AALS Panel – Global Legal Education – Maximizing the Internationalization of U.S. Students’ Legal Education: Ideas for Making the Most of Your Resources

2004 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-334
Author(s):  
Jennifer D'arcy Maher

My colleagues on this panel address the need for more internationalization in U.S. law schools and describe some of the difficulties in internationalizing instruction at a law school in a new European Union member state. As they acknowledge, internationalizing legal education can be expensive, competing with other budgetary demands on U.S. law schools. My remarks today will suggest methods to maximize internationalization less expensively, by using existing programs or by setting up new ones more effectively. Although composed for an audience of U.S. law school faculty members and administrators, these remarks, with some adaptation, may be useful for law faculty outside the United States.

2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 863-870 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marshall B. Kapp

Thirty years ago when I, an attorney, took a tenure-track faculty position at an innovative, newly opened medical school, I was an oddity — truly, a stranger in a strange land. Today it is not uncommon for American medical schools to employ an attorney as a tenured or tenure-track member of its faculty. Over these last three decades, the educational roles and responsibilities of health law faculty who teach in law schools have become increasingly well defined, with numerous health law courses and textbooks now generally accepted as part of the typical law school curriculum. However, the roles and responsibilities of attorney faculty members who teach in medical schools remain less clearly defined and likely are more individualized to the particular medical schools in which they teach. This essay explores some of the challenges and the opportunities which are given to attorney faculty members who teach in medical schools.


2006 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce A. Kimball

Case method teaching was first introduced into American higher education in 1870 by Christopher C. Langdell (1826-1906) of Harvard Law School (HLS), where it became closely associated with—and emblematic of—a set of academic meritocratic reforms. Though regnant today, “the ultimate triumph of [Langdell's] system was not apparent” for many years. The vast majority of students, alumni, and law professors initially derided it as an “abomination,” and for two decades case method and the associated reforms were largely confined to Harvard. During the subsequent twenty-five years between 1890 and 1915, a national controversy ensued as to whether case method teaching—and the concomitant meritocratic reforms—would predominate in legal education and, ultimately, professional education in the United States.


2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 535-578
Author(s):  
Bruce A. Kimball

Between 1915 and 1925, Harvard University conducted the first national public fund-raising campaign in higher education in the United States. At the same time, Harvard Law School attempted the first such effort in legal education. The law school organized its effort independently, in conjunction with its centennial in 1917. The university campaign succeeded magnificently by all accounts; the law school failed miserably. Though perfectly positioned for this new venture, Harvard Law School raised scarcely a quarter of its goal from merely 2 percent of its alumni. This essay presents the first account of this campaign and argues that its failure was rooted in longstanding cultural and professional objections that many of the school's alumni shared: law students and law schools neither need nor deserve benefactions, and such gifts worsen the overcrowding of the bar. Due to these objections, lethargy, apathy, and pessimism suffused the campaign. These factors weakened the leadership of the alumni association, the dean, and the president, leading to inept management, wasted time, and an unlikely strategy that was pursued ineffectively. All this doomed the campaign, particularly given the tragic interruptions of the dean's suicide and World War I, along with competition from the well-run campaigns for the University and for disaster relief due to the war.


2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 53
Author(s):  
Tymoteusz Zych

More Theory, more Practice? Interdisciplinary and NonDogmatic Education in American Law School CurriculaSummaryWhile American legal education is very often invoked as a modelfor Polish law faculties, the actual role of interdisciplinary and non--dogmatic courses in the curricula of American law schools has not beencoherently analysed yet. The American example shows that the conceptof legal education has a significant impact on the development of thelegal system. Interdisciplinary courses have been present in the curricula of university law schools since the beginning of American history.Currently the American Bar Association requires law schools to includenon-dogmatic contents in their curricula to obtain accreditation. Thewidest range of non-dogmatic courses is offered by the most prestigiouslaw schools. Leading American legal thinkers of all currents emphasisethe importance of interdisciplinary and non-dogmatic subjects in theeducational process. The paper concludes with a comparative analysisof the role of interdisciplinary subjects in law school curricula in Polandand in the United States.


1999 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 389
Author(s):  
R O McGechan

The author compares the teaching methods in law schools in the United States and New Zealand. The author first notes a comparison between direct lecturing and case method, finding merit in both. The author then points out that students' interest and enthusiasm often wane by second and third year, whether in New Zealand or America. The prestige of the American institutions' law reviews is also discussed, as well as some features of educational institutions (including classroom sizes and the curriculum). The author also discusses the New Zealand law school approach of getting part-time work experience while studying law. The author concludes that legal education needs a balance between the practical and the theoretical. 


2004 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 277-337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce A. Kimball

Christopher Columbus Langdell (1826–1906) is arguably the most influential figure in the history of legal education in the United States, having shaped the modern law school by introducing a number of significant reforms during his tenure as dean of Harvard Law School (HLS) from 1870 to 1895. Langdell's innovations—including the admission requirement of a bachelor's degree, the graded and sequential curriculum, the hurdle of annual examinations for continuation and graduation, the independent career track for professional faculty, the transformation of the professional library from a textbook repository into a scholarly resource, and the inductive pedagogy of teaching from cases—became the characteristics gradually adopted by university law schools after 1890 and, eventually, schools of other professions. Langdell thus transformed legal education from an undemanding, gentlemanly acculturation into an academic meritocracy.


2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 38-65
Author(s):  
K Rajashree ◽  
Sonika Bhardwaj

The law schools legal aid activities conducted through its clinics has come a long way in India especially since its inception in the early 1970’s. Its evolution has been gradual, intermittent and varied. Although The Bar Council of India (BCI) has mandated, establishing legal aid clinics as a pre-requisite for granting the necessary permissions before law schools start functioning, there are limited ideas of its purpose and objectives. An inherent lack of understanding its importance in terms of teaching, learning and research, the legal aid practices are largely left to the discretion of the individual law schools and interpretations of the individual faculty members. Combined with ideas heavily borrowed from the law schools in the US and individual experiences of the faculty members, legal aid practices in India are diversified. In the backdrop of this, the author intends to explore and map the aspiration of legal aid through an analysis of the key policy documents of legal education since India’s independence through an ontological framework. The ontology maps the aspirations of the legal aid clinics that was intended through these documents. Additionally, a case study of two important institutions have been taken as the case in point in order to verify whether the practices match such aspirations. Thereby, putting forth arguments that are critical for understanding the gaps between the aspiration and the state of reality. Key words: Legal aid Clinics, Law schools, Clinical, Legal education, Social justice


2009 ◽  
Vol 10 (6-7) ◽  
pp. 1127-1148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luigi Russi ◽  
Federico Longobardi

From the perspective of a non-American jurist, student-edited law reviews seem to be one of the most distinctive features of the United States legal education system. The development of law reviews in the United States has been particularly sustained in more recent years, with a literal proliferation of law (schools and law) reviews, both of general focus and subject-specific. With student-edited law journals making up the largest share of the legal periodical “market,” publication in highly ranked student-edited law reviews has come to acquire great significance also in relation to the law faculty selection and tenure-granting mechanism.


2004 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry Bakken

During the past decade many American law schools have identified and responded to the opportunity and necessity of training law students and lawyers for the challenges created by globalization. Opportunities are certainly available to schools with strong business, international trade and human rights programs. Opportunities are, however, also available to schools with interests and strengths in the newer disciplines such as conflict resolution, intellectual property and environment protection. Law schools which have ventured into global oriented training have recognized that the market is not simply a one-way-street for domestic students but also includes training of foreign law students and lawyers. Private foundations in the United States and abroad, foreign governments and our national government have helped finance foreign lawyer visits and training events throughout America. When international lawyers visit the United States, domestic law schools are involved as hosts, training sites, and sources of professional expertise. There has also been a simultaneous movement of domestic lawyers and law students through foreign law school programs and other study abroad opportunities. When all these international experiences are taken together one realizes the need for law schools to become more involved in the development and implementation of training and development of globally oriented legal education.


Author(s):  
Volodymyr Kakhnych

In the article the formation of legal education at the University of Melbourne, its short and successful path to worldwide recognitionis examined. The importance of researching such a successful example for national legal education is shown. Important researchby well-known professors who have worked at the University of Lviv and the University of Melbourne is depicted, and their contributionto the study of legal education in Melbourne is revealed.The author of the article shows that the experience of legal education in one of the oldest law schools in Australia – the Universityof Melbourne, which is now one of the world’s leading universities, as well as 50 best educational institutions in the world, is importantas an example of legal education for Ukrainian universities, in particular Lviv University. Legal education at Lviv University occupiesa significant place in the education of young professionals for crucial government positions.Founded in 1853, the University of Melbourne is the second oldest university in Australia. This is a state research university. Itconsists of 10 colleges located on the main campus and in the surrounding suburbs, which offer academic, cultural and sports programs.The University of Melbourne often ranks first among Australian universities in the world rankings. More than 46 % of his students areforeigners. This school is officially accredited by the Australian Department of Education and Training.The teaching of law, until 1873 at the University of Melbourne, was governed directly by the board and faculty; there was nocouncil or committee in charge of the faculty, and no head or administrator to lead the law course other than faculty and university officials.It was the council that decided on the details of the curriculum and considered students’ complaints about things like absenteeismand lecture venues. Other disciplines were in the same position. Not only in the field of law, but in general, the university did not havefaculties that would be responsible for certain areas of study.The university was so small that in 1872 it had only 134 students, 53 of whom studied law. In the early 1870s, the situation wasfavorable for change. The council committee explored the possibility of expanding the teaching of law by creating more subjects andlecture courses, and at the same time, by creating a new body, a faculty to oversee them.The council committee called this change the creation of a law school, and since then the terms “law school” (“law schools”) and“law faculty” have sometimes been interchangeable. Law classes were called a “school of law” for several months after their foundingin 1872. This term was sometimes used in another sense (as a discipline with honors). Despite the ambiguous terminology, the councilmeant the creation of the faculty and the accompanying reorganization of teaching in 1872–1873.The author of the article argues that building a legal education in Ukraine is impossible without a proper study of the experience,knowledge and practical skills that existed at the University of Melbourne. The opinion is based on the fact that the organization ofwork, cooperation with students and involvement of a large number of foreigners remains a model to follow. This approach to coope -ration and establishing contacts with their structure has made them famous and universally recognized worldwide. We can see thisbecause the University of Melbourne is now one of the world’s leading universities, as well as one of 50 best educational institutionsin the world.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document