I hesitated to post this now because I really want to see some creative feedback on the previous post from Carolyn Grose! Please DO RESPOND to Carolyn’s excellent post.
However, this was simply TOO good to wait to share – here’s some news from the TAXLAW BLOG that confirms what Best Practices has been “preaching”! Continue reading
Filed under: Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Teaching Methodology | 4 Comments »
We had a fantastic time in Seattle a few weeks ago, and I for one felt reinvigorated and excited about this great project we’re all involved in — you know, the one about totally reforming legal education? What we didn’t get either from the Best Practices Meets Reality workshop (see my earlier post on September 9th) was much discussion about the following questions. So I’d be very interested in seeing if we can generate some dialogue here, and then maybe take it on the road at the next round of conferences.
Let’s brainstorm and generate concrete ideas about the following:
What do you all think?
Carolyn Grose
Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change, Teaching Methodology | Comments Off on Queries from the Best Practices Implementation Committee
A fun aspect of getting a few gray hairs: we’re around long enough to see our ideas come to fruition. Some years ago I wrote about the important role of experiential learning in providing context for law students. Continue reading
Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Catalysts For Change, First Year Law School Innovations, Teaching Methodology | Comments Off on Passion, Context, Redux (Part 1)
So, Deborah Rhode’s Best Practices in Law Schools Survey just hit my school, probably yours too. Brilliant concept, superb execution. Very excited about the potential impact of delivering real, solid, accurate information to USNWR respondents. Not trying to compete with USNWR, but to subvert it, if you will. All good. So affirmatively seek out your academic dean or other relevant administrator and inquire, what’s up with the Best Practices Survey? Don’t let it fall behind the decanal desk. Obviously, it will only have clout if the participation is broad enough to make its data meaningful. Continue reading
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Back on June 12, I posted about our “baby step” curriculum reform efforts at the University of Washington Law School last year: information gathering, conversations, and making what we currently do more visible to ourselves. Continue reading
Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum | Comments Off on Process: Conversations and PR
Back on June I2, I noted that lots of folks are thinking about what processes are most likely to produce successful curricular reform.
At the Crossroads Conference, we had a very interesting plenary on “Institutional Processes for Curriculum Reform”. Great introductory comments from Mike Schwartz of Washburn. The panelists? Rod Smolla, the new Dean at Washington & Lee. You’ve probably heard that they’re implementing a new “all experiential” third year. Jim Moliterno, the guiding light behind William & Mary’s twenty year old “law office” program. Not to mention lengthy comments from the audience by Ed Rubin about Vanderbilt’s extensive efforts. Click here for podcasts and materials.
The core message: one size does not fit all, pay attention to the openings and dynamics are your school. The three examples just cited resulted from radically different processes.
Process was a theme in other sessions, as well: Gerry Hess’s presentation (Theme 6: Whole Curriculum Reforms Showcase) was up to his usual standards and covered both substance and process for Gonzaga’s recent reforms, print materials, p. 85.
In a workshop on the same subject, teams from William Mitchell, print materials p. 19, and Georgia State focused on different aspects of the reform process , including the messages implicit in the rhetoric we use. To what extent are the labels for different type of teachers necessary, or destructive, especially for schools that are fortunate to have overcome the status differentials that often accompany these differences?
Many questions. No easy answers. Let’s keep sharing experiences.
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For a number of years I’ve taught a course on Access to Justice that satisfied the externship classroom component requirement. Because we are restructuring our externship program, when I taught the class spring quarter the students who were taking the class only to satisfy the requirement were moved to our new externship course.
Not surprisingly, the class drew a number of students who are planning public interest careers. But it also drew others who have made the decision to work at a firm, but want to be engaged in pro bono public service work. Many of the students were especially drawn to the portions of the course in which we talked about the law school experience and the way it shapes students career aspirations.
As I noted in my post on July 10 I’ve been struck by how hungry many our students seem to be for such conversations. Hungry for Carnegie’s “apprenticeship of professional formation,” I think. Both ideas and action on how to weave these issues into the curriculum still seem woefully undeveloped.
Note: For the last several iterations of the course, I’ve used parts of Mahoney, Calmore, and Wildman, Social Justice: Professional Communities and Law, including Chapter 4 on Personal Identity, Role, and Values: Becoming a Lawyer, Staying Yourself. I highly recommend it.
Filed under: Teaching Methodology, Who is Using the Best Practices Book? | Comments Off on More Conversations on Professional Identity
I just finished writing a letter to the editor of National Jurist about the magazine’s ranking of the “Best Law Schools for Practical Training” in the September issue. They don’t have a letter to the editor section, so I don’t expect it to get it published, but I did want to educate the magazine about Best Practices and Carnegie. The methodology of the ranking was apparently to count the total number of students enrolled in the school and divide that by the number of clinical spots available and then rank the law schools based on that quotient.
At a law school like New Mexico which has a mandatory clinic, they apparently only counted the mandatory clinic slots (about a third of the student body since clinic is normally taken in the third year of law school). We ended up ranking 14th. I realize that is pretty good, but then the article states that the top school, Yale, offers clinical opportunities to 90% of its student body. Of course, schools such as UNM, CUNY, UDC and others that require clinic for graduation offer clinical opportunities to 100% of the student body. So, I am unsure how a school that offers clinic to 90% of its students is ranked higher than those schools that offer it to 100% of its students. In addition, the raw numbers fail to take into account the rest of the law school curriculum and its commitment to training that is consistent with Best Practices and Carnegie. Of course, the schools that were ranked at the top of the survey are excellent schools and likely to do well, in large part, because of their commitment to clinical legal education
Roy Stuckey has asked whether someone should evaluate law schools based on the ideas in Best Practices. While it is great that magazines such as National Jurist are interested in writing pieces about practical education, given these quantitative types of rankings, the idea of some qualitative evaluation would be a service to future law students.
Filed under: Best Practices & Setting Goals, Catalysts For Change, Uncategorized | Tagged: clinical legal education, National Jurist | 2 Comments »
As you’ve heard from already heard from Carolyn Grose, the conference held at the University of Washington School of Law in early September on Legal Education at the Crossroads: Ideas to Accomplishments: Sharing New Ideas for an Integrated Curriculum was a great success.
I can’t resist reciting the full title of the conference, because it really captures what we accomplished. Ideas large and small, new and not so new. (The not-so-new is a good thing, by the way, as it represents efforts that actually stuck over time, no small achievement. ) Lots of materials explaining what, why and how folks are implementing their ideas.
We’ve created a website for the conference at http://files.law.washington.edu/open/Crossroads_Conference/.
At the top of the page you’ll find links to the materials submitted before the conference, additional handouts and other materials brought to the conference, and session podcasts. Lots of great and very usable stuff! I can personally plug the materials brought by Wisconsin’s David Schwartz (Theme 3: 1L Reforms Supplementing the Cognitive Apprenticeship) and Roberto Corrada (Theme 5: 2nd and 3rd Year Reforms). But I’ll be gradually working my way through the materials for the sessions I wasn’t able to attend.
We recorded almost all of the sessions — 9 for each time slot, as many as our technology would allow. So if you weren’t able to attend — or attended but want to check out some of the other sessions — check out the podcasts. The technology gods were fickle, as usual, so quality varies. (They’re all posted currently, but we’ll gradually remove the bad ones. Feel free to give us a heads up about any that should be deleted.) Thanks to Harold Daniels of our UW Clincal Law Program staff, who has been working hard to get everything posted, and Sarah Walsh who is reviewing the podcasts.
Filed under: Who is Using the Best Practices Book? | 1 Comment »
One of the more surprising aspects of law teaching is how hard it is to articulate with specificity the outcomes we are trying to achieve. Our goals seem too obvious to even discuss – until we try to pin them down. The challenge of identifying learning goals is present at all levels of academic decision-making, from planning individual courses to revisiting a law school’s stated institutional mission. For those of us who are relatively new to thinking about assessment, it can be difficult to get started.
At the Crossroads conference in Seattle earlier this month (Legal Education at the Crossroads: Ideas to Implementation), Barbara Glesner-Fines presented, among other things, a series of questions that can be used to generate productive thinking about learning goals. During her talk, she asked members of the audience to respond to question 16, “What major misunderstanding, mistaken assumption, prejudice, or bad habit (of thought or practice) do students bring to your course that you would like them to “unlearn”? The responses contributed by conference attendees were vivid and specific – nothing like the broadly meaningless attempts at defining learning goals one sometimes sees/hears/engages in. Attacking the weighty issue of learning goals with smaller, more manageable questions, from different angles, initiates a good dialogue (whether with colleagues or with oneself). Which can lead to actual results.
While Glesner-Fines and her colleagues developed these questions during collaborative discussions about assessment among UM-KC family law faculty, I could also see using variations of these questions to spark a larger discussion about the programmatic goals of an institution. Thanks to Barbara for providing the link. Enjoy.
Filed under: Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change | 1 Comment »
The New York Bar Association’s Committee on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar invited me to present to them on Best Practices — the book, the BLOG and the movement! I did so this past Wednesday September 10th. Committee members were very interested and asked many questions. Some members were concerned that Best Practices’ call to teach professionalism “pervasively” throughout the three years would lead to less professional responsibility actually being taught. That committee member argued that many traditional faculty don’t really care what the rules are and don’t want to raise such issues in property, torts or contracts. Other members noted that teaching pervasively doesn’t mean eliminating the basic ethics course but adding to it. Another concern raised was that many/most current faculty members have little practice experience and recent hiring trends have emphasized scholarship over practice experience.
The discussion was wonderfully robust and rich. I provided a few ideas: 1) hiring – I gave as an example my school, Albany, where we have included in our hiring criteria “teaching in accordance with Best Practices”; 2) current teachers – I spoke a bit about the opportunity for co-teaching between adjunct practioners and traditional faculty or clinical faculty and traditional. In addition, we discussed the use of simulations, small groups and other teaching methods. One committee member expressed concern about creating “striations” of law schools or graduates; in other words, one would graduate only being able to perform in a particular area of law. Other members found this to be an argument that has been used too often to ignore the basic skills and competence we know all lawyers need. The committee also engaged in discussion about how the bar exam seems to fly in the face of the Best Practices approach. The questions was raised: how can you prepare students for practice using more formative evaluations and outcomes assessments but then demand these same students take the bar exam before practicing? The committee noted that another Bar committee was studying the bar exam and that information should be exchanged between both. We also discussed the ABA’s Outcome Measures Report.
I hope the Committee’s final question will trigger interest on this BLOG. How SHOULD Bar Association’s go about trying to participate in the Best Practices/Carnegie movement? Should they survey their members to find out what concrete, criteria-based skills law graduates should possess upon graduation? Should they look at what England, Scotland and Australia has done and see if it matches what US lawyers need?
I suggested that, at the very least, members query their alma maters about Best Practices and that they consider these issues when hiring graduates. I also promised to keep in touch and communicate ideas from the Best Practices project folks! I feel that there must have been so much more I could have encouraged the committee to do. What are your thoughts? I’d truly appreciate suggestions and discussion.
Mary Lynch, Editor
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Setting: Seattle. It’s sunny and warm. Mt. Rainier beams down on us like a wise and indulgent grandfather. We’re all set for 42 hours of thought, discussion and plotting revolution in and of the legal academy. And that’s what we do. Continue reading
Filed under: Catalysts For Change | 2 Comments »
I just saw that the Outcome Measures Report is posted on the ABA web site. The Outcome Measure Committee was chaired by Randy Hertz and is a tour de force. The Report cites Best Practices and the Carnegie Report extensively, it then goes on to look at legal education in other countries, accreditation in other disciplines and regional accreditation standards for universities and colleges. The Report concludes that the ABA accreditation standards should be less “input driven” and more “outcome driven”. It even begins to consider the costs of this shift in accreditation standards. Check out the report!
http://www.abanet.org/legaled/
Filed under: Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change, Who is Using the Best Practices Book? | 3 Comments »
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Best Practices for Legal Education 