legal education reform | Best Practices for Legal Education

Shifting Law School Faculty Demographics

Posted on January 5, 2022 by Melanie Daily, University of Kansas School of Law

By Robert Kuehn, Washington University School of Law

In 1980, one-third of law students and only 14% of all law teachers were female, and a mere 9% of students and 4% of faculty were identified as non-white. Today, law faculties are more diverse by gender and race/ethnicity. Yet, the demographics of faculty subgroups diverge widely and, importantly, faculty remain less diverse than their students.

Focusing principally on law clinic and field placement teachers (full time, excluding fellows), over two-thirds identified as female (cis or trans) in the latest 2019-20 Center for the Study of Applied Legal Education (CSALE) survey. The graph below reflects a trend of increasingly female clinical faculty beginning in the late 1980s/early 1990s and continuing through all five tri-annual CSALE surveys:^[1]

Newer clinical teachers are even more predominantly female ─ 73% of those teaching three years or less are female. Within clinical teaching areas, those who primarily teach field placement courses are more predominantly female than those who primarily teach in a law clinic — 82% of field placement teachers are female compared to 65% of clinic teachers.

By comparison, 47% of all full-time law teachers were identified as female in 2020 law school ABA annual reports, an increase from 40% in 2011, 32.5% in 2000, and 24% in 1990. However, ABA results include the overwhelmingly female clinical and legal research and writing faculties. If clinical (67% female) and legal writing (70% female) faculty are removed from the 2020 ABA totals, women constitute fewer than 38% of full-time non-clinical/non-legal writing faculty, as illustrated below.^[2] In contrast, 54% of J.D. students in 2020-21 were female, compared to 47% in 2010, 48% in 2000, 43% in 1990, and 34% in 1980.

Faculty have increased in racial and ethnic diversity since 1980. The percentages of full-time clinical teachers by race/ethnicity are shown in the table below. Surveys indicate steady, but slow, growth in the percentage of full-time non-white clinical teachers (excluding fellows) over the last four decades.

*Clinical Faculty Race/Ethnicity*	*SALT 1980*^[3]	*SALT 1986*	**AALS 1998^[4]**	*CSALE 2007*	*CSALE 2010*	*CSALE 2013*	*CSALE 2016*	*CSALE 2019*
White	95%	92%	87%	87%	86%	83%	80%	78%
Non-White	5%	8%	13%	12%	13%	15%	17%	18%
Other/2 or More Races	─	─	<1%	1%	1%	3%	3%	3%

Among newer clinical teachers of three years or less, the percentage of white teachers was slightly lower at 76%. Within clinical teaching, 77% of primarily law clinic instructors and 83% of primarily field placement teachers are white.

In the 2020 annual reports, 21% of full-time law faculty were identified by their schools as “minority,” an increase from approximately 17% in 2011, 14% in 2000, and 10% in 1990. The most recent ALWD/LWR survey identified 13% of legal research and writing faculty as non-white, multiracial or other, compared to 12% reported non-Caucasian in its 2010 survey.

Similar to gender, law school faculty are less racially/ethnically diverse than their students: 34% of students were identified in 2020 annual reports as minority, an increase from 24% in 2010, 21% in 2000, 14% in 1990, and 9% in 1980.

Available surveys and reports do not include recent information on the age of law faculty. There has been no change, however, over the five CSALE surveys since 2007 in the median number of years of prior practice by those teaching full time in a law clinic or field placement course, remaining approximately eight years. Excluding those hired into temporary fellow positions, similarly across CSALE surveys the median number of years of prior practice experience among newer faculty teaching three years or less in a law clinic or field placement course has been eight years.

In sum, while the diversity of law school faculty has been increasing over the past four decades, it still lags behind the gender and racial/ethnic diversity among students. And even though schools are hiring increasingly more female faculty, women continue to be disproportionately hired into traditionally lower status/lower paying clinical and legal writing positions.^[5] There may be no easy fix to these issues, but the first step towards addressing them is to be aware of the numbers.

[1] “SALT” percentages are from Richard H. Chused, Hiring and Retention of Minorities and Women on American Law School Faculties, 137 U. Pa. L. Rev. 537, 556-57 (1988) (also reporting 14% of all law teachers as female and 5% as non-white in 1980). “Angel” percentages are from Marina Angel, The Glass Ceiling for Women in Legal Education: Contract Positions and the Death of Tenure, 50 J. Legal Educ. 1, 4 (2000).

[2] The 2020 ABA annual reports identified 4,399 female and 4,986 male full-time faculty (5 reported as “other”). Removing 1,157 female clinical teachers (67% of the 1,727 full-time clinical faculty reported by the 95% of schools that participated in the CSALE survey) and 649 female legal research and writing teachers (70% of the 927 full-time LRW faculty at the 169 of 203 ABA schools that participated in the 2019-20 ALWD/LWI Legal Writing Survey) results in 2,593 full-time female non-clinical/non-legal writing faculty. Further removing 848 male faculty identified in the CSALE and ALWD/LWI surveys results in 38.5% full-time non-clinical/non-legal writing female faculty. If the missing 5% of schools in the CSALE survey and 17% in the ALWD/LWI survey are accounted for, 37% of 2020 full-time non-clinical/non-legal writing faculty were female.

[3] The 1980 and 1986 SALT surveys excluded faculty from minority-operated schools and, therefore, likely underrepresented non-white faculty.

[4] “AALS” percentages are from an AALS Clinical Section database reported in Jon C. Dubin, Faculty Diversity as a Clinical Legal Education Imperative, 51 Hastings L.J. 445, 448-49 (2000). [1] Robert R. Kuehn, The Disparate Treatment of Clinical Law Faculty (2021), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3760756.

[5] Robert R. Kuehn, The Disparate Treatment of Clinical Law Faculty (2021), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3760756.

Filed under: Best Practices, Best Practices and Clinics, Catalysts For Change, Diversity & Social Justice, Uncategorized | Tagged: best practices for legal education, clinical law faculty, clinical legal education, CSALE, Equity, gender pay equity, gender race and employment in legal academy, law professor salaries, law professor status, law professors, law school, legal education, legal education reform, legal writing professor equity, salary equity, status in legal academy, unequal profession | Comments Off on Shifting Law School Faculty Demographics

Negotiating Trauma and Teaching Law

Posted on July 28, 2021 by Melanie Daily, University of Kansas School of Law

By: Mallika Kaur, UC Berkeley School of Law and Executive Director, Sikh Family Center

As a human rights advocate focused on gendered violence work, about seven years ago I began employing the term “negotiating trauma” (while developing a class of the same name for UC Berkeley School of Law) in order to encourage fellow lawyers to consider, recognize and better prioritize the many emotional interplays in our everyday work.

This new article focuses on trauma & the classroom. I propose adopting “a combination of simple strategies… that better acknowledge trauma (whether or not the professor chooses to use that term, and whether or not the class is a small seminar or large lecture) is to everyone’s advantage in today’s law school.” Like with other negotiations, we could apply a zero-sum approach to the various players’ emotions involved in legal teaching or choose to instead engage the complexity to generate better, perhaps deeper, and eventually more valuable learning and lawyering.

The Abstract:

HOW DO YOU NEGOTIATE TRAUMA AND EMOTIONS IN YOUR CLASSROOM? Posing this open-ended question to law professors not only begets more questions, but also often elicits a reflexive retort: law professors dare not present themselves as mental health experts and law schools have mental health resources for students having difficulties. The difficulty of this approach is that in 2021, most law students are no longer willing to accept that their legal education must suppress emotions, including trauma. For classrooms where professors may be less comfortable with emotional discussions, they may find themselves challenged and perhaps even feel obstructed from teaching their subject matter with the freedom and expertise it deserves. Are we simply dealing with an overly sensitive generation? Or are we being pushed to make overdue changes that will improve legal teaching, legal education, and eventually the profession?

Citation Information

Kaur, Mallika. “Negotiating Trauma & Teaching Law.” Journal of Law and Social Policy 35. (2021): 113-119. https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/jlsp/vol35/iss1/6

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Foundations for Teaching: A Data-Driven Model to Help Legal Educators Build Learning Outcomes into Their Instruction

Posted on May 14, 2021 by davidafinger

Zack DeMeola
Director of Legal Education and the Legal Profession, IAALS

Logan Cornett
Director of Research, IAALS

In 2011, IAALS—the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System at the University of Denver—launched Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers (ETL), a unique, national initiative to change the way law schools educate students. ETL provided a platform to encourage law schools to showcase innovative teaching to produce more practice-ready lawyers who can better meet the needs of an evolving profession. One of the primary concerns IAALS hoped to address was the perceived skills gap between the abilities new lawyers have when they graduate law school and the abilities they need for practice. Of course, this gap has serious implications for educators and employers, but it has even greater implications for the profession. Not only do under-prepared lawyers undermine public trust in our legal system, but they also struggle longer and harder than they should as they try to gain footing in the legal profession. The ETL initiative has since ended, but from that work emerged Foundations for Practice, a first-of-its-kind effort to develop an evidence-based understanding of the competencies, skills, and characteristics new lawyers need to develop to be ready for practice and understand how law schools and employers can best instill these qualities in future lawyers.

Through a national survey, to which more than 24,000 lawyers from all 50 states representing a diverse array of practice settings and specialties, IAALS identified 76 characteristics, professional competencies, and legal skills that are necessary immediately out of law school—these are the 76 foundations a new lawyer needs to be successful. But uncovering this information was just the first step. We understood that the comprehensive data that came from Foundations would have more impact if we could better organize and harness it in a practical way. The goal is to offer educators and employers a framework to create more objective, transparent, and accountable practices for assessing competencies in students and new lawyers.

Learning outcomes, the bedrock of standards-based instruction, provided an obvious framework for this next phase. Learning outcomes are academic standards and methodologies used in instruction, assessment, grading, and reporting to ensure students learn, practice, and master the requisite skills and content. Learning outcomes are more than the recitation of specific skills and abilities—they operate through applying research- and evidence-based instructional practices, including rigorous assessment, to ensure student needs are being met, and are thus also used as defendable criteria for program, course and curriculum content value and effectiveness. The process emphasizes transparency, accountability, flexibility, and clarity. Thus, learning outcomes better assist educators to:

Structure and identify key concepts for coursework;
Assess student performance and whether students understand and can apply those concepts;
Map the relative strengths and places for improvement in programs and curriculum;
Set shared expectations between students and educators;
Collect the information needed to continually improve instruction; and
Collect the information needed to show evidence of effective learning for accreditors.

Learning outcomes are not a fringe concept, but they are new to legal education. Although learning outcomes are a primary feature of education in just about every other context—from kindergarten to graduate school (medical schools had an early form of learning outcomes in the 1930s, which have been modernized over time) it wasn’t until 2016 that the American Bar Association (ABA) required law schools to “establish and measure other important outcomes for those who enroll” in legal education program” by developing learning outcome measures and assessment methodologies to “improve their legal education programs and better serve the needs of students during their legal education and in their professional careers.”

While this new accreditation standard was an important development for legal education, the ABA provided precious little guidance on how learning outcomes should be implemented or evaluated. Understandably, many law schools and law school faculty, when faced with the prospect of a wholly new way to frame instruction and curriculum, have been slow to develop effective learning outcomes. In our work on this project, we learned that law school faculty, staff, and administrators are all grappling with how to structure, design, and incorporate learning outcomes and assessments into their educational programs. But we also learned that they are genuinely motivated to better prepare students for their careers after law school. In our view, a Foundations-based approach using a data-driven process to design learning outcomes and implement corresponding assessments is the best way to accomplish that goal.

The need for guidance and for a relevant, empirically validated, and effective outcomes-based framework for education spurred IAALS to design Foundations-based model learning outcomes. The five broad learning outcomes categories—Communicator, Practitioner, Professional, Problem Solver, and Self Starter—organize the 76 foundations entry-level lawyers need to succeed in the practice of law and make it easier for educators to hone their teaching methods around them.

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CLEA STATEMENT ON ANTI-RACIST LEGAL EDUCATION

Posted on April 22, 2021 by davidafinger

Nearly a year has passed since historic events and protests, domestically and internationally, brought renewed attention to racial justice and the discriminatory and racist practices ever present in our social structures. The Black Lives Matter protests called attention to the unjust and disproportionate treatment of Black and Brown individuals by law enforcement and other institutions. More recently, violent attacks have roiled Asian communities, which have already been the targets of violence and hateful rhetoric since the COVID-19 pandemic began. And publicized incidents at various institutions of higher learning have demonstrated the failure of these institutions to protect students from racism, even within the walls of academia. As law schools and faculties reflect on how to advance racial justice and equality, the Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA) calls upon law school administrations and faculties, including experiential faculty, to play an active role in reforming our institutions and transforming our communities to be anti-racist.

An anti-racist curriculum is essential to disrupting and undoing racism in all its forms. Experiential courses are a critical component of any effective anti-racist curriculum, as such courses often allow for individualized student engagement, via legal work in local and marginalized communities, in order to promote social change and access to justice.

But experiential faculty should not rest on traditional notions of clinical and externship pedagogy. We encourage experiential faculty to actively implement principles of anti-racist education into their teaching. As recent events have made clear, students from marginalized backgrounds have long been considered less qualified and competent than their peers by some faculty, including law faculty. Such treatment creates an inequitable and hostile educational environment that can impede students’ ability to learn and succeed. As experiential faculty, we are particularly concerned with how racist and biased views from faculty members can negatively affect student performance in experiential courses. The elimination of biases and the perception of biases in grading and assessment is particularly important in experiential courses, which do not generally employ blind or anonymous grading. Experiential faculty must therefore create an intellectual environment that promotes a climate of equity and inclusivity for all students.

CLEA also encourages law schools to treat their experiential faculty equitably in terms of pay, job security, and status, as those faculty members are often disproportionately women and racial minorities. Inequalities between faculty members communicate to students, whether implicitly or explicitly, the relative value of those faculty. Moreover, even as women and racial minorities tend to be overrepresented in experiential faculties as compared to non-experiential faculties, law schools must do more to increase the diversity in their experiential faculties. As a recent essay by the CLEA Faculty Equity & Inclusion Committee demonstrates, the racial diversity of clinical faculty has remained stagnant in recent decades. The need for diverse faculties in experiential education is self-evident. Demographics matter, and any lack of diversity in experiential faculty negatively affects students, clients, and communities alike. CLEA has led efforts to diversify clinical and externship faculties and will continue that work in upcoming programming at the 2021 AALS Clinical Conference, in materials developed with the AALS Clinical Section Policy Committee, and in legal scholarship. We look forward to continuing this work alongside our colleagues in the coming months and years through specific recommendations aimed at improving the dismal demographical data that our research has identified.

Law schools should take proactive steps to ensure that their faculty members work to eliminate biases and racism in their teaching and should support their students of color, who inevitably face disparate treatment and shoulder the burdens of responding to such incidents. They should also prioritize hiring faculty members that reflect the communities they serve in their experiential programs and treat those faculty members equitably. Despite the recent attention given to anti-racist initiatives, law schools have much work to do in their quest to develop a more equitable, just, and inclusive discipline and profession. CLEA looks forward to working with its members and other members of legal academia to further these goals.

This statement was drafted and approved by the CLEA Faculty Equity & Inclusion Committee and approved by the CLEA Board of Directors.

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Looking At Ourselves–How Can Reduce Barriers to Entry in the Legal Profession?

Posted on December 21, 2020 by davidafinger

Jennifer S. Bard, Visiting Professor of Law, University of Florida Levin College of Law

Over a series of past posts, I have looked at how law school could be adapted so that it does not disadvantage students who come not already knowing how to play the law school game. As we have known for a long time, some groups of students experience more initial success than others in law school–and these differences are magnified by the effect first semester grades can have on lifelong implications in terms of employment opportunities. Most law students catch on quickly after the first semester, but their self-esteem may have already been severely damaged in what Sara Berman has called “a zero-sum environment where initially-lower performers are not encouraged to improve in consistent and meaningful ways”.

But taking a step back from equalizing the experience of students already in law schools, it may be time to think about who isn’t there–and why. What aspects of legal education, such as the cost and program structure, create barriers to entry? And how do these barriers to entry worsen an ever growing justice gap in the United States where only a small percentage of people who would benefit from legal representation have access to a lawyer?

The primary barriers are the cost of legal education and how it is structured.. The challenge we face is that there are barriers at every stage of the process, from high school graduation to college entry and beyond. Homelessness, substance use, mental health can all be factors in making higher education inaccessible. Also, we know of the barriers students with disabilities face when they get to law school (or college), but we don’t know how many people who chose not to attend might have done so if they could do so from a more accessible location. And of course, many scholars have pointed out that systemic racism is itself a formidable barrier in gaining admission to law school.

We can’t as legal educators end the systemic racism and economic inequalities that block many people from even being eligible to attend law school. Nor can we always reconfigure our aging infrastructure. But we can take responsibility for what we charge students to attend and how we structure the conditions for completion.

The first step to lowering the barriers within our own control is to recognize them. We need to re-evaluate the very structure of legal education–which can be most easily seen by reviewing the standards that both govern and reflect current practice. My intent is not to criticize the existing ABA standards or those who drafted and uphold them nor to suggest that they be rescinded, and legal education deregulated. But rather to recognize the consequences and costs of these practices so we can better evaluate their value. Below is a list of some obvious suspects–I’m sure everyone can generate more.

*Restrictions on Distance Education

With few exceptions, approved law schools cannot confer a degree on a student who does not earn two-thirds of their credits in face to face instruction. This continues to put law school out-of-step with nearly every other degree-granting program in the United States and to both the cost and physical demands of attending law school.

*Expensive Eligibility Requirements:

B.A. Required

Next on the list, we need to consider the cost in time and money of requiring that students earn a B.A. before enrolling in law school. Lawyers in Europe, South America, Africa, Asia, Australia, New Zealand are all practicing laws at the highest possible levels without seven years of post-secondary specialty training.

*Length of Degree and Time Limit on Completion

Not only must students complete a B.A., but they must also accumulate 87 credits within 84 months of enrollment. This of course adds cost in the form of tuition, but it also requires an even greater expenditure of time away from family and limit on the ability to earn a living.

Each of these requirements, indeed each of the Standards which govern legal education, were developed with the best intentions, but if the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that just because we haven’t done something before doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t find a way to do it now.

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Could We Create a New Bar Exam?

Posted on November 30, 2020 by davidafinger

Deborah Jones Merritt, Distinguished University Professor and John Deaver Drinko/Baker & Hostetler Chair in Law, The Ohio State University.

A few weeks ago, Logan Cornett and I published a major study of the work that new lawyers do—as well as the knowledge and skills they need for that work. John Lande has already offered two thoughtful posts about the study (thanks, John!). We think the research offers important information for legal educators, bar examiners, and workplace supervisors: we need to align education, licensing, and supervision to improve the service that new lawyers provide clients.

Will it be possible to achieve that alignment? In particular, can we make the bar exam a more valid assessment of the knowledge and skills that new attorneys need? I hope so. Neither states nor the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) have ever validated the current exams; that means we have no evidence that the skills and knowledge assessed on the exams match the ones that new lawyers use in practice. NCBE’s current attempt to validate the exam—through survey evidence—does not capture sufficient detail about the ways that new lawyers use their knowledge and skills in the workplace. Our study, based on 50 focus groups held in locations across the country, provides those more detailed insights. Combining our findings with those from NCBE’s study and other research could yield a valid licensing process.

An invalid exam would be embarrassing enough for a profession that prides itself on logic and reason, but our current bar exams have another flaw: they pass white candidates significantly more often than candidates of color. An exam that has never been validated, yet discriminates against candidates of color, is unthinkable in the modern age—and yet, we have tolerated these exams for decades.

It’s time to change, but will we have the courage to do so? Our profession has a deep attachment to closed-book exams, multiple choice questions, and time-pressured tests. The research that Logan Cornett and I did convincingly shows that none of these assessment methods are appropriate for the legal profession. Entry-level lawyers work from sources, not memory; they gather information to solve open-ended problems rather than choosing one canned answer from four; and, although they often practice under time pressure, the time constraints on the bar exam are dangerously unrealistic.

We need to challenge all three of these obstacles to a valid licensing process. Our report suggests many ways to accomplish that end. Here’s just one modest proposal that would significantly improve the validity of the bar exam:

Maintain the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam (MPRE), which tests knowledge of basic principles of professional conduct, but make the exam open book. No one can wind their way through the dense rules of professional conduct and commentary without previous study, so an open-book exam won’t make the test “too easy.” On the contrary, an open-book exam would encourage new lawyers to check the rules and commentary whenever they face a conduct issue. That’s a habit we want to encourage, not discourage.
Maintain two performance tests like the ones currently prepared by NCBE, but allow 3 hours (rather than 90 minutes) for each test. Expanding the time frame would make these tests more realistic measures of minimum competence. It might also make grading more reliable because graders would be faced with real-world products produced under realistic time constraints.
Create a 3-hour research exam that consists of multiple-choice or fill-in-the-blank questions. This exam would test the kind of quick research that lawyers do routinely: What is the statute of limitations for medical malpractice in Ohio? Does a will need witnesses to be valid in Texas? Give candidates access to any online tools they desire to do this research.
Create a 3-hour, multiple-choice exam that tests (a) basic understanding of U.S. legal processes and sources of law OR (b) a single substantive subject (such as civil procedure, contracts, business law, or family law). If the latter, consider giving candidates a choice of the area in which they wish to test.

Our research suggests that the final doctrinal component of this exam should be open-book; new lawyers simply don’t work from memory. Instead, they internalize basic principles that allow them to identify issues in a client problem and find the specific rules they need to address that problem. But if bar examiners insist on a closed-book exam component, they could make this portion of the exam closed-book. Memorizing the rules related to a single subject—especially if the subject reflects an area in which the lawyer hopes to practice—more closely parallels the work that new lawyers do than memorizing the rules that govern ten or more fields.

A bar exam with the four components listed above could be administered according to our current schedule. I.e., candidates could take the MPRE on one occasion and the other three components over two days in late July or February. Alternatively, the proposed exam could be divided into five different components (the MPRE, each of two performance tests, the research test, and the doctrinal test) and states could allow candidates to take the components at different times and in any order. Breaking the exam into components would relieve some stress and give candidates more flexibility. It might also allow candidates to determine, while still in law school, that they lack skills needed for law practice—and either choose a different career or remedy those deficiencies through more coursework.

Our report offers other options for licensing, including a rigorously structured diploma privilege. We also recommend that states complement any written exam by requiring candidates to complete law school clinics and courses in client counseling and negotiation. Those experiences assure instruction, practice, and feedback on skills that are difficult to test through a written exam.

It’s time to get serious about aligning legal education and licensing with the work that new lawyers do. Only then will we fulfill our mission of protecting the public.

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Leading Edge Conference: Facing and Forming Legal Education’s Future with Insights, Data and Inclusive Thinking

Posted on July 20, 2019 by Mary A. Lynch

Last week, I was fortunate to attend the 6th annual Leading Edge Conference hosted by Wolters Kluwer (WK) in Riverwoods, Illinois. It was my first experience with this particular conference. Using an unconference format and with a balance of old-timers and new attendees, WK brought together approximately 30 “thought leaders” for two+ days of intense discussion. Participants included professors and deans from a wide variety of law schools, representatives from law related entities such as LSAC, NITA and IAALS, education or pro-bono related entrepreneurs, and digitalization pioneers.

In addition to the conference, WK hosts the Leading Edge Webinar Series and just announced its 2nd annual Leading Edge prize. Ten Thousand Dollars ($10,000) will be awarded to two winning teams “to help implement their visions of improving student outcomes or expanding educational opportunities for law students.” Proposals are due August 15th.

I left the conferences with many “take-aways,” that I am only beginning to fully digest, and with a better sense of the continuing challenges facing legal education and our profession. Bernard A. Burk, Jerome M. Organ and Emma B. Rasiel recently published in the Nevada Law Review “Competitive Coping Strategies in the American Legal Academy: An Empirical Study”. Their research examined the response of law schools “to the substantial fall off in both the number and the conventional qualifications of applicants to law school that began after 2010.”

The “Competitive Coping Strategies” research also explains why more law schools have not closed and emphasizes the “widened distance” between current students’ needs and current school resources. The study found that in the face of plunging applications to law school, “Reputationally stronger schools” generally chose to preserve their entering Class Profile. This meant “thousands of viable candidates remained available to other law schools, effectively preventing the closing of as many as twenty Reputationally Weaker schools.”

Second, the study points out the implications of shrinking Class Size and discounting Tuition to preserve entering class profile. “As a practical matter, then, law schools ‘invested’ in Profile rather than in expanding their faculties, facilities or their access to clinical and experiential education. We encourage discussion of the implications of this investment choice.”

Third, the study noted that “some Reputationally Weaker law schools perversely were able to maintain or raise their average Net Tuition” and “the students with the least promising prospects for obtaining or making any economically sustainable use of their law degrees are paying the highest prices to obtain them. These inequalities expanded significantly after 2010.”

Fourth, the study highlights the millions of dollars in forgone Tuition Revenue “unavailable to meet the needs of students who at many law schools are significantly less prepared” than their predecessors and suggests this widening gap underlies the declining Bar Exam pass rate.

We seem to have reached a plateau in declining admissions to law school. But that plateau is not a place for us to settle in and rest. There are too many hard questions about where we are now.

How do we address the inequalities which have expanded since 2010 in law schools? What is the value we provide to those with the “least promising prospects?” Is it immoral that those least likely to make “any economically sustainable use of their law degrees are paying the highest prices to obtain them?” or that they may be undertaking crippling debt to obtain a law degree?

On the other hand, if we narrow the pathway into law schools even further, rejecting any who come to law school less credentialed or less prepared, will we be rejecting the dreams and hopes of those who desire a professional pathway? Will we be rejecting many who will find an economically sustainable and good life for themselves? Will we be playing God with students from less advantaged backgrounds just because we don’t know who will make it and who won’t? Will we be eliminating first generation students in larger numbers? Will we be amplifying the lack of diversity in our profession?

And what about the role of law schools in the community at large at this moment in our nation’s fledgling history? Shouldn’t we continue to exist as community laboratories which encourage civil discussion, uphold the rule of law, critique unjust legal systems and decisions, work to sustain democratic institutions and constitutional checks and balances, and produce new ideas about the role of law and legal systems in society?

Finally, if we espouse the “public good” values of my last two paragraphs as arguments for the continued existence of the legal academy and law schools, then do we prioritize these values in our faculty hiring, our strategic plans, and our prioritization of resources?
So, I leave you as I left the conference, with more questions than answers, but with a firm sense that we must continue to ask these important questions.

(Note: the author had her lodging, food and flights paid. She was not paid to write or post anything about the conference. Besides, she is pretty opinionated and not easily swayed.)

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Our Authors and Readers Propelled us Into the Hall of Fame! Thank you! Happy New Year.

Posted on December 31, 2018 by Mary A. Lynch

Web 100 Hall of Fame badge.

As 2018 draws to a close and the new adventures of 2019 are still resting below the horizon, it seems a fitting moment to acknowledge gratefully all those who contribute to making this blog a useful and informative read. This year, our thoughtful and insightful authors – please take a look at their names on our sidebar – together with our loyal and well informed readership has earned us a new honor. As you may remember, for three straight years, from 2014 to 2016, Best Practices was named one of the ABA Journal‘s top law blogs. This year, Best Practices has been named to the ABA Journal‘s Blawg 100 Hall of Fame. That’s right, we are Hall of Famers!

The ABA Journal noted

‘”At this blog, law professors discuss what skills and qualities—beyond knowing the law—the future lawyers in their classrooms really need and the nitty-gritty of how to teach them. Recent posts discuss suggestions for bar exam reform, approaches to take with Generation Z law students who were raised on the internet, and what law students remember about professors decades later.”

On reflecting on this honor, please bear with me as I take a trip down memory lane to 2007, over a decade ago , when this blog was but a twinkle in the eye of the Clinical Legal Education Association’s then named “Best Practices Implementation Committee” (which exists today as the renamed “Best Practices in Legal Pedagogy Committee.”)

CLEA’s Board had commissioned one Professor Roy Stuckey to lead the charge in editing and publishing the original Best Practices book to be distributed for free (see right sidebar for a free copy) in timely accordance with the publication of Carnegie’s Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law . Together the two books caused quite the stir in the legal academia and presaged the critiques that would come post-recession about the way law schools had lost their way in serving its students and society. Roy emphasized, as did the committee working with him, that Best Practices was meant to be an evolving guideline NOT a textualist nightmare. University of New Mexico Law Professor Antoinette Sedillo Lopez described the need for further iterations to flesh out the cultural awareness and competence sections. In response to these and others concerns, Pace Law’s Professor Vanessa Merton suggested the development of a BLOG as a way to continue the critique and conversation in real time adding acquired knowledge and exploring experiments gone flop! Albany Law agreed to foot some minor bills and provide some tech support for creating the blog. I agreed to become editor by figuring out what a blog actually was! Hence the Best Practices in Legal Education Blog was born.

The Blog was softly launched in late 2007 with some preliminary posts. The hard public launch was planned to coincide with the January 2008 AALS annual conference in NYC. New York state law faculty lugged Best Practices books with them to the conference by subway, metro north, Amtrak, cars, buses and feet! In the main hall of vendors, we signed up folks onto the blog’s feeburner site (see option on right sidebar!) and shared a table in the Hall with Equal Justice Works! We also hosted a birthday celebration for both Roy and Best Practices!

In 2015, a second book arrived. A group of experienced, thoughtful and collaborative women faculty – Professors Deborah Maranville, Lisa Bliss, Carrie Kass and Professor Sedillo Lopez – engaged in a several year drafting process gathering newly informed teaching, curricular, extracurricular and assessment insights and innovations. Their book reflected upon and fleshed out original Best Practices principles to guide law schools and legal educators facing new challenges With the input of hundreds of chapter co-authors, readers and commentators Building on Best Practices: Transforming Legal Education in A Changing World published by Lexis-Nexis has become a desktop bible for many of us. It is also available for purchase in e-chapters

In the past decade, this modest little blog has hosted so many talented authors, guest contributors, insightful commentators and the most loyal and passionate readership. We have been ably assisted by devoted and tech savvy student assistants as well as by fellows Justin Myers and Kevin Ramakrishna . We would be lost in cyberspace without the tech wizardry and grammarian expertise of nina Roepe.

Vintage Christmas Clip Art - Laurel Wreath Frame - The ...

We do not intend to rest on our laurels, however! Issues of law, the Rule of Law, and the role of law in supporting a free and democratic society have become more important than ever. How we teach and who we teach and who does the teaching are ever more important questions – even more so than a decade ago. Here, on this blog, without a lot of fanfare, or social media confetti, or hysterical tweeting, we can discuss, explore and examine how to proceed to facilitate learning for the budding lawyers who will lead the way forward. They are eager and they are our hope.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: #reformlegaled, ABA, best practices for legal education, law schools, legal education, legal education reform | 2 Comments »

Experience with Peer Support, Peer Review and Feedback on Teaching?

Posted on September 25, 2017 by Mary A. Lynch

We are all familiar with engagement in peer review of scholarship. Law faculty culture prioritizes peer input and review of scholarly ideas and articles. Sending drafts of articles to colleagues for feedback, “workshopping” preliminary ideas, and vetting scholarship is part and parcel of the work we do. We visit other schools, make presentations and attend conferences because we value peer discussion and input. It is the basis by which we create and communicate knowledge.

I don’t believe, however, we have a similarly pervasive culture for formative peer review when it comes to teaching in law schools, although such culture exists at other higher education institutions. According to The University of Texas Faculty Innovation Center, an academic culture which prioritizes informed peer collaboration, review and input on teaching benefits everyone,

Good teachers continually learn and develop. Peer Review, which combines the examination of course materials with in-class observations and collegial discussion, helps prompt this learning among faculty. Ideally, these interactions and conversations can create opportunities for us as colleagues to reflect on and adapt our teaching practices in order to become better teachers and increase student learning.

Northeastern University Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning through Research recommends a four step process:

Initial conversation between the observer and the observed
The observation itself as an informal data collection and distillation process
Follow-up conversation in which the observer shares the observations and collaborates with the observed teacher in any kind of brainstorming or troubleshooting that the observations invite.
Reflective summary written by the observed instructor, integrating what was learned from the process and how this will influence future teaching.

Vanderbilt University’s Center for Teaching includes the goal of “enabling more intentional and mutually supportive communities of scholar teachers.”

It is true that we have made some progress in elevating the role of teaching in law schools in the past decade. Legal Education certainly woke up to the need for a culture change around curriculum and teaching following the publication of Best Practices for Legal Education and Educating Lawyers. The economic downturn heavily affected the admission process and the need to focus on student learning. ABA requirements regarding student learning outcomes also redirected attention and resources towards what students actually learn while in law school. Moreover, organized efforts such as the Institute for Law Teaching and Learning and the AALS Section on Teaching Methods have converted many to the idea that teaching and learning are matters worthy of scholarship, innovation and peer discussion. Places like this blog and others support exchange of ideas, methods and innovations.

It is also true that as far back as 2008, pioneering legal scholars Gerry Hess and Sophie Sparrow studied factors which encourage or assist the professional development of law teachers including peer observation. So there are many resources available to improve teaching in law schools. Yet, across the academy, are we truly immersed in a continual process of formative feedback for law teachers? If so, the web shows little evidence of it.

I think some of the culture gap is explained by the fact that historically peer review of teaching only happened during a promotion and tenure process that resulted in an up or out decision by the faculty — hardly a formative approach. A voluntary formative program of peer support and review – not used for personnel decisions – should allay those fears. Appropriate concerns about interference with academic freedom in the classroom might explain some of the culture gap. Except that, even more concerns about academic freedom arise with respect to peer input into “controversial scholarship,” since draft writings can be more easily captured and reproduced than can observations of a single class session. What I think explains the gap, instead, is that we have not properly trained or equipped law faculty with the tools and methods for conducting and receiving helpful peer observations.

At Albany Law, we have promoted a culture of inquiry around teaching and learning for many years now — colleagues sit in each others classrooms from time to time, our Academic Dean prioritizes teaching support, our Center for Excellence in Law Teaching showcases teaching ideas and invites collegial discussion through teaching workshops, and our Director of Online Learning and Instructional Technology facilitates flipped classrooms and other innovations. What we haven’t done is formalize a voluntary peer support and review program. This year, we are planning to revisit our very loose approach and learn from the ever evolving resources and experimentation of others.

So readers, contributors and chance internet searchers, please post here what if any processes have you implemented to support peer observation of law teaching? Is it a voluntary program as we envision at Albany? How has it worked? Or, if you have an opinion about faculty peer review programs, let us know what you think!

I hope to compile the results and report back later in the year!

P.S. If you are more comfortable with e-mail than a blog comment, feel free to contact me at mlync@albanylaw.edu.

Filed under: academic freedom, Best Practices, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Teaching Methodology | Tagged: assessment of teaching and learning, formative assessment, law teaching, legal education, legal education innovations, legal education reform, peer observation, peer review of law teaching, professional development | 6 Comments »

Competencies-Based Legal Education

Posted on March 29, 2016 by Michele Pistone

[This was originally posted by the Clayton Christensen Institute on Disruptive Innovation]

Last week, I discussed why law schools need to respond to the changing marketplace for legal services and legal education. In thinking about how best to prepare for that changing world, law schools need to consider how competency-based educational models can be employed to advance educational objectives for students seeking to enter the market for legal services. As Michael Horn and I explain in our new whitepaper, Disrupting Law School, regulatory protections that have sheltered law schools from competition will continue to subside. In this new environment, law schools need to reimagine themselves as educators for students interested in learning about the legal services sector, not simply those seeking a JD.

One way to do this is to think about legal education from a blank slate. Rather that try to retrofit our current pedagogy to address 21^st century needs, instead we need to think about it from its inception — if one were to start a school today to educate those who want a career in the legal services field, what would that school look like?

Upstart competency-based education programs have done just that in other parts of higher education. They provide at least three new considerations for traditional law school as they begin to think about and prepare for the future.

1. Time is no longer the measure of accomplishment

Online competency-based learning reverses the traditional relationship in education between time and student learning. In the traditional educational model, time is fixed while each student’s learning is variable. With online competency-based learning, the relationship between time and learning is reversed — time becomes the variable and each student’s learning becomes essentially fixed. Students process at their own pace, moving from topic to topic upon mastery of each. Those who need more time to master a concept before moving on to the next take the time they need, while others move ahead to the next set of material and learning objectives.

2. Centrality of competencies, learning outcomes, and assessments

Online competency-based programs shift the teaching pedagogy toward student-centered learning. In an online, competency-based program, faculty and instructional designers start by identifying the competencies students must master to achieve the desired learning outcomes and then work through each to understand how a student would demonstrate mastery of those objectives. Through constant feedback, students know how they are doing and what they need to do next and teachers can determine when students have mastered competencies and are ready to move forward. The assessments in other words are both forward looking—assessments that help determine what a student studies next—and backward looking —assessments that indicate whether a student has mastered the material.

3. Modularization of course material provides more flexibility and different business models

Online competency-based learning is also changing key elements of the traditional higher education business model. Online technologies make it possible to modularize the learning process—that is, to break usual semester-long courses into shorter learning units or modules, which can be studied in sequence or separately. When material is packaged in online modules, it is easier to use for multiple educational purposes and multiple audiences in different combinations.

Stackable modules allow students to create individualized curricula based on their own learning goals and objectives. For students who attend law school knowing the area of law in which they want to practice—a segment of the student body currently underserved due to limited course offerings in any one topic at any one law school—modules open up opportunities to stack credentials from multiple sources. The long tail of the Internet opens up these opportunities; there may be sufficient student demand if online courses can aggregate demand and serve students from around the country or even the world.

Modules also eliminate duplication and optimize teaching resources. This flexible architecture can create an entirely new business model for law-related education. When learning is broken down into competencies—rather than semester-long courses—modules of learning can be packaged into different scalable programs for very different audiences—for example, paralegals, legal technicians, law students, lawyers (CLE), judges, administrative agencies, non-JDs working in law-related fields, foreign students, high school/college moot court teams, undergraduate students, journalists, clients, life-long learners, and so forth. The possibilities abound.

This exercise can take us in a lot of different directions. Every direction, though, will ask us to change and move beyond the status quo. While change is hard, it is also necessary. I hope our whitepaper provides sufficient impetus to get started.

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Catalysts For Change, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Teaching Methodology, Technology, Uncategorized | Tagged: #reformlegaled, Assessment, disruption, law school, law schools, law students, legal education, legal education reform, reforming legal education | Comments Off on Competencies-Based Legal Education

New York Proposes “Experiential Learning Requirements” as Condition of Licensure: CLEA and NYS Bar Committee Respond

Posted on November 20, 2015 by Mary A. Lynch

Readers of this blog and followers of the NCBE’s expansion remember that this past Spring New York became the 16th state to adopt the Uniform Bar Examination (UBE), changing its longstanding bar admission requirements. Many voices opposed adoption including the New York State Bar Association (NYSBA) (see Committee on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar (CLEAB) report 10-29-2014 and vote of House of Delegates), the Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA) and the Society for American Law Teachers (SALT). Despite these and other opposition voices, the proposal was adopted with the new changes going into effect for the July 2016 bar examination.

During discussion of the adoption of the UBE, the Court was encouraged to include clinical or experiential requirements for licensing so that lawyers admitted to the New York Bar would be ahead of the curve — a position I firmly support. On the opposite coast, California had been engaged in a multi-year process examining licensure and profession readiness which resulted in a proposal requiring 15 credits of experiential learning before admission. In response to the movement to incorporate experiential learning in bar admission, the New York State Court of Appeals formed a Task Force on Experiential Learning and Admission to the Bar. Just last month, that Taskforce requested comments on its proposal that

New York adopt a new mechanism for ensuring that all applicants for admission to the bar possess the requisite skills and are familiar with the professional values for effective, ethical and responsible practice. In light of New York’s diverse applicant pool, and in an effort to accommodate the varying educational backgrounds of applicants, the Task Force suggests five separate paths by which applicants for admission can demonstrate that they have satisfied the skills competency requirement.

The New York Law Journal examined the proposal in an article found here. In addition, the Honorable Judge Jenny Rivera, chair of the Taskforce attended a meeting of NYSBA’s Committee on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar (CLEAB) to explain the proposal and answer questions.

It is heartening that the Court is concerned about and wants to require the development of essential lawyering skills and professional values acquisition. However, without more, Pathway 1 of the current proposal will not actually ensure that applicants to the bar experience the kind of skill development and value formation that the Taskforce desires. Pathway 1, referencing new ABA standards, requires schools to confirm that they have published their “plan for incorporating into their curriculum the skills and professional values that, in the school’s judgment, are required for its graduates’ basic competence and ethical participation in the legal profession.” It also requires law schools to certify that law graduate applicants for admission “have sufficient competency in those skills and sufficient familiarity with those values” which are publicly available on the law school’s website. Although Judge Rivera believes that the certification process described in Pathway 1 can have some real bite, as pointed out in comments submitted by the Clinical Legal Education Association (11.9. 15 CLEA SUBMISSION ON EXPERIENTIAL REQUIREMENT ), Pathway 1 simply mirrors the experiential training requirements already mandated by the American Bar Association.

New York’s law school deans, not unexpectedly, submitted comments supporting the “flexibility” of Pathway 1. The CLEAB report to the Experiential Taskforce expressed concern that without additional content to Pathway 1 “little will be accomplished” by the proposal. And as one member of the NYS bar committee argued, “what law school is going to admit that one of its graduates did not acquire the skills or values promised on its website?”

In my opinion, the most important concern is whether applicants to the bar have ever represented or interacted with a client, or operated as a lawyer, in a live setting under guided, experienced supervision before admission. In its comment to the Taskforce, CLEA urges that a “three- credit clinical training requirement” be added for all J. D. applicants to the New York Bar. This makes sense. Law school clinics and faculty-supervised externships are designed to create the very kind of skill development and value acquisition with which the Court is concerned. And clinical faculty have developed the formative assessment tools to maximize skill and professional identity formation.

I am hopeful that, in its next iteration of the proposal, the Taskforce will heed CLEA and CLEAB’s comments and come back with recommendations that will ensure applicants for the bar are ready to engage in competent, ethical and professional representation of New York’s citizenry, corporations, and not–for–profits.

Filed under: Bar Exam, Best Practices, Uncategorized | Tagged: ABA, aba standards, Assessment, bar exam, Best Practices and Curriculum; Catalysts for Change, best practices for legal education, CLEA, clinical legal education, Court of appeals, law schools, law students, legal education, legal education reform, New York, NY BOLE | Comments Off on New York Proposes “Experiential Learning Requirements” as Condition of Licensure: CLEA and NYS Bar Committee Respond

Building on Best Practices now available as eBook

Posted on July 9, 2015 by dmaranville

Are you trying to:

Develop a meaningful law school mission statement?
Understand new accreditation requirements, learning goals, and outcomes assessment?
Expand your experiential offerings? Decide whether to use modules or courses? An on-site clinic, an externship, or community partnership?
Teach ALL of your students in the most effective ways, using a full range of teaching methods?
Add to your curriculum more of the professional identity, leadership, intercultural, inter-professional and other knowledge, skills, and values sought by 21st century legal employers?
Lead thoughtfully in the face of the challenges facing legal education today?

These and other topics are addressed in Building on Best Practices: Transforming Legal Education in a Changing World, now available in ebook format from LexisNexis at no charge.

The print version is not yet out. LEXIS-NEXIS is taking advance orders for $50, plus shipping. BUT we understand that they will make one copy available to every US legal educator for free upon on request. Details on this and international availability still to come.

Thanks, and congratulations, to book project sponsor Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA), the more than fifty legal educators who participated as authors, and the countless others who assisted as readers and in numerous other ways.

And, a huge shout-out to my wonderful and talented co-editors, Lisa Radke Bliss, Carrie Wilkes Kaas, and Antoinette Sedillo Lopez.

Filed under: Best Practices, Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices & Externships, Best Practices & Setting Goals, Best Practices and Clinics, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Best Practices, Diversity & Social Justice, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change, Diversity & Social Justice, First Year Law School Innovations, International Initiatives and Models, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques | Tagged: #reformlegaled, aba standards, Assessment, Best Practices and Curriculum; Catalysts for Change, best practices for legal education, blended learning, CLEA, clinical legal education, cultural competence, distance learning, experiential education, experiential learning, faculty tenure, law school, law schools, legal education, legal education reform | 2 Comments »

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

Posted on June 8, 2015 by dmaranville

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices & Setting Goals, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness | Tagged: best practices for legal education, generalist, law school, law schools, leadership, legal education, legal education reform, Maranville, professional identity, reforming legal education, skills, specialist | 1 Comment »

Birth, Maturity, Creative Destruction & Renewal At AALS Clinical Conference

Posted on May 14, 2015 by dmaranville

As someone who collaborated on a concurrent session titled “Facing Our Fears in Changing Times” at the AALS Conference on Clinical Legal Education, it’s probably not surprising that I was especially drawn to sessions that brought in models or speakers from other disciplines to provide insight on how to operate effectively in the midst of the current period of change in legal education.

In addition to my last post on Michele Weise’s Closing Plenary, in this and my next two posts, I’ll discuss three other provocative sessions that addressed different aspects of this theme.

On Tuesday morning my University of Washington colleagues Jennifer Fan and Lisa Kelly, worked with Rutgers-Newark’s Randi Mandelbaum and Syracuse’s Mary Helen McNeal to introduce the “liberating structures eco-systems model” of leadership. That model views organizational change as an infinity loop in which organizations move through four cycles that call for different styles of leadership:

Stage Leadership Style

Birth Entrepreneur

Maturity Manager

Creative Destruction Heretic

Renewal Networker

The model suggests that embedded in the cycle are two “traps“:

1. Between the Maturity and Creative Destruction stages lies the Rigidity Trap of “not letting go” of what the organization has birthed and brought to maturity. Staying stuck in the past and wedded to the old ways of doing things.

2. Between Creative Destruction and Renewal lies the Poverty Trap of “not investing enough to accomplish renewal”.

Sound familiar? The session included an exercise where attendees decided which stage they perceived their individual clinic, program, institution, or the clinical legal education movement to be in. Participants then added on the infinity loop diagram post-its with their results. Although responses were spread around the loop, most clustered among Maturity — Creative Destruction — and Renewal. Most responses addressed clinical programs and law schools.

I find this framework a helpful reminder that our current struggles are “normal” and that they won’t last forever. And inspiration to let go of fears and rigidity.

I’m grateful to my former colleague Tim Jaasko-Fisher for his work with liberating structures in the Court Improvement Academy of UW Law’s Children and Youth Advocacy Clinic.

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices and Clinics, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Catalysts For Change | Tagged: clinical conference, creative destruction, disruption, eco-cycle, legal education, legal education reform, liberating structures, Maranville, reforming legal education | 1 Comment »

Disruptive Innovation & the AALS Clinical Conference

Posted on May 12, 2015 by dmaranville

One of the highlights of last week’s AALS Conference for Clinical Law Teachers was the closing talk by Michele Weise, Senior Fellow, Education at the Clay Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation. (A big shout out to Michele Pistone for her role in making that talk happen!) I was superficially familiar with the disruptive innovation thesis, but Weise’s half-hour talk brought to life its relevance to the current moment in legal education in a way that previous exposure had not. Disruptive innovations that shake up a market or industry often follow a predictable pattern, it is argued. The established players in the market target a higher end client base and compete on quality, improving the product and selling it at a high margin. This leaves a significant, low-end segment of the market unserved. New entrants provide an inferior product to these unserved consumers, and gradually improve the product and expand their market. Poof go the established players. Think personal computers, print media, digital cameras, mobile phones . . . . Traditional higher education has long failed to reach a significant segment of potential consumers and the federal government’s shift from financial aid grants to student loans has greatly exacerbated that problem. Arguably, the stage is set for disruptive innovation and on-line technology may be the means to that disruption. The next step of Weise’s analysis was what really captured my attention. She noted that higher education currently serves many functions – transmission of content and certification of knowledge or skills; providing a safe space for young adults to mature socially; networking opportunities, mentoring and tutoring; research & dissemination of scholarship. These functions can be – and are being – disaggregated and provided more cheaply on line. Even the Harvards of the world are potentially at risk, according to Weise. Law schools have traditionally provided a generalist education. As legal practice becomes more specialized, that educational model arguably serves to mask more specialized functions that could be disaggregated. This is already being tried in my home state of Washington with our new Limited Licensed Legal Technician (aka/ Triple LT) program. But lawyers also wouldn’t have to be trained as generalists. As course offerings expand, the potential for moving away from the traditional generalist education does also. Already, this shows up in the transcripts of some of my students who are not necessarily taking the doctrinal courses that were considered foundational in my day. Does this matter? Before hearing Weise’s talk, during the Law Clinic Directors Workshop, I raised the question “how much doctrine do we need to teach?” Good lawyers, I observed, have extensive doctrinal knowledge. (Of course, law schools historically haven’t taught doctrine in connection with the experiential anchor points that many of us need in order to retrieve that knowledge for practice.) Elliott Milstein later challenged the importance of doctrinal knowledge, observing that his clinic students handle their cases well regardless of whether they have taken relevant doctrinal courses. Often true. And yet . . . The counter-example that I didn’t have a chance to share: one of my students recognized that we could challenge a new unemployment compensation statute on the ground that the subject was not properly included in the title of the legislation. A classic case of issue spotting that came about solely because he was taking a Washington State Constitutional Law course. (I didn’t recognize the issue.) A reminder that the ability to issue spot is valuable. But . . . state constitutional law isn’t a classic “foundational” “bar course”. This issue spotting was strictly serendipity – a traditional doctrinally-focused course load would not have accomplished this result. I’m still struggling with the generalist/specialist question. But it leaves me thinking about the potential for niche curricular innovation aimed at students – often older ones who understand their talents, passions and life goals – who come to law school with a commitment to a practice area like criminal law, immigration law, or business law.

Are there enough of those students to justify a legal education targeted at those niches?
If so, can we focus their education in a way that really prepares them for their specialty?
And, can we at the same time identify a “sweet spot” of “just enough” generalist knowledge to accompany that specialization? One that provides a foundation for passing the bar exam and the analytical and research skills to master new areas of the law, but does not take up the bulk of a three year curriculum?

I don’t know the answer to these questions. But they strike me as worth investigating.

Filed under: Best Practices, Best Practices & Curriculum, Catalysts For Change | Tagged: #reformlegaled, disruption, generalist, legal education, legal education reform, reforming legal education, specialist | Comments Off on Disruptive Innovation & the AALS Clinical Conference

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