This article in the New York Times is about a different profession, but it seems familiar.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off on Prepared to Practice?
This article in the New York Times is about a different profession, but it seems familiar.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off on Prepared to Practice?
Wanted to get this Special Report out to you ASAP! I am poring over it now and will report back soon!
View the Digital Edition of this Special Report.
Bruce A. Green, the Louis Stein Professor at Fordham Law School, writes: Making students ready for practice is not just a task for the formal curriculum. Law students spend much of their time in law-related pursuits outside the classroom including in extracurricular activities and part-time and summer employment. Law schools strive to help students make the most of these opportunities.
Jeremy Paul, dean of Northeastern University School of Law, writes that the over-emphasis on the divide between theory and practice lurking within today’s calls for law school reform obscures a far more basic reality. Grounding in “theory” is what makes successful lawyering possible in the first place.
Richard A. Rosenbaum, the chief executive officer of Greenberg Traurig in Manhattan, writes: Law schools, firms and seasoned attorneys must continue to work together to creatively ensure that we keep open the doors of opportunity to emerging legal talent.
Alison Nina Bernard, the director of corporate practice at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, and Niki Kopsidas who oversees firm-wide lateral partner hiring and integration at Blank Rome, write: In today’s highly competitive legal market, an attorney needs a high level of Collaborative Intelligence to help clients meet their strategic business goals, and law firms and other legal organizations need to foster a culture where knowledge and expertise are shared openly and effectively.
Jill Backer, associate director for employer relations at Brooklyn Law School, writes: Because plans and people change, as do industries and the employment market, your goals must be able to change as well. If your goals are resilient then you can be too.
Read more: http://www.newyorklawjournal.com/id=1397823099047/Law-Schools#ixzz2zYPVtExj
Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off on New York Law Journal Special Report on Experiential Learning & Charting a Career Path
As readers to this blog know from earlier posts, the Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar completed almost all of its work on comprehensive review at its meeting held on March 14-15, 2014. Importantly, the proposed changes incorporate identification and assessment of student learning outcomes into the Standards. In March, the Council also approved a few final matters for Notice and Comment:
Today, the Standards Review Committee (which reports “up to the Council”) posted the agenda and supporting materials for its next meeting which will be held in St. Louis on April 25th . The agenda begins with a Hearing on the matters out for Notice and Comment: Interpretation 305-3, Interpretation 503-3, Standard 505, and Chapter 8. The SRC will review the posted comments as well as the draft final report of the proposed comprehensive changes.
The posted material also includes a helpful summary of Council actions ( Council acts on ABA law school approval standards at March 2014 meeting) and a statement of next steps:
The complete set of revisions is expected to be reviewed by the ABA House of Delegates in August 2014 in accordance with House Rule 45.9. The House may either concur with the Council’s decisions or refer a proposed change back to the Council for further consideration. Any reference back to the Council must include a statement setting forth the reasons for the referral. A decision by the Council is subject to a maximum of two referrals back to the Council by the House. The decision by the Council following the second referral is final.
The end of this comprehensive review is in sight!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off on Agenda Circulated For April 25th Standards Review Committee Meeting
CHECK THIS OUT:
Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
The Clinical Law Review will hold its next Clinical Writers’ Workshop on Saturday, September 27, 2014, at NYU Law School.
The Workshop will provide an opportunity for clinical teachers who are writing about any subject (clinical pedagogy, substantive law, interdisciplinary analysis, empirical work, etc.) to meet with other clinicians writing on related topics to discuss their works-in-progress and brainstorm ideas for further development of their articles. Attendees will meet in small groups organized, to the extent possible, by the subject matter in which they are writing. Each group will “workshop” the draft of each member of the group.
Participation in the Workshop requires the submission of a paper because the workshop takes the form of small group sessions in which all members of the group comment on each other’s manuscripts. By June 30, all applicants will need to submit a mini-draft or prospectus, 3-5 pages in length, of the article they intend to present at the workshop. Full drafts of the articles will be due by September 1, 2014.
As in the previous Clinical Law Review Workshops, participants will not have to pay an admission or registration fee but participants will have to arrange and pay for their own travel and lodging. To assist those who wish to participate but who need assistance for travel and lodging, NYU Law School has committed to provide 10 scholarships of up to $750 per person to help pay for travel and lodging. The scholarships are designed for those clinical faculty who receive little or no travel support from their law schools and who otherwise would not be able to attend this conference without scholarship support. Applicants for scholarships will be asked to submit, with their 3-5 page prospectus, by June 30, a proposed budget for travel and lodging and a brief statement of why the scholarship would be helpful in supporting their attendance at this conference. The Board will review all scholarship applications and issue decisions about scholarships in early July.The scholarships are conditioned upon recipients’ meeting all requirements for workshop participation, including timely submission of drafts.
Information about the Workshop – including the Registration form, scholarship application form, and information for reserving hotel rooms – is available on-line at:
http://www.law.nyu.edu/journals/clinicallawreview/clinical-writers-workshop
If you have any comments or suggestions you would like to send us, we would be very happy to hear from you. Comments and suggestions should be sent to Randy Hertz at randy.hertz@nyu.edu.
— The Board of Editors of the Clinical Law Review
Filed under: Best Practices, Best Practices and Clinics | Comments Off on Clinical Law Review Workshop – Registration deadline is June 30, 2014
At our first conference this upcoming Friday we are featuring over 30 law professors from the United States who will be presenting in TEDx styled talks. Here is a link to our impressive speaker list:
http://legaledweb.com/igniting-law-teaching-conference-speakers
Here is some more information about our vision for LegalED and our conference:
Unlike MOOCs, where one professor teaches thousands. We believe that all professors topics that they know best and that collectively we can bring students more ideas and perspectives, which is important for legal education. In studying the law, it is important for students to be able to see an issue, a problem from various perspectives.
And the unique thing about the conference is that we are creating a body of professional development materials for professors. In the legal academy and probably in higher ed generally, not a lot of attention is paid to how students learn or to the craft of teaching. This conference addresses that head on and begins to create a collection of videos, available 24/7 for professors interested in improving their craft.
Also check out our website and please feel free to contact me with any questions.
http://legaledweb.com
-Benjamin Pietrzyk
Uncommon Individual Foundation
Filed under: Catalysts For Change | Comments Off on LegalED Igniting the Law Conference April 4th @ American University Washington College of Law
The ABA Council of the Section on Legal Education met in San Diego on March 14th and 15th and voted on the final recommendations of the Standards Review Committee’s (SRC’s) comprehensive review of the standards begun in 2008. ( See earlier discussions here and here and here). I report on some but not all of this past weekend’s work.
On the controversial SRC recommendations on faculty tenure, security of position and academic freedom, the Council voted down both alternatives to the current standards, thus retaining the current system of tenure and security of position pursuant to ABA Standard 405. This is a victory for those who support tenure and security of position as the key to ensuring academic freedom, as I do. Council members acknowledged that the current standards are imperfect. For example, current standards unfairly institutionalize hierarchies within faculty that are inconsistent with innovation and preparing students for the profession, particularly with respect to our Legal Writing and Lawyering colleagues. This and other issues will be left for the next comprehensive review.
On the competing proposals to require experiential learning for all students, the Council voted to require six credits, rejecting an alternative proposal for 15 credits. This is a very small step in the right direction but at least it is a step. The approved ABA standard approved by the Council reads as follows:
“one or more experiential course(s) totaling at least six credit hours. An experiential course must be a simulation course, a law clinic, or a field placement. To satisfy this requirement, a course must be primarily experiential in nature and must:
(i) integrate doctrine, theory, skills, and legal ethics, and engage students in
performance of one or more of the professional skills identified in Standard
302;(ii) develop the concepts underlying the professional skills being taught;
(iii) provide multiple opportunities for performance; and
(iv) provide opportunities for self-evaluation.”
As to proposals concerning student pro bono hours, the Council adopted 50 hours as an “aspirational” goal, thus rejecting an hourly requirement such as that imposed by the New York Court of Appeals for admission to the bar in New York. With respect to inclusion of LGBT law students and law students with disabilities, the Council rejected proposals for affirmative inclusion, relying on general non-discrimination language.
Finally, the Council voted to send out for Notice and Comment a proposal to permit students to receive academic credit for paid externships. The Council is expected to vote on this proposal at its June meeting. As I discussed in an earlier post, this proposed change is fraught with difficulties and real risks. Those interested in this issue should think about information that needs to be conveyed to the Council and watch the ABA website for posting of the time frame for Notice and Comment. I will be following closely and will announce what I learn on this blog. The ABA House of Delegates is scheduled to vote on the proposed revised standards at their August meeting.
Filed under: Uncategorized | 5 Comments »
Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Catalysts For Change, Teaching Methodology | Comments Off on REMINDER: Educating the Transactional Lawyer of Tomorrow
Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Catalysts For Change, Teaching Methodology | Comments Off on Assessment Across The Curriculum – Spring Conference
Readers may be interested in Populist Outrage, Reckless Empirics: A Review of Failing Law Schools, a recent blog post by Michael Simkovic & Frank McIntyre drawing on their article The Economic Value of a Law Degree .
Simkovic & McIntyre challenge the empirical analysis underlying Brian Tamanaha’s claim that legal education is no longer a good value given current law school tuition levels. They point out numerous ways in which Tamanaha’s argument rested on apples to oranges statistical comparisons, and note flaws in other studies he relied on.
Key conclusions: “[T]he value of a law degree typically exceeds its costs by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Even at the twenty-fifth percentile, a law degree is typically a profitable investment. At current price levels, law degrees generally provide an attractive double-digit pretax rate of return.Legal education is profitable both for students and for the federal government as tax collector and lender.”
For me the most provocative idea in the post was one from Tamanaha — supported by Simkovic & McIntyre — that I hadn’t remembered: Law students are good enough loan repayment risks that law schools might consider providing loans directly to their students at lower interest rates than are currently available. A new best practice, perhaps?
Filed under: Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Uncategorized | Tagged: Failing Law Schools, Financing legal education, Simkovic & McIntyre, Tamanaha, Value of legal education | 3 Comments »
Thought-provoking discussion at the NYLS Clinical Theory Workshop on Friday.
Definitions. Carrie Kaas reported on the “definitions” project of an Alliance for Experiential Education Committee chaired by Cindy Adcock of Charlotte. That committee is attempting to generate a common vocabulary around experiential learning — a set of common definitions for the overlapping and inconsistently used terms now in use. The Building on Best Practices project will need to decide whether to adopt that vocabulary, or not.
One of the most interesting, and challenging, tasks is to decide what differentiates an in-house clinic from an externship. Is it geography? Who pays the supervisor? A distinction rooted in pedagogy? Degree of independent role assumption? Or perhaps the distinction is no longer useful & and is ready to be junked?
I lean towards pedagogy & intensity of supervision, and degree of independent role assumption. Except when I lean towards junking the terminology and recognizing that we’re dealing with a continuum on multiple dimensions, as argued in Revision Quest: A Law School Guide to Designing Experiential Courses Involving Real Lawyering.
Sequencing. Cynthia Batt from Stetson presented her draft article on curriculum sequencing that is one of several independent articles spawned by the Building on Best Practices book project. Arguing for what I have termed the “layer cake” curriculum model, she conceded that the model is not necessarily the “only” or “best” model. But, she suggested, at schools where significant numbers of faculty are resistant to integrating experiential education throughout the curriculum, whether due to insecurity about lack of practice experience, fear of change, or other reasons, it is one that might have the best chance of implementation. Fair enough. A reminder to me that I’m at a school with relatively little resistance to experiential education.
Under the Radar Creativity. Cynthia made another comment that I’ve been pondering: “I am so impressed with my colleagues’ creativity, the kinds of work they are having students do that no one else knew about. Why are people so reluctant to talk about experiential education embedded in ‘traditional’ doctrinal education?”
That creativity certainly permeates my own law school. Based on a survey last spring, my colleagues are integrating experiential exercises into over 50 doctrinal courses. And they’ve created a long list of very creative simulation oriented courses, ranging from Venture Capital Deals to Supreme Court Decision Making to International Contracting.
So much of this creativity operates pretty “under the radar screen”. But I’m not sure it’s reluctance exactly. Lack of time? Lack of an appropriate forum? Understated, we-don’t-blow-our-own-horn Seattle manners?
I don’t know. But if our two schools at opposite corners of the country are representative, perhaps legal education has changed more than we know. Are we approaching a tipping point?
Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices & Externships, First Year Law School Innovations, Teaching Methodology, Uncategorized | Tagged: Alliance for Experiential Education, Carrie Kaas, Clinical Theory Workshop, Cynthia Adcock, Cynthia Batt, experiential education | Comments Off on Building on Best Practices and the Clinical Theory Workshop
Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman of New York State’s highest court (the NYS Court of Appeals) announced today the creation of a Pro Bono Scholars Program in which certain qualified law students may sit for the February Bar Exam during their third year of law school and then spend from March to May of their third year performing 500 or more hours of pro bono legal services. He made this announcement as part of his 2014 “State of the Judiciary” address. During what the Chief Judge describes as a “challenging economic environment and legal job market” for new law grads, the Pro Bono Scholars Program is intended to facilitate “quality mentoring relationships” and provide “adequate practical training” under the direct supervision of a practicing lawyer, while “helping those who cannot afford legal services.” It also “builds upon New York’s 50 hours pro bono admissions requirement.”
Judge Lippman noted
“In New York, we are so fortunate to have stellar law schools, with innovative clinical programs and well-crafted curricula.”
The NYS Board of Law Examiners (BOLE) has already approved the initiative which “will be offered to all of New York’s 15 law schools, as well as other schools that wish to participate.” Judge Lippman also noted that the supervision will “take place through educational programs developed by law schools and their clinics, and in partnerships with legal service providers, corporations and law firms.”
Senior Associate Judge Victoria A. Graffeo will head an Advisory Committee composed of law school deans from around the state to address “the logistics of an expanded February bar exam, ensure compliance with ABA standards, and develop a more precise timetable for the implementation of the various aspects of the Program.” Judge Lippman praised Graffeo’s “tremendous expertise and formidable organizational and managerial skills” in ensuring a “smooth transition for the new protocols,” noting that Graffeo used the same strengths in leading the 50 hour pro bono requirement.
For an audio webcastand transcript of the address see:
http://www.nycourts.gov/ctapps/soj.htm
Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
American Bar Association Accreditation Standard 305 addresses “study outside the classroom” and, in particular, field placement courses. Interpretation 305-3 states:
A law school may not grant credit to a student for participation in a field placement program for which the student receives compensation. This Interpretation does not preclude reimbursement of reasonable out-of-pocket expenses related to the field placement.
The written submission by the Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA) filed January 31, 2014 (found here or on ABA site) argues
To revoke this regulation would give employers in paid field placements significantly more power both to control student work and to minimize the employer’s supervisory role, and would significantly reduce externship faculty control over the educational benefit of the placement.
This is a real concern. When I directed Albany’s field placement program, I often had to discuss with supervisors the difference between their treatment of academic interns and paid clerks. For example, throwing an inexperienced student into night court without direct attorney supervision may free up the evening of the harried assistant public defender or assistant prosecutor but it fails to teach the intern the constitutional way to practice law. And, if you pay the interns you may well be entitled to assign them to pick up your dry cleaning or walk your dog because your time is more valuable, however those activities are hardly educational. These were actual issues I addressed and was able to resolve in favor of the students educational experience because the employer had no money in the pot and needed to follow the requirements of the law school. That leverage will be undercut if interpretation 305(3) is removed.
I also agree with CLEA’s position that
……nothing suggests that field placement courses are displacing a large volume of paid part-time work for law students. To the contrary, pervasive anecdotal evidence suggests that employers are unable to pay and would prefer that students work without pay. Field placement directors (and placement offices) routinely field requests from employers who seek to offer unpaid work through a field placement experience. Nothing suggests an increased demand by employers to pay students who are also getting credit.
If anything, during difficult economic times, law students need the negotiating power of an experienced attorney and faculty member even more, since they are more vulnerable to exploitation by employers. I urge the Council to keep Interpretation 305 (3) in place to protect the educational quality of field placements. As discussed in another earlier post, during Thursday’s public hearing before Council members, Interpretation 305 (3) was discussed, including the applicability of the Fair Labor Standards Act, possible exploitation of students, and the problem of differing expectations regarding treatment of paid and unpaid interns. These issues are complicated and deserve further attention. With the SRC members deciding to complete the comprehensive review at the February meeting and leave issues which need more data and input for another day, it was surprising, in my opinion, to observe them move so quickly on the proposal to remove 305-3 without a more informed vetting of the issues.
Disclosure: I was recently elected co-vice president of CLEA. However, I was not responsible for the CLEA position letter on this interpretation. When writing on this blog, I do not represent CLEA.
Filed under: Best Practices & Externships, Uncategorized | Tagged: #reformlegaled, ABA, ABA Council on Legal Education, ABA STANDARDS REVIEW, best practices for legal education, CLEA, clinical legal education, experiential learning, field placement courses, field placement program, law schools, law students, legal education | Comments Off on SRC voted to eliminate Interpretation 305-3 which distinguishes paid employment from academic field placements
I am sitting in the lovely and warm Conrad Ballroom of the Conrad Hotel in windy, freezing Chicago. So far today, the Standards Review Committee (SRC) of the ABA Section on Legal Education has decided to leave some major issues in the hands of the Council on Legal Education. (As you know from my earlier post, the Council yesterday held the last of its public hearings on the proposed revisions posted for notice and comment.) The overall theme of today’s session appeared, at least to this observer, to be an urgency to finish the comprehensive view (which began in 2008) as soon as possible so that the Council can finish its work by June and the ABA House of Delegates can vote in August. Many times, it was noted that issues not currently resolved in this comprehensive review can be considered carefully by the committee going forward.
First, in previous meetings the SRC had voted to send up to the Council a proposed revision that require each student to take six credits of experiential courses. Last December, the Council decided to post for notice and comment an alternative proposal made by CLEA that would require 15 experience-based credits. Today, the Standards Review Committee decided not to further discuss the 15-credit proposal but to leave the choice to the Council without any revised recommendation from the SRC.
Similarly, with respect to security of position and tenure, the SRC decided that the very robust and interesting comments on the issue should be considered directly by the Council. SRC member and Southwestern Professor Catherine Carpenter in presenting a review of the recent comments noted the helpful law review article submitted on tenure and said that two interesting themes emerged from the recent comments: 1) whether academic freedom can truly be secured by any framework other than tenure; and 2) whether a time of financial exigency is the best time to change the rules of the game. The SRC and the Council members present agreed that the Council is in the best position to review the recent submissions and comments and take action.
With respect to Bar Passage revisions, the working committee reported that the continued resistance of some states to reporting individual pass results to law schools counseled against taking action at this time. In addition, they did not feel that they currently possessed all the data on state cut rates, pass rates and other “meta data” to create a properly informed recommendation. It was underscored that there are several important issues regarding bar passage that must be revised and/ or clarified before the standard should be amended. The committee will take up the matter again after the summer.
There were some changes made which I will report on later.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off on Standards Review Committee Says “Our Work is Done” on Skills Requirement and Tenure and Security of Position: It’s in Council’s Hands Now