scholarly journals Candor and the Politics of Law Teaching

2014 ◽  
Vol 99 ◽  
pp. 27-33
Author(s):  
Paul Campos
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Graduation Rates ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Law School ◽  
The Past ◽  
American Law ◽  
School Graduation ◽  
Ethical Obligations

Over the past 25 years, the price of legal education has skyrocketed, while the labor market for new attorneys has contracted sharply relative to law school graduation rates.  This article addresses the ethical obligations law teachers owe their students as a consequence of the crisis of the contemporary American law school.

The Proliferation of Case Method Teaching in American Law Schools: Mr. Langdell's Emblematic “Abomination,” 1890-1915

2006 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce A. Kimball
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Professional Education ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Law School ◽  
Case Method ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
American Higher Education ◽  
American Law ◽  
Law Professors

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.

scholarly journals Law School Learning Outcomes: Legal English Course Contribution

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-146
Author(s):  
Elena Vyushkina
Keyword(s):  
Learning Outcomes ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Oral Communication ◽  
Professional Associations ◽  
Field Studies ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Legal Writing ◽  
American Law ◽  
Russian Law

Abstract Standards of professional legal education are developed by different organizations: in some countries these are governmental bodies, in others these are professional associations. Apart from a country these standards include Learning Outcomes which shape law schools’ curricula. Both American and European standards mention, to different extent, written and oral communication in the legal context, but a number and contents of subjects directed at developing and mastering professional communicative competency differ a lot. There are disciplines totally devoted to the competency named (e.g. legal writing) as well as courses in which communicative skills are an integral constituent for their successful completion (e.g. basis of negotiations/mediation/client consultation). The article goal is to find a place and role of a Legal English (LE) course in achieving learning outcomes connected with professional communicative competence. The methodology incorporated desk and field studies. The literature review is aimed at identifying current state of affairs in American law schools, as they provide first-class legal education recognized all over the world, and in Russian law schools, as the author works in this system and is interested in its development. A questionnaire was designed to explore Russian law school graduates’ assessment of practicality of subjects they had studied for their professional activities. The analysis of literature and Internet sources allowed to specify the ways of teaching written and oral communication in American law schools and to highlight the situation in Russian legal education. It shows that the Russian system is characterized by predominance of teaching theory of substantive and procedural rules of law and lack of curriculum disciplines aimed at cultivating skills and competencies. A survey of Russian law schools’ recent graduates indicates that most of communicative, in a broad sense, skills, which they use in their everyday work, were obtained within their LE classes. So, complementing a LE course with modules devoted to different aspects of legal writing and specific patterns of lawyer-client, lawyer-lawyer, lawyer-judge communication will definitely contribute to achieving learning outcomes which are put forward by legal education standards.

The Legal Education of the First Chinese American Admitted to the New York Bar in the Twentieth Century and his Crusade to End Discrimination Against Ethnic Chinese in America

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 219-229
Author(s):  
Li Chen
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Extracurricular Activities ◽  
First Generation ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Chinese American ◽  
Law School ◽  
New York University ◽  
Ethnic Chinese ◽  
American Law

AbstractThis article attempts to reveal how a typical first generation Chinese American activist set out to go to law school to learn the skill set to help fight against racial prejudice directed at the Chinese in the early twentieth century. It examines how Hua Chuen Mei, a first-generation Chinese American lawyer was educated and trained in America; it primarily traces his undergraduate and law school education at Columbia and New York University Law School from 1910–1914 to show how he overcame the odds and excelled academically to complete his undergraduate and law degree programs with flying colors. It revisits his extracurricular activities to understand what motivated early Chinese immigrants like him to seek legal education, and what issues were uppermost in the mind of a typical Chinese American law student in that era.

scholarly journals WIĘCEJ TEORII I WIĘCEJ PRAKTYKI? KSZTAŁCENIE INTERDYSCYPLINARNE I NIEDOGMATYCZNE W PROGRAMACH STUDIÓW PRAWNICZYCH AMERYKAŃSKICH UCZELNI

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 53
Author(s):  
Tymoteusz Zych
Keyword(s):  
Legal Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
American Law ◽  
Bar Association ◽  
Polish Law ◽  
Interdisciplinary Courses ◽  
School Curricula

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.

scholarly journals A "Mean Hard Place"? Law Students Tell it as it is

2005 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 197
Author(s):  
Caroline Morris
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Female Students ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Student Interactions ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Us ◽  
Hard Place

Empirical research carried out in the US in the last 10-15 years reveals that law students are generally dissatisfied with their experiences there. The negative effects of legal education are particularly marked for female students. This study, carried out at Victoria University of Wellington in late 2004 seeks to replicate earlier United States studies and queries whether the influx of female students into law school in the past ten years has effected any change in how law school is experienced. It asks: how comfortable are students with lecturer interactions inside and outside the classroom? with student interactions? how attached are they to their law school? why did they come to law school and how do they feel about their performance while there?

scholarly journals Bringing Purposefulness to the American Law School’s Support of Professional Identity Formation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis D. Bilionis
Keyword(s):  
Professional Identity ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Educational Process ◽  
Law School ◽  
Professional Identity Formation ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
American Law ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Staff Experiences

Ten years after the publication of Educating Lawyers, a growing number of American law schools are taking initiative to better support their students in the formation of professional identity. There is widespread recognition that success in these efforts requires an element of “purposefulness” on the part of law faculty and staff. Experiences, environments, and pedagogies that actually work for professional identity formation must be crafted and promoted with intentionality. Bringing the requisite purposefulness to the effort, however, will take a mindset about the education of a lawyer that will be new to many in legal education. This article explores that mindset and the habits of the mind that will best serve law schools as they move forward in this area. Schools need not abandon prevailing approaches to the cognitive and skills dimensions of a law student’s education that Educating Lawyers called the first and second apprenticeships, respectively. But when it comes to the third apprenticeship of professional identity and sense of purpose, a reorientation in thinking about law students, their law school, and the educational process is necessary. That change in the way of thinking can be invigorating and empowering, revealing opportunities with time, talent, space, and experiences that have been underexplored by American legal education.

Legal Education in Taiwan: Evolution and Innovation

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chih-Chieh LIN ◽  
Mong-Hwa CHIN ◽  
Shang-Jyh LIU
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Social Enterprise ◽  
Traditional Approach ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Legal Professionals ◽  
The Past ◽  
Civil Rights Movements ◽  
Experimental Approaches

AbstractTaiwanese legal education is undergoing transformation and diversification. While the traditional approach to legal education has produced legal professionals who have led civil rights movements and contributed to the democratization of Taiwan, it has failed to meet the challenges of today’s world. Under globalization, Taiwanese industries and society now require lawyers capable of solving transnational legal disputes and legal issues regarding developments in technology and changes in society. However, these new challenges also provide law schools in Taiwan with an opportunity to apply experimental approaches, to innovate legal education. This essay describes the past and present state of legal education in Taiwan, especially its development since the government’s failed attempt at reform. Furthermore, it introduces the successful example of National Chiao Tung University’s Law School—a new law school that has developed a creative model of “innovation hub” and “social enterprise” that is transforming Taiwan’s legal education.

AALS Panel – Global Legal Education – Can American Law Schools Respond to the Opportunities?

2004 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry Bakken
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Foreign Law ◽  
American Law ◽  
Foreign Governments ◽  
Simultaneous Movement

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.

scholarly journals Why not an International Journal of Clinical Legal Education?

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Gold
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Active Role ◽  
The United States ◽  
Law School ◽  
The Past ◽  
School Based ◽  
Important Milestone

Jerome Frank may have suggested the term Clinical Legal Education (CLE) first when he asked “Why Not a Clinical Lawyer School?”2; but, it was not until the New York City based Council on Legal Education for Professional Responsibility (CLEPR), funded by the Ford Foundation, took the pre-eminently active role in promoting and supporting law school-based experimentation in the 1970s and 1980s that CLE truly had an opportunity to develop. Over the past thirty plus years CLE has become more and more central to legal education, especially in the United States; innovations elsewhere have been fewer, more modest, and slower to develop, but of significance to the shifting culture of law learning, wherever they have taken place. The inception of the Journal3 marks an important milestone in the continuing development of CLE; for with this volume, we formally recognise that CLE is a vitally important and diverse phenomenon with a global reach.

scholarly journals To work or not to work... Before law school: apprehension, confidence, and cynicism among law students

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yung-Yi Diana Pan
Keyword(s):  
Work Experience ◽  
Immigrant Students ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Economic Recession ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Work Experiences ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
American Law

<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify; line-height: 200%; -ms-text-justify: inter-ideograph;"> </p><p>Most socio-legal scholarship does not examine pre-law school preparation, more specifically, work experience. The recent American economic recession brought many working adults back into the fold of school. With regard to legal education in particular, how might work experience before law school affect students’ perceptions of the profession, themselves, and their career trajectories? And, how do these experiences vary between law schools, and among law students? Drawing on an ethnographic study at two divergently-ranked American law schools between 2009-2011 (the beginnings of the economic crisis), I argue that student work experiences (or lack thereof) before law school matter for their own perceptions of their school and overall career outlook. I typologize those students who transitioned immediately from undergraduate to law school as "conventionals," and those with work experience prior to commencing legal education as "returnees." I find that overall, returnees are more confident about completing law school, yet cynical about legal education, while their conventional counterparts respect the pedagogy but remain apprehensive regarding their career outlook. In this respect, work experience provides a form of "capital." Notably, most immigrant students in this study are conventionals, and I provide some suggestions to better incorporate these students who already feel as if they are posturing in an unfamiliar cultural and professional environment.</p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify; line-height: 200%; -ms-text-justify: inter-ideograph;"> </p>

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document