NYT OP ED:

Posted on April 12, 2010 by Mary A. Lynch

Kudos to the NYT for focusing on the teaching, academic freedom rights and public service mission of law schools and their clinics.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/opinion/12mon3.html?emc=eta1

NYT Editorial

“First, They Get Rid of the Law Clinics

Published: April 11, 2010

Law school clinics give students real-world experience in advocacy and provide underserved communities with legal representation. Increasingly, they are being attacked by business interests, which are often the targets of clinic lawsuits.

Maryland’s lawmakers have been wrestling over a bill that threatened the funding of the University of Maryland’s law clinic if it did not provide more information about its clients. The clinic has come under assault after filing an environmental lawsuit against Perdue, a powerful force in the state, charging that chicken waste from farmers who contract with the company is polluting Chesapeake Bay. Similar campaigns are being waged across the country, as Ian Urbina reported in The Times recently

In Louisiana, the powerful chemical industry is unhappy with the Tulane Law School clinic, which has sued to increase air quality enforcement in the state. The State Legislature is considering barring clinics that receive public money from suing companies or government agencies for money damages, unless the Legislature gives them an exemption. In New Jersey, a real estate developer sued a state-financed law school clinic at Rutgers University seeking its internal documents, after the clinic sued to stop the developer’s planned strip mall.

Attacks like these are a direct interference with law schools’ freedom to decide how to educate students. Jamin Raskin, a law professor at American University and a Maryland state senator, compared it to “going into somebody’s class and trying to change their syllabus.”

Extracting information from clinics about the people they serve and the work they do also threatens the clinics’ professional relationships with their clients.

The president of the American Bar Association, Carolyn Lamm, urged “those who would undermine clinical law school programs to step back and remember that the rule of law cannot survive if pressure prevents lawyers from fulfilling their responsibilities to their clients.”

Law school clinics often provide the only legal assistance available to poor people. Some powerful interests may not like that, but it is critically important work.”

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AALS to ABA: Concern over Possibility of Changes to Security of Position

Posted on April 11, 2010 by Mary A. Lynch

On March 15th,  2010,  AALS President H. Reese Hansen and Executive Director Susan Westerberger Prager submitted a letter to the ABA’s Standard Reviews Committee identifying their concern about proposed changes to the accreditation standards for law schools and announcing the formation of a special AALS Advisory Group chaired by GW Professor Thomas G. Morgan.   Other members of the committee are listed in the letter which I will be posting at  www.teachinglawstudents.com.

In my opinion, the AALS should be applauded for forming this Advisory Group and focusing on common concerns for all its member schools and their faculty.   The AALS letter rightly notes that, as the ABA proposes to move to an learning outcomes- based  framework,  there is potential “in this period to change the standards in fundamental ways without first adequately developing a full understanding of the implications intended and unintended.” (March 15th letter).  The AALS letter proceeds to specifically address the concern that security of position for fulltime faculty members could be at risk and to reaffirm the importance of a  framework which depends on a “full time faculty  dedicated to teaching and advancing knowledge about law and legal institutions where the faculty plays  significant educational policy roles.” 

Those of us who have urged legal education reform do want a full exploration of the intended and unintended consequences.   For example, better use of adjuncts and practioners in educating law students does not mean that we should do away with a professional faculty whose primary and fulltime commitment is to legal education.   Nor does a focus on an outcomes framework mean that inputs can ever be used to encourage results.  In fact, there may be times when,  in order to  reach outcomes meaningfully,  you need to mandate appropriate inputs.   For example,  it may be difficult or unrealistic to assess whether students have real and multiple opportunities  to practice professional judgment and understand the nuances of  professional identity without creating some input incentives for law schools to offer clinical experiences.

I am glad to see that the AALS has formed this Advisory Group and appointed a  number of widely respected individuals to that group.  We should all follow its work closely.

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ABA Accreditation & Proposed Skills requirement

Posted on April 7, 2010 by Mary A. Lynch

Professor Barbara Schwartz recently posted this query on a clinic listserv and  would like feedback:

“I am co-chair of the curriculum committee this year, and we are in the process of finalizing a new mandatory skills requirement to comply with ABA accreditation standards.  I have a question that folks on this list might be able to answer.

 As part of the committee’s work, we surveyed all our faculty for their opinion on whether courses they were currently teaching would comply with the proposed rule (equivalent 1-hour credit requirement for instruction time (14 hours); experiential component;  assessment).  Two responses have created a question—our judicial externship program and a supreme court seminar in which students simulate being a clerk/justice and draft an opinion on a case actually pending in SCOTUS.  The externship supervisor believes that her program qualifies either because the students “draft” written work for the court which is assessed by her (we have included legal drafting as included within the list of skills) or because the students are learning the skill of being a judicial clerk.  Similarly, the instructor in the seminar believes that the students are “drafting” opinions.

 I for one don’t believe that opinions or memoranda to a judge qualify as “drafting”, but we currently do not have a definition that distinguishes between legal drafting and other legal writing like briefs, law review articles and seminar papers.  Anyone have such a definition?

 Anyone have experience with these issues…in your own skills training policies, how have your schools handled judicial externship programs?

 I would be glad to see any written policies regarding mandatory skills training that you would be willing to share.

 Thanks.

 Barbara A. Schwartz

Clinical Law Professor

University of Iowa College of Law

Iowa City, Iowa 52245

barbara-schwartz@uiowa.edu

319.335.9023

FAX: 319.353.5445

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Efforts to Reform Legal Education Can be Discouraging

Posted on March 24, 2010 by Roy Stuckey

We know that many law schools are engaged in making exciting, forward-looking changes to their curriculums and methods of instruction.  Unfortunately, there is clear evidence that some schools are just not interested in improving their programs of instruction and the ABA is not currently interested in forcing them to do so.

When ABA Accreditation Standard 302(a)(4) was adopted, many people thought it would lead to fairly rapid and eventually significant changes.  It says that “[a] law school shall require that each student receive substantial instruction in other professional skills regarded as necessary for productive and responsible participation in the legal profession.”

However, the “Consultant’s Memo on Standards Guidance” which was published on page 4 in the Winter, 2010, edition of the Syllabus (the newsletter of the ABA Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar), makes it clear that the current version of Standard 302(a)(4) will not bring about any significant changes.

The Consultant’s memo explains the minimum that law schools must do to comply with the Standard, as interpreted by the Accreditation Committee.  It is obvious that the Accreditation Committee is desperately trying to persuade recalcitrant law schools to provide some professional skills training, but it has lowered the bar so much that students who are enrolled at schools that only meet that low bar will not be well served.

The  memo does make it clear that the Standard means that all students must receive some professional skills instruction.  “[T]he fact that 98 percent of the student body takes skills course is not sufficient; every student, as a requirement of graduation, must receive substantial skills instruction.”   However, the memo then explains that the “substantial skills instruction” requirement can be satisfied, inter alia, by adding a substantial counseling and negotiating module to a first year legal writing course, or by requiring students to take a one credit course in any professional skill, including for example, a one credit component of “a substantive course that includes substantial skills instruction, e.g., a corporations class where each student is required to draft substantial legal documents that are assessed by the instructor.” 

If they were not true, these previously secret and unpublished “interpretations” by the Standards Review Committee would be laughable.  I think it is a fine idea to have students draft documents in a Corporations course, but I do not think that by doing  that, and nothing else, students would be receiving substantial instruction in the “professional skills generally regarded as necessary for effective and responsible participation in the legal profession.”  I doubt that the members of the Accreditation Committee really think so, either.

Again, I view the “guidance” memo as evidence that some schools are not interested in improving their programs of instruction and that the ABA’s Accreditation Committee is not willing to hold their feet to the fire.  Hopefully, the ongoing efforts of the Standards Review Committee to draft outcomes-focused Standards will raise the bar again and, wishfully, the Accreditation Committee will not dilute their impact via secret interpretations that are contrary to the clear meaning of the Standards.

Meanwhile, I extend my best wishes to those schools that are trying to improve your programs of instruction for the welfare of your students.

Roy Stuckey

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The Longitudinal Law School

Posted on March 21, 2010 by glesnerb

Participants in the Spring Workshop of the National Institute for Teaching Ethics and Professionalism has spent the past two days discussing how law schools can help students to respond to the economic crisis.   One of the exciting presentations from the program was by Fred Rooney of the Community Legal Resources Network of CUNY Law School.  He discussed a concept of “The Longitudinal Law School” — a law school’s continuing obligation to its graduates.  He described two programs of the CUNY  Community Legal Resources Network –  “a collaborative that supports CUNY Law School graduates as they work to set up and run solo or small-group practices devoted to serving pressing needs of the poor and disadvantaged in communities that are underserved by lawyers.”  Components of the program include the “Launchpad for Justice” program in which new graduates have an opportunity to provide critical legal services and continue their professional development in the time between their graduation and their admission to practice.   A second program, the Incubator for Justice, which “trains CLRN members, over an 18-month period, in basic business issues such as billing, record-keeping, technology, bookkeeping and taxes while, at the same time, facilitating Incubator participants’ involvement in larger justice initiatives and in subject-based training in immigration law, labor and employment and other topics that will arise continually as these attorneys build their practices.” 

As law schools are called upon to increasingly broaden their objectives, the concept of an ongoing commitment to the education of students beyond graduation is an important and often overlooked aspect of best practices.

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Wegner Dicusses Legal Education, Student Employment, & the Economy

Posted on March 16, 2010 by Justin Myers

In her new article, Professor Judith Wegner of UNC School of Law, addresses:  “the implications of the recent economic downturn, the market for law graduates’ employment, and implications for legal educators. The article disagrees with the premises of a student author who contends that legal education should increase reliance on adjunct faculty and reduce emphasis on faculty scholarship in order to reduce student costs. The article assesses such proposals and contends, instead, that the most fruitful response to the current economic downturn would be to bifurcate the bar examination (in order to keep law schools honest, allow law students to know where the stand and address deficiencies, and allow those unsure of their commitment to legal education to take time out and work before returning to complete law school). The author is a legal educator who was involved in the Carnegie Foundation’s recent study of legal education (Educating Lawyers).”

The article is entitled, “More Complicated than We Think: A Response to Rethinking Legal Education in Hard Times: The Recession, Practical Legal Education and the New Job Market,” and is part of larger set of essays forthcoming in the Journal of Legal Education. 

To read Professor Wegner’s article, click here.

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Imagine…Learning from Real Life

Posted on March 12, 2010 by Justin Myers

Students choose to enroll in law school. They arrive on the first day excited to begin learning the law.  Unfortunately, most students lose this excitement for learning somewhere on the road to graduation, and instead, turn their interest to actually practicing.  In a recent article, Critical Enculturation: Using Problems to Teach Law, Professor Keith Hirokawa of Albany Law School demonstrates how Problem-Based Learning (PBL) can push students to once again engage their education in law with passion — passion for their chosen profession and the subject matter at hand. 

Professor Hirokawa uses his land use planning course to illustrate the PBL approach, and provides several examples of activities that force students to tackle issues that the students could conceivably face as clients. The activities include: requiring students to determine whether she would be able to hang a shingle and open a solo law practice at her residence; turning the classroom into multiple zoning districts; and assigning students to advocacy groups to represent the interests of identified clients in case simulations.

Professor Hirokawa is not the only professor at Albany Law School who is writing about engaged teaching and innovative activities in scholarly papers.  Associate Dean Patricia Salkin (a frequent contributor to this blog) believes that courses in Land Use Planning can be the perfect ground for implementing the strategies of Best Practices. Dean Salkin states that “unique opportunit[ies] exist through the application of many “best practices” concepts for land use law faculty to lead the academy in reinventing curriculum and teaching strategies to better prepare students for the practice of law” in her new paper,  Practically Grounded: Convergence of Land Use Law Pedagogy and Best Practices, which is co-authored by John R. Nolon.

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Business Models, Faculty Size, Tuition — and Best Practices

Posted on March 11, 2010 by dmaranville

Somehow I think this post should have preceded yesterday’s!  The National Jurist today claims that “The average law school has lowered its faculty-to-student ratio by 22 percent over the past 10 years ” accounting for “48 percent of the tuition increases” in that time period.

What to make of the rise in faculty size?

Does the claim fit your experience?  Has your faculty size grown?  How much of that growth is attributable to Best Practices related curriculum shifts and how much to other areas?

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Of Business Models and Best Practices

Posted on March 9, 2010 by dmaranville

My dean just forwarded the announcement below about a contest/series of conferences & working sessions hosted by NY and Harvard Law Schools over the next year to generate ideas about new business models for law schools and concrete steps to implement them.  Though the announcement focuses on “business models,”  the first sentence on the webpage link is “Got an idea about the future of U.S. legal education? Think it’s time to go clinical? Or global? Or virtual?”

What’s the relationship between our law school business models and best educational practices?  Unfortunately, the first session conflicts with the Minnesota Experiential Renaissance Roundtable on April 9 and 10, so I won’t be able to find out by attending the conference.  Look forward to getting the skinny from the rest of you!

“New York Law School – April 9-10

Harvard Law School – October 15-16

New York Law School and Harvard Law School are hosting a year-long contest of ideas about legal education. The goal is to come up with operational alternatives to the traditional law school business model and to identify concrete steps for the implementation of new designs. The kickoff event is a two-day conference for educators, employers, and regulators at New York Law School on April 9-10, 2010, to identify problems, innovations and constraints, and to organize working groups to develop designs and strategies for implementation. Working groups will refine their ideas and reconvene for a second meeting at Harvard Law School on October 15-16, 2010. Final designs will be presented, with commentary, at New York Law School in April, 2011.

Interested? Questions? Please visit http://www.nyls.edu/futureed”



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Externship Conference: Responding to Changing Times

Posted on March 9, 2010 by nancymaurer

Externships 5:  Responding to Changing Times

I just returned from this excellent conference in Miami attended by over 150 externship faculty, deans, and administrators.  The Lextern list is buzzing with excitement about meeting the challenges of designing and teaching externships (or Field Placements, as we say in Albany) in changing times, and with praise for the conference planning committee and chair who organized a program rich with new ideas, methodologies, and resources.   

Thanks to conference planners Alex Scherr, Harriet Katz, Avis Sanders, Eden Harrington, Sande Buhai, Liz Ryan Cole, Robert Parker (am I leaving anyone out!?), host law schools, and conference chair, Jennifer Zawid for putting together such an informative, interesting, collaborative, challenging conference – and fun too! 

The Conference discussions, along with Carnegie and Best Practices, provides the externship community with many interesting and challenging questions issues to address, including: externships in the curriculum, designing educational outcomes in light of evolving ABA standards, increased pressures on externships as law schools and legal communities deal with the current economic downturn,  teaching ethics and professional identity in externships, etc. 

Here are a just a few highlights from the Conference to get the discussion started…

  1. There’s More Than One Way to Create a Great Externship Program

Choices regarding placement options, classes or seminars, program oversight, and training, are – or should be – a function of particular program goals and law school mission and should consider where the primary learning is expected to take place – (field and/or classroom). Avis Sanders and Eden Harrington led a panel discussion through the pros and cons of supervising attorney training, site visits, allowing placements at private firms and for-profit entities, general or subject specific classes, etc. Great food for thought for both established and new programs.

  1. ABA proposed standard 305

Alex Scherr led an open forum on the proposed elimination of interpretation 305-3 which currently prohibits law schools from granting credit to a student for participation in a field placement program for which the student receives compensation.  There is still time to comment on this proposal and it is important that we weigh in as this rule will have significant impact on externships. 

As some pointed out, this might assist students in tough economic times and we should still be able to control placement educational goals even if placements pay for student work.  A vocal majority, however, expressed concern about the prospect of allowing pay and credit.  For example, would field placements lose academic legitimacy if students get paid for credits?  Assuming that students would opt for placements that are able to pay, what would this mean for the majority of public service, public interest, government, not-for-profit placements?  If schools are unable to place students in public placements, might this undermine social justice goals?  There were concerns regarding pressure to send students to private placements and to give credit for already existing paid jobs – an additional administrative burden.   I hope others will weigh in.

  1. Status of externship faculty 

I was surprised to learn that while some externship teachers and program directors are tenured faculty or even academic deans, others, including leaders in legal education and experiential learning, are not considered “faculty” at their own institutions!   Does the lack of faculty status undermine the educational mission? Does it send the wrong message to students and placements that externships are not part of the academic program?  What do others think?   

The detailed program can be found on the co-sponsor University of Miami website

 http://www.law.miami.edu/events/externships/works.php, as well as on the Lextern web

 http://laworgs.cua.edu/lexternweb/index.htm.  I hope presenters will post materials on both sites.

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Journal of Legal Education Calls for Third Year Curricular Reform Efforts

Posted on March 2, 2010 by Justin Myers

Our friends over at the  Journal of Legal Education are soliciting examples and articles that relate to Third-year curricular reform efforts.  The publishers are looking for information as simple as referrals to websites describing your innovations, or as polished as full journal articles.  Responses should be sent to jle@swlaw.edu.

Hey, and while your at it, why not post your Third-year curricular innovations to the Blog as well?  …Please.

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum | 2 Comments »

My Experiment with teaching Trusts and Estates, Outcomes-Style

Posted on March 1, 2010 by Carolyn Grose

For the past two years, I have served on two distinct but related committees having to do with “the future of legal education.”  Here at William Mitchell, I am on the “Future of Legal Education Task Force,” in which capacity I contributed to writing a lengthy report on “Outcomes-based education,” portions of which have appeared on this blog in the past.  In addition, I am a member of the Best Practices Implementation committee, which is charged with figuring out ways to both implement the suggestions made in Best Practices for Legal Education, and to gather information about who is doing what innovations related to the book.  In other words, ideas about the design and delivery of legal instruction in new and more effective ways have been much on my mind over the past 24 months.

 I learned in the spring of 2009 that I would be teaching Trusts and Estates for the first time the following spring (ie right now!).  At that time, the Mitchell Task Force was finalizing its report, and the BPI Committee was finalizing its survey, and it occurred to me that I had a great opportunity here to put these ideas to the test. 

Instead of doing what I have always done when teaching a course for the first time – talk to a bunch of people about what books they use and what they do in their courses, get a bunch of syllabi, maybe some class notes, put together my own syllabus and then start planning my classes – I would start from the end point, ie I would ask myself:  what are my goals for this course? Or, put another way, what do I want my students to be able to do when they’re done with the course?  From there, I would work backwards, through assessment methods (what evidence will I need to know whether they have achieved these particular goals or outcomes?), to delivery of instruction (how do I put together a syllabus and class activities that will facilitate the students’ meeting of these goals?), and finally to evaluation.  That, simply put, is outcomes-based education.

I have been amazed at how satisfying this process has been.  From learning the material myself to designing assessment tools to deciding what to cover in each class, having the touchstone question of “what are my goals for this particular piece” has made each task manageable and a coherent part of the bigger puzzle.  I believe the course I ended up with, and am now half-way through teaching, is more thoughtful and interesting than it would have been if I had gone about planning and delivering it without thinking about goals and outcomes.  I certainly am having more fun teaching it; we’ll have to wait and see the student evaluations to see if the feeling is shared by the consumers!

Stay tuned . . . .

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National Law Journal Covers Student Learning Outcomes Discussion

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Mary A. Lynch

LAW SCHOOLS
Holding schools accountable
ABA is pushing educators to prove their law graduates can cut it. by Karen Sloan

February 22, 2010

When 3,500 legal educators convened in New Orleans for the Association of American Law School’s annual meeting in January, one topic dominated the conversation: the American Bar Association’s attempts to add “student learning outcomes” to its accreditation standards.

One session on the issue drew 400 attendants, and debate spilled out into hallway conversations and cocktail hours throughout the five-day conference. At a deans-only meeting, top administrators expressed both support and worry about basing law schools’ accreditation on what students learn.

“If the ABA’s goal was to get people’s attention, it has worked,” said Reese Hansen, a professor at Brigham Young University J. Reuben Clark Law School and president of the American Association of Law Schools (AALS).

The buzz over Continue reading →

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Clinical Theory Workshop 25th Anniversary Celebration and Conference

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Carolyn Grose

 Dear members and friends of the Clinical Theory Workshops:

             I’m happy to tell you that this year, 2010, marks the 25th anniversary of the Clinical Theory Workshop series. In honor of this birthday, I propose to throw a party – that is, to hold a conference – and I’m writing to invite you to participate.

             The theme of the conference follows from the nature of the occasion. We have been meeting to discuss works of clinical scholarship for a quarter-century, and along the way many of us have also written clinical scholarship ourselves. Our meetings have been fun; we are a community; but what have we discerned over the years? That’s the question for the conference. Put more formally, our theme will be: “Twenty-five years of clinical scholarship: What have we learned, and what should we work on next?”

             We will meet at New York Law School on Continue reading →

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Calling All “Contracts” Professors: What’s your favorite coursebook?

Posted on February 17, 2010 by Mary A. Lynch

As we have been implementing Best Practices and Carnegie reforms, many of us have created or have made creative use of  coursebooks which facilitate Best Practices learning and teaching.     One of my colleagues will be teaching Contracts for the first time this fall,  she has extensive practice experience and has excelled at clinical supervision and clinical pedagogy.   What suggestions does the Best Practices community have as to her selection of a coursebook? Have you identified focused learning goals and outcomes?  How have you provided formative assessment?  How have you assessed for grading purposes?  Do not hesitate to “toot your own horn” or in this case – your own book!

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