directedness.  In an article for the St. Thomas Law Journal, we report the contrasting survey results.  See https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2997258  The first survey sought from students their top goals leaving law school. One of the top goals, ranking even higher than paying off student loans, was to find meaningful employment.   The other survey, of the same schools, asked students to fill in a survey that assessed the degree to which they possess self-directedness.  The results showed that most law students are lacking in this quality.   We observe in the article that students need to understand—have us “connect the dots” for them on this point—that if they are going to find meaningful employment, they need to cultivate self-directedness.   We then describe some of the schools that have initiatives designed to do just that.

In short, the professional identity movement continues.  As it does so, its benefits for legal education become even clearer.   We only hope that more schools agree and take advantage of the efforts of the working groups seeking to move the ball forward in this important area.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Teaching Transformation for Well-being

Posted on October 9, 2017 by Marjorie Silver

In his August 21, 2017 blog, John Lande offered cogent observations about the new report of the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being, The Path to Lawyer Well-Being: Practical Recommendations for Positive Change.  Noting the substantial stress that both law students and lawyers experience and the evidence that this stress contributes to the high incidence of substance abuse and mental illness among both groups, John opined that addressing the symptoms of these problems without taking on their causes was insufficient: in order to prevent these problems from arising, both the law school and the practice of law require cultural change.  I agree, although my interest in work towards such a shift has taken a different direction.  John quotes from the report: “Our legal system is adversarial—it’s rooted in conflict.”    Of course, conflict is inevitable.  But is an adversarial legal system inevitable?  I suggest that adversarialism need not remain its dominant paradigm.

This cultural transformation has been incubating in a growing segment of the profession and the academy for at least the past three decades.  Examples include Collaborative Law, Restorative Justice, Therapeutic Jurisprudence, Integrative law, and Humanizing Legal Education, among other developments in the law, seeking healthier, happier paths to achieve justice and practice law.  By introducing law students as well as lawyers to more healing, relational and therapeutic ways to be a lawyer, resolve conflicts and achieve justice, we can increase the chances that they will choose careers more consistent with balance and well-being—for themselves and for their clients.

Humanizing Legal Education

At the end of the last century, propelled by the energy and commitment of Professor Lawrence Krieger[1] from Florida State University, whose work is likely well known to the readers of this forum, a group of law professors forged an online Humanizing Legal Education (HLE) community.  In 2009, that community achieved permanent status in the American Association of Law Schools (AALS), becoming the Balance in Legal Education (Balance) section.  A primary goal of HLE and the Balance section is the enhancement of student well-being.  Many law professors, not only around the country but around the world, have been reforming how they teach to compassionately support their students in constructively managing the inevitable stress of legal education.  This is what Healing Classrooms, the chapter I contributed to the recently published book, Transforming Justice, Lawyers, and the Practice of Law, is about.[2]

Healing Classrooms, the reader may already have noticed, is a double entendre, one that deliberately captures two modalities for humanizing legal education generally and teaching transformation in particular.  Examples of atypical courses discussed elsewhere in Transforming Practices include Susan Brooks’ Communicating for Success, Victor Goode’s Contemplative Practice, Rhonda Magee’s Introduction to Race Law and my seminar Transforming Justice and Lawyering (né New Paradigms in Law and Lawyering), discussed below.  These are courses outside the mainstream curriculum, focusing on skills, values, and content to support alternative approaches to practicing law and achieving justice.  The former, and by far the most common, are those that, while part of the mainstream curriculum, are taught by faculty attuned to and concerned with the emotional well-being of their students and the lawyers they will become.  These teachers proactively, consciously endeavor to humanize all the classes they teach.  They approach legal education holistically.  Much as integrative lawyers relate to their clients as whole persons, not just legal issues or “files,” these teachers regard their students as individuals, each of whom brings to the classroom her unique set of experiences, challenges, joys and sorrows.  They deliver traditional academic content informed by best practices in teaching and learning theory, including nonjudgmental compassion.  Their classrooms serve as antidotes to the too often toxic effects of traditional legal education.

Faculty I have encountered who fall into either or both categories are too many to mention, but Appendix A in Transforming Justice highlights the course offerings of many who have inspired me in my journey as a teacher.  Appendix B, also undeniably incomplete, includes the names of many others who are dedicated to humanizing their classrooms and supporting the healthy development of their students.  There is no doubt that their legions will grow, as the Legal Academy, much like society as a whole, accepts the indisputable connection between the well-being of its graduates and the fulfillment of its mission to educate lawyers as part of a helping profession.  Our students are much the better for these efforts.

Humanizing the Profession

In the spring of 2015 I began to teach a dedicated seminar with an experiential component, Transforming Justice and Lawyering.  The course serves as an overview of the Integrative Law Movement.[3]  Students learn about collaborative law, restorative justice, treatment-based (problem-solving) courts, transformative mediation, and other approaches to practicing law, resolving controversies and administering criminal justice outside of the traditional adversarial paradigms, in ways that aspire to enhance the well-being of participants and engender relational and healing outcomes in matters that might otherwise end up in acrimonious or punitive litigation.  Students spend an average of four to five hours per week in one or more of these settings, learning from those who are solution-oriented judges and lawyers practicing in these transformative paradigms.  In addition, students learn about mindfulness, emotional competence, and effective communication, all of which help students develop both self-awareness and awareness of others.  The course also emphasizes the importance of self-care, health, and well-being to the sustainable practice of law.

Transforming Justice and Lawyering offers students the choice to be different kinds of lawyers—lawyers who can enhance their clients’ well-being and their own.  Lawyers who can contribute to address the brokenness of justice-involved persons through appropriate resources and treatment, rather than incarceration.  And the students meet lawyers and judges who have enriched their own lives as well as those they represent, supervise, or serve through work that they love.  Whether these students ultimately seek employment in these settings or not, they are able to experience that there are many ways to be a lawyer, and many ways to find joy and satisfaction in the practice of law.  By introducing them to a number of humanistic innovations in processes and settings designed to achieve justice and resolve disputes, they are better able to critically examine how well the adversarial system of justice and traditional law practice succeed, or fail to succeed, in enhancing the well-being of all stakeholders.

However, it doesn’t require a dedicated course to expose students to these alternative practices.  In both my Professional Responsibility course and Civil Externship seminar, I spend some time exploring the range of careers and settings available to those with a law license, and make sure to discuss these practices as well.[4]

For example, I have included restorative and collaborative practices in the ADR segment of my Civil Dispute Resolution and Procedure course. Criminal Law and Procedure professors might introduce Restorative Practices and Treatment (Problem-solving) Courts in their courses, and compare the potential for therapeutic outcomes for participants in such processes with the punitive, retributive nature of our criminal justice system.  As restorative justice is increasingly used as an alternative to suspension in elementary and secondary schools, those who teach courses on Juvenile Justice and Education Law might incorporate coverage of such practices.   Family Law courses could contrast the benefits and drawbacks of the collaborative process with divorce litigation.  By learning about alternative roles focused on practicing law as a helping, healing profession, law students are able to expand their conceptions of the professionals they might become and envision increased possibilities for being healthy and happy in their chosen profession.

Changing legal culture is an evolutionary process.  As J. Kim Wright’s new book, Lawyers as Changemakers[5] documents, the Integrative Law Movement is spreading throughout the world.  Perhaps it will never become the dominant paradigm in the United States, but those of us who might like to see a kinder, healthier legal culture, have an obligation to introduce our students to these possibilities as part of their legal education.

[1] The empirical research conducted by Larry, and his colleague and collaborator, Ken Sheldon, has likely done more to identify and address the causes of law school distress than any other work.  See Lawrence S. Krieger & Kennon M. Sheldon, Ph.D., What Makes Lawyers Happy? Transcending the Anecdotes with Data from 6200 Lawyers, 83 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 554 (2015); Kennon M. Sheldon & Lawrence S. Krieger, Understanding the Negative Effects of Legal Education on Law Students: A Longitudinal Test of Self-determination Theory, 33 Personality Soc. Psychol. Bull. 883 (2007); Kennon M. Sheldon & Lawrence S. Krieger, Does Legal Education Have Undermining Effects on Law Students? Evaluating Changes in Motivation, Values, and Well-Being, 22 Behav. Sci. Law 261 (2004).

[2] In my recently published book, Transforming Justice, Lawyers, and the Practice of Law (Marjorie A. Silver, ed. 2017), I have described some of these methods.  See ch. 9, Healing Classrooms 251-98.  Most of the remainder of this blog is adapted from that chapter.  Footnotes omitted.

[3] See infra, note 5 and accompanying text.

[4] The chapter I contributed to the text for externship programs, Learning from Practice, ch. 25, Work and Well-Being, includes a segment on the Integrative Law Movement.  Learning from Practice: A Text for Experiential Legal Educations 714-16 (Wortham, et al. eds., 3rd ed. 2016).

[5] J. Kim Wright, Lawyers as Changemakers:  The Global Integrative Law Movement (2016)

Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Forbes article focusing on law schools, competencies and skills development

Posted on October 1, 2017 by Mary A. Lynch

Earlier this week, Forbes contributor Mark A. Cohen discussed what he calls “the interdependency — and misalignment —   of law school stakeholders.”  Cohen refers to a comment in a recent speech by Mark Smolik, the general counsel of DHL Supply Chain Americas, that  “he would no longer subsidize on-the-job-training of law firm associates.”  According to Cohen, Smolick’s remarks are an

indictment of the Academy for its failure to produce practice-ready graduates with required skillsets and a swipe at law firms for their failure to more fully invest in associate training to drive client value.

Cohen is urging today’s law students to look to the marketplace for “efficient, accessible, cost-effective, and just-in-time learning tools available to fill knowledge gaps and to teach new skills.” He boasts about one product that produces “high quality videos” and uses “flipped classrooms.”

I don’t disagree that law schools need to transform faster, provide more skill building,  emphasize the business context in which lawyers are hired to help, and prepare law students for the team realities of today and tomorrow’s economy.  And I appreciate Cohen’s raising this issue and inviting discussion. But his claim that only a “handful” of law schools are savvy on these issues – or as he put it have “yet to read the memo” – made my Irish blood boil. Maybe it is because it is the end of the week and I’m just tired? Maybe it is because I  just recently (September 13th) hosted yet another Flipping (every pun intended) workshop at our school showcasing all the great work being done by my colleagues in flipping their classroom? Maybe it is because if Cohen googled law schools and flipping classrooms,  he would have found Michele Pistone’s fabulous LegalED information? Maybe it is because he could have found this blogsite pretty high up on that google search and clicked on a number of posts such as here and here  and here and here and here  and here ?  Maybe it is because  nobody is noticing the work of folks like my faculty colleague Antony Haynes on innovative online opportunities?

I invite you to read the article, see what you think and tell us on this blog about what Cohen missed happening at your school!

Filed under: Best Practices, Catalysts For Change, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | 5 Comments »

Experience with Peer Support, Peer Review and Feedback on Teaching?  

Posted on September 25, 2017 by Mary A. Lynch

We are all familiar with engagement in peer review of scholarship. Law faculty culture prioritizes peer input and review of scholarly ideas and articles. Sending drafts of articles to colleagues for feedback, “workshopping” preliminary ideas, and vetting scholarship is part and parcel of the work we do. We visit other schools, make presentations and attend conferences because we value peer discussion and  input. It is the basis by which we create and communicate knowledge.

I don’t believe, however, we have a similarly pervasive culture for formative peer review when it comes to teaching in law schools, although such culture exists at other higher education institutions. According to The University of Texas Faculty Innovation Center, an academic culture which prioritizes informed peer collaboration, review and input on teaching benefits everyone,

Good teachers continually learn and develop. Peer Review, which combines the examination of course materials with in-class observations and collegial discussion, helps prompt this learning among faculty. Ideally, these interactions and conversations can create opportunities for us as colleagues to reflect on and adapt our teaching practices in order to become better teachers and increase student learning.

Northeastern University Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning through Research recommends a four step process:

  • Initial conversation between the observer and the observed
  • The observation itself as an informal data collection and distillation process
  • Follow-up conversation in which the observer shares the observations and collaborates with the observed teacher in any kind of brainstorming or troubleshooting that the observations invite.
  • Reflective summary written by the observed instructor, integrating what was learned from the process and how this will influence future teaching.

Vanderbilt University’s Center for Teaching includes the goal of “enabling more intentional and mutually supportive communities of scholar teachers.”

It is true that we have made some progress in elevating the role of teaching in law schools in the past decade. Legal Education certainly woke up to the need for a culture change around curriculum and teaching following the publication of Best Practices for Legal Education  and Educating Lawyers.  The economic downturn heavily affected the admission process and the need to focus on student learning. ABA requirements regarding student learning outcomes also redirected attention and resources towards what students actually learn while in law school. Moreover, organized efforts such as the Institute for Law Teaching and Learning  and the AALS Section on Teaching Methods  have converted many to the idea that teaching and learning are matters worthy of scholarship, innovation and peer discussion.  Places like this blog and others support exchange of ideas, methods and innovations.

It is also true that as far back as 2008, pioneering legal scholars Gerry Hess and Sophie Sparrow studied factors which encourage or assist the professional development of law teachers including peer observation. So there are many resources available to improve teaching in law schools. Yet, across the academy, are we truly immersed in a continual process of formative feedback for law teachers? If so, the web shows little evidence of it.

I think some of the culture gap is explained by the fact that historically peer review of teaching only happened during a promotion and tenure process that resulted in an up or out decision by the faculty — hardly a formative approach. A voluntary formative program of peer support and review – not used for personnel decisions – should allay those fears.  Appropriate concerns about interference with academic freedom in the classroom might explain some of the culture gap. Except that, even more concerns about academic freedom arise with respect to peer input into “controversial scholarship,” since draft writings can be more easily captured and reproduced than can observations of a single class session. What I think explains the gap, instead, is that we have not properly trained or equipped law faculty with the tools and methods for conducting and receiving helpful peer observations.

At Albany Law, we have promoted a culture of inquiry around teaching and learning for many years now — colleagues sit in each others classrooms from time to time, our Academic Dean prioritizes teaching support, our Center for Excellence in Law Teaching showcases teaching ideas and invites collegial discussion through teaching workshops, and our Director of Online Learning and Instructional Technology facilitates flipped classrooms and other innovations. What we haven’t done is formalize a voluntary peer support and review program. This year, we are planning to revisit our very loose approach and learn from the ever evolving resources and experimentation of others.

So readers, contributors and chance internet searchers, please post here what if any processes have you implemented to support peer observation of law teaching? Is it a voluntary program as we envision at Albany? How has it worked? Or, if you have an opinion about faculty peer review programs, let us know what you think!

I hope to compile the results and report back later in the year!

P.S. If you are more comfortable with e-mail than a blog comment, feel free to contact me at mlync@albanylaw.edu. 

Filed under: academic freedom, Best Practices, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Teaching Methodology | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments »

Kiser’s Soft Skills for the Effective Lawyer

Posted on September 15, 2017 by John Lande

I was really pleased to meet Randall Kiser at a recent conference.  I was very impressed by his important study (co-authored with Martin Asher and Blakeley McShane), Let’s Not Make a Deal: An Empirical Examination of Decision Making in Unsuccessful Negotiations.  The top-line finding was that in 85.5% of cases, parties went to trial when one of the parties would have been better off to accept the other side’s last offer.  Plaintiffs received an award less than or equal to the defendant’s last offer in 61.2% of the cases and defendants were ordered to pay more than the plaintiff’s last demand in 24.3% of the cases.

Randy is the principal analyst at DecisionSet®, which consults with lawyers and law firms to improve their effectiveness.  He has written several books including Beyond Right and Wrong: The Power of Effective Decision Making For Attorneys and Clients and How Leading Lawyers Think: Expert Insights Into Judgment and Advocacy.

He just came out with an excellent new book, Soft Skills for the Effective Lawyer, continuing his work to help lawyers do and be the best they can.  He defines soft skills as including “intrapersonal and interpersonal competencies such as practical problem solving, stress management, self-confidence, initiative, optimism, interpersonal communication, the ability to convey empathy to another, the ability to see a situation from another’s perspective, teamwork, collaboration, client relations, business development, and the like” (quoting Susan Daicoff).

He presents research showing that legal clients especially value these skills in lawyers.  Much research on lawyers, such as the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System’s “Foundations of Practice” study, shows that many practicing lawyers also highly value these skills – often much more than the skills we generally emphasize in law school.

Many readers of this blog would recognize these as precisely the skills we focus on in our theory, teaching, and practice.  The chapters deal with self-awareness, self-development, social proficiency, wisdom, leadership, and professionalism.  Each of these subjects include quite a number of specific skills.

The book synthesizes a great deal of research on psychology and lawyers, citing numerous empirical studies.  Teachers probably wouldn’t assign this as a required reading, but it would be useful as a recommended reading for law students who want to get a head-start on honing skills that they will really need after graduation.  It would also be of interest to faculty and administrators for decisions about what to emphasize in their courses and academic support activities.  Scholars interested in this subject would find this book of particular value.

 

 

Filed under: Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

Survey of Applied Legal Education

Posted on September 12, 2017 by elizabethmurad

Report on 2016-17 Survey of Applied Legal Education Now Available

The Center for the Study of Applied Legal Education’s (CSALE) report on “The 2016-17 Survey of Applied Legal Education” is now available: http://www.csale.org/results.html. Over 1,100 law clinic and externship faculty from 187 law schools (94% of ABA accredited U.S. schools) participated in CSALE’s latest tri-annual survey. The 2016-17 survey (CSALE’s fourth) provides the most comprehensive, accurate picture to date of clinical legal education programs, courses, and faculty. The report summarizes the collective responses from schools and their faculty on questions relating to program design, capacity, administration, staffing, funding, and pedagogy, and the role of clinical legal education and educators in the legal academy. In addition to the report, upon request CSALE provides customized information on various aspects of the data to law schools, legal educators, scholars, and oversight agencies.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Best Practices Blog Interest Survey

Posted on September 3, 2017 by elizabethmurad

Good Afternoon Blog Users,

As a new academic year begins, your blog moderators would like to know what it is that interests YOU, and what it is that you might want to see more of on the blog. Please take a moment to complete this survey by selecting from our most frequently used categories, and/or adding your own topic of interest.

Your participation is important to us so that we may better serve you!

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/RXWWZN6

Create your survey with SurveyMonkey

Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off on Best Practices Blog Interest Survey

Teaching “Too Big to Fail”?

Posted on August 28, 2017 by Jill Engle

What is Too Big to Fail?  Tragically, it is clear, not a law school, an American city, or a government-constructed storm levee.  But banks, or more accurately certain staggeringly rich banks, are the raison d’etre  for the quasi-legal phrase “Too Big to Fail.”  This week I teach on corporate fraud and attorney liability in my Legal Ethics course. We will be zooming the lens way out and starting with a look at the 2008 financial meltdown and the government’s multi-billion dollar bailout of the banking industry.

What is the connection to lawyer liability in corporate fraud cases? As the casebook I’ve adopted points out, the financial scandals of the post-World War II U.S. economy have drawn public attention to fraud by accountants and other financial professionals. But lawyers? Not so much.  And not for lack of involvement.

What is the law, if not a rubric to regulate human behavior? We reward and punish each other with laws, take away with one hand and feed with the other, all in a messy attempt to keep ourselves in check.  When we behave badly, the law metes out a corrective measure, overtly or tacitly. We trust that, by and large, this approach yields ever better results over time. As citizens, we honor this code with order when it works and dissidence when it doesn’t.

As teachers, though, how do we teach these distinctions?  More importantly, how do we teach self-regulation to future lawyers in a time when lawyer culpability is barely visible?  Lawyers are vilified in many contexts, to be sure. But our responsibilities for corporate governance and, at least in part then,  for our nation’s economic health, are crucial aspects of a budding lawyer’s knowledge base.  I think ethical inquiry belongs in every law school classroom, and gives our students the foundation they need to strengthen our legal system’s scaffolding.

 

Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Dealing with Causes as Well as Symptoms of Law Students’ and Lawyers’ Lack of Well-Being

Posted on August 21, 2017 by John Lande

The National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being just issued its report, The Path to Lawyer Well-Being:  Practical Recommendations for Positive Change.

It’s a thoughtful, constructive effort to address problems that lawyers face in practice and to promote their well-being.  It deals with serious issues including substance abuse, mental health problems, and suicide.  It includes recommendations for better education, fostering collegiality and civility, enhancing lawyers’ sense of control, mentoring, and systematic monitoring colleagues’ well-being, among many others.  It addresses legal education, recommending adjustment of the admissions process to promote well-being, detection and assistance of students experiencing problems, addressing of issues of well-being in professional responsibility courses, and provision of onsite counselors, among other things.

An appendix suggests topics for educational programs, including conflict management.  This section reads, “Our legal system is adversarial—it’s rooted in conflict.  Even so, lawyers generally are not trained on how to constructively handle conflict and to adapt tactics based on context—from necessary work-related conflicts to inter-personal conflicts with clients, opposing counsel, colleagues, or loved ones.  Conflict is inevitable and can be both positive and negative.  But chronic, unmanaged conflict creates physical, psychological, and behavioral stress.  Research suggests that conflict management training can reduce the negative stressful effects of conflict and possibly produce better, more productive lawyers.” [Footnotes omitted in this and subsequent quotations.]

Dealing with Causes of Law Students’ Problems

I believe that many students’ and lawyers’ problems are caused by law school and legal practice.  To the extent that’s so, treating the symptoms will not fundamentally deal with the systemic causes of the problems.  Rather, significant changes in the nature of legal education and practice – not merely dealing with the symptoms – would be necessary to prevent many of these problems from arising.

I recently wrote a piece, Escaping from Lawyers’ Prison of Fear, in which I examined lawyers’ fears about negotiation and a long list of other things.  I summarized evidence that “the law school experience often is highly stressful and stimulates fear-related responses.  Patterns of fear initiated in law school can persist and grow as students move into legal practice. … Several studies have found that law students ‘consistently report more anxiety than the general population. … Although some students obviously thrive in law school, for others, law school is an experience of ‘fear and loathing.’ … During law school, [] symptom levels are elevated significantly when compared with the normal population.  These symptoms include obsessive-compulsive behavior, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, hostility, phobic anxiety, paranoid ideation, and psychoticism (social alienation and isolation).  Elevations of symptom levels significantly increase for law students during the first to third years of law school.   Depending on the symptom, 20-40% of any given class reports significant symptom elevations.  Finally, further longitudinal analysis showed that the symptom elevations do not significantly decrease between the spring of the third year and the next two years of law practice as alumni.”

“It is not clear what causes law students’ distress. Theorists have suggested various features of legal education may be causal factors including ‘overvaluing theoretical scholarship and undervaluing the teaching function, employing generally unsound teaching and testing methods, and emphasizing abstract theory rather than providing practical training.’  In particular, some things causing distress may include an intimidating Socratic teaching method, novelty of the subject matter, ambiguity of the law, heavy work load, competition, lack of grades in most courses until the end of the semester, feelings of isolation, de-emphasizing personal relationships, ignoring emotional reactions, and reluctance to get help.  Some have compared the first year of law school to ‘military indoctrination’ in which instructors intimidate students, who are ‘stripped naked, so to speak, so that [they] may be remade’ as lawyers and, as a result, become passive and fearful.  Some scholars argue that legal education trains students to ignore their own values, which undermines their self-confidence.  For example, Dean Edward Rubin argues that lawyers experience ‘ethical stress’ where ‘lawyers [and law students] are required to be insincere, to speak words they themselves do not necessarily believe.’”

The Task Force Report recommends that faculty “assess law school practices and offer faculty education on promoting well-being in the classroom.”  It cites Larry Kreiger and Kennon Sheldon’s research suggesting that “potential culprits that undercut student well-being includ[e] hierarchical markers of worth such as comparative grading, mandatory curves, status seeking placement practices, lack of clear and timely feedback, and teaching practices that are isolating and intimidating.”

The Report recommends “that law schools assess their classroom and organizational practices, make modifications where possible, and offer faculty programming on supporting student well-being while continuing to uphold high standards of excellence.”

If law school faculty and administrators want to take serious action to prevent law students’ mental health problems and lack of well-being, they should conduct a careful examination of features of their programs that unnecessarily contribute to these problems.  Students with manifest problems are like canaries in the coal mine for a much larger group of students who experience great stress but whose problems do not manifest outwardly.  Thus dealing with fundamental causes of students’ problems could benefit a large portion of the student population.

As I wrote in connection with the Stone Soup Project, students may do better if they feel that their studies are relevant to professional goals — and fun.

Obviously, no set of measures dealing with causes or symptoms would completely prevent students’ problems.  And there is a long list of pressures inhibiting law schools from making substantial changes in their educational practices, so change would be hard.  But changing the law school environment – and not only addressing individual students’ issues – might be necessary to effectively address the cause of many students’ problems.

Dealing with Causes of Lawyers’ Problems

Most lawyers’ work is stressful.  Litigation is inherently adversarial and transactional work involves efforts to gain competitive advantage.  So the stress of constantly being immersed in conflict is unavoidable to some extent.  But not completely unavoidable.

Some lawyers view their roles as problem-solvers and, as such, seek to de-escalate conflict whenever appropriate while always providing diligent representation.  Even these lawyers need to fight hard when dealing with untrustworthy adversaries.  But they do so only when needed.

The culture in some practice communities is generally adversarial.  Acting tough is the default and the norm, not something that lawyers do to deal with a few exceptionally problematic cases.

This culture seems unnecessary and counterproductive both for clients and lawyers.  I believe that changing this culture would substantially improve lawyers’ well-being.  This is not merely being civil, which is good but doesn’t fundamentally change lawyers’ approach to their work.  Rather, this involves a legal culture where problem-solving is the norm for the way that lawyers serve their clients.  My book on lawyering with planned early negotiation is one of many efforts encouraging this approach.

As with changes in legal education, changing legal practice culture is not easy nor a complete solution to the problems.  But I think that seeking such changes is worth the effort.  Hopefully, such changes would produce better education and client service – with the side-effects of improving law students’ and lawyers’ well-being.

Filed under: Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Catalysts For Change, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

“Situational Excellence” – A Good Concept for Legal Education?

Posted on August 18, 2017 by Carrie Sperling

I recently spent a week in close proximity to four of my clinical students. We participated in a high-stakes, out-of-state hearing for one of our clients in the Wisconsin Innocence Project. The trip topped off a summer’s worth of intense preparation that involved distilling a few thousand pages of transcripts and briefing into an hour-long presentation to the court. Prior to the trip the students created charts, briefed cases, wrote potential counter-arguments, and developed a highly effective PowerPoint to assist me in the closing argument.

The week started with a 14-hour drive. Once we arrived at our destination, we jumped right into last-minute preparations. We met with our client and local counsel, organized our materials, and tested the technology that we would use. The day before the hearing, we gathered with other attorneys in a windowless hotel meeting room to coordinate and revise our presentations for the defendants we represented. The students played more than just a logistical role. They helped revise arguments and edit the presentations. They relentlessly checked the record, providing the detail needed to make our presentations persuasive. As the preparation reached into the evening, still in the windowless hotel room, one of the attorneys reminded the students that we were aiming for “situational excellence” as we finalized our preparation.

Those words of wisdom, uttered by a long-time, excellent public defender, struck a chord with the students. After the hearing, on our long drive home, they talked about “situational excellence.” I wanted to know more about why they thought this was such great advice – to aim for situational excellence. My students impressed me with their insight. They confessed that they often become paralyzed by perfection. The phrase “situation excellence” told them that there’s a time when you must move forward even when you don’t feel like you’ve reached perfection.

Concerned that the phrase might lead them to believe that with few resources, situational excellence may mean that poorer clients get less service. They pushed back. Situational excellence, they said, means to be excellent in this moment. “You should be your best self. That means be your best even if the case is pro bono.” Connecting the phrase to a legal claim we often litigate – ineffective assistance of counsel – a student said, “When you don’t have the resources you know your client needs, you must request them. If you don’t get them, you must make your objections clear. That’s situational excellence.”  Another said, “You can’t give up. Each situation gives you a new opportunity to excellently advocate for your client no matter what your circumstances.”

The discussion made me wonder if we are preparing our students for the situations that arise in the typical practice environment. In our clinic, we teach students to be relentless in their pursuit of perfection. We ask them to call the expert from Stanford Medical School. Maybe she’ll talk to us. Maybe she can provide an answer. We slow things down, working through multiple drafts of emails and letters. We workshop our briefs among the class and the experts in the building. We talk through the interview of a crucial witness for weeks before we actually meet. Are we setting them up to feel like failures once they enter the hustle and bustle of practice?

Research shows that our clinical teaching methods are optimal for learning knew information and new skills. By relentlessly pursuing perfection, we expose students to what ideal representation looks like. By slowing the process down and allowing for lots of feedback and reflection, we help students develop judgment. They learn to critique their own work. We provide a scaffold for them as they develop on a pathway to expertise. This is why clinical education is so important. If we pursue perfection when we have time, we can make better decisions about what excellent representation would look like in any given setting.

I’ve learned from my students’ insight. I’ve realized that we often fail to explicitly inform our students of the long path one travels from novice to expert. The public defender whose wisdom they have clung to spent decades practicing excellently. She knows what excellence means in any given situation. She also knew how to synthesize our massive record into a powerful argument in lightning speed compared to the snail’s pace we took to arrive at our argument.

Knowing the difference between learning and practicing law is crucial to our students’ improvement. Students who can apply their learning in a near-practice setting will have an edge when they begin their practice. But could we better prepare our students by introducing them to the concept of situational excellence? We could certainly be more explicit about how they apply their clinical experience to less than ideal settings. If the students practice excellence under ideal circumstances, their best selves will be better prepared to produce excellence under pressure.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

Scholarship on Bar Exam Alternatives Needed

Posted on July 28, 2017 by andicurcio

This week, our students sat for bar exams across the country.  Many of us may have once again been thinking about the myriad of critiques we have about the current bar exams – critiques that have been published time and again.  Over the years, we hoped the critiques would motivate the National Conference of Bar Examiners [NCBE] to explore and pilot test alternatives.  Thus far, that has not happened.

While there likely are many reasons the NCBE has failed to develop and pilot test alternatives, one oft-heard reason for not changing bar exams is that while the current exams are not perfect, they are the best that can be done.

As Professors Eileen Kaufman, Carol Chomsky and I recently wrote elsewhere – this is simply not true.  We note that for the last ten years, the Law Society of Upper Canada has been administering an open book multiple choice test that covers a much wider range of competencies than is currently tested in the U.S. and that asks questions in context of how lawyers use information when representing clients.  That is just one example of a viable alternative.

As academics, while most of us don’t have the same psychometric background as NCBE employees, we do have the ability to engage in scholarly research and publish what we find.  What are other countries doing?  What licensing methodologies from other professions could we adapt? What are we doing in our own courses that could be adapted to a law licensing process?

There is momentum for change. States such as California have begun to look at the bar exam’s content validity as well as bar exam passing scores.  Professor Deborah Merritt and Dean Nick Allard have both made persuasive arguments as to why bar leaders should convene a  national task force to examine potential bar exam reforms.

The current momentum for change recognizes that existing bar exams have fundamental flaws that should be addressed.  As academics, we can build upon this momentum by researching and writing about alternatives. We can encourage our law review student editors to consider symposium issues focused on bar exam alternatives. We can create pressure for meaningful change by showing that change is possible. Let’s do it.

 

Filed under: Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

Law Student Wellness Awareness

Posted on July 26, 2017 by Pam Armstrong

As most are aware, the New York Times published an essay on July 15, 2017, entitled, “The Lawyer, the Addict” recounting the writer’s tragic loss of her lawyer-loved one to drug-overdose.  A significant part of the tragedy was that the lawyer successfully hid the addiction for years.  As we consider programming for Fall Semester orientation and beyond, this is a good time to give more consideration to addressing depression, anxiety, substance abuse and addiction among law students. 

In this regard, I strongly encourage downloading and taking a look at the “Substance Abuse & Mental Health Kit for Law Students and Those Who Care About Them”,” put together by the ABA Law Student Division, the ABA Commission on Lawyers Assistance Programs, and the Dave Nee Foundation. The ABA Law Student Division has also created a web site and begun compiling links to resources for law students under Mental Health Resources.

The 2016 Report, published in the Journal of Addiction Medicine referenced in the NY Times, reports on the significant numbers of lawyers affected by depression, substance abuse and addiction as well as the numbers of law students affected.  And, as so many articles and the 2016 Report note, in law students, the driven qualities that propel students to go to law school; law school’s consuming demands; law school anxiety and stress; competition, and the prospective (or lack of prospective) job market, all affect, and perhaps negatively affect, law student mental health.  These issues are all compounded by the stigma attached to “others.”

At law schools, we still deal with the student as a person, a pre-professional.  As Scott Fruehwald noted in a posting on the importance of professional identity training, law school is a prime time of both crisis and potential growth if students are well-guided.  However, as Louis Schulze noted on the Faculty Lounge Blog, “Ask not what you can do for your students, ask what your students can do for themselves,” students have to come by their learning as well as their personal identity ultimately on their own.  Being responsible for one’s own learning, being responsible for one’s well-being, and being responsible for gaining and keeping sobriety are ultimately not things that are externally controlled.

Recognizing there is a problem and that we cannot solve it by mandating compliance, what are some things we can do so that our students are open to and can achieve their own stability and appropriate level of sobriety?   What can we provide that students can themselves use? The ABA Health Kit has some suggestions worth noting here.  For example, it suggests:

1.       Think about the problem; create and have a strategy; make students aware; reduce stigma so students will take make use of the strategies, and follow through. Make the issues and assistance “present.”

2.       Provide and encourage Lawyers Assistance Program access;

3.       Have an on-campus counselor;

4.       Limited self-disclosure. Most Anonymous Meetings begin with, “Hi, I’m (name), and I’m (whatever the concern).  For anyone who has ever been to one of these meetings – and, yes, I have been in celebration – the mere existence of others similarly situated is itself very powerful. 

5.       Provide links and access to resources – many of which can be found in the Health Kit, others of which can be found in Scott’s article, through the ABA or your state bar, through various mental health advocacy  and disability advocacy sites or through any Anonymous site.  There are even NA and AA meeting locator apps.

6.       Learn about and provide guidance for gaining and maintaining a healthy life.

The Health Kit also notes some other things law schools have done or are already doing to promote wellness.  Those include providing access to a mental health professional and then, coordinating with student affairs to create various programs (plural) throughout the year to introduce that person and then create occasions for students to interact with that person such as “let’s talk,” or “how to bounce back,” events. 

Other ideas include Family Fun Day; Wellness Fair or Wellness Day with structured events including speakers from the local LAP, strategies for time management, diets, as well as activities such as yoga, resiliency training, and chair massages.  (I admit to liking this last.)  Some schools, ours included, have had “Puppy Love” opportunities – most recently here as a stress-reliever before the bar exam.  (Hypo-allergenic only)

On the more serious side, some schools have integrated LAP programs or one credit “courses” throughout the curriculum with a different focus each year.  Two possible syllabi are included near the end of the Health Kit, one by Marjoire A. Silver from Touro Law Center, and one prepared by the ABA CLAP.

Law Student mental health, substance abuse and addiction are personal to me.  I cannot tell you the number of students who have passed through my doors over the decades who were and are vulnerable.  What are other schools doing?  Do you have plans? Programs? Access?  Course work you would share?  Other?

 

Filed under: Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Designing Your Life

Posted on July 20, 2017 by Michele Pistone

Summers always present wonderful opportunities to reflect on the past year and make plans for the next.  For me, they are a period of rejuvenation and reassessment.

I find that each summer I spend some time designing my life and thinking about my own professional formation.

This summer, my reading list has included two books that I consider life-changing, The Four Desires by Rod Stryker (referred to me by Jean Koh Peters, Yale Law School) and Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans (referred by Doni Gewirtzman, NYLS).  While the authors come to the topic from vastly different perspectives, Styker is a yogi and Burnett and Evans teach design thinking at Stanford’s dSchool, the two books contain similar messages and suggest similar practices.  The clear message from both books is about actively creating a life that you design and desire for yourself so that you live a life that is authentic to you.  How simple, yet powerful, that message can be.  Especially for lawyers and law students.

To access the authentic self, both books suggest engaging in the process of listening to our unconscious selves so that we can get in touch with and identify the true purpose of our lives; the things that truly motivate us and bring us joy and happiness.  Once we have access to that information – which we can access through meditation and journaling (Stryker) or recording daily activities and reflection (Burnett and Evans) — the next step is to decode the information and use it to design a new way forward.  The books also recognize and help the reader to identify sources of resistance (both internal and external) and how they may impact your ability to advance in new directions.  Once you have this data, the next step is the process of redesigning your life – using exercises such as mind mapping, mindfulness, letting go of preconceptions, visualization, journaling and reflection.

This process takes time and lots of focus.  Indeed, I see it as a methodology for a life-long process of iteration and life improvement.

Luckily, I was able to do much of the hard work over three days at the beginning of the summer.  When Jean recommended the Stryker book, she also noted that he conducts workshops on the Four Desires.  As fate would have it, I learned that Stryker was going to be at the Himalayan Institute, which is less than a 3-hour drive from my home in Pennsylvania, in early June and that openings remained in the workshop.  So, I was fortunate to enroll in Stryker’s Four Desires Workshop last month.  While it has only been a month, I already see a change in my life. And others notice it too.

It is never too late to redesign your life.  I recommend you start this summer.  If you do, please let me know how it goes for you.

My hope is to be able to share this methodology with my students as well.  Once I have more data on the results in my own life, I plan to share the process with my students.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful for the next generation of law students to graduate with a methodology for designing an authentic life for themselves.  Stay tuned!

 

 

Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Blended Learning for Law Schools

Posted on July 14, 2017 by Michele Pistone

I just returned from an inspiring and thought provoking three days at the Wolters Kluwer-sponsored Leading Edge workshop. The gathering of about 35 thought leaders from legal education – a wonderfully diverse group – was structured as an un-conference, so the participants designed the agenda upon our arrival and all the discussions revolved around topics that the invitees chose and facilitated. The topics ranged from assessment to increasing diversity in the academy, to teaching about leadership and cyberlaw, to disruption of law schools (yes, that was the session I lead).

Among the many recurring themes at the conference was online learning, particularly blended or hybrid learning, also referred to as flipping the classroom. Over the last few years, researchers have increasingly confirmed that students learn best in courses that combine online with face-to-face learning. Here, the Mayo Clinic describes the utility of blended learning in the health sciences field. Similarly, the US Department of Education found many benefits of flipping the classroom in its meta-analysis of online learning. These and other studies talk about the many advantages that derive from blending online and in-class instruction.

In the law school context, I made these videos about flipping the law school classroom and blended learning in legal education, in which I talk about how online learning can free up class time for law students to begin to gain exposure to essential lawyering competencies during each course while still covering the doctrinal material that professors hope to assign during a typical semester. Adding blended elements to your courses can be fun and rewarding. Here are some tips for getting started.

Top Five Things to Consider When Flipping a Law School Course

  1. What topics do you want to flip?

Before you begin, identify the topics that you typically cover for which the flipped classroom model would make the most sense in the course.

  1. You don’t have to produce all of the videos.

Don’t be reluctant to assign video content produced by other professors. Like other teaching and scholarly activities, such as writing an effective article, practice guide or even blog post, the production of effective and engaging video content takes time. As a result, I often assign my students to read law review articles and casebooks prepared by other professors. Assigning videos prepared by other professors is analogous. Indeed, by assigning material prepared by others, our time is freed up to spend on more active teaching activities. Visit legaledweb.com for a collection of videos prepared by leading law faculty.

  1. Begin with planning what will be “flipped in” rather than what will be flipped out.

Plan what you want to do with the additional face-to-face time with students that blended learning will afford. This is the point of having a flipped classroom. For example, consider adding new activities into the classroom (such as interviewing, negotiation or drafting exercises) that hone practical lawyering skills and competencies.

  1. Produce chunked, short video content.

Research shows that effective videos do not exceed 5-8 minutes in length, and some are even shorter. Break up a longer subject matter into a few chunked segments, making sure that each video addresses a discreet legal topic. Remember to make the video engaging and to speak clearly and concisely.

  1. Hold the students responsible for watching the videos.

Start each class with an assumption that the students watched the video. That will create an expectation for the group. Start the class by expanding on the videos lessons and assigning activities/discussions that ask students to use the theories learned from the videos actively through role plays, simulations, small group work or Socratic dialogue.

Best of luck innovating legal education. Let us know, in the comment section below, how it goes for you. What works? What could be improved? What insights can you share with the community?

And if you want to learn more about flipping the classroom and other innovations in teaching pedagogy, visit legaledweb.com

 

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Teaching Methodology, Technology, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

FutureLaw Workshop – Call for Papers

Posted on July 13, 2017 by Michele Pistone

Conference Announcement and Call for Papers
2017 Junior Scholars #FutureLaw Workshop 2.0 at Duquesne

The conference is organized by Seth Oranburg, Assistant Professor, Duquesne University School of Law. Funding is provided in part by the Federalist Society. All papers are selected based on scholarly merit, with an emphasis on scholarly impact, topical relevance, and viewpoint diversity.

September 7-8, 2017

By invitation only

OVERVIEW: The conference aims to foster legal and economic research on “FutureLaw” (as defined below) topics particularly by junior and emerging scholars by bringing together a diverse group of academics early in their career focusing on cutting-edge issues.

TOPICS: The conference organizers encourage the submission of papers about all aspects of FutureLaw, which includes open-data policy, machine learning, computational law, legal informatics, smart contracts, crypto-currency, block-chain technology, big data, algorithmic research, LegalTech, FinTech, MedTech, eCommerce, eGovernment, electronic discovery, computers & the law, teaching innovations, and related subjects. FutureLaw is an inter-disciplinary field with cross-opportunities in crowd science, behavioral economics, computer science, mathematics, statistics, learning theory, and related fields. Papers may be theoretical, archival or experimental in nature. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

– Innovation in legal instruments (e.g., new securities, new corporate forms, new litigation procedures, etc.)

– Innovation in legal technology (e.g., new law firm governance, legal automatic, democratizing access to legal services, legal chatbots, etc.)
– Innovation in legal teaching (e.g., new classroom techniques, distance learning studies, experiential learning, transactional clinics, etc.)

Papers regarding the effect of these innovations (e.g., diversity, inclusion, equity, equality, fairness, return on investment, productivity, security, etc.)

DUAL SUBMISSION PROCESS: For the 2017 conference, the FutureLaw Workshop and the Duquesne Law Review (DLR) announce a new, non-exclusive, combined submission process. At your discretion, a paper submitted to the 2017 FutureLaw Workshop 2.0 may also be considered for publication by DLR free of charge. The rules for this dual submission process are as follows:

(1) You must apply online at http://law.duq.edu/events/junior-scholars-futurelaw-workshop-20. Submitted papers will be considered for publication by the DLR free of charge. A reply to your submission in acceptance to the Workshop or invitation to publish in the DLR is your option, not your obligation.

(2) If you do not wish to be considered by the DLR while submitting for the FutureLaw Workshop, please indicate this in the comments field provided.

(3) Papers submitted for dual consideration must not already be accepted by another journal.

(4) While under consideration as a dual submission for the 2017 FutureLaw Workshop and invitation by the DLR, a paper may be submitted to another journal (or JAR).

PAPER SUBMISSION PROCEDURE: Please send a PDF version of your working paper, by August 4, 2017 at http://law.duq.edu/events/junior-scholars-futurelaw-workshop-20.

 

The FutureLaw Workshop may reimburse presenters and discussants reasonable travel expenses and accommodations. Please let us know if your academic institution does not provide you with travel and accommodation expenses.

CONFERENCE ATTENDANCE: Attendance is free and by invitation only. Academics interested in receiving an invitation to attend but who do not wish to submit a paper may apply online as “observers” at http://law.duq.edu/events/junior-scholars-futurelaw-workshop-20.

 

Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off on FutureLaw Workshop – Call for Papers

« Previous Page — Next Page »