Shultz and Zedeck: Collaboration and Motivation in Orientation!

Posted on August 13, 2014 by Mary A. Lynch

One-Ls at Albany Law, just like those at many other schools, are in the midst of Fall 2014 Orientation. Today, I participated as a  “faculty observer” in a collaborative skill building exercise organized by our Associate Dean Alicia Ouellette.  Imagine my delight to see copies of Schultz and Zedeck’s 26 lawyering effectiveness factors distributed at each table in the school gym!

Teams of 20-25 students, most of whom had either just met each other or not yet met, were tasked with:

  • Assembling a small children’s bike (to be donated to the Boys and Girls Club); the first team to both build the bike and have a team member ride the teeny-tiny bike around the orange cone course set in the gym would be declared winner. 🙂
  • Building the tallest pasta-marshmallow structure
  • Making sure every student on the team participated in the endeavor.

Faculty participants were assigned to observe what they saw happen during the group exercise, report their observations to their student team, and explore with the student teams questions such as:

  • what worked well?
  • what was challenging about  mandatory collaboration?
  • what might they have done differently to more effectively collaborate?
  • what might these exercises suggest about effective lawyering?

The students brought good humor to the task.  They brought a range of experiences, including a few with engineering backgrounds and/or “mom/dad” know-how, and a range of abilities. The fact that the bikes were to be REALLY used by local community members was a motivating factor.  In fact, students vocally expressed concern about the safety of the quickly assembled bikes noting,  “Remember, some kid is going to ride this!” and “It has to be safe.”

By the end of the assigned time period, everyone in my group had participated …. at least a bit. The debriefing was more effective than one might have predicted. One student on my team noted gender differences in approaches – a number of women were reading instructions for assembling the bike while a few of the males started to immediately put pieces of the bike together. This led to a discussion of THE CONFIDENCE GAP.  Another student noted the difference between working on a task when you know what the outcome should look like (the bike) and working on a concept without a uniform or agreed upon vision of what the outcome looks like (the highest pasta structure). Many students reflected on the significant importance of communication skills, particularly listening.

Other teams reflected on the challenge of being asked to accomplish a collective task when most members of the team felt inadequately prepared. With faculty guidance, that team explored when that might happen in law school or in practice.  Issues such as time management, resource management – one team ran out of tape – and problem solving techniques were also discussed. Students, encouraged by faculty suggestions, also pondered what kind of teams they might participate in their post-graduation future .

As I looked around the tables, I could not help but think of Richard Susskind’s book,  Tomorrows Lawyers.  These one-Ls will be entering a profession and a world in which working with others, problem solving, creative thinking, and clear communication will be even more critical for those in our profession than in times past.   As graduates, these students will be participating in teams and in collaborative enterprises that we faculty probably cannot now envision.  However, it is our job to facilitate their acquisition of the kinds of skills and capacities and attitudes that will best serve them in the uncertain but potentially exciting future.   Happy New Semester all! Happy Facilitating!

Orientation 20140813_142119

 

Orientation Pic 2 Orientation Pic 7 Orientation Pic 6 Orientation Pic 5 Orientation Pic 4 Orientation Pic 3 Orientation Pic 1

Filed under: Best Practices & Setting Goals, First Year Law School Innovations, Teaching Methodology, Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

The Baby Has Finally Been Birthed!

Posted on August 12, 2014 by Mary A. Lynch

Comprehensive revisions passed

The ABA House of Delegates passed the comprehensve revisions with “minimal  fuss” according to the ABA Journal linked  above.  One area, however, garnered  significant attention and also resulted in  an odd, though perhaps meaningless ,  procedural move.  The House voted  to send back to the Section on Legal Education for further consideration the comment to standard 305 which prohibits payment to students for credit-based courses.

What does this mean? Law schools which have not already done so must start identifying, articulating publicly and assessing student learning out outcomes, providing every student six  credits of clinic or clinic-like experiential courses and requiring students to take two credit hours worth of professional responsibility coursework.

Well, it’s a start……

Filed under: Best Practices & Externships, Best Practices & Setting Goals, Best Practices and Clinics, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Wishing students success on the bar exam

Posted on July 22, 2014 by Pam Armstrong

The Bar Exam is upcoming. And with it comes heightened stress and potential for students, but also an odd chance for diverging interests between a small number of students and their law schools.

Bar exam homonyms: high stakes; gateway, leveler, stressor, useless unnecessary burden after three years of school, fee generator, standardizing, and proficiency. I’m sure “bar exam” conjures up many more thoughts and meanings for others. For law students, the impact of this exam is wide-ranging. Most graduates spend months of intensive study preparing for the bar exam. They incur additional debt for these review courses; they devote months of their lives to study intensively for the exam. Exam passage marks the entree into our profession with all of its benefits and burdens. Exam passage allows our graduates to practice law and makes more likely their getting and keeping a job sooner rather than later.

While for individual students, we provide encouragement, cajoling, and hope for exam success, their exam success has an additional impact on us. For law schools, the bar exam is a factor in accreditation and in reputation. The ABA accreditation standards require a law school to meet a bar pass requirement that can be done in one of two ways: “either by showing that 75 percent of its graduates who took the bar exam in at least three of the previous five years passed or by showing that its graduates’ first-time bar pass rate was no more than 15 points below the average bar pass rate for ABA-approved schools in states where its graduates took the bar.” The ABA, this spring, did not follow through on a proposal that would have increased the passage percent rate requirement from 75 to 80 percent. This connection to accreditation, while arguably standardizing law schools, can recast student success on the bar exam from an individual achievement and triumph to an institutional success or failure.

Therein lies a challenge for a small number of students – reconciling the individual student’s path toward bar exam success with institutional markers of success. Where one student may benefit from repeated attempts at taking the exam, gaining familiarity and comfort and so easing stress that inhibits success, the student’s school must count that student’s learning process as a “failure” against institutional success and reputation. To foster institutional reputation, encouraging some students to wait to take the bar exam seems a good path; on the other hand, for the student who would benefit from the exposure, supporting the student’s decision to take and re-take may be the better path for the student even if not for the institution. A delicate balance is needed when we approach those students who are at risk of not passing the bar exam.

Of course, student success or failure arises from many factors, and the choice to take the exam in the face of difficulties is the graduate’s. It’s also worth remembering that many famous people did not pass the bar exam on their first try including President Franklin D. Roosevelt, First Lady Michelle Obama, and even Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo. So, I’m going to encourage all of our students to know themselves, to work as hard as they can in the way that works best for them, and of course: wish all students success on the bar exam.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Thirty-One Themes of Thought

Posted on July 10, 2014 by Jill Engle

“Thirty-One Themes of Thought” is the title I gave my fifth grade class poetry compilation.  What could this possibly have to do with best practices for law professors?

This post, my first for this blog I have long admired, I conceived as a commentary on what I call my “thematic” approach to law teaching.  In my doctrinal Family Law course as well as in my Family Law Clinic I stress recurring themes: the intense public-private tension inherent to Family Law; social change as catalyst for legal developments; storytelling as advocacy; client-centeredness; and holistic lawyering.

As I pondered this concept of “thematic teaching” my mind wandered repeatedly to that alliterative “Title” my 10-year-old brain fashioned . . . 35 years ago.  My use of the word “theme” was likely less about dedication to big-picture thinking than it was about grappling for a word other than “poem” to make my little manila-folder-booklet different from the rest in some small way.  Yet upon further reflection I find a resonance in that word choice with my current work and my teaching style.  Calling my booklet “Themes of Thought,” I believe demonstrated a constant yearning for connectivity (hence the alliteration) and a broad view (referencing the “thought” our class put into each poem)  that is part of my identity.

Taking a thematic approach to law teaching is not something I was taught–it is something that I developed organically as I grew the past 12 years as an educator.  And although I have been aware of it as my approach for years, I just a few months ago began to name it and reflect on it.  Reflection, I firmly believe, is a fundamental aspect of my professional growth as a professor and a lawyer, but also of my students’ growth.  Reflection as a tool in clinical law teaching is nothing new.  I first experienced it as a law student invited/required to submit journals routinely during my clinical year.  Borrowing that tool from my mentors was arguably the single best decision I made as a new clinical professor four years ago.  Reflection fosters self-awareness, which fosters a maximization of strengths.  Lawyers work hard, think critically and often receive little praise from clients and judges alike–not to mention opposing counsel.  Reflecting on one’s accomplishments and professional development, in addition to client interactions, shows budding lawyer (our students) that they can do this work and in fact are doing it well on many fronts.  By the same token, the opporutnity for feedback from their professor or other clinical supervisor through submission of journals is a safe and controlled space to reflect on mistakes and engage in contemplation about how to improve skills while a mentor helps them process those often uncomfortable realities.

This methodology of reflection and self-awareness is different in the traditional law school classroom setting than clinics, but it can be done.  Several colleagues have written and presented at conferences on using written reflections and other tools in non-clinical classrooms.  In my thematic teaching paradigm, I use several approaches in my Family Law lecture course, which often holds enrollment of over 50 students:

1. On Day One of class I explain the main theme of the course, which is the public-private tension mentioned above.

2. My “big picture” approach is evident from both my remarks that day in class; my syllabus which describes each class period’s theme; and the casebook, which opens with commentary on that very same public-private tension unique to Family Law.

3. I assign casebook material for Day One, comprised of several United States Supreme Court cases interpreting Due Process liberty interests.  During class I ask students to ponder why a course on Family Law suddenly looks so much like a Constitutional Law course.  Drawing their attention back to the public-private tension theme, I remind the students that Due Process liberty inquiries center around that same public-private tension.

4.  One Day One I dispense the material via lecture and PowerPoint, but clarify that I use the Socratic method from Day Two forward and call on students at random.  The Socratic method promotes self-awareness and reflection in a way no other methodology can offer, when managed successfully.  Each teacher must define success for themselves, but for me it means engaging the student about why they responded as they did, regardless of the accuracy of that response.  Even if the response is flawed in some way, I invite them to thoroughly vet it.  Then I clarify any flaws–with compassion and professional respect.

5. Volunteered answers, and questions, are welcomed in my classroom.  The questions are particularly useful for promoting reflection as well as larger themes, as they often stem from common public misconceptions about Family Law ripe for discussion.

6. Returning back to Day One for a moment, I ask the students something critcal after my introduction of the course themes and my teaching style, but before my lecture on the assigned material.  I invite them to mindfully reflect on whether this course will serve their needs as a learner.  Immediately, they as listeners are cued to reflect what they do need as learners of the law.  With what I hope is humility, I remind them that my brilliant colleague Dara Purvis also teaches Family Law and they can take the course with either prof. Students dropping my course after hearing that speech does not offend or scare me, and I stress that.  Occasionally a student walks out at that point, never to return.  That is utterly fine.

7. Finally, the final exam.  After a semester of thematic teaching and, one can assume at least a sliver of reflective learning, the students are asked at least one question on my exam about the public policy aspect of Family Law. The question is not a fact pattern.  Other parts of my exam utilize those.  But the policy question asks them to consider (and sometimes describe) an area of Family Law and what they learned about it, and opine on the efficacy of that legal framework or approach.  I like to end the semester the way we began, with reflection on the big picture, with consideration of our legal system as social underpinning.  How does the law reflect our values and social norms? Who gets to define those norms?  How much government regulation of private decision-making on personal matters is too much?

What is your signature teaching approach?  I ask my clinic students to reflect on what is their unique style of lawyering.  As their teachers I believe we are well served by reflecting on what is our unique style of teaching. The growth among our academy and our students is symbiotic.  Let us embrace that.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Writing about Teaching Literature

Posted on July 8, 2014 by Mary A. Lynch

This may be helpful for those of us whose summer plans include scholarship on teaching and learning.
….. And speaking of the fruits of our labor, the blueberries in the farmers markets on the East Coast are really spectacularly delicious right now.
What “fruit” scholarly or organic appeals to you this summer?

Contributor's avatarTeaching & Learning in Higher Ed.

"Writing" by Jeffrey James Pacres (CC BY-NC-ND)by Laura L. Runge

The MLA recently released its long-awaited report on Doctoral Study in Modern Languages and Literature. Among its recommendations, the report argues for greater support and value for teacher-training. Although not an early harbinger of change, the report gives a welcome endorsement to strategies that we have seen developing in doctoral programs around the country.Report of the MLA Task Force on Doctoral Study in Modern Language and Literature I’ve taught a practicum in teaching literature at the University of South Florida since 2004. I’ve also written two teaching guides for Norton and a couple of articles on pedagogy. Whereas in the earlier days I felt something like of a lone voice in the wilderness among my colleagues in English, I’ve watched the scholarship on teaching transform to a diverse and robust field.

There are now many opportunities to share our scholarship on teaching and learning, and there is much to be learned from the variety of classroom experiences in…

View original post 946 more words

Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Best Law Teachers Conference

Posted on July 5, 2014 by Steven Friedland

While attending the Best Law Teachers Conference in Chicago last week I was struck by how much I learned by simply observing terrific law teachers. I saw contrasting styles, from Heather Gerken’s Socratic Method, to Meredith Duncan’s distinctive discussion approach, to Rory Bahadur’s combination method. Actually, all three blended different methods and shared some basic characteristics. It was obvious that each was passionate, dedicated to having their students learn, highly organized and focused on learning outcomes, and had a structure that they intentionally shared with students. Just because they did not hide the ball did not mean they did not have high expectations; students were on notice that they needed to put on their learning hats while in the room. I took notes furiously on my laptop and felt like a student again – until my poor eyesight and creaky hands reminded me that my “youthful student” days were long over.

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

A Primer on Professionalism for Doctrinal Professors

Posted on June 26, 2014 by Paula Schaefer
Legal education reform advocates agree that law schools should integrate professionalism preparation throughout the curriculum. Ultimately, it falls to individual professors to decide how to incorporate professionalism issues into each course. This can be an especially difficult task for professors teaching traditional doctrinal classes. The law — and not the practice of law — is the focus of most doctrinal casebooks. Law students typically do not act in role as lawyers in these classes, so they are not compelled to resolve professional dilemmas in class, as students are in a clinic or simulation-based course. As a result, it takes some additional preparation and thought to introduce professionalism issues into these courses. Some professors may resist making this change — not knowing which aspect or aspects of professionalism should be the focus, fearing that time spent on professionalism will detract from the real subject matter of the class, or believing professionalism is adequately covered elsewhere in the curriculum.
My article A Primer on Professionalism for Doctrinal Professors considers how and why doctrinal professors should address the challenge of integrating professionalism into the classroom. The article was recently published in the Tennessee Law Review and is available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2449313.
Part I of the article briefly discusses the multitude of meanings ascribed to attorney professionalism and argues that the lack of a clear, concise, and shared definition is a substantial barrier to effectively incorporating professionalism into the law school curriculum. Next, Part II provides a more coherent, streamlined definition of attorney professionalism. This part also identifies and describes three primary aspects of lawyer professionalism: fulfilling duties to clients, satisfying duties to the bar, and possessing core personal values essential to being a good lawyer. This simplified conception of professionalism should begin to address the concerns of professors who do not know where to begin to incorporate professionalism into their classes. It is also intended to persuade skeptics that professionalism is something they can and should teach as part of their doctrinal classes.
Thereafter, Part III provides guidance for developing course outcomes that connect course subject matter and professionalism. Questions prompt doctrinal professors to look for the natural connections between their course subject matter and issues of professionalism. Then, Part IV considers various methods doctrinal professors can use to introduce professionalism topics into their courses. Integrating professionalism into the classroom does not require professors to abandon their casebooks; using case law can be an effective method. This part also considers other teaching methods and materials for combining doctrine, skills, and professionalism. Finally, Part V concludes with thoughts on how students benefit when professors make the effort to incorporate professionalism into every law school classroom.
ps

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum | Tagged: , , | 2 Comments »

Trauma Informed Services and Trauma Informed Supervision (Another Post From “the Real World”)

Posted on June 21, 2014 by Antoinette Sedillo Lopez

Antoinette Sedillo Lopez's avatarAsedillolopez's Weblog

In my new position as executive director of a non-profit dedicated to eliminating domestic violence, I have learned a lot about trauma.  Trauma causes three main automatic reactions in the brain:  Fight, flight or freeze.  Trauma also makes us more sensitive to triggering events that can recall the trauma in our brains.  A smell, the slamming of a door, a sharp noise, even a tone of voice can trigger a reexperice of the traumatic event.  And, service providers, including lawyers, experience vicarious trauma by listening to the stories of traumatic events experience by others.  Knowing that this is happening is the first step in learning how to address the effects of truama.  At Enlace Comunitario, we try to have polcies that don’t retraumatize our clients.  We try to have a warm and welcoming waiting room and we don’t have harsh policies such as cancelling an appointment for someone who comes…

View original post 133 more words

Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off on Trauma Informed Services and Trauma Informed Supervision (Another Post From “the Real World”)

Transferring Best Practices to a Domestic Violence Agency–i.e. the real world

Posted on June 16, 2014 by Antoinette Sedillo Lopez

On February 1, 2014 I left the ivory tower of a law school I had loved for 27 years to become the executive director of Enlace Comunitario, a non-profit agency focused on eliminating domestic violence in Latino immigrant communities through intervention services such as case management, counseling and legal services and prevention activities such as leadership development, education and outreach.   This was a big transition for me, but I am loving it!  And, my long time involvement with Best Practices for Legal Education has paid off in this context.  How, you might ask, are the skills transferable?  Well I will give some examples in my next few posts…but I will share immediately that I am working to create a teaching and learning culture at my agency.   Specifically, my goal is to build the capacity of folks in the agency so that when I step down one or several of the staff members will feel ready to take on the helm. And, of course, I will want staff members to step up to take their place. Already, we are training a counselor to become a counselor supervisor and we are training a former receptionist to become a case manager. I love seeing my staff take on the teaching role! And, they are good at it.

So…one of the foundational principles of best practices is to work to develop learning objectives for your students.  Well, it is not a stretch to work with staff members and develop learning objectives with them!  And, creating evaluations that fit the job duties and the learning objectives was fun:  Each job criteria or learning objective is evaluated as follows:  “in training”, “needs improvement” “good work” or “awesome, can teach this knowledge, skill or value”.   So far the staff has responded positively to the new evaluation process.  We will finish up this month!  I will let you know how it goes!

Filed under: Best Practices & Setting Goals, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness | Tagged: | 2 Comments »

ABA Council on Legal Education Maintains Separation Between Paid Work and Academic Externships

Posted on June 11, 2014 by Mary A. Lynch

Last week, the ABA Council on the Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar (Council) approved a comprehensive revision of the accreditation standards for law schools and moved the package of revisions on to the ABA House of Delegates for approval at its August meeting.   Before finalizing the package of revisions, the Council voted on the  Standards Review Committee ‘s   recommendation to remove  the bar on paid externships,  a recommendation strongly supported by the ABA Law Student Division.   The Council rejected that proposal and voted to maintain the separation between academic externships and paid work.   The National Law Journal reported on the Council’s action and quoted Barry Currier, the ABA’s managing director for admissions and legal education, “The council received a lot of comments and decided to not make the change. The fundamental reason is this perceived tension between the obligations of someone who is a paid employee and a student.”

At first blush, paid externships sounds positive — a  way to assist law students in reducing their debt while engaging in experiential learning.   That point has been argued by the Law Student Division.  However, as I discussed back in February,   permitting paid externships would create new problems.  One of the more likely outcomes was identified in the comment submitted by the Clinical Legal Education Association,

But those employers that are most capable of affording the full cost of a “paid externship” are also likely to accept only externship students who they deem qualified for long-term employment. Reliance on class rank would become the norm for “paid externship” placements. Traditionally, clinical courses have provided opportunities for all students to hone their abilities and prepare for practice. Students who are not at the top of the class have benefited from a chance to develop and demonstrate abilities that do not emerge in an exam. Particularly in light of the legal market and the needs of our students, CLEA is profoundly concerned about a change in the Interpretation that would benefit only students whose rankings are at the top of the class.

Moreover, those employers able to bear the full cost of a “paid externship” would more than likely “shop”among law schools. Faced with the choice of establishing a recruitment program with a school in the top tier or with a school in the third tier, CLEA believes that employers would choose the former. We suggest that revoking Interpretation 305-3 would limit the availability of certain kinds of experience to top-ranking students at top-tier schools and severely restrict students’ opportunities to participate in clinical and experiential education.

In short, CLEA strongly supports the interests of students, by seeking to assure that all students at all schools engage in high quality work, under close and careful supervision. We want more for our students than checking cites and reviewing depositions. We seek a set of standards that ensures high quality clinical legal education, in which supervisors are fully invested in teaching and mentoring students. CLEA encourages mandates that will result in equal access to all courses and for all law students. It is in the best interests of students to preserve a separate market for paid employment in which students are compensated with the fair market value of their work. Permitting the mixture of educational and employment functions will result in the diminishment of value for each, harming both students and law schools.

In its comment, the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT’) raised excellent questions about the the  likely, although unintended, consequences,

Having employers pay students also raises difficult questions about control of the assignment and crediting process. Could the employer fire a student for not performing at high enough levels?
Would a faculty supervisor be able to reassign a student if the employer failed to provide adequate onsite supervision if that would have implications for other students working for that employer, with or
without receiving academic credit? Could students refuse tasks assigned by their paying employer if those tasks were not consistent with the learning goals and the placement expectations? Would students be willing to discuss frankly with faculty supervisors any externship site supervision problems if they worried that it could mean displeasing an employer and potentially losing income. These are just
some of the troubling pedagogical issues likely to arise if students earn academic credit for paid employment.

We do need to find ways to reduce law school costs and defray student debt,   but not at the expense of providing appropriately designed and equally available academic experiences.  The Council made the right decision for legal education and for law students.

 

 

 

Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Innovative licensing of architects – a model for the legal profession?

Posted on June 4, 2014 by Howard Katz
While many who comment about the design of legal education look to medical schools, it seems to me that architecture schools provide another useful model. The architecture curriculum integrates classroom instruction with a central role for the studio (the equivalent of simulation or clinical work in law school), and the review of student work (also called critique or “crit”) is central to the studio. There may be lessons to be learned.
Now an alternative method of licensure (similar to the Daniel Webster Scholars Program in New Hampshire, but on a larger scale) is being considered:
NCARB Endorses New Path to Becoming an Architect:  Architect Licensure Upon Graduation

Incorporating internship and examination requirements into university education, the regulatory organization aims to simplify and accelerate the licensing process.

30 May 2014
Washington, DC—The National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) Board of Directors has announced their endorsement of the concept of an additional, structured path that leads to licensure in a U.S. jurisdiction. The new path—licensure upon graduation from an accredited program—would integrate the rigorous internship and examination requirements that aspiring architects must fulfill into the years spent completing a professional degree in architecture.
The concept was designed by a distinguished group of volunteers convened by NCARB, which recommends national architect registration standards, called the Licensure Task Force. This group, which was initially formed in mid-2013, is headed by NCARB’s Immediate Past President Ron Blitch of Louisiana, and it includes former and current leaders of NCARB, the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB), the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the Association of Colleges and Schools of Architecture (ACSA), and the American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS), as well as interns, recently licensed architects, program deans and instructors, and jurisdictional licensing board representatives.
A Progressive Path
Describing the work of the Licensure Task Force, NCARB CEO Michael Armstrong said, “NCARB is engaged in streamlining and simplifying the licensing process for aspiring architects, and we are actively re-engineering all elements of the architectural licensing process—education, experience and examination—to focus on facilitation of licensing.”
“This additional path to licensure is another concrete step to reimagining and reconfiguring each part of the process while upholding the rigorous standards needed to protect the public’s health, safety and welfare,” he said.
This progressive concept was borne of research and development efforts by the Licensure Task Force, with leaders from diverse segments of the architectural community to analyze each component of the licensure process to identify overlaps and redundancies to existing programs.
Now beginning the second year, the Licensure Task Force will start to identify schools interested in participating in the program. NCARB expects to issue schools Requests for Information later in the year, followed by a Request for Proposal process in 2015.
Exam Evolution
In addition to the licensure work, NCARB also announced this month that a transition plan is underway to guide the implementation of major improvements and changes to the Architect Registration Examination® (ARE®), the test that all prospective architects must take to get their licenses. The new ARE 5.0 will launch in late 2016, while ARE 4.0 will remain available for at least 18 months after the launch.
The exam is required by all U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands for initial architectural licensure by assessing candidates for their knowledge, skills, and ability to provide all services required in the practice of architecture.

 

Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

TEACHING RESILIENCE AND BEING RESILIENT : Filling Our Tanks This Summer

Posted on May 27, 2014 by Mary A. Lynch

About a month ago, I had the pleasure of attending the annual AALS clinical conference held  in Chicago.   The conference focused on achieving happiness and resilience at a time of challenge in legal education while exploring methods for becoming “better” clinical teachers.  Clin14BookletWeb

The Keynote opening presentation by Professor Nancy Levit from the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law outlined research about happiness,  lawyers and legal careers.   Professor Levit’s  book with Doug Linder, The Happy Lawyer: Making a Good Life in the Law, was published by Oxford University Press in 2010. Their sequel, The Good Lawyer: Seeking Quality in the Practice of Law is now available.  The Levit and Linder research helps answer questions for our students and ourselves about how and why lawyers find a  legal career rewarding.   Much of the research reveals that simple truths about happiness – such as feeling valued or being part of a community – bears repetition.   The presentation was informative and the research can be used in advising our students, supporting our colleagues and caring for ourselves.

After her keynote, panelists Professor Calvin Pang (University of Hawaii, William S. Richardson School of Law)  and Professor Joanna Woolman (William Mitchell College of Law) with moderator American University Professor Brenda Smith presented a few clips from a very realistic “role play” focused on a “devastating” day in court and the responses  of a clinical teacher, clinical student, and non-clinical colleague.    (The film will be available after the conference – I believe at the AALS site – for those who want to use it in their home schools.)  In the film, the law student  faces a surprising negative court ruling and then experiences his client yelling at him outside the courtroom.   In conversation with the clinical professor, the student expresses anger with his client and believes he should just “drop” clinic.  The clinical professor listens to the student and also explores other aspects of the student’s current anger and despair including his having received a number of employment rejections during this same time period.

The film was provocative and engendered good discussion about the role of law professors .  Many of us have experienced with our students or in our own professional lives the coinciding emotional burdens of dealing with difficult emotions in client’s cases and receiving negative news on the home or career front.   Managing and coping with all those emotions and burdens is a never-ending part of professional development and law schools can and should play a significant role in preparing students with appropriate skills, appreciation of professional values and coping tools.

In a final exercise, the entire room of about 500+ created word trees on three questions:

1.  What do you do as a teacher to “fill your tank.?”

2. What do you do to encourage your students to adopt habits to make themselves whole?

3. What are the barriers and obstacles to the first two?

In asking myself these questions and watching the hundreds of others eagerly participate, I reflected on the particular importance of the resilience, holistic, and happiness theme at this moment in time.   Students and recent grads need our positive support.  Institutions need our creative, optimistic energy.   But providing that energy and support can be personally tolling.

Student-centered faculty – and in particular clinical faculty with summer burdens or untenured faculty with heavy writing demands – must  carve out some real off time or vacation in order to be effective in the long term.  Their institutions must support their need for renewal.  Filling  our personal “tanks” with sunsets, summer treats (ice cream for me!), some  relaxing days, renewed commitment to exercise or getting outside, and time vacationing with loved ones helps form the foundation for resilience in the academic year.  We need to do this not only to support our own resilience but to equip ourselves with the experience-based wisdom that will be needed in great quantities in the coming semesters.  In order  to assist our students and our institutions at this precarious time for law schools, we need to nurture our whole selves now.

Filed under: Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Catalysts For Change, Teaching Methodology | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

The most fun grading ever, really

Posted on May 13, 2014 by andicurcio

The words “fun” and “grading” rarely appear in the same sentence.  However, my large section civil procedure and evidence students’ extra credit projects really are fun to grade.

 The Assignment

Students get extra credit if they develop a creative way to explain one of the more complicated concepts we cover in class.  Students receive the following instructions:

You may work alone, or in a team of up to four people, to create a video, comic book, song, game, poster or some other creative way to explain any one of the following concepts: relation back of amendments; work product; expert discovery; summary judgment; claim and/or issue preclusion [in Evidence the list includes hearsay, character evidence, expert testimony and impeachment]. You may choose to focus on particular aspects of these concepts or the entire concept. 

The project will be worth up to 6 raw score points toward your final raw score total. [The most raw score points available in the class toward a final grade, excluding extra credit, is 100].

Points for the extra credit project will be allocated based upon: creativity; content chosen and explained [i.e. if you take a very simple portion of a rule and explain that, you will likely not get many points]; demonstrated understanding of the applicable rule[s]; communication of the rules to other students. Your project will be part of the review session in the final class.

The Projects

About two-thirds of the class normally turns in a project.  The grades usually are between 4 and 6 points, although I have given some projects a 1 or 2.

Some students developed projects based on television shows or movies. For example, in civil procedure, students developed this game show video on work product

The student actors all imitated various faculty members – complete with wigs, hand gestures, and hair flips. Another group of students in civil procedure did a spoof on the Back to the Future movies to explain relation back.

Other students developed a twitter feed on work product.  Some students used board games for inspiration.  A group of civil procedure students produced an elaborate game entitled “Battleship Preclusion”

bp photo

The next year, many of those students took my Evidence class and created a new game: “Escape from the House of Hearsay”

 bp photo1

Others developed projects using music and poetry.  For example, in Evidence, students developed a song to help explain hearsay, “The Hearsay Saga of Johnny and Sue”:

This stanza from a poem on character evidence made me laugh:

Hope you enjoyed this poem, I sure had fun.
I hope character evidence no longer makes you want to run
Despite this poem I’m sure we will still all cram
So that we do not fail this godforsaken Evidence exam.

These are just a small sampling of the wonderful creative projects.

It’s Not Just Fun and Games

The Best Practices suggestion that doctrinal faculty use multiple methods to assess student learning [chapter 7] prompted me to develop this creative extra credit assessment.

The assessment has multiple learning objectives.  First, the projects require students to learn the material because they cannot communicate creatively if they do not fully grasp the underlying doctrine.  Anecdotally, when polled via anonymous clickers about the assignment, most said working on the project was either very, or somewhat, useful to their learning.

This assessment also seeks to develop students’ abilities to communicate complex material beyond how they would do so in class or on an exam.  Using different mediums to communicate information is a useful skill.

Additionally, this project allows students to express themselves creatively.  Creativity and innovation are amongst the Shultz/Zedeck lawyering effectiveness factors.

Finally, assessing students on what largely end up being visual presentations provides an opportunity to assess the students’ grasp of the material in a format that may be used by tomorrow’s lawyers to communicate information.

The Impact on the Final Grade

Why make it extra credit rather than required?  Although I believe the projects have educational value, I make them extra credit because some students get anxious at the idea of having to engage creatively with the material.  Also, I want students to have some degree of autonomy about where they spend their time and energy.

I have been asked if this type of extra credit project “changes the curve”.   Underlying that question is the assumption that the way we traditionally grade has a validity that may be skewed by a project such as this one. I question that assumption.

This project measures students’ ability to understand, and communicate that understanding, in a different, but not less valid, way than a multiple choice or essay exam questions.  In some ways, giving extra credit for these projects is analogous to giving class participation credit.

Additionally, those who do not participate presumably can use the time students spent on the projects to study the doctrine.  Thus, the non-participants at least theoretically might have a leg up in terms of the material to be tested via a traditional final.

The Take Away

As we explore ways to prepare our students for practice in tomorrow’s world, we should consider alternative ways to assess knowledge and communication skills, and we should encourage creativity and outside the box thinking.  These projects do that.  And, they are fun to grade.

Filed under: Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques | 3 Comments »

REMINDER: Educating the Transactional Lawyer of Tomorrow

Posted on May 4, 2014 by Lauren McCormick

Tina L. Stark Gives Kickoff Speech for Emory Law’s Conference on Transactional Law Education,

June 6-7

REMINDER:  If you haven’t yet registered for Emory Law’s Fourth Biennial Conference on Teaching Transactional Law and Skills, entitled “Educating the Transactional Lawyer of Tomorrow,” you should do so now.

Tina L. Stark will return to Emory to kick off the Conference by updating the fantasy curriculum that she proposed in her speech at the inaugural conference in 2008.  On Day Two, the keynote panel will address the topic, “Skills is Not a Dirty Word:  Identifying and Teaching Transactional Law Competencies.”

You won’t want to miss these or the many other terrific sessions we have planned.  You can register for the Conference by clicking here.  If you have any questions about registration, please contact the Conference Coordinator, Edna Patterson, at edna.patterson@emory.edu.

Please click here to download the 2014 Conference Schedule.

I hope to see you in June.

Sincerely,

Sue Payne

Executive Director

Center for Transactional Law and Practice

Emory University

1301 Clifton Road

Atlanta, Georgia  30322-2770

sue.payne@emory.edu

404-727-3202

Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off on REMINDER: Educating the Transactional Lawyer of Tomorrow

Five Tool Lawyers

Posted on April 29, 2014 by dmaranville

Leading Northwest legal practitioner and technology entrepreneur Marty Smith has an interesting post on the Five Tool Lawyer over at Legal Refresh. Using the metaphor of the Five Tool Lawyer, Marty breaks apart the stages of problem solving, incorporating risk analysis in a way I found helpful. In my response Five Tool Lawyers and Legal Education, I critique aspects of the Five Tool Lawyer metaphor for compressing too much into the 1st [Use interviewing skills to gather client facts, goals and needs] and 5th tools[Counsel, document, negotiate and advocate on behalf of client]. But here’s why I thought the metaphor was compelling:

"Compelling, because [it] moves beyond issue spotting v. problem solving to articulate the stages of problem solving, targeting a spotlight on often overlooked aspects. . . . By focusing on risk, the metaphor highlights two often neglected stages of the lawyer’s work – “use judgment to assess actual risks” and “problem solve for best way to meet client’s needs with minimal risk.” At the same time, it implicitly places the legal problem in the larger context of the individual’s life, or the business’s health. And it underscores the fact that lawyers need to know how to assess the significance of legal risks within that larger context."

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices & Externships, Best Practices & Setting Goals, Best Practices and Clinics, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Comments Off on Five Tool Lawyers

« Previous Page — Next Page »