Globalizing the U.S. Law School Curriculum: How Should Legal Educators Respond?

2013 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farida Ali
Keyword(s):  
Legal Education ◽  
School Curriculum ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Current State ◽  
Northwestern University ◽  
Current Program ◽  
The Impact ◽  
School Curricula

This article examines the implications of globalization for legal practice, law students, and law school curricula. It opens with a review of the impact of globalization on the legal profession, together with an overview of the benefits and challenges that come with globalizing legal education. The article then examines the current state of U.S. legal education by identifying some of the schools that have expressed or demonstrated a commitment to providing a global legal education, and surveying the types of reforms that these schools have adopted in order to meet this objective. The article considers schools’ attitudes to and choice of reforms in light of the view that the typical new American lawyer is inadequately prepared to practice law in today's global legal order, in which he or she is increasingly likely to be called upon to resolve legal issues of a transnational nature. Preparing students to practice law in a globalized society, the article contends, should therefore be a key objective for American legal educators. With this goal in mind, the article examines the current program at Northwestern University School of Law as a case study and offers recommendations that can help to achieve the goal of globalizing legal education while responding to the needs and concerns of today's law students and future legal practitioners.

scholarly journals “Irish Clinical Legal Education Ab Initio: Challenges and Opportunities”

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence Donnelly
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Scholarly Output ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
National University

<p>This article details the incipient efforts of one Irish university law school, the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUI Galway), in the field of clinical legal education. While clinical legal education, which began in the United States some fifty years ago, has made significant advances throughout the rest of the common law world, it remains at a very early stage in Ireland.1 In fact, Irish efforts in the field to date more closely resemble what is known in the United States as the “externship model” of legal education, rather than what are commonly identified as law clinics in other jurisdictions.2 And for a variety of reasons that will be touched upon later in this article, the law school clinic is unlikely to develop here to the same extent it has elsewhere. As such, this article explores what Irish clinical legal education currently looks like and what it might look like in the future.</p><p>It begins with some background on and consideration of legal education in Ireland, then, using NUI Galway as a case study, details the emergence of skills teaching in the curriculum and the consequential increase in participation in moot court competitions and in student scholarly output. The article next examines the establishment, organisation and maintenance of a placement programme for final year law students. In so doing, it reflects on what has worked and what has not at NUI Galway from the perspectives of the clinical director, placement supervisors and students. The article concludes with some realistic, yet sanguine, observations as to what future clinical legal education has in Ireland.</p>

Legal Professionalism and the Ethical Challenge for Legal Education: Insights from a Comparative Study of Future Lawyers in Greater China

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Richard Wai-Sang Wu ◽  
Carlos Wing-Hung Lo ◽  
Ning Liu
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Ethical Challenge ◽  
Education Systems ◽  
Legal Ethics ◽  
Greater China ◽  
School Curricula

Abstract This article uses data gathered from a survey that probed the career orientations and values of more than 1,000 law students in Beijing, Hong Kong and Taipei to examine the legal professionalism of future lawyers being trained under different legal education systems in Greater China. Our findings suggest that these future lawyers have a “materialistic” career orientation, although those studying in a system whose legal education goal is to train professional lawyers are more inclined to pursue professional legal ideals, and those trained in a system that emphasizes legal ethics are more likely to pursue public interest issues. On the basis of the findings, we argue that legal education systems in Greater China, while different in their traditions, share the same need to strengthen legal professionalism by according greater emphasis to legal ethics in their respective law school curricula.

scholarly journals Bringing the Clinic into the 21st Century

2009 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 36
Author(s):  
Julie Macfarlane
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Teaching ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
School Curriculum ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Teaching Methodology ◽  
Legal Services ◽  
Student Interest ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Client Advocacy

Emerging in the 1960’s, the clinical legal education movement promoted an important dual mission – the training of law students in practical client advocacy and the service of under and un-served communities. These laudable goals spawned a movement of great significance for legal education. At its peak the clinical movement can point to hundreds of clinics in law schools across the world, specially appointed clinical faculty, a law review and the development of a voluminous literature on clinical teaching methodology. However in the last 10 years student interest, funding and scholarly attention to the legal clinics has faded. This article argues that this is in part due to the mission and ideology of the law school clinics remaining “stuck” in a conception of social justice lawyering that is heavily dependent on rights-based strategies and traditional, hierarchical conceptions of the lawyer/client relationship. While reflecting the same stasis that affects the wider law school curriculum, this disconnect from the needs of contemporary clients as well as an increasingly pluralist model of legal services has unique implications for the legal clinics.Faisant son apparition dans les années ’60, le mouvement d’éducation juridique en clinique promouvait une double mission importante – la formation d’étudiants et d’étudiantes en droit à la pratique de défense de clients et le service aux communautés non ou mal desservies. Ces objectifs louables ont donné naissance à un mouvement de grande importance pour l’éducation juridique. À son apogée, le mouvement clinique peut se vanter de centaines de cliniques au sein de facultés de droit à travers le monde, de la nomination spéciale de professeurs cliniques, d’une revue de droit, et du développement d’une littérature volumineuse sur la méthodologie de l’enseignement en clinique. Toutefois, au cours des dix dernières années, l’intérêt étudiant, le financement et l’attention savante envers les cliniques juridiques se sont affaiblis. Cet article soutient que ceci est dû en partie au fait que la mission et l’idéologie des cliniques des facultés de droit demeurent «prises» dans une conception de la pratique du droit en vue de la justice sociale qui dépend en grande partie sur des stratégies fondées sur les droits de la personne et sur des conceptions traditionnelles hiérarchiques de la relation avocatclient. Tout en reflétant le même état statique qui affecte le programme des facultés de droit en général, cette déconnexion des besoins de clients contemporains ainsi qu’un modèle de services juridiques de plus en plus pluraliste a des implications uniques pour les cliniques juridiques.

scholarly journals Defining and Quantifying Intermittency in the Power Sector

Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 3366
Author(s):  
Daniel Suchet ◽  
Adrien Jeantet ◽  
Thomas Elghozi ◽  
Zacharie Jehl
Keyword(s):  
Power Source ◽  
Production Data ◽  
Power Sector ◽  
Predictive Capacity ◽  
The Public ◽  
Current State ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Quantitative Definition ◽  
The Impact

The lack of a systematic definition of intermittency in the power sector blurs the use of this term in the public debate: the same power source can be described as stable or intermittent, depending on the standpoint of the authors. This work tackles a quantitative definition of intermittency adapted to the power sector, linked to the nature of the source, and not to the current state of the energy mix or the production predictive capacity. A quantitative indicator is devised, discussed and graphically depicted. A case study is illustrated by the analysis of the 2018 production data in France and then developed further to evaluate the impact of two methods often considered to reduce intermittency: aggregation and complementarity between wind and solar productions.

scholarly journals Promoting Positive Mental Health in International Postgraduate Law Students at a Time of Global Uncertainty: A Case Study from qLegal at Queen Mary, University of London

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-134
Author(s):  
Emily Wapples
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Online Delivery ◽  
Student Mental Health ◽  
Study Approach ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Academic Consequences ◽  
Global Uncertainty ◽  
The Impact

Law student mental health and wellbeing was already a growing concern in the UK prior to COVID-19, but when the pandemic occurred, widespread uncertainty placed an unprecedented level of mental health burden on students. Law students were faced with dashed hopes, uncertain futures and the fear of negative academic consequences. This burden was exacerbated in respect of postgraduate international students in London, who were often also forced to decide whether to return home to their families, or to continue their studies abroad, albeit online. This paper uses a case study approach to discuss how one provider of postgraduate clinical legal education (CLE), approached the promotion of positive student mental health both before, and in response to, the pandemic. qLegal at Queen Mary, University of London provides CLE to postgraduates studying for a one year law masters, and in 2019-2020, qLegal delivered CLE to 134 students from 27 countries. The impact that the pandemic had on the mental health of international postgraduate law students was therefore witnessed first-hand. This paper discusses the challenges faced, and concerns raised by international postgraduate law students at qLegal as a result of the pandemic. It examines the steps taken by qLegal to maximise student engagement and promote positive student mental health when rapidly switching to a model of online delivery. The paper concludes by outlining the steps qLegal will take to monitor and address the impact that online delivery in this period of global uncertainty has on the mental health of the next cohort of postgraduate CLE students.

scholarly journals Interdisciplinarity and Clinical Legal Education: how synergies can improve access to rights in prison

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 210
Author(s):  
Cecilia Blengino
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
School Curriculum ◽  
Law School ◽  
Education Movement ◽  
The Future ◽  
Legal Positivist ◽  
The Law ◽  
Improve Access ◽  
Positivist Approach

<p>This article discusses the resistance experienced by the clinical legal education movement in Italy due to a widespread legal positivist approach which views law as a self-contained technical subject, and excludes interdisciplinarity from the law school curriculum.</p><p>The choice that the newly-born Italian CLE movement now faces is the option to either become a new socio-legal epistemology of law in action and a social change-maker, or to ascribe to a simple restyling of legal education to include certain practical activities aimed at introducing students to the profession. The future of the movement will depend on whether the rapid increase in the number of clinics will be matched by appropriate reflection on "how clinics might be consciously designed around exposing students to gaps between the law in books and the law in action".</p>

scholarly journals Transforming legal education through emotions

Legal Studies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 450-479 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Jones
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Objective Analysis ◽  
Transformative Power ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Legal Scholarship ◽  
Law Degree

AbstractLaw has traditionally viewed emotions as the enemies of rationality and reason, irrational and potentially dangerous forces which must be suppressed or disregarded. This separation and enmity has been mirrored within undergraduate legal education in England and Wales, with its rigid focus on seemingly impartial and objective analysis and notions such as the ubiquitous ‘thinking like a lawyer’. This paper will argue that attempts to disregard or suppress emotions within the law school are both misguided and destined to fail. It will explore the integral part emotions play within effective legal learning, the development of legal skills, and the well-being of both law students and legal academics. It will also consider how developments in legal scholarship and the evolving climate of higher education generally offer some potential, but also pitfalls, for the future acknowledgment and incorporation of emotions within undergraduate legal education in England and Wales. Bodies of literature relating to not only legal education, but also education generally, psychology and philosophy will be drawn on to demonstrate that emotions have a potentially transformative power within legal education, requiring them to be acknowledged and utilised within a more holistic, integrated form of law degree.

scholarly journals Water Retention in Nature-Based Solutions—Assessment of Potential Economic Effects for Local Social Groups

Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 3347
Author(s):  
Zwoździak Jerzy ◽  
Szałata Łukasz ◽  
Zwoździak Anna ◽  
Kwiecińska Kornelia ◽  
Byelyayev Maksym
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Water Retention ◽  
Economic Effect ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Economic Effects ◽  
Operating Costs ◽  
Current State ◽  
The Impact

The upcoming trends related to climate change are increasing the level of interest of social groups in solutions for the implementation and the realization of activities that will ensure the change of these trends and can reduce the impact on the environment, including the health of the community exposed to these impacts. The implementation of solutions aimed at improving the quality of the environment requires taking into account not only the environmental aspects but also the economic aspect. Taking into account the analysis of solutions changing the current state of climate change, the article focuses on the analysis of the potential economic effect caused by the implementation of nature-based solutions (NBSs) in terms of reducing the operating costs related to water retention for local social groups. The analysis is based on a case study, one of the research projects studying nature-based solutions, created as part of the Grow Green project (H2020) in Wrocław in 2017–2022. The results of the analysis are an observed potential positive change in economic effects, i.e., approximately 85.90% of the operating costs related to water retention have been reduced for local social groups by NBSs.

The Impact of Legal Education: An In-Depth Examination of Career-relevant Interests, Attitudes, and Personality Traits Among First-Year Law Students

1979 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 791-868 ◽  
Author(s):  
James M. Hedegard
Keyword(s):  
School Environment ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Personality Characteristics ◽  
First Year ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
School Class ◽  
Career Plans ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Behavioral Styles

This article examines in detail patterns of change in career-relevant interests, attitudes, and personality characteristics among first-year students in one law school. The data presented suggest that a single entering law school class can be viewed as a varied group in terms of career plans and potential behavioral styles. Moreover, immersion in the law school environment may accentuate this initial variability. Although some studies have suggested that, overall, first-year law students experience a drop in law interests, including interests in altruistic and “socially conscious” career activities, the methods of analysis used in this study suggest alternative interpretations of some aspects of such changes. In addition, the author believes these methods shed greater light on the overall process of professional development in law school.

scholarly journals Research knowledge in undergraduate school in Brazil: a comparison between medical and law students

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 273-280 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio José Souza Reis Filho ◽  
Bruno Bezerril Andrade ◽  
Vitor Rosa Ramos de Mendonça ◽  
Manoel Barral-Netto
Keyword(s):  
Medical Students ◽  
Educational Institution ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Students ◽  
First Year ◽  
Research Experience ◽  
Research Knowledge ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
Research Activities ◽  
The Impact

ABSTRACT Objective: Exposure to science education during college may affect a student's profile, and research experience may be associated with better professional performance. We hypothesized that the impact of research experience obtained during graduate study differs among professional curricula and among graduate courses. Methods: A validated multiple-choice questionnaire concerning scientific concepts was given to students in the first and fourth years of medical and law school at a public Brazilian educational institution. Results: Medical students participated more frequently in introductory scientific programs than law students, and this trend increased from the first to the fourth years of study. In both curricula, fourth-year students displayed a higher percentage of correct answers than first-year students. A higher proportion of fourth-year students correctly defined the concepts of scientific hypothesis and scientific theory. In the areas of interpretation and writing of scientific papers, fourth-year students, in both curricula, felt more confident than first-year students. Although medical students felt less confident in planning and conducting research projects than law students, they were more involved in research activities. Conclusion: Medical graduation seems to favor the development of critical scientific maturity than law graduation. Specific policy in medical schools is a reasonable explanation for medical students’ participation in more scientific activities.

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