The Best Practices for Legal Education Blog would like to extend a special thank you to the Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA) for their dedication to this project.
On behalf of Andrew Henderson, PhD Candidate, ANU College of Law, The Australian National University
Developing a relationship with students in an online setting is a challenge. There are the problems with technology (‘You’re muted!’) and the usual interruptions (‘I’ll come and watch Paw Patrol in a minute’). But all those usual tricks we use as law teachers to ‘read the room’, especially at the start of the semester, don’t quite work.
One of the ways I have often got out ahead of student satisfaction in face-to-face classes was to have an explicit conversation about expectations. But not just the standard, finger-wagging ‘you will do the reading’ diatribe. I ask students specifically about their expectations of me.
I was an elementary school teacher. I often wondered why, when I moved to law school, law teachers didn’t do the same thing. Especially when they’re subject to a much more explicit student evaluation process.
But, by the time the comments appear, it’s generally too late to do anything about a lot of them. Assessment tasks were locked in with the faculty board months or even years ahead. And lectures are ‘done and dusted’.
Getting that feedback earlier on would, of course, have been valuable. And in an online environment, grabbing some of those expectations can be even more useful given that both students and teachers are doing something new. Some of the comments might even explain why law students were really engaged. They might also explain why they performed poorly or didn’t participate. It might have had nothing to do with you at all! But it will also tell you about things that you might have been able to do, or stop doing if you had known earlier.
But how can you do this in an online environment where no one really wants to sit in a Zoom room for more than an hour? And how can it be done to preserve a degree of sincerity and openness, especially in a first meeting?
Maybe one of the simplest ways is to use a shared document or even create a Google form with some simple questions. The settings for Google forms can be adjusted so that the respondent doesn’t have to enter their email. Responses are helpfully collected anonymously in a single Google Sheet that can be reproduced and published.
While the process of collecting expectations in the classroom was valuable, I have actually found that collecting them through an online tool even more useful. Students would appear to be happy to express themselves more freely and openly. They will often talk about their expectations and where they believe they need help with aspects of the content or skills development.
For example, students have asked for specific things to be covered in more detail because they aren’t sure they understand them. Some have asked for specific advice about particular skills, like essay writing. Some have even expressed their concerns about being called on but also suggested how I can help them manage that anxiety so that they can actively participate.
Overall, it has meant that I have been able to adapt my teaching and the content to respond specifically to students’ interests and needs. Put another way, students have been actively engaged in the development of the course.
Setting out expectations at the start of the semester can be a valuable process. From a selfish perspective, it can give an early ‘heads up’ things that can be addressed before student evaluation time. But, the more valuable outcome has been that my teaching overall has improved. Using these online tools has meant that expectations are captured accurately, clearly communicated and expressed in a way that has further enhanced my teaching.
The Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA) welcomed 475 clinic faculty from around the country to its 2020 Virtual Conference, July 21-23. CLEA called on clinic faculty to join together virtually this unprecedented moment. To view the conference program guide, pleaseclick here. To view the poster presentations, pleaseclick here.
CLEA’s call for proposals drew a large response from clinic faculty around the country. The call:
Streets are filled with protesters rising up in response to horrific and ongoing systemic racism manifested by the continued attack on black and brown lives, and the COVID-19 pandemic has changed our daily reality. This has and will impact our professional and personal lives in critical ways. We are called upon as clinical faculty to reflect on and approach our pedagogy and practice differently. We are in new territory trying to determine the best way to run our clinical programs with the need for all or some of our teaching, services, and advocacy to be delivered remotely. We must re-examine the best way to teach about racial injustice and leverage clinical resources to take action to bring about real, lasting change. With these challenges and the inability to connect in-person, it is our goal to build community, draw on our collective wisdom, and provide a forum for discussion.
The virtual conference included plenaries, affinity group discussions, and larger discussion formats. The opening plenary,Facing New Suns: Futuristic Lawyering for Black Liberation (“There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.” – Octavia Butler) brought together Rasheedah Phillips (Featured Speaker) and Norrinda Hyat (Rutgers).
The Black Lives Matter protests that took place in the days and weeks following the public murder of George Floyd signal a remarkable shift in the landscape of modern social movements. A New York Times article, published on July 3, remarked that at the peak of the protests, on just one day June 6, half a million people turned out in nearly 550 places across the United States. And, also, that an estimated 15 million to 26 million total people in the United States have participated in demonstrations over the death of George Floyd and other black people since May making this “the largest movement in the country’s history.”
Some of our students and clients have now spent months in the streets advocating for an end to the status quo, a status quo that is strengthened by the curriculum and structures of most, if not all, law schools. Central to these calls are a rejection of incremental reform. In place of conformism, the protesters are calling on America to imagine, in real time, a world without police, prisons, war, or capitalism. The writings of Angela Y. Davis remind us that the abolition of systems of oppression is both a negative and positivistic project. As for the latter, the protestors call for affirmatively imagining a country with healthcare, housing, education and freedom for Black and Latinx people.
As teachers of and lawyers for many of the individuals and organizations marching, this moment calls for clinicians to “decolonize our imaginations,” as Walidah Imarisha sets out in the introduction to the Afro-futurist collection of short stories Octavia’s Brood. This plenary employs the tool of speculative fiction and the lens of Afro-futurism to motivate in each of us the process of “decolonizing” clinical legal education and clinical practice. Afro-futurism has been described as “an art form, practice and methodology that allows black people to see themselves in the future despite a distressing past and present.” Radical speculative fiction explores the connections between art and movements for social change. Speculative fiction is not new. W.E.B. Du Bois’ short story, The Comet, imagines a post-apocalyptic world in which the sole survivors are a black man and a white woman. In 1972, the MacArthur ‘genius’ Fellow Ishmael Reed wrote the canonical Mumbo Jumbo. The modern godmother of this genre, Octavia Butler, wrote her first of 13 books imagining a better future for black people in the diaspora, Patternmaster, in 1976. Radical speculative fiction’s application in the law is also not contemporary. In 1992, Professor Derek Bell merged radical speculative fiction and the law in his now iconic essay Space Traders. Following in the footsteps of DuBois, Butler and Bell, by looking to the creative, this plenary queries the role of clinical legal education in facilitating the future our clients are imagining and urges us to expand our notions of what is possible to stand in solidarity with our students, the protesters and organizers for black liberation through our teaching, advocacy and scholarship.
The second panel, Black Lives Matter and the Future of Clinical Legal Education, included: presentations by: Desiree Mims (Black Organizing Project), Alexi Freeman (Denver), Nicole Smith Futrell (CUNY), and Renee Hatcher (UIC John Marshall), Donna Lee (CUNY), Oscar Lopez (East Bay Community Law Center)
Finally, the closing panel, Top 5 Tips for Teaching Clinic Online, featured a presentation by Michele Pistone (Villanova)
Thoughts, discussion, and ideas for further engagement from the CLEA virtual conference are welcome!
The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed legal education. As law professors, we find ourselves in a new era of online teaching that is fraught with uncertainties and new challenges. We face the task of redesigning our courses while continuing to teach effectively and struggle to figure out how to design an online law course that is both effective and engaging.
As a longtime proponent of online educational programs, I surveyed the legal academic community to identify the five most common “pain points” experienced over the last several months. The data informed a webinar I conducted last month for the AALS Section on Technology, Law and Legal Education (click here to watch it), which I recently developed into a 3-day Bootcamp on Designing Your Online Law Course. In this post, I address each pain point in turn, with the aim to provide strategies and highlight some advantages of online education.
Making the Experience Like a Classroom
Colleagues ask how they can replicate the traditional classroom experience. They want to maintain lively class discussions on Zoom, but find it difficult to engage students and encourage participation. Many struggle with multitasking between controlling the class narrative, presenting their slides, and monitoring the chat function. So, the first pain point is how to I replicate the classroom experience using online modalities?
The answer is simple: you can’t. Online learning is different than traditional classroom teaching. When teaching online, we need to adopt a new mindset. In my view, the first step in adopting a new mindset is to appreciate that “teaching” and “learning” are two different verbs performed by two distinct groups of actors. For years, I assumed that if I taught a topic, my students learned it. Not, I realize the mistake in that way of thinking and have started to think about teaching and learning from my students’ perspectives. By unbundling the teaching and learning processes, we can be more deliberate about how students learn best. I think that is the first step in building an effective online course.
Engaging Students
Being cognizant of the learning side of the process will also guide us in engaging students. The second “pain point” articulated has to do with student engagement; “how to I engage my students online?” The solution is to shift to a student-centered design approach. Student-centered design is a concept I borrowed from user-centered design, a design-thinking approach that has been successfully employed by start-ups and other new ventures.
User-centered design, or design thinking, teaches us to start by gaining a deep understanding and empathizing with our end users—in this case, our students. What do we know about our students? We know that they are learning at home; at home they likely face many distractions, have a shorter attention span, and might be dealing with familial obligations. If we acknowledge these realities as we develop our syllabus and engage in course design, we know that we will want to chunk up the learning into smaller pieces to keep students engaged.
Student-centered design will also guide our course design by getting us to clearly articulate the learning goals for our courses and for each unit (class, week, section). The guiding questions here are: what do we want our students to know, be able to do, and value when they finish the course/unit?
Next, plan the assignments and readings your students can complete on their own time (cases, statutes, regulations, articles, treatises), as well as the active learning activities (chunked videos, narrated slides, podcasts, exercises, role plays, discussion boards, reflections, breakout rooms, Socratic dialogue, etc). Lastly, give students formative assessments such as quizzes, and provide ample feedback on discussion boards and written drafts/exercises. This may entail more planning, grading, and monitoring than in-person classes.
Assessing Learning and Providing Feedback
The third “pain point” centers around gauging student learning. For that, online education offers a lot of options to gather feedback about and assess student learning. You can use online tools to assess if students are moving toward the learning goals. Indeed, online learning makes it easy to insert periodic formative assessments—either graded or ungraded – throughout the course. In law school we are used to summative assessments. Summative assessments, while the cornerstone of gauging law school performance, do not give students feedback as they are in the process of learning. Learning theory tells us that students learn best when they get immediate feedback. It also keeps them engaged in the learning process. Moreover, the results will show you how effective your own course is—allowing for better course design, iteration and corrections, as needed. Formative assessments come in many forms, from multiple choice quizzes to demonstrate basic remembering and understanding, to problems that ask students to apply facts to the law or analyze case holdings. When inserted into your learning management system, you can also provide an answer key and pre-written explanations, so that the students get feedback close in time to taking the assessment.
Maximizing Your Impact
Another question that I am asked a lot by law professors relates to using our time most efficiently. Online education certainly requires a more steady upfront investment of time. I think that to maximize our impact as professors, we should think about how to use space and time differently. By that I mean, we should consider what aspects of our syllabi need to be done in person, and what parts can be performed by students on their own time or in small groups. I think that as you start to consider this question and become more comfortable with the affordances made possible through online technologies, you will find that there are lots of asynchronous ways to engage students in learning. For example, rather than leading an entire several-hour class online, consider asking students to work independently or in small groups on problems or projects and then reconvene and debrief. On Zoom, you can drop in intermittently into break out rooms to check on student progress. Rather than devoting the entire class period to lecturing, consider adding active learning exercises such as working through problems, role plays, or simply answering their questions.
Working with Technology
Finally, the pain points of many professors center around using new technologies. That is totally understandable. Utilizing current technology can be overwhelming, especially for supporting active learning in a completely synchronous context. The key is to start slowly by learning a few tools at a time. Try not to overwhelm yourself or your students with lots of new technologies at once. Use existing resources from your campus, or collaborate with colleagues to share the burden by sharing resources or using existing resources, such as those found on LegalED, Quimbee, BarBri, and CALI. As you shift your mindset to online learning, remember that it is okay to make mistakes. Students appreciate that you are learning as you go—just like them.
I really enjoy teaching online and hope you will, too. If you are experiencing pain points that I missed here, please share them in the comments below. As always, I’d love your feedback.
Like many law professors, I found myself a few months ago teaching regularly from a laptop in my home. With little prior online teaching, I was intimidated. Relying on expert help at our school and in the legal education community, on lots of practice using the platforms available, and on the generosity of my students (who kindly took time to do pre-class sessions), I muddled through the semester.
When I learned we were likely to be teaching online again in some capacity, I decided to take advantage of the available resources to help understand the similarities and differences between face-to-face classes and online classes. I was delighted to find among these resources an article by one of my favorite educators, Gerald Hess. His article that explored many of the questions on my mind. See Gerald F. Hess, Symposium: The State and Future of Legal Education: Blended Courses in Law School: The Best of Online and Face-to-Face Learning?, 45 McGeorge L. Rev. 51 (2013). (Note on a separate resource: coauthored with Michael Hunter Schwartz and Sophie Sparrow, Professor Hess’s book Teaching Law by Design [Carolina Academic Press 2009] has helped me more than any other single source in designing and teaching my courses. It should be mandatory reading for all new law professors.)
Professor Hess’s article cites credible authority that online teaching fosters students’ development of self-directed learning.[1] My colleague, Natt Gantt, and I have been working with St. Thomas Law School’s Holloran Center to provide tools with which law teachers can both adopt development of self-directed learning and use the materials on the Holloran Center website to achieve and measure that learning outcome.[2] We had not, however, focused on the strengths of online teaching as a means of achieving self-directedness. Perhaps it should have been obvious to me that, if a student knows that she will be expected to actively participate in the online class, she will take more ownership of her learning. I had to see the online format in action to begin appreciating its benefits.
Professor Hess’s article references not only interviews of teachers and students but also empirical evidence that evaluates how effectively face-to-face, online, and blended (combining face-to-face with online) instruction achieves learning outcomes. The findings offer support for online as a more effective means of achieving learning objectives than traditional face-to-face classes. However, Professor Hess cautions against exaggerating these findings because most of the empirical research did not involve on law schools (but did include graduate courses). When one compares the ability to achieve learning outcomes through face-to-face versus online teaching, however, this evidence suggests that we keep an open mind. When comparing face-to-face teaching with blended teaching, moreover, the results show “stronger learning outcomes than did face-to-face instruction alone.”[3]
Professor Hess explains why such conclusions make sense. A well-designed blended classroom encourages students’ collaboration in the learning process. Such a class also allows students to use their strengths to their advantage while developing or improving new skills. For instance, the face-to-face class allows students who think quickly on their feet to interact with the professor and each other. Many students, however, feel more comfortable participating online, after having had the chance to ponder a prompt or post. All students, moreover, must actively participate in the process of learning.
Professor Hess’s articles sets forth General Design Principles for an effective blended class. I encourage anyone who may be teaching a blended class in the upcoming academic year to review his design principles. I am sure they will help to ensure a class is as effective at achieving learning outcomes as possible. I know that they showed me I still have a lot of work to do. However, I realize now that the effort can lead to more effective teaching and learning than in what I had come to accept as the previous norm—face-to-face classes.
[2]See, e.g., Larry O. Natt Gantt, II, and Benjamin V. Madison, III, Self-Directedness and Professional Formation: Connecting Two Critical Concepts in Legal Education, 14 Univ. of St. Thomas L. J. 498 (2018); see also Univ. o St. Thomas Law School’s Holloran Center for Leadership in the Professions, Competency Milestones: Self-Directedness, https://www.stthomas.edu/hollorancenter/hollorancompetencymilestones.
[3]See Hess, supra, at 69 (quoting Means et al., U.S. Dep’t of Educ. Evaluation of Evidence Based Practices in On-Line Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies 28 (2010).
The author proposes that law professors teach legal writing intentionally designed for the digital reader.
The proposed framework uses visual design elements and digital functionality to overlay traditional structures of legal writing. Writing for the digital reader addresses the challenges of reading on a computer screen and amplifies best practices for legal writing. The result is a conceptual framework for written communication that helps bridge the gap between the writer’s “intention” and the reader’s “attention,” regardless of medium (paper or digital).[1]
The COVID-19 pandemic and the move to online learning by law schools has exposed the pre-existing need to incorporate writing for the digital reader as part of the fundamental framework for teaching legal writing across the law school curriculum. Digital writing represents a “best of both worlds” approach: to write well for the digital reader is to write well for the paper reader.
Digital writing does not replace the creative, human writing process, complex narrative and analysis, or the role of “old school” technologies in that process—for example, pen and paper. Similar to the difference between a paper and digital map, writing for the digital reader adds dynamic dimensions that enhance communication between the writer and reader.
Writing for the digital reader meets today’s law students, who are mostly “digital residents,” where they are. It facilitates “adaptive transfer” by encouraging all students to draw on their learning experiences, including oral and written communication. It is a bridge for students from their lived experiences in the digital age to the unfamiliar landscape and structures of legal writing and analysis.
Writing for the digital reader prepares law students for contemporary practice: “Lawyering in the Digital Age.” In legal education, the shift to digital technology, according to Professor Conrad Johnson, “transforms the way we practice traditional lawyering skills and requires us to teach the new skills of contemporary practice.”[2] Writing for the digital reader is an example of a contemporary approach to a traditional lawyering skill.
The author hopes to encourage law professors and law schools to help reshape the teaching and practice of legal writing to better reflect the reality of lawyering in the digital age. Law professors can use the checklist below to get started.
2. Why law professors should teach writing for the digital reader.
Written communication is a core lawyering skill for law students: in many ways, to be a lawyer is to be a writer. The fundamental concept of legal writing, and how it is taught in law schools, should reflect the reality that the audience will likely be reading on a computer screen. This includes the full range of professional writing that law students will learn and do while in law school and as lawyers.[3] Even writing that may have to be printed and read on paper, for example, “know your rights” materials and communication to clients who are detained or incarcerated, will benefit from a “digital writing” approach.
Scholarship on visual design and the impact of digital technology on legal writing provides a theoretical and practical basis for shifting our notion of a legal document from paper to digital. For example, Professor Ruth Anne Robbins, in her 2004 seminal article, Painting with Print, and in her 2015 work with Professor Steve Johansen, Art-iculating the Analysis, made important connections among visual design techniques, legal writing, and lawyering strategy. Professor Kirsten Davis, in her 2014 article, The Reports of My Death Are Greatly Exaggerated, asserted that “all legal reading is rapidly moving to on-screen legal reading.” Professor Ellie Margolis, in her 2015 article, Is the Medium the Message? observed that, “[T]urning the traditional, linear, text-based brief into a multidimensional e-document is a key example of how the medium changes the message and suggests that it is time to rethink that classic legal document.”
Lawyers no longer have a choice about incorporating technology into their practice and ABA Model Rule 1.1, Comment 8 requires that lawyers understand the risks and benefits of technology as part of the duty of competence, and ABA Formal Opinion 477R provide guidance about the lawyer’s duty to make “reasonable efforts” to secure confidential client information when using technology to communicate.
Any form of legal writing, broadly defined, can be transformed from “paper” (two dimensional) to “digital” (multi-dimensional) with modest changes in design, structure, and functionality. Writing for the digital reader incorporates, accentuates, and builds upon the components, structures, frameworks, and techniques that are effective for the paper reader. Digital writing can be adapted by law professors because particular elements or tools can be overlaid, sprinkled or infused regardless of the particular document, assignment, class, or module.
Law students can use a visual design approach to both construct their written analysis in outlines and drafts (for example, by using organizational visuals to deconstruct complex rules or facts) and present in their final writing whatever digital elements are appropriate, depending on the purpose and context of the writing. A writing for the digital reader framework emphasizes and synthesizes the following interactive elements:
Visual design elements to organize and present information in an accessible format :
3. Our “brain on screen” explains the need to write for the digital reader.
In the digital age, we are challenged by massive information overload and multiple distractions. This heightens the need to understand how “screen habits” affect the way in which we process information and maintain, develop, or lose cognitive focus.
Reading on a computer screen (including laptop, tablet, smart phone) is associated with distraction, lack of sustained attention, and diminished comprehension. Researchers and educators fear that deep learning and meaningful comprehension are threatened as we try to read and:
To meet these challenges, we need to cultivate what Maryanne Wolf calls “cognitive patience” in our students (and ourselves) and, ultimately, a “biliterate brain” that switches effortlessly among different modes of reading.[4]
Regardless of medium, law students can develop and maintain habits of mind and strategies to compensate for diminished attention and manage information overload. Metacognition—awareness of their own learning process—will help students (re)balance and self-regulate their learning strategies and improve their ability to engage in deep reading and learning, even while using computer devices.
4. Checklist for teaching law students to write for the digital reader.[5]
Learning to write for the digital reader can help students improve their writing. This checklist incorporates practical approaches that draw on visual design, best practices in writing, and digital functionality. Professors, students, and attorneys can use it as a guide for written communication.
Meet students where they are. Most of our students are “digital residents” who have lived their entire lives in the digital age. We can help them transfer their online experiences, knowledge, and skills to academic and professional writing assignments with practical frameworks and approaches.
Begin with a reflection exercise. Ask students to reflect on their writing, including papers, articles, texts, emails, tweets, and posts.
What techniques do they use to communicate in writing online?
In more traditional papers?
What makes reading online easier or more difficult?
Writing as a process. Writing for the digital reader can help students think about their writing process.
How do they generate and organize ideas?
Do they take notes, create an outline, write in stream of consciousness, or use other approaches?
What technology do they use: pen, paper, computer, a combination of paper and computer?
Writing choices flow from content. Encourage students to focus initially on the goals of the writing and their ideas, research, analysis, and content. Thoughtful analysis, strong content, and clear objectives are the foundation for effective writing. Structure and format flow from substantive analysis.
See writing with fresh eyes. Ask students to “step back” and review an initial draft.
Do lines of text appear “bunched” together?
Does the student’s eyes “glaze over” when they are reading due to long sentences and paragraphs?
Do they have to struggle to find the meaning of text that is too dense and hard to follow?
Write to overcome screen reading challenges. Research shows that when we read on a screen, we are more distracted, less able to maintain sustained focus, and our comprehension diminishes. We can teach students how to use techniques and strategies to compensate for these problems.
Eliminate or minimize distractions. Practice focused reading in 20-30 minute blocks without checking texts, emails, or social media. Minimize notifications and any other distracting “pop ups.” Take a short break.
Headings, topic sentences and paragraphs. Encourage students to use headings and sub-headings in the early stages of writing process and, for most writing, through the final draft. This helps organize ideas and thoughts. Headings can “announce” topics or make an affirmative point. Topic sentences and concise paragraphs will also help both writer and reader.
Spacing, lines, and fonts. Be aware of spacing, lines, and font (typography). The size and type of the font will likely depend on the conventions of the assignment or genre of writing. Spaces between lines, and the length of the lines of text, can help or hinder the reader.
Use visuals and media to present information.
“Organizational visuals.” Also called “navigational” visuals, these techniques are a great starting point to help the writer’s understanding, analysis, and structure. When writing about elements, rules, and multiple items, students can express information using “tab form” to create lists with:
1. Bullets,
2. Numbers, or
3. Letters.
Graphs, tables, & charts. These are more tools students can use to communicate information. The key is to highlight content, not format of presentation. Students can use a simple table to compare and contrast information in context with practical, side by side examples.
Images, diagrams, & videos. Depending on the context, students can use multi-media to support & illustrate their analysis. Media can help students develop ideas & analysis, and also meet the goals of the assignment.
Hyperlink citations. We are so used to clicking on hyperlinks that we barely notice: they are a key difference between digital & paper writing. Writing assignments should include hyperlinks to legal citations and other resources.
Best practices for hyperlinks. Hyperlinks can help students think differently about the purposes and form of citations.
Bookmarks. Students can insert bookmarks in longer documents. These bookmarks enhance functionality. Students can use bookmarks without a full table of contents. Students can insert hyperlinks to bookmarked sections in a roadmap or introductory section at the beginning of a document.
Self-assessment. As part of the thinking and writing process, students see their piece of writing as a whole.
Is there a balance between text and space?
What visual tools are used in the writing?
Are the visual tools appropriate for the context?
Do the visual tools advance the purpose of the writing?
Continue the editing, revising, and proofreading loop. In the digital age, learning how to write for the digital reader is a necessity. Students can learn to write at the intersection of visual design, best practices in writing, & digital functionality, and also improve their screen reading. Professors can too!
5. At a glance typography for legal writing for the digital reader.
Design choice
Recommendations
Comments
Typeface or font
Baskerville Bookman Book Antiqua Calisto Century Century Schoolbook Garamond New Baskerville Palatino Times New Roman
Serif for body of doc Sans Serif for headings Any “Book” font good for legal writing (Some say avoid Times New Roman because designed for newspaper columns and not as legible)
Font size
Between 10 & 13
Depends on letter height & line length
White space (including margins)
Use expansively 1.5 as default, 1.0 and 2.0 as appropriate
Avoid bunching together text without enough space. Double space not as effective for screen reading
Headings & subheadings
Use headings & sub-headings Sentence format Arabic numerals (1.0) Arial Century Gothic Trebuchet Corbel
Use Sans Serif font for contrast Avoid: ALL CAPS, Small Caps, Cap At Beginning Of Each Word, & underline Align with left margin (do not center) Insert extra space before each sub-heading (distances from prior section, connects with related text)
Organizational or navigational visuals
Use for elements, lists, points (bullets, numbers, letters, other visual signals).
Avoid “burying” items within a paragraph. Use to complement, not replace narrative text.
Page numbers
Use p. 1 of 20
Avoid p. # alone
Length of document
Word count
Not number of pages
Line length & justification
Shorter line length (6”) (margins equal to or more than 1”) Rule of thumb: line should be 2 or 2.5 times alphabet length (52 to 65 characters)
[2] Conrad Johnson, Lawyering in the Digital Age at 308 in Bryant et al., Transforming the Education of Lawyers: The Theory and Practice of Clinical Pedagogy (Carolina Academic Press 2014)..
[3] For example, formal legal memoranda and briefs, articles, essays, emails, letters, websites, posts, tweets, blogs, “DIY” guided interviews, court forms, reports, and community education materials.
By Sara J. Berman, Director of Programs for Academic and Bar Success, AccessLex Institute Center for Legal Education Excellence
Hats off to LSAC for its important June 30th webinar featuring Berkeley Law Dean, Erwin Chemerinsky. As LSAC President Kellye Testy said at the close of the session, I too felt a longing to return to the richness of law school learning while listening to Dean Chemerinsky’s review of recent Supreme Court decisions. The session also provided a hopeful counterpart to Dean Paul Caron’s same day post, Is A LawSchool Meltdown Coming? Thank you, Dean Caron, for this critically important warning that I hope we all heed, and for the rays of light in between the cautionary notes.
Dean Chemerinsky showed every prospective law student —via a distance learning delivery system I might add — why the law and legal education are critically important—indeed vital to the future of our democracy. And, for all who watched and listened, or will do so when the video link is posted, Dean Chemerinsky’s Constitutional Law session provides irrefutable evidence that great teaching is great teaching, in any delivery mode.
Distance learning is not new. We have long been engaged in deep learning through books, movies, and educational television. How many of us first learned how a bill becomes a law or the proper use conjunctions because of Schoolhouse Rock? And, how many are learning important U.S. history lessons by singing the lyrics of Hamiltonand watching the musical online—from a distance, not “in the room where it happened.” Thank you, Lin-Manuel Miranda, one of today’s greatest distance educators!
I am a legal ed distance learning pioneer. When people question me about the efficacy of online learning in legal education, I often point to Professor Arthur Miller. Teaching in person for decades at Harvard Law School and now at NYU, and through multiple distance formats, Professor Miller has taught more lawyers, judges, and everyday citizens than anyone could possibly ever count— about civil procedure and the American legal system— through his Federal Practice and Procedure treatise, casebooks, and hornbooks, bar review, PBS series The Constitution: That Delicate Balance for which he won an Emmy, and decades of work providing legal commentary and bringing life and clarity to legal issues on national television, not to mention the lectures he recorded for the first online law school, where I served for some fifteen years as a faculty member and assistant dean.
Quite simply, anyone who categorically dismisses “distance learning” in legal education as some sort of inferior substitute has never heard, watched, or read the teachings of Erwin Chemerinsky or Arthur Miller, or any of the thousands of other brilliant law professors across this country who are right now preparing to teach superb online courses this fall. And, this is precisely what we should be doing —preparing for the fall.
In a June 30, 2020 post, former Northwestern Dean Dan Rodriguez rightly lauds Professor Deborah Merritt, “What Prof. Merritt captures well, and what I and others have tried hard to capture as we have discussed this issue privately and publicly is this: We can and should put on a full-court-press to develop and refine our remote/online teaching abilities so as to commit to giving our students an excellent educational experience — excellent in curricular content, excellent in experiential/skill-building opportunities, and excellent in the community-building that technology can assist us with, if we are diligent and strategic, energetic and empathetic.”
And, to anyone who contests the community building part of the statement above, anyone who claims that unless we are together in person we cannot really build deep and lasting connections, let us remember that history is replete with people who have fallen in love, sustained relationships, started revolutions, and changed the world through letter writing.
The week of June 30th was indeed a busy one for legal education and distance education in particular. In addition to the webinar and posts noted above, the Summer 2020 issue of the AccessLex Institute’s Raising the Bar (RTB) was published on July 1, 2020. I am proud to have founded and continue to serve as managing editor of RTB. This issue is dedicated to distance learning in legal education, and features among other content, wisdom from four visionary law school deans who are at the helm of hybrid JD programs that were educating for the 21st century prior to the pandemic. I hope that readers find the issue informative and will feel inspired to continue working to develop precisely the kind of excellent educational experience in learning that Professor Merritt envisions.
As legal education continues in part or fully online in the new academic year and until this virus is eradicated and perhaps beyond, let’s work together with the same fervor depicted in Alexander Hamilton’s writing “like he’s running out of time,” to see the virtual halls of our nation’s law schools filled this fall with the brightest, most engaged minds —students from all backgrounds who are ready to learn to protect the Constitution and to ensure that our nation remains a thriving democracy, governed by the rule of law.
During this spring semester, legal education like nearly all education sectors, underwent an overnight revolution, moving from largely an in-person to an online delivery format. Educators have had to adapt to not only to new technologies but to new ways of communicating, adopting many new teaching and learning methods, new grading policies, and more. Understanding that many law faculty have been completely overwhelmed by having to change so much so rapidly, but knowing also that this change will continue, in all likelihood, into this summer and fall, we propose some simple steps that faculty can take to incorporate professional formation and development into online law classes, all of which can be employed in in-person classes as well.
I. Contextual Background
First, what is meant by professional formation and development? Many publications have detailed these concepts at length.[1] For the sake of brevity here, each student should demonstrate an understanding and integration of:
1. Pro-active professional development toward excellence at all the competencies needed to serve others well in meaningful employment; and
2. An internalized deep responsibility to others, especially the client and the legal system, whom the student serves as a professional in widening circles as the student matures.
There are several key principles that should guide the development of strategies that foster professional formation and development. Holloran Center scholars have been building a framework of key principles to guide the development of the most effective curriculum, culture, and assessments to foster each student’s growth toward later stages of development on the two foundational professional formation and development competencies,[2] conducting research and analyzing scholarship on (1) higher education in other disciplines, particularly medical education, (2) moral psychology, and (3) self-directed/self-regulated learning.
Four research windows agree that an effective curriculum (including assessments) that promotes the two professional formation and development learning outcomes should:
Take into account that students are at different developmental stages of growth and engage each student at the student’s present developmental stage – Go Where They Are;
Provide repeated opportunities for reflection on the responsibilities of the profession and the habit of reflective self-assessment in general;
Emphasize experiential learning, feedback on the student’s performance, and reflection; and
Emphasize coaching.
An additional research window suggests the following curricular engagements to foster each student’s growth toward the two professional formation and development learning outcomes:
5. Experiences that create cognitive dissonance/optimal conflict with the student’s current developmental stage on either of the ethical professional formation and development learning outcomes;
Instruction that helps the student understand how new knowledge is building on the student’s prior knowledge and competencies (student’s existing narrative);
Instruction that helps each student understand how the professional formation curriculum assists the student to achieve his or her goals; and
Instruction that helps each student understand and implement specific steps to grow toward later stages of development.
II. Fifteen simple questions or strategies
We need to remember that this generation of law students also experienced the Great Recession of 2009-11; now they are experiencing the current crisis and will in all likelihood face yet another serious recession or more dire economic struggles ahead –not to mention health and safety related hardships. The questions/strategies below may be helpful to provoke constructive reflection and discussion, and hopefully to positively channel at least some important concerns about moving forward in their professional lives in this challenging context.
The following are questions that a professor can pose to students to spark self-reflection and awareness about professional formation and development:
“Assume you meet a lawyer who could be important in your employment search and the person asks some version of, ‘What did you learn in this crisis?’ Write a brief answer to this question –or record a brief video of yourself answering this question.”
The teaching opportunity suggested with this writing prompt is to provoke thoughts about this underlying query: “What did you learn that would be useful to an employer?” Thoughtful answers would go toward versions of I learned adaptive capacity skills, perhaps with words such as: a) “I learned that I know how to figure out solutions to a host of unanticipated changes and challenges,” b) “I made X changes to adapt to Y challenges.” Or, c) “Actions I have taken so far and/or will take to adapt and eventually thrive, even in the face of many challenges, include Z].” Student answers might include specific examples of “grit,” “resiliency,” and positive or growth mindsets that helped them through pandemic-related challenges offering evidence that the student would demonstrate similar resilience as a future professional.[3] Note: where students video themselves, they are also simulating how they might orally respond to such a question in an interview.
Same situation as in the first query but posing this question: “What did you learn about the organizations, businesses, or business sectors you observed? Write specific examples of how they reacted, adapted, or failed to do so during the pandemic.”
Talk to a person whom you know who has experienced and transcended a crucible in life and ask what they learned from the challenges going forward. As students: “What did you learn by asking the question and/or from the response? What follow-up questions did you ask and why?”
At the end of a Socratic Q & A session (in-person or online), ask students to write down any other questions they would have asked if they were the professor. The ability for students to see themselves in a professional role, here as professor, is critical to making the successful transition from student to professional.
The following are actions that a professor can take to support students while encouraging their professional formation and development:
If you are comfortable doing so, talk with your students about the crises/crucibles/difficult times in your own professional life or the life of your clients, noting what you and they learned?
Log on to synchronous online classes 10-15 minutes early or stay for 15-20 minutes after class to talk and listen to students’ comments about “life” and in particular about their professional life and concerns during this crisis. This underscores the notion that a vital part of professional life is to engage in collegial discussion; it stresses the importance of personal connection as an integral part of professional work. You might analogize “official” class time to office work time, and these pre- or post-class discussions to attending bar association meetings or receptions with colleagues. Taking just a few minutes before or after class also promotes belonging and work-life balance and underscores the importance of continuing to engage in personal and professional networking, especially as students are facing extraordinary health, financial, and psychological stress, and are forced to stay at home.
As a faculty member, attend an extra-curricular event led by the Dean of Students, the Career Services office, the Academic Support faculty, and/or an event organized by a law student affinity group, and sit in the audience if invited when LRW faculty hold oral arguments. Attend these now, virtually, and plan to attend in person when you can. Law schools host many events to help students, some of which are part of programs you strongly believe in. Theoretical support is important, but your presence (online or in person) as a faculty member, even for a few minutes, carries far more weight that you will ever know in terms of whether students take such programming seriously. This will also help students realize as future professionals how important their presence will be at law office functions, networking opportunities, and community events.
Provide extra credit in class for students who make thoughtful explicit connections between classroom assignments and any outside pro bono work they are doing or plan to do. There will continue to be limitless opportunities for meaningful pro bono work as society weathers this storm – assisting with unemployment issues, bankruptcies, evictions, and more. Share with your students (in an email, recorded message, or synchronous online class) any pro bono work you are doing or examples of pro bono work you did in the past, noting how it has made you a better lawyer and more competent and empathetic professional.
Tell students why you went to law school, and ask them to think about why they came to law school. (You can send this as an email, post it as a discussion board exercise in the LMS, or bring it up in a Zoom or other synchronous class.) Tell them about how your purpose with respect to your understanding of what it means to be a member of the profession may have changed over the years. Is it changing now in this crisis?
For faculty involved in planning fall Orientations, think about including time for incoming students to write a Why Law School letter to themselves; collect the letters and return them to students during the summer between 1L and 2L and again before they begin bar exam preparation. Finding one’s “why” and holding fast to it are critical to success in law school, on the bar exam, and in practice.[4]
When students pose a question or answer a question in a way that demonstrates that they listened to (or read) a previous student’s comments and integrated those comments thoughtfully into their new question or comment, the Professor can drop an email or instant message note saying, “The way you asked (answered) this question shows you listened carefully to your classmate’s comments (or listened to and recalled a dialogue from one of our last classes). That’s great! Critical listening (or critical reading) skills are among the most important qualities of a successful lawyer. As just one of many examples, you might well find yourself in the position of eliciting more important information and posing better, more thoughtful follow-up questions because you critically listened to a witness’s answers in a deposition. Thank you again for your thoughtful question/comment. And, keep developing this important skill.”
Little time is needed to reinforce and praise professional behavior and the demonstration of critical lawyering skills; the potential for positive impact on student engagement, well-being, and learning, in addition to on their professional formation and development is great.
Professors can also help students improve listening skills by periodically stopping class (in-person or in a synchronous online class), for example after you have posed a question, and asking students to write down what you just asked (noting whether they believe they heard and understood your question) and then email you their answers. Collect the answers and choose some to read or post, anonymously. Warn students in advance that you will be doing this. And, be transparent about the nature and purpose of this assignment: to encourage individuals to sharpen their own listening skills. You can also use this exercise as an opportunity to explain the purpose of questions generally in the law school classroom – that they center not just on the 1-on-1 between professor and student, but on everyone collectively listening carefully (or reading questions posted on bulletin boards), just as they will need to listen to clients, colleagues, and witnesses. (Similar exercises can be useful to help students train critical reading skills.)
Distribute (via email or on a discussion board) a master list of the key skills/qualities of competent lawyers (for example from Schultz and Zedek or IAALS) and/or note (in live class, by email, or on discussion board) a few of the key skills/qualities that you believe the work you are doing is helping to train during each class so that students can “check in” and ask themselves if they are honing these skills. Reading such practice-minded lists will empower students who are building certain skills but still working on others to continue to believe that they “have what it takes” to become competent lawyers. (You might also ask students to consider which competencies are most relevant to help clients in a crisis.)
Bring guest speakers to online and in-person classes, such as practitioners who can talk about the entire range of competencies needed in the various areas of practice.[5] Guest faculty can also provide insights into differing perspectives on parts of your courses. CALI.org has posted a list of professors willing to Zoom into classes as guest lecturers at https://www.cali.org/content/guest-speakers-available-remote-teaching-law-school-courses-coronaviruscovid-19
When/if you give formative assessments (in-person or as part of asynchronous or synchronous online learning), make explicit which of the lawyering competencies each assessment is measuring – how and why. Provide concrete examples of the transferability of skills from success in law school and on the bar exam (where applicable), to success in law practice and as professionals.
Give a talk (in a synchronous online class or in a recorded message), before the end of the semester if possible, or during this summer, to try to blunt the pain that the law school curve can bring and to encourage all of your students to feel that they belong. Even though many schools have changed the grading policies to pass/fall for the spring 2020, many students will be even more concerned about their law school GPAs and their potential impact on future employment. Now more than ever is an important time for students to read the Roadmap.[6]
There is no one right message; this has to be authentic for each professor. But, an example might include something like, “You are all used to getting A’s. You cannot all get A’s in law school. What you can all do is your best, and can and must, as professionals, engage in continuous learning and improvement. If your grades and/or comments on exams do not reflect the quality of work you will need to be doing to best serve clients when you graduate, please talk with me; ask me to review your exams and help you determine how to improve. The career path of great lawyers involve continuous improvement. Your goal is to be a lifelong learner.”
III. Conclusion
As noted at the outset, the authors applaud law faculty nationwide whose nimbleness served as irrefutable evidence of a collective dedication to students and to the continuity of graduating future leaders who will protect the rule of law. The suggestions in this paper are merely that, thoughts on some simple steps to incorporate professional formation and development into online law classes. The authors hope that these suggestions spark ideas for faculty to adapt as they choose, and that a discussion will continue to further develop both additional simple steps and more comprehensive programming on professional formation and development in online and in-person formats, as we weather the storms resulting from and adapt to changes required because of the 2020 pandemic.
The authors are available to discuss these further and encourage readers to contact the authors with additional strategies for integrating professional identity formation into legal education. This list will be updated and available on the Holloran Center website.
Sara J. Berman, Director, Academic and Bar Success Programs, AccessLex Center for Legal Education Excellence; formerly held Assistant Dean and Director positions Whittier and NSU Law Schools, and served as faculty and in senior administration of nation’s first fully online law school. SSRN author page
[2] These general principles here appeared first in Neil Hamilton, Formation-of-an-Ethical-Professional-Identity (Professionalism) Learning Outcome and E-Portfolio Formative Assessments, 48 UNIV. PACIFIC L.REV. 847, 856-59 (2017).
[3] Neil Hamilton includes many additional strategies to help students and for students to help themselves to pave the way toward developing meaningful employment opportunities in Roadmap: The Law Student’s Guide to Meaningful Employment, Second Edition (ABA Publishing, 2019).
[4] Purpose-driven learning is a cornerstone of bar success, as Sara Berman writes in the introduction to Bar Exam Success: A Comprehensive Guide (ABA Publishing 2019).
[5] Inspired by her civil procedure professor who brought a journalist to class to discuss the differences between the types of questions lawyers ask and those that journalists ask, and why, providing an engaging deep dive into the importance of facts generally, author Berman regularly invited police officers to her in-person criminal procedure classes and a family court judge to her online community property classes, which resulting in The Courtroom Comes to the Classroom, a collaboration between Professor Berman and Judge Mark Juhas.)
Earlier this week, Forbes contributor Mark A. Cohen discussed what he calls “the interdependency — and misalignment — of law school stakeholders.” Cohen refers to a comment in a recent speech by Mark Smolik, the general counsel of DHL Supply Chain Americas, that “he would no longer subsidize on-the-job-training of law firm associates.” According to Cohen, Smolick’s remarks are an
indictment of the Academy for its failure to produce practice-ready graduates with required skillsets and a swipe at law firms for their failure to more fully invest in associate training to drive client value.
Cohen is urging today’s law students to look to the marketplace for “efficient, accessible, cost-effective, and just-in-time learning tools available to fill knowledge gaps and to teach new skills.” He boasts about one product that produces “high quality videos” and uses “flipped classrooms.”
I don’t disagree that law schools need to transform faster, provide more skill building, emphasize the business context in which lawyers are hired to help, and prepare law students for the team realities of today and tomorrow’s economy. And I appreciate Cohen’s raising this issue and inviting discussion. But his claim that only a “handful” of law schools are savvy on these issues – or as he put it have “yet to read the memo” – made my Irish blood boil. Maybe it is because it is the end of the week and I’m just tired? Maybe it is because I just recently (September 13th) hosted yet another Flipping (every pun intended) workshop at our school showcasing all the great work being done by my colleagues in flipping their classroom? Maybe it is because if Cohen googled law schools and flipping classrooms, he would have found Michele Pistone’s fabulous LegalED information? Maybe it is because he could have found this blogsite pretty high up on that google search and clicked on a number of posts such as here and here and here and here and here and here ? Maybe it is because nobody is noticing the work of folks like my faculty colleague Antony Haynes on innovative online opportunities?
I invite you to read the article, see what you think and tell us on this blog about what Cohen missed happening at your school!
Feedburner is the easiest way to get all the latest Best Practices news. Click here to receive Best Practices post updates by email!
NEW!! Click here to subscribe to the comments too!
Best Practices for Legal Education 