Law School 2.0

LWI 2012 Conference Presentation

2012-05-25T22:19:59-06:00

For many years, legal education has been criticized for not teaching its students enough of the practical skills they need to function effectively as lawyers. Those of us who teach legal writing have always understood this. Most of us teach in the first year, although some of us also teach upper level writing courses as well. Writing, of course, is certainly is an important skill for lawyers. But what is also needed is innovation in the teaching of doctrine, and because many (if not most) LRW faculty practiced law before becoming teachers, we are well positioned to teach doctrine in a practice-focused way.

While some of this sort of teaching can be accomplished in clinics, much more can be provided by simply making many of the courses we already have more integrated, with better formative assessment, and based more on a design of teaching “doctrine-in-context.” Legal writing teachers are well positioned to develop, propose, and teach such courses, and it could present a tremendous opportunity for us. My presentation at the LWI Biennial Conference this year will detail my Discovery Practice course, and the development of a “Carnegie Integrated Course" requirement at the University of Denver.

While more resources will – at many schools – be put into clinics, there is more that can be done in a non-live client environment to improve writing skills and prepare students for practice. One of the things that can be done is to offer more simulation-based practice courses with a doctrinal focus that include a significant writing component. Those of us who teach legal writing are, in many cases, the best-positioned members of our faculties to teach such courses, and indeed, a few of us already do. But it is still not widespread.

True, many schools have upper level writing courses, but this effort includes, but (in many cases) could go beyond those courses. These new courses are ones that combine a significant doctrinal component with formative assessment of numerous writing projects, taught in a fully simulated practice environment. This presentation will focus on how to teach such a course, and how to advocate for such courses in your law school. Further, it will describe the creation of a course requirements list for what we at the University of Denver law school are calling “Carnegie Integrated Courses” (CIC), and describe the current state of this project. Here is the Prezi I will be using during my talk:

If you prefer to view it at the Prezi site, here is a link to the Prezi for my talk, which is scheduled for Friday, June 1 at 10:00 a.m. during the LWI Conference in Desert Springs, California. If you would like more information about the Discovery Practice course that I teach (which is an example of the CIC model), you can find a blog post about it here, and an article written about it by one of my former students here. Also, a complete teaching portfolio for the course is available on the Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers site, which you can find here.

For many of us, a career teaching just legal writing might feel limiting in the long term, but adding such a course to your portfolio and getting it accepted into the curriculum could present a terrific opportunity for professional development. A long-term mix of teaching some first year legal writing, and some upper-level writing courses with a significant simulation and practice focus, might well be the direction that many schools will be moving over the next several years as they adjust their curricula to respond to the Carnegie report. Accordingly, this could be both a broadening of focus and a tremendous opportunity for the legal writing community, and many of us will want to be well positioned to take advantage of it.

New Video for Law School 2.0

2012-05-11T12:12:51-06:00

In the last of three videos that I prepared about my work - with the help of Lexis - I talk about my book Law School 2.0: Legal Education for a Digital Age (LexisNexis/Mattew Bender 2009). In the book I explain what I call the cost/change connundrum in legal education: we know what we need to do (smaller classes, more skills training) but most of it involves lower faculty-student ratios and more individualized feedback. And that costs more money, at a time when legal education is already under fire for being expensive. The thesis of the book - and many of the posts on this blog by the same name - is that the only way we can break through the cost/change connundrum in legal education is to be creative in the use of technology. In the video, I make the same argument, and I also introduce the idea of making a large class "smaller" by putting 2/3rds of the material online and having smaller classes actually meet once per week. I explain this idea in greater detail in yesterday's post A Response: The Issue of Skills Course Supply and Demand.

A Response: The Issue of Skills Course Supply and Demand

2012-05-10T11:37:16-06:00

I have noted here a welcome to the law student legal education reform blog Law Schooled. Having the student voice in this discussion is incredibly important. There have been numerous thoughtful posts already on their blog, and I encourage you to read it and keep track of it.

A recent post at the Law Schooled blog asked for clarification of something Scott Fruehwald wrote at the Legal Skills Prof Blog: “take as many skills courses and clinics as you can. If students take more skills courses and clinics, your law school will have to hire more skills professors and offer more skills options.”

The poster at Law Schooled explained that at her school the skills courses are always full, and it is not clear whether long wait lists have an effect on administration. It is obvious to students that the large classes are more cost effective for law schools, and smaller classes are more expensive. And students just don’t understand how signing up for more skills classes will make a difference – that it would actually increase the number of skills classes that are made available. “Is there a magic number that will signify that enough of us want these courses to push law schools to change the supply of skills courses to meet our demands?”

Scott responded in the comments that it is a question of “allocation of resources,” and noted that some schools have already started to respond to this issue, citing the consortium schools that are part of the Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers project. (Full disclosure: my own school is a member of the consortium). And he made mention of the Context and Practice Series (from Carolina) and the Skills & Values Series (from Lexis) (and I am an author and series editor of the Lexis books) as new forms of teaching materials that law professors can use to teach in a more practice-focused way. He also encourages students to pick law schools that are part of ETL and encourage administration at their own schools to invest in teaching and not new buildings.

The post at Law Schooled brings up a terrifically important issue. Students want to have a voice, but they don’t know where to put it or how to have impact. Scott makes some good suggestions, he encourages civility, and even adds a reminder that they will be alumni one day, and being asked for money. These are all good suggestions, but I wanted to add a few more.

It is true that the power of “voting with your feet” is limited if the demand for skills courses outstrips supply. If the courses are full, you can’t select it, and you are often left with a traditional doctrinal course. But there are other things that students can do. They can vote with evaluations – in most schools administration looks carefully at student evaluations. They can petition the Associate Dean for more skills courses, and ask the registrar for data on how many students are waitlisted for these courses. By the way, while you are speaking with your Associate Dean, encourage her not to address the problem solely with adjuncts. The problem with adjuncts is they often don’t know how to teach in this way, and (because they practice law all day) have trouble providing the formative feedback that these courses require.

Students can also ask their professors – respectfully – questions like: “Could we work on drafting a contract in this class?” Or: “Could we draft a Complaint and Answer?” That kind of question might not create instant change, but it would make an impression, and future students might get the benefit.

Finally, a longer-term answer to the question posted at the Law Schooled blog. It comes from a suggestion I made at the FutureEd3 Conference in New York a year ago, and I often wonder how many students would welcome this. But suppose you had a Civil Procedure class with a great professor who wanted to incorporate skills more in the class. Unfortunately, it is a 90-student class, and so that is hard to do. It meets three times per week, and right now, those classes are mostly traditional “Socratic” method format: going through cases to learn the doctrine of Civ. Pro. from mostly appellate cases.

But suppose the professor taped a full set of those classes for the semester last year – with students in the class asking the usual questions and responding to the professor’s inquiries. This year, the class is divided into three sub-sections – let’s call them A, B, and C, with 30 students each, and “class” meets three times per week – on M/W/F at 10 a.m. You are in Section B, which means you do the assigned reading and watch the class online on Monday and Friday, but on Wednesday, you go to the class with the professor “live” and focus on assignments that come out of the doctrine you are learning in the online class and the reading. (On Mondays, Section A attends the small class, and on Friday, Section C does). Online during the week, you also participate in a discussion about the cases and doctrine with the professor and fellow students in the course.

(A few things to note: First, ABA accreditation standards would not allow this much time spent learning online during the first year. But it would not prohibit such a course design in the upper levels, and any school can experiment with a course in this way with notice to the ABA. Second, assume that sufficient coverage of the material needed for "bar courses" is still possible; I believe that to be true, but the case for that is beyond the subject of this post. Third, the technology to make this work - and well - is not new, and is reliable.)

Sometimes, I think it is students who come to law school with preconceived notions of how classes will go. Perhaps this comes from the movies, but also (unfortunately) from college classes they have taken. Professors need to think “outside the box” but perhaps students do too. How would students respond to such a course design? If not in the first year, then how about Evidence or Admin Law in the second or third year? These are all courses that are currently in the curriculum, and making the changes described here would have almost no additional cost. There would be a need for currently employed faculty to make some significant changes, but I suspect if they did, they would find it much more fun to teach in this way. We could make significant strides in teaching in a more practice-focused way, and we would not have to hire additional faculty, or push these curricular changes onto our adjuncts.

Students at Law Schooled, would you prefer to attend a class in this format? Do you think it would work? How could this model be improved?

New Video for the Skills & Values Series

2012-05-08T17:48:43-06:00

At the AALS conference a few months ago, LexisNexis also asked me to answer some questions relating generally to the Skills & Values Series of law school textbooks, of which I am one of two Series editors. In this video, I explain the reasons behind the design of the Series. I also explain what the term "Carnegie Integrated Course" means, and how the S&V Series provides support to teachers who want to teach in this way:

New Video for Skills & Values: Discovery Practice

2012-05-07T17:46:00-06:00

My publisher, LexisNexis, asked me to sit down for a video about the Discovery book during the AALS Conference a few months ago, and they just posted the result to YouTube. It came out pretty well, I think (even though I look old and tired). It explains how the Discovery book works, and how I use it in my Carnegie Integrated course on Discovery Law:

If you would like to know more about the Discovery book, you can visit the website for the book here.

Law Students Come Together at Law Schooled

2012-04-04T09:20:48-06:00

A new blog has come online that publishes and disseminates information about legal education reform for law students. This is an important development, because students need to be informed about the discussion so they can make good choices about which law school to attend, and how to get the education they need at the law school they attend.

I think law students have not yet had much of a voice in this discussion for two reasons: first, they are focused on the experience for only three years, and in the first year (and even after) it is hard to think about anything else; and second, because we (legal educators) have not encouraged them to speak up enough or given them enough options. When law students become informed about these questions, and vote with their dollars (in selecting a law school) and with their feet (in selecting upper level courses to take) the legal academy will have to take notice. After all, without students, there isn't much reason for us to be here.

But it is critical that their effort not be a flash in the pan. I hope Law Schooled will have a succession plan in place, so that as students graduate and move into their careers, the discussion can be sustained. In the meantime, it is good to see students joining in the discussion in an informed way. Welcome! (Hat tip to Scott Fruehwald's post on this).

CELT Conference Presentation

2012-03-29T13:32:21-06:00

Tonight I am giving a talk at a conference sponsored by the Center for Excellence in Law Teaching (CELT) at Albany Law School. The conference, which has attracted over 100 attendees (mostly clinical and doctrinal professors), is entitled Setting and Assessing Learning Objectives from Day One. The full program for the conference can be found here. It looks to be a terrific conference that will advance the discussion about outcomes-driven assessment and curricular design in legal education.

In many ways, this conference is the continuation of the Legal Education at the Crossroads: Assessment Conference that I hosted at the University of Denver in September of 2009. Much has happened in this area since that conference, and it is a good time for those who are moving the discussion forward to gather again to learn from each others’ experiences and developing knowledge.

My talk tonight, which starts off the conference, is entitled Update on Outcomes Reform in Legal Education. I have decided that I need to provide some background before I get to updates – I am concerned that some of the attendees might feel like they are coming into the middle of a conversation, so a little background is warranted. Of course Mary Lynch, the conference organizer and Director of CELT, has given me an impossible task. Providing a precise update on a topic that is expanding like kudzu throughout legal education is almost impossible.

But here is a link to the Prezi that will go with my talk. I have used the age-old journalist’s model of the Five “Ws” and one “H” to structure my remarks. And I have intentionally used the metaphor of the background picture – we are climbing a mountain, and assessment can be the red guide rope that we have needed for many years.

During my talk, I will cite several reference points. Of course, the latest draft of the Accreditation Standards on outcomes are important, and we will look at that. Here is a link to the current draft. On the subject of objections to outcomes assessment, everyone should read Mary Lynch’s article (forthcoming in the William Mitchell Law Review) The Top Ten Myths Concerning Student Learning Outcomes in Legal Education. In her article, Mary describes and addresses 10 common objections that most of us involved in outcomes assessment have heard from some of our colleagues.

I will also reference Bloom’s taxonomy, and how helpful it (and several of its offspring) can be when trying to articulate learning outcomes. Here is a link to the graphic version of the taxonomy that I used in my talk, which also includes several other versions of the Bloom “wheel.” I make reference to the Shultz/Zedick Lawyering Effectiveness factors, and you can find a list of those, and an article describing them, here. And I will speak a bit about my concern that there exists some confusion between the terms Professionalism and Professional Identity; they are not the same, and I think understanding PI as a separate learning outcome is a critical step in achieving the goals of the Carnegie report, as will being able to assess how well (and in what direction) we are advancing the development of professional identity in our students. I have a blog post about the confusion issue here, where I try to explain my view of the separation between the two concepts.

David Segal: The Business of Law Schools is "Crazy"

2012-02-11T12:02:31-07:00

Recently, Bloomberg Law posted a video interview with New York Times reporter David Segal on YouTube. Mr. Segal is the reporter who has written several articles over the last year highly critical of legal education generally, and law school economics in particular. If you would like to read those articles, you may find them here, here, here, and here.

In the video interview, Mr. Segal explains how he came to be interested in the subject of legal education, alleges that the "business of law school is crazy," and refers to the "madness" of the overly influential and "pathological" U.S. News rankings. He calls the "prestige race" sparked by U.S. News "incredibly destructive."

Concerning the tension between rising student debt and the history of some law schools to not reveal accurate employment information, Mr. Segal argues in favor of law schools "patronizing" potential students to provide that information and let them know how tough it is to make a living as a lawyer. He also argues in favor of a range of law schools producing different "levels" of lawyers, from those qualified to handle small matters to those qualified to handle bigger ones, suggesting that this would benefit consumers. He charges that the ABA has a conflict of interest in being the regulating body for legal education, since lawyers have an interest in their being fewer lawyers on the market, and want to keep wages high. Near the end of the interview, Mr. Segal strikes a discouraging note when he predicts that the extent of reform that the ABA or Congress is likely to force will be limited to better reporting of employment data and similar information.

Here is the video (14 minutes):

From my point of view, in his articles in the Times and in this video, Mr. Segal has put a spotlight on problems in legal education at the top (schools that mostly disfavor teaching lawyering skills) and at the bottom (schools that charge a lot and may be playing fast and loose with employment data). But he misses the good middle almost entirely.

There are many law schools today that are working hard (and harder every day) to train their graduates better for a wider range of law practice. One way of looking at the concern about a lack of "small matter" lawyers is that too many law schools are not producing graduates who are ready to practice when they leave, some of whom might "hang out a shingle" competently, and develop a small matter practice and make a decent living doing so (and be able to pay off their educational debt).

I suppose the sexier, headline grabbing, front page "above the fold" articles are the ones Mr. Segal wants to write. But there is another very encouraging story that he is missing, and by not paying attention to it, he is not providing the full picture of legal education today. There are many encouraging signs. For a start, he might want to look at the Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers initiative of the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System. A consortium of law schools - across the spectrum - are working hard to improve legal education. My own course portfolio - for the Discovery Practicum course - was one of the first ones posted, but I am hardly alone; more and more law professors are changing how they teach law, in part by making it more practice focused.

These efforts are about producing better value for the cost of legal education. We may not be able to reduce the cost, but we can teach better, and prepare our students for a variety of practice settings. As I argue in the Law School 2.0 book, leveraging technology will play an increasingly important role in providing better value for the cost. This was also the subject of my talk at New York Law School as part of the Future Ed 3 Conference last April.

Personally, Mr. Segal's attack on law schools for not teaching practical skills was the toughest for me to take. He is right, at least at the "top" schools, and the rest of us - sure, we could all do more. But to suggest that law schools do not teach real lawyering skills was hard to swallow. I have taught a course doing just that for over 20 years, and have written extensively about how to do this. After teaching as an adjunct for many years, I left a healthy 20 year practice to teach full time at the University of Denver so I could do more of this kind of teaching. A former student in the Discovery course wrote an article in the February issue of the Denver Bar Asssociation's montly publication about how it helped her to be ready for practice. A more eloquent rebuke to Mr. Segal's article could not be imagined - at least not by me.

Yes, that is just one course. But there are many like it. And even more broadly, the University of Denver has required a course of all first year students called Lawyering Process, and I have taught in that program for 15 years (as an adjunct for six years, and full-time faculty for 9). I have been Director of that program for the last 4 years. My colleagues (9 full-time faculty members) believe very strongly in what we do - teaching lawyering skills to first year students - and many of us have dedicated our careers to doing this. And we are not alone! Lawyering skills teachers abound in nearly every law school across the country. Are there issues about how we are perceived and valued in the academy? Sure. But we teach these skills day in, day out. Hundreds of us. The complete picture is much better, and more encouraging, than Mr. Segal acknowledges, and that story would benefit from his spotlight. There's something to write about.

Snow Day? University Closed? Class is in Session.

2012-02-05T13:05:59-07:00

Last Thursday evening, the University of Denver announced it would be closed on Friday, February 3. A massive snow storm was coming in overnight, and indeed it was not a false alarm. In the morning, the roads were treacherous, and it snowed all day Friday and into the night. When it finally cleared on Saturday, we had two feet of snow in our front yard.

One of my colleagues once said about the frequency of University closings: "It usually takes a direct hit by an asteroid." Meaning, it never happens. But the University was right to close.

But why also cancel classes? We have to make them up at some point, and that can extend the semester too late. And with "integrated" law school skills classes - like the Discovery Practicum course I teach - it is very disruptive to postpone a class. It is not like a typical "doctrinal" course, where each class is essentially the same - going through cases in a casebook. Skipping one class just doubles up material in another, or adds a class to the end of the semester, or the end of semester material is skipped or compressed. It doesn't much matter to most law school courses. But it does matter to the Discovery class I teach.

So I conducted class online on Friday. The technology to support this is in place in almost every class: Blackboard, or a similar courseware system. I wrote to my students on Thursday evening to let them know that I would like to conduct class online the following day. To their credit, they seemed willing to go along with this - I was clear that I was not requiring them to participate, since the University was closed, and if they would rather go sledding, they could certainly do that. I prepared the class in the morning, and conducted it in the Lexis Webcourse site (basically, Blackboard) that comes with the textbook for the course (Discovery Practice, described elsewhere in this blog).

Like most classes, there was advance reading in the text and online, as well as a pre-class quiz (online) about the reading. I prepared a PowerPoint that went through the doctrinal material for the course (our subject was Answering Interrogatories), and then set up several discussion threads. The PPT made reference to those threads in several places, and it was there that we had the class discussion. The class extended the full class period - actually, it started before 1:30, and ended after 4:00 p.m., which is the usual class period (since we only meet once per week). I followed the discussion threads as they developed over the course of the class, and asked questions and added my guidance when it seemed helpful. At the end of the class, there were 110 postings made to seven threaded discussions over the course of 2.5 hours.

All but two of my students were able to attend the class, and they will be able to catch up - asynchronously - over the next few days when it is convenient for them. And, we all stayed safe and warm. Even better, last night I received an email from one of the students in the course, which read as follows: "I just wanted to say that I was initially apprehensive about the online idea but I am pleasantly surprised and impressed with how it turned out. Thanks for exposing a law school class to the new era!"

It was really simple to do, with technology that has been available to us for many years. What teacher today doesn't know how to use PowerPoint, an online courseware site to upload a file, and participate in online discussions? Sure, I worked all day when it might have been nice to enjoy the unexpected day off. But given this type of class, it was much better to conduct class online and stay on track.

It is perfectly appropriate to close the University when it is unsafe to travel, but I am becoming increasingly convinced that it has become an anachronism to cancel classes.

The Practicality of Practicums

2012-01-29T20:38:34-07:00

The February issue of The Docket, a montly publication of the Colorado Bar Association, includes an article by a former student, Beth A. Tomerlin. The article, The Practicality of Practicums: Thinking and Acting Like a Lawyer, One Class at a Time, describes the Discovery Practicum course that I have taught at DU Law School for nearly 20 years. Beth was a student of mine in Lawyering Process in her first year, and took the Discovery course in her second year. She graduated from the law school in 2007.

Needless to say, it is gratifying to read what a student has written after taking one of your courses, particularly when it is written from the perspective of having been out in practice for several years. But this is especially true when it makes such a convicing case about how the course helped her be prepared for practice. For any teacher, seeing a student succeed with what you taught them is immensely gratifying. For a teacher like me who has given so many years to this sort of teaching - well, it doesn't get better.

Although I have to say, it takes some getting used to. I first taught this course almost 20 years ago at DU, as an adjunct professor. I felt like I was about as alone as alone could be. I thought it was working, and my students seemed to think so too (for the most part). I tweaked the course over the years, and when I joined the full-time faculty in 2003 I revived the course in the curriculum, and have taught it once or twice a year since then.

It is not like this is rocket science or anything. It can be done with virtually any law school course. It is based on the simple proposition of "Learn and Do." Learn the rules and the cases - the applicable doctrine - and then practice it in between classes. In my experience, this is best accomplished when the course is designed as what I call a "whole course simulation," organized around a rich problem set.

It is this kind of course that really needs new teaching materials, since a traditional casebook just won't work. That is why I have been serving as Series Editor on the Skills & Values Series with Lexis for the last several years, and why I authored the S&V book for Discovery. Although you could use it in several different ways, it is designed to support this kind of whole course simulation (as are the other S&V texts).

In the Discovery course, students read the rule, applicable cases, and some information about strategy and context before class (some of which is in that print book shown above, and some of which is in the Webcourse for the book online), then we review and discuss that material in class, and then the students engage in a mock litigation and *use* the discovery tools and strategies we have learned about in class. Each week, they prepare a discovery document and serve it on their opposing counsel. The next week we learn about the next discovery rule, and then we practice that one. I give them feedback on each assignment. Later in the semester they take, defend, and act as a witness in a deposition (with student court reporters taking down the transcript). And at the end of the course they settle the case in settlement negotiations, and the final paper is their settlement agreement.

There are many advantages of teaching in this way. For starters, it's more fun. For the teacher as well as the students. As a result, both are more engaged, and engaged learners are learning more. Students love this approach (you may read some of my student evaluations at the link below). Imagine such a course with a professor lecturing about the rules and strategy during class, with students taking a final exam for 100% of the grade. Well, I suppose students could learn the rules and cases in the traditional class (although I don't think they would learn more substance than what my students learn anyway), but the retention rate would be awful. And they would never actually learn how to draft the discovery documents they will soon be asked to draft in practice.

But don't believe me! Read Beth's article - it's all in there.

When I read the Carnegie Report in 2007 I was gratified to see it argue in favor of more law school courses in which Doctrine, Skills, and Professional Identity are integrated. Because that perfectly describes the goal of the course design for the Discovery Practicum. Students learn the doctrine - be assured of that. But they also begin to develop their skills of using the doctrine (and hone their legal writing skills too - always a good thing). Perhaps most importantly, the simulation creates situations in which the students are called upon to begin to develop their professional identities. What kind of lawyer do they want to be? How will they behave when this situation arises in practice? A typical law school course can *ask* students questions like that, but until they are put in a situation that requires them to confront their own decision making process, they won't really know what their answer will be. I think that when the Carnegie Report called upon law schools to do a better job integrating Professional identity formation into the curriculum, this is the sort of opportunity they were referring to.

In sum, it is nice that the course is getting some attention, finally. But mostly I am proud of Beth, for working hard in law school, thinking through what she needed out of the experience, and now for making her way in her career. And I am proud that she feels like she received a good education at the DU Law School. Her article is a good rebuke to David Segal's most recent article in the New York Times, which had the headline: "What They Don't Teach You in Law School: Lawyering." Ha.

If you would like to learn more about how the Discovery course works, read Beth's article, and take a look at the teaching portfolio on the Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers website. Also, please feel free to contact me with any questions - I would be glad to help in any way I can.