DOE Gainful Employment Rule Affects For-Profit Law Schools

Posted on June 27, 2015 by Peter Joy

Federal district courts in New York and the District of Columbia have rejected challenges to the Department of Education’s “gainful employment rule”. A recent story in The American Lawyer, “New Rule Spells Trouble for For-Profit Law Schools”, explains how the DOE gainful employment rule will likely affect for-profit law schools. The gainful employment rule, which is based on graduates’ annual incomes and their discretionary incomes, requires a for-profit school’s graduates to have debt payments that are 8% or less of their annual incomes, or 20% or less of their discretionary incomes. A school fails the test if student debt payments exceed 12% of annual incomes or 30% of discretionary incomes. A school is considered “in the zone” if loan payments of graduates are greater than or equal to 12% of their annual incomes, or payments are greater than 10% but less than or equal to 30% of discretionary incomes. A for-profit school becomes ineligible for federal loans if it fails both the annual income and discretionary income tests in any two of three years, or if it fails both tests or is in the zone for four years. The story also explains that graduates’ enrollment in income-based repayment programs is not considered in the government’s application of the new rule. The American Lawyer story contains tables that project how the rule could be applied based on available debt, income, and employment information for graduates at the six for-profit law schools. The DOE gainful employment rule goes into effect July 1, 2015.

Filed under: Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness | 1 Comment »

Law School Curriculum Review & Reform: Lessons Learned

Posted on June 26, 2015 by Paula Schaefer

In 2012, my dean asked me to chair a review our curriculum at the University of Tennessee College of Law. He asked our committee to consider the current three-year curriculum in light of our learning outcomes. It sounded like an overwhelming job.

During the first year of our curriculum review, I remember reading the book Reforming Legal Education: Law Schools at the Crossroads. Michael Hunter Schwartz and Jeremiah Ho wrote a great chapter titled Curriculum Reforms at Washburn University School of Law.

I would describe Schwartz and Ho’s chapter in two ways: (1) full of practical suggestions about the process for reviewing curriculum and considering reform; and (2) terrifying.

I stole many of the practical, process-related suggestions from their chapter. We had a committee retreat where we spent an uninterrupted day discussing the curriculum. Committee members went door-to-door and talked to each faculty member about the curriculum and possible changes. The committee developed two proposals for curriculum reform and discussed these proposals with the full faculty. I am sure there are other ideas we borrowed from Schwartz and Ho.

The terrifying part of Schwartz and Ho’s chapter was this line: “[O]ne might conclude that, after nearly three years of work, Washburn’s curriculum reform efforts have been unsuccessful.”

Three years? We may do this for three years and feel it wasn’t a success?

Of course, Schwartz and Ho go on to explain that there were successes in the three-year process. (The Washburn faculty reached a consensus on key issues and made progress toward some important goals detailed in the chapter). But it was daunting for me to think that the process would be difficult and might take three years.

In 2015, the University of Tennessee College of Law faculty adopted a package of significant changes to the 1L curriculum. While the substance of those changes is important, I think it is also important to contribute to Schwartz and Ho’s discussion about the process. So here are a few of the lessons I learned about the process of curriculum review and reform over the past three years.

1) Three Years is a Good Start. When we started, three years sounded like a long time to work on a curriculum review. I now know that three years of curriculum review passes in the blink of an eye. We needed that much time to understand our curriculum, talk to faculty, alumni and students, research what was happening elsewhere, create proposals for change, seek more input, and generate new proposals.

2) Less is More. Our committee accomplished something in three years because we narrowed the focus. Even though our original committee charge was to review the entire curriculum, we ended up focusing on the first year curriculum. That was a more manageable project. Also related to “less is more,” after two years we realized the committee was spread too thin. Our dean originally gave the curriculum review charge to the Academic Standards & Curriculum Committee. For two years that committee juggled the curriculum review and the regular business of Academic Standards. In the third year, our dean created a separate task force to focus solely on the curriculum review. That change made us much more efficient in year three and allowed us to reach a faculty vote on a package of proposals.

3) Seek Input from Faculty, Alumni, and Students Multiple Times, in Multiple Settings. Throughout the three years of our curriculum review, we talked to faculty, alumni, and students. When we met with alumni and students, we gave them the chance to address the room, answer questions anonymously (with clickers), and respond in writing to questions. We often continued these discussions on the phone, by email, and in person. We were able to compile all of this input and share it with the faculty. The committee spent even more time gathering ideas from the faculty in one-on-one meetings, in multiple forums, in small group sessions, and in many informal conversations over the course of three years. Seeking input in all of these settings helped us learn from all of our stakeholders and resulted in a variety of suggestions.

4) Compromise Can Lead to Something Better. Near the end of our second year of the curriculum review, the committee presented the faculty with two packages of possible reforms to the 1L curriculum. Discussing and debating the merits of these proposals helped the committee see potential problems we had missed and opportunities for meaningful change. With that information, we met with small groups of faculty to generate ideas about new classes and other innovations. In these meetings, members of the faculty often suggested they wanted to take the lead in making a change or teaching something new. As the third year came to a close, the faculty approved a package of 1L curriculum changes that was substantially better than what the committee had suggested at the end of year two.

5) Curriculum Review “Success.” Three years ago, it was unnerving to read that Schwartz and Ho thought we might not find curriculum reform “success” in three years. But I now know that is a good thing. Curriculum review and reform does not have to be perfect, because we are never done. Curriculum review should be an ongoing process. This allows us to identify what is working and determine what we will do next as we prepare students for practice.

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum | Tagged: , | 3 Comments »

Lawyers as Leaders

Posted on June 24, 2015 by Paula Schaefer

Leadership courses can prepare law students for the leadership roles they will assume as they serve their clients, law offices, and communities.

The University of Tennessee College of Law’s Institute for Professional Leadership offers courses and programming aimed at developing students’ leadership skills and professional values. Doug Blaze directs Tennessee’s program and has co-taught the course “Lawyers as Leaders” for several years. The course integrates readings on leadership, class discussions, and guest appearances by lawyers from various practices. Blaze says that students have described the course as “one of the most meaningful and valuable” courses that they took in law school.

Stanford Law School’s Deborah Rhode wrote the book Lawyers as Leaders and teaches a course titled “Law, Leadership, and Social Change.” Stanford’s course addresses the responsibilities and challenges of leaders and considers topics including: leadership styles, organizational dynamics, conflict management, innovation, diversity, and ethical responsibilities.

At Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law, the Program on Law and Leadership consists of seven initiatives that “make leadership an integral part of the law school experience.” These initiatives include workshops, a speaker series, a dean’s roundtable, collaboration and partnerships, scholarships, a conversation series, and various courses. Ohio State’s “Lawyers as Leaders” class “is designed to help students understand the hallmarks of skillful leadership and management.” The course combines theory, case studies, and simulations.

Other schools with notable leadership programs and courses include Columbia Law School, Elon University School of Law, and University of Minnesota Law School.

These programs recognize that all lawyers need to be prepared for the leadership roles they will inevitably play in their personal and professional lives. Tennessee’s Doug Blaze says, “We want to prepare lawyers who will make a positive difference in the profession and in their communities.”

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Law Students and Mindfulness Training

Posted on June 23, 2015 by Paula Schaefer

The Wall Street Journal recently featured a story on the growing movement among law schools to provide “mindfulness” training for students. The article describes mindfulness as “[a] Zen-inspired blend of meditation, breathing exercises and focus techniques.”

As noted in the WSJ article, University of Miami School of Law is one of approximately two dozen schools offering mindfulness classes. According to its course catalog, Miami’s course is titled Mindfulness in Law: Cultivating Tools for Effective Practice. The course description notes that two local bar associations have formed the “Mindfulness in Law Joint Task Force” to explore mindfulness in practice. In the course, students are introduced to mindfulness “as a collection of tools of awareness that can enrich one’s skill set in relationship to the stimulating and challenging aspects of legal practice.” The full course description can be accessed here.

The WSJ story is available here.

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Why More States Should Not Jump on the Uniform Bar Exam Bandwagon

Posted on June 18, 2015 by Ben Bratman

In May, New York became the 16th state—and by far the most prominent—to adopt the Uniform Bar Exam, the standardized licensing test for lawyers created and promoted by the National Conference of Bar Examiners..

With such an influential state on board, the UBE is now all the rage. New York Court of Appeals Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman proclaimed in his announcement of the Court’s decision that it “will reverberate among the other states,” ultimately leading to adoption  of the UBE throughout the country. The president of the Florida Bar responded to the decision by predicting that the northeastern states will soon follow New York’s lead and also acknowledging that Florida will give accelerated consideration to the UBE. And UC Irvine Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky argued in an L.A. Times op-ed that California should join New York in adopting the UBE.

Before other states react to the reverberations by crowning the UBE as the predominant or sole bar exam in the nation, the entire uniform exam initiative merits closer scrutiny. To be sure, adoption of the UBE throughout the country would make law licenses much more portable for beginning lawyers recently out of law school. That is a worthy goal, but the UBE is a dubious and potentially damaging means for achieving the desirable end of greater interstate license portability, especially because there is a different and more benign way to achieve that end.

A comprehensive consideration of the UBE suggests to me five reasons why additional states should step back from the precipice and be very cautious about joining the UBE bandwagon.

I discuss my five reasons in greater length here and, without annotations, here. In sum, they are as follows:

  1. The UBE perpetuates a flawed bar exam and is fundamentally inconsistent with recent trends in legal education and the legal profession
  2. The UBE would represent a regressive change to the current bar exam in several state
  3. The advantage of having the National Conference set a singular scoring methodology for all bar exams is overstated
  4. National implementation of the UBE would decrease the chance of meaningful bar exam reform by taking power away from states and giving it to the National Conference
  5. There is another means for achieving license portability that has far fewer drawbacks than the UBE

The Multistate Bar Exam (MBE) is administered as roughly half of the bar exam in 49 states and is a very reliable test from a psychometric perspective. Why not allow applicants who achieve a passing score on the MBE on any jurisdiction’s bar exam to apply for admission to any other state without the necessity of taking the bar exam again? Minnesota, North Dakota, and the District of Columbia already permit this, and other states need only follow their example.

A state adopting this approach in lieu of the UBE would be giving full faith and credit to whatever the written portion of the exam is in the original jurisdiction instead of forcing applicants to take its written portion. Since most states scale the scores from their written tests to the MBE, the policy is psychometrically sound. In fact, in many cases, the written tests of the two states at issue would be very similar, and the only variable would be awareness of local law, which could be covered through a CLE program.

Instead of putting its energies into national adoption of the UBE, which would decrease the quality of the bar exam in many states and drastically reduce state autonomy and flexibility, the National Conference could simply push for more states to adopt the policy already maintained by Minnesota, North Dakota, and D.C. We already have a uniform bar exam, and the National Conference already has enough power.

(Some of my article expands on the astute observations made by Professor Dennis Honabach in a piece he wrote in the ABA journal Professional Lawyer last year. ABA members can retrieve full text here, or on Westlaw, it’s at 22 No. 2 Prof. Law. 43.)

Filed under: Bar Exam | Tagged: | 1 Comment »

NYT OP ED – Putting Lawyers where they are needed

Posted on June 17, 2015 by Mary A. Lynch

In today’s New York Times, THERESA AMATO makes recommendations for addressing the justice-lawyer gap — that frustrating current reality in which United States citizens have tremendous legal needs but no lawyer to help while, at the same time,  American law schools graduate a supply of lawyers who need jobs and need to pay their school debt.

You can read her ideas here.

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Experiential Learning in Law

Posted on June 16, 2015 by Jessica Persaud

Professor Brian Sites, Coordinator of Experiential Learning at Barry University School of Law in Orlando, Florida, composed a fluid list of experiential learning resources that may be added to and shared among the legal community.

The resources are grouped by, among other methods, course area (i.e. Contracts,  Torts, IP, Family Law, etc.).  In the list, you will find books that are simulation-based, experiential supplements, law review articles on exercises in that area, websites that have exercises in that area, and exercise ideas.

Professor Sites plans to expand the list as he finds more resources and welcomes emails suggesting additional materials and newly-created exercise ideas.

The link to the resource list and Professor Sites’ contact information may be found below:

https://goo.gl/59KlUP

Professor Brian Sites

Assistant Professor of Law, Coordinator of Experiential Learning

Barry University Dwayne O. Andreas School of Law

Phone: (321) 206-5685

Email: BSites@barry.edu

SSRN Author page: http://ssrn.com/author=1490216

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DREAMer Application to NYS Bar Granted – A great step for legal education

Posted on June 13, 2015 by Mary A. Lynch

I am reblogging this great news from Albany Law ‘s Multicultural Initiatives Legal Round up.

DREAMer Application to NYS Bar Granted
The New York State Supreme Court Second Department Appellate Division last Wednesday issued a monumental decision approving the New York State Bar application of Cesar Vargas, the dynamic Co-Director of Dream Act Coalition. Cesar who was brought to the United States from Mexico by his mother when he was 5 years old and graduated from City University of New York School of Law in 2011, is a DREAMer who is authorized to be lawfully present in the United States under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (“DACA”) program. Vargas was initially approved for deferred action in 2013 after DACA was first implemented in 2012.

This is the first New York State court decision explicitly holding that a DREAMer law graduate can fulfill the “good character and general fitness” requirements for NY bar admission. Moreover, in a matter of national first impression, the court further found that a DREAMer such as Cesar is not barred from being granted his New York State law license under a federal law prohibiting states from issuing state benefits such as a professional license to undocumented immigrants unless the state first enacted enabling legislation authorizing the issuance of such benefits or licenses. The court held Congress cannot unconstitutionally infringe upon a state’s sovereign authority to divide power among its three co-equal branches of government such as in in New York which has granted the Judiciary branch the authority to review and approve bar applications to practice law, and that the Judiciary may exercise their authority as state sovereign to opt out of such federal restriction as the court did here!

Pershia M. Wilkins's avatarDiversity and Inclusion Blog at Albany Law School

Legal News Roundup
DREAMer Application to NYS Bar Granted
The New York State Supreme Court Second Department Appellate Division last Wednesday issued a monumental decision approving the New York State Bar application of Cesar Vargas, the dynamic Co-Director of Dream Act Coalition. Cesar who was brought to the United States from Mexico by his mother when he was 5 years old and graduated from City University of New York School of Law in 2011, is a DREAMer who is authorized to be lawfully present in the United States under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (“DACA”) program. Vargas was initially approved for deferred action in 2013 after DACA was first implemented in 2012.

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Readying students for a 21st Century Education

Posted on June 9, 2015 by dmaranville

In response to my previous post, sgeorge326 “wonder[s] how schools can achieve this lofty goal?” of learning “how to identify prospective students or develop admitted ones who understand their life goals and values, and their intellectual and personal gifts well enough to make intelligent decisions around specialization”.

Here are five steps toward that goal AND ideas for achieving them:

1.  Encourage students to gain experience in the workplace before attending law school, especially in jobs that expose them to lawyers,.and to reflect on what they learned about lawyers and themselves.

  •  Focus admissions essays around these questions
  • Develop pipeline programs for students who are 1st in their family to attend college or from underrepresented groups.  Provide them with pre-law contact with lawyers and the opportunities to work in a law office that are often available to upper middle class students with family contacts

2. Help students understand what lawyers do.

3. Incorporate the work of lawyers into first year courses.

  •  Assign court observations for first year courses, especially criminal law and civil procedure, or school wide as in Drake Law’s Trial Practicum
  •  Use course materials that expose students to the work of lawyers, including both litigation and transactions — motions and supporting documents, real contracts, deeds, etc. (The major publishers all offer such materials.)
  • Incorporate simulations into existing 1L courses or separate problem solving courses or skills labs.
  • involve students in real legal work as described by The New 1L: First-Year Lawyering With Clients

4. Infuse experiential education throughout the curriculum.

  • Include simulation modules in doctrinal courses, or attach them as separate small-credit courses
  • Offer a range of theory and practice simulation skill-focused courses, in-house clinics, and externships to students throughout their legal education
  • Link volunteer pro bono opportunities to the formal curriculum
  • Counsel students on how best to sequence experiential offerings given their interests

5.  And, perhaps most important, but still the biggest stretch for most law schools, help students both understand the importance of learning about their life goals and values and intellectual and personal gifts and provide opportunities for them to do so.

  • Hire coaches in the career office with a job description that includes helping students develop both self and career knowledge, provide them with tools such as personality tests, skills inventories, and similar tools, and connect them with the faculty so their efforts are part of the educational process
  • Encourage faculty to view their role as also including efforts to help student develop self-knowledge in arenas beyond the intellectual
  • Focus the externship program around developing a professional identity
  • Incorporate opportunities for reflection on goals and gifts in both doctrinally-focused and experiential courses

As the links in the above paragraphs demonstrate, many schools already one or more of these individual ideas in place.  The now ABA-required process of identifying outcomes (Standard 302), including in assessment of student learning both formative feedback and summative grading (Standard 314), and assessing program outcomes (Standard 315) could be implemented in ways that encourage additional student progress in these important areas.

The new volume “Building on Best Practices: Transforming Legal Education in a Changing World” should be available in ebook format from LexisNexis by the end of the month.  It includes more ideas and details. Readers, you undoubtedly have additional ideas — share them!

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LexternWeb By: Sandy Ogilvy

Posted on June 8, 2015 by Jessica Persaud

If you are new to externships or returning to them after being away, I would like to invite you to check out the website created for faculty and administrators of externship programs, LexternWeb.  Visit http://lexternweb.law.edu/  for links to all law school externship webpages, materials, and more.  Note that the site can always use new, updated, or corrected content.  Please send me materials or links for posting.  Also, you can subscribe to the Lextern listserv from the site and join 547 other teachers and administrators of legal externship programs in sustained dialogue about externships.  For more information, please contact me:

J.P. “Sandy” Ogilvy
Ordinary Professor of Law and
Director-CUA Innocence Project Clinic & Clemency Project,
Director-Law & Social Justice Initiatives,
Director-National Archive for Clinical Legal Education
Columbus School of Law
The Catholic University of America
Washington, DC 20064
Tel: 202-319-6195
Fax: 202-319-4459

http://www.law.edu/faculty/ogilvy/

http://lib.law.cua.edu/nacle/

http://lsji.law.edu/

http://www.law.edu/clinics/cle/InnocenceProj.cfm

Public Interest Blog: http://jogilvy.wordpress.com/

Twitter @SandyOgilvy

SSRN: http://ssrn.com/author=363920

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A 21st Century “generalist legal education”? Skills & professional identity focused.

Posted on June 8, 2015 by dmaranville

More musings on generalist v. specialist education, and how much doctrine law schools need to teach.

A conversation with one of our University of Washington alums — Leo Flor, Westpoint grad, Gates Public Service Law Scholar, Equal Justice Works Fellow at Northwest Justice Project, and spark plug for the new resource Representing Washington Veterans  — has me chewing on whether we need a new understanding of what a “generalist legal education” means.

Leo noted that the JD is often viewed as a relevant generalist credential, even though most law school grads move into traditional bar-passage-required “law practice” jobs.  And he observed that many job postings for alternative positions list an MBA or MPA as a relevant qualification, but not the JD.

The traditional generalist education of my era, and to a significant extent still, was intended to teach a set of analytical skills and and expose students to a broad range of legal doctrine potentially relevant to a general practitioner and to passing the bar exam. Though passing the bar remains important and is a significant factor in designing the educational program for lower tier schools, few 21st century lawyers are truly general practitioners.

Perhaps the generalist foundation needed in this era is built on skills, more than doctrinal knowledge.  And for Leo’s purpose not only skills in a technician sense.  Skills also in a “professional identity” sense.  Self-awareness & understanding of ones’ own gifts.  Leadership and interpersonal skills. Such an understanding of generalist could make the JD an appropriate credential for the types of job Leo described.

In a previous post, I suggested that that, at least for those students who come to law school with significant self-knowledge and experience, a substantively specialized curriculum could make sense, if combined with the general analytical and research skills to learn new areas.  This is not a new  idea.  Back in 2002 then-law-student Kevin E. Houchen self-published a detailed review of the trend toward certificate programs and concentrations, arguing that for a subset of students such specialization makes sense.

A decade later in 2012 the New York Times touted  NYU’s  limited moves toward greater specialization not just once, but again in an article  promoting specialization for law schools focused on Biglaw.

And in early May of this year 2015 at the National Summit on Innovation in Legal Services sponsored by the ABA and Stanford Law School, speakers reiterated these themes.   Richard Susskind (13:08) argued that legal education needs to train graduates for 21sth century jobs like legal project managers, legal process analysts, legal knowledge engineers, and legal risk management.  Prof. Deborah Rhode(13.29) observed that it “makes no sense to train Wall Street M &A lawyers the same way we train someone who’s going to be doing routine real estate and divorce work in a small town.”

It is not so very difficult to understand what acting on Prof. Rhode’s observation might mean.  As a practical matter, some curricular differentiation based on where graduates will practice already takes place, linked primarily to  different levels in the law school hierarchy.  Beyond that, many schools offer an extensive enough curriculum – both in doctrine and skills — to permit considerable specialization aimed at traditional law practice niches, even beyond formal concentration tracks and certificate programs.

For more specialized training law schools that offer extensive LL.M. programs routinely allow students to complete an accelerated JD/LL.M in three calendar years.  In the tax field, where the LL.M. has long been de rigueur, many schools provide such opportunities, including NYU, the long-time leader in tax LL.M’s.  And increasingly, schools educate students not just in substantive tax specialties, but also — using my own school, the University of Washington as an example — with  tax-focused skills and clinical training for both JD. and LL.M. students.

My hunch is that increasing numbers of students already opt to specialize, sometimes with a substantive law focus, often combined with a skills focus, e.g.  corporate deals with drafting or criminal & tort law with trial advocacy.

Richard Susskind’s challenge is a bigger stretch for legal education, though, again, some initiatives are visible, such as Michigan State‘s Reinvent Law Laboratory.

A key challenge for law schools is to learn how to identify prospective students or develop admitted ones who understand their life goals and values, and their intellectual and personal gifts well enough to make intelligent decisions around specialization.  To meet that  challenge, a holistic approach to education is needed –whether understood in the MacCrate framework of knowledge,  skills and values, or the Carnegie framework of cognitive, professional skills and ethical professional identity apprenticeships.

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices & Setting Goals, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Professionalism as a Survival Strategy in the New Normal?

Posted on June 4, 2015 by Mary A. Lynch

Last week’s ABA e-news discussed “The Relevant Lawyer: Reimagining the Future of the Legal Profession,” a new book from the ABA Standing Committee on Professionalism and Center for Professional Responsibility. Jayne Reardon, executive director of the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism, is the author of Chapter 19: “Professionalism as Survival Strategy.” Her comments in the ABA article really resonated with me and accord with my sense of how legal professionals can and will evolve. Her recommendations deftly balance the need to embrace change with a commitment to the good lawyering that is fundamental to a just and civil society.

Here are a few samples of her ideas to entice you further:

Instead of trying to get back the slice of the pie that Internet providers have taken, you advocate for lawyers to focus on expanding the services they’re offering to clients. Can you go into detail on that?

I only partly joke that when I was a new lawyer, my primary value was in knowing how to access legal information in an even-then arcane research system. Now anyone who has access to the Internet has access to information—lawyers have lost their monopoly on information. So they need to focus on their value to clients and to society beyond information. Creative solutions are necessary because lawyers have been providing the same types of services for decades, perhaps hundreds of years, but now decreasing numbers of people are finding that those services are worth paying for.

Internet providers process and provide information, but only lawyers with the depth of knowledge and experience can interpret and apply that information to greater and better value for clients. Lawyers can ask questions that get at underlying interests, motivations and other intangibles beyond what a client thinks they may need in filling out a web-based questionnaire. We all can see a great need for advocacy in court, as the number of self-represented litigants continues to rise, so lawyers should address this need and figure out how to benefit the clients and still earn a decent living.
…
You write that diversity and globalization are forcing the legal profession “to provide more holistic advice for clients.” What steps can an attorney take to get ahead of this curve?

Globalization has facilitated the dramatic increase in ethnic and racial diversity of our society. For lawyers to get ahead of this curve, they should expand their learning, which will expand their perspectives and decision-making. Take online courses or read outside your area of specialty, even outside the field of law, which will allow you to draw connections and fashion creative solutions. Expand your personal and professional relationships beyond your current circle to include those who are different from you in terms of gender, race, socioeconomic class, political persuasion. In the workplace, challenge others to challenge your thinking and, if you are in management, put together teams that will facilitate “cross-pollination” of ideas and approaches.

I see Jayne Reardon’s wisdom perfectly dovetailing with the engaging work being done on student learning outcomes throughout legal education. Our faculty spent the past year developing our universal Student Learning Outcomes. In a series of workshops we discussed, brainstormed and evaluated the changing role of lawyers along with the longstanding value to clients and society of lawyers’ knowledge, skills, judgment, attitudes and ideals. Like Jayne Reardon, we believe that

“As lawyers adopt new ways to work, think and act, the commitment to professionalism preserves and reinforces their professional identity as lawyers and provides a prescription for competitive advantage.”

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How to Be Happy in Your Work

Posted on May 27, 2015 by Mary A. Lynch

I so appreciated this post over at Legal ED. This semester, I ended my Crim Pro Adjudication class with information from the excellent book The Happy Lawyer. It was a risk since it was my first time teaching this particular course and I was not sure what the students thought of my teaching style…I was elated when a student e-mailed me the following which I post with her permission:

Professor Lynch,

I just stumbled upon this Times article and it reminded me of our brief class discussion about “The Happy Lawyer.” I am pleased to say that Albany Law School, thanks to its incredible alumni connections and location in New York’s powerful Capital Region, has allowed me to dive head-first into the public sector. I could not be any happier— thus far, at least— and figured you’d appreciate a break from reading our exams (while you’re not catching up on VEEP!).

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/05/12/lawyers-with-lowest-pay-report-more-happiness/?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&bicmp=AD&bicmlukp=WT.mc_id&bicmst=1409232722000&bicmet=1419773522000

I hope you have a great summer and I will see you in the fall!

OLIVIA ORLANDO
Albany Law School
J.D. Candidate, 2016
Executive Vice President, Student Bar Association Senate

This is the kind of e-mail that confirms my instinct that we are obligated to teach what we know to be true about the professional and personal development of lawyers…..

denvirj's avatarGuile is Good

Some lawyers are happy. Don’t take it on faith; the New York times says so. Of course, other lawyers are not.

One Interesting statistic from the study the story relies on is that associates at high end corporate firms are no happier than their less elite classmates. I was not surprised by this news because once I went on a human rights tour of Central America with several young bright young lawyers doing volunteer political asylum work. All of them were from top San Francisco law firms, and not one of them seemed especially happy in his or her work.

Why aren’t young lawyers holding the most sought after jobs happier in their work? The authors of the study suggest the reason is that the day to day experience of working at a big firm does not score high on the three “pillars of self-determination”– competence, autonomy, and connection to…

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Inner Development, Community, Social Justice (Concurrent Session, AALS Conference on Clinical Legal Education)

Posted on May 21, 2015 by dmaranville

Last, but not least, in this series highlighting lessons from experts in other disciplines relevant to how to navigate the chaotic “new normal”  in legal education: Thursday’s concurrent session organized by Tennessee’s Paulette Williams:  “A Commitment to Inner Development: Connecting the “New Normal” with Clinics’ Social Justice Mission”.

The session brought  Edward Groody and Timothy Dempsey from the Community Building Institute in Tennessee.  The Institute helps social service and criminal justice organizations become more effective by training participants in community building practices.  Taking an evidence-based approach built on motivational interviewing, trauma-informed care, and pro-social supports, community building is a “highly experiential process that helps participants remove barriers to communication and unlearn unproductive attitudes and behaviors.”

Groody began the session with a detailed overview of a four-stage process for building community:

  • Pseudo-community
  • Chaos
  • Emptying/Letting Go
  • Community

That process adds an important step — emptying/letting go — to Bruce Tuckman’s familiar “forming, storming, norming, performing” model of group formation.  My own interpretation of this additional,  third step is that it provides space for  participants to recognize,  and learn skills to address, the emotional issues that so often get in the way of honest connection with others.

Dempsey then shared powerful stories of how that process helps ex-offenders with post-prison re-entry,  allowing them to move past behavioral responses that may have seemed — and perhaps were — functional in their previous lives, but would block their efforts to move forward.   Or, to put it another way, this step acknowledges that in order to take advantage of education or employment opportunities, people need to let go of fears, resentments or trauma.  This is challenging work that is the foundation of many spiritual traditions, but can help build strong connections with others.

Time constraints prevented Paulette Williams from speaking in detail about how she makes use of this process in her clinical teaching work.  I hope she finds other forums for sharing those experiences and insights.

The insights of this community building process struck me as relevant not only to social justice and clinical legal education work, but also to faculty interactions within our law schools.  From another time and place, I well remember a year when every faculty meeting resulted in controversy, usually about something relatively minor that seemed to be a proxy for other, larger, but unacknowledged issues festering beneath the surface.    I suspect that many faculties are experiencing something similar as they operate  in the  current climate of uncertainty and change, too often getting stuck in the fear those conditions foster.  It’s  difficult for me to imagine applying this model in the typical law school environment.  But successfully moving through the “emptying/letting go” phase, as individuals and a group,  could be oh, so helpful!

Filed under: Best Practices, Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices & Setting Goals, Best Practices and Clinics, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Best Practices, Diversity & Social Justice, Catalysts For Change, Diversity & Social Justice, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , | Comments Off on Inner Development, Community, Social Justice (Concurrent Session, AALS Conference on Clinical Legal Education)

Lessons from “Counseling Our Students” (Mini-Plenary at AALS Conference on Clinical Education)

Posted on May 17, 2015 by dmaranville

At the recent AALS Conference on Clinical Education two additional sessions provided important insights from experts iin other disciplines on how to operate effectively in the midst of the current period of change in legal education.

Wednesday;s Mini-Plenary on Counseling Our Students In the New Normal included an inspiring guest speaker who was even more impressive as a listener.

Moderated by Mercer’s Tim Floyd, the session began with a helpful overview of the current state of the job market (bottom line:  recovering, slowly) by Abraham Pollack, GW’s  Professional Development dean. But the centerpiece of the session was Carolyn McKanders, Co-Director and Director or Organizational Culture, Thinking Collaborative and, not incidentally, mother of Tennessee’s Karla McKanders,

Carolyn brilliantly demonstrated “cognitive coaching” (check out the app!) in an unscripted coaching session that allowed Mary Lynch (yes, that Mary Lynch,  Editor of this blog) to expand  her acting career into improv. The session was designed to help Mary think through her goals and approaches in counseling students on career development in an environment where predictable and linear career tracks are no longer the norm.

After the role play Carolyn summarized three keys to cognitive coaching:  pausing, paraphrasing and posing questions (with a rising inflection that communicates curiosity and openness, not control or credibility).  The beauty of this approach is that it helps the individual “self-monitor, self-analyze, and self-evaluate“.

The session certainly reinforced three lessons that clinicians should know; after all, a foundational goal of clinical legal education is fostering reflection, and most of us teach interviewing and counseling, at least to some extent.

  • First, the power of listening.  In a world of fast talking, sometimes monologue-happy, often living-in-our-heads law professors, so easy for this lesson to “go missing”  if we ruminate worriedly, trying to cope with the new normal in faculty and committee meetings and informal conversations.
  • Second, the value of paraphrasing for understanding to ensure accurate communication.
  • And finally, the importance of  founding our questions on authentic curiosity — listening in order to understand, not to counter an argument.

In a constantly changing world, where so many verities are in play, it’s too easy for us to get stuck in fear and suspicion.  Though the stated rationale for the mini-plenary was to help us counsel students, for me it spoke at least as powerfully to how we can most effectively interact  with our colleagues.  And, perhaps, “counsel” ourselves.

In the next, and final post of this series, I’ll discuss a Thursday concurrent that linked “inner development” with community building and social justice.

Filed under: Best Practices, Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices & Setting Goals, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

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