Law School Innovation

Role Modeling for Future Academics

For many of us, there are a tiny fraction of our own students who will go into our particular field, law teaching.  That said, these students are usually easy to identify by their third year, in large part because they have developed an academic record which would support that ambition.   Some of the more academically distinguished schools, particularly the University of Chicago, seem to nuture those with an interest in teaching in a very intentional way, and with good results.

I suspect that part of the job of preparing these students to explore teaching is to open up our lives to them more than we sometimes do-- that is, let them see the lifestyle and intellectual life that law teaching allows.  For most of us, it was the experience of watching our own professors that inspired us in this direction.  Now that we are on the other side, we have a duty to recognize the effect of that role-modeling, and promote our own vocation to the extent we are proud of it.

-- Mark Osler

Will a uniform bar exam influence law school education for the better or for the worse?

The National Law Journal has this effective and important new piece, headlined "Uniform Bar Exam Drawing Closer To Reality." Here are the basics:

Next year, at least 10 states are expected to switch to the so-called Uniform Bar Exam, and 22 other jurisdictions are positioned to adopt the test in the next few years. The test, developed by the National Conference of Bar Examiners, will allow law school graduates to transport their bar scores across state lines without re-taking exams.  And backers say a uniform exam will improve the quality of bar exams, particularly in states with small test-development budgets.

The test still has big hurdles to overcome.  Several of the biggest legal markets have yet to sign on: New York, California, the District of Columbia, Florida, Illinois and Texas so far have taken a pass.  Some worry the test will give short shrift to important state law concepts. Others have scheduling problems and scoring concerns.  And the test puts a great deal of power in the hands of the NCBE, which gives some state-level bar officials pause.

And here is one prediction from the NLJ article about how these developments might impact law school education:

Moving toward one test will create notable changes in legal education and the practice of law, said Jerome Hafter, chair of the American Bar Association Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar.  The greatest benefit, he said, will be the portability of scores for new graduates.  In recent years, more jurisdictions have admitted out-of-state attorneys to practice by a motion to a state court; a portable score is part of a trend toward the nationalization -- if not globalization -- of legal practice, Hafter said.  He personally supports the uniform test, although the ABA legal education section has no official position on the issue.

It is important for states to be able set their own pass scores, Hafter said, but he expects that most eventually will settle on the same score, the equivalent of 135 out of 200 on the Multistate Bar Exam.  As more states move toward one test, Hafter expects a normalization of law school curriculum, to focus on the core subjects covered on the test.  Law schools would not feel the pressure to cover "niche" subjects such as workers' compensation or oil and gas law, since those subjects would not be included.

I have no doubt that the adoption of a uniform (and portable) new bar exam can and will have a profound impact on legal education, at the very least in those states that adopt the exam and probably in all states near states that adopt the exam.  If, for example, New Jersey and/or Connecticut both adopt the new Uniform Bar Exam (the nUBE), students attending the many law schools in New York City will surely be interested in making sure that some of their instruction is attentive to nUBE coverage.

Because the nUBE will definitely impact law schools -- especially those schools that have a significant student populations (1) eager to practice in nUBE-friendly jurisdictions and/or (2) that tend to worry a lot about bar passage -- the title of this post question whether that impact will be a good or bad development.  Because I think the status quo of bar exams tends to impact law school education for the worse, I am eager to believe that the nUBE might have a positive impact on legal education.  But I may be naively optimistic on this front and I am eager to hear other opinion.

Posted by DAB

Training the general practitioner

The law school curriculum sometimes seems very odd, as others have noted before. At better schools, most of the students aspire to high-paying jobs with large law firms. Few of them aspire to a low-paying general practice. Yet, our curriculum is crafted so as to train our students to be general practitioners. That is, we make them take roughly equal amounts of torts, property, contracts and criminal law in the first year, and sometimes into the second year. In the upper-level courses they may specialize to some degree, but rarely does that specialization include much that overlaps with what people at big firms actually do. That is, in both traditional classes and clinical offerings, there is often relatively little that covers the two primary functions of large-firm partners and associates: (1) The discovery process in litigation, and (2) the nuts-and-bolts of transactional law practice. Nor, at most schools, is there much to prepare students for what actually happens in criminal practice. The outcome is that we have trained best those who have done the worst and are relegated to a general practice, as they are unable to get large-firm jobs. (Please understand that personally I think these general-practice jobs actually can be far superior to large-firm practice; I am simply dealing with what I perceive as the desires of most students). Meanwhile, we have provided the least relevant training to those who have done the best, and get the plum big-firm jobs.

Of course, some grounding in the basic fundamentals of torts, property, contracts, and criminal law is essential. Still, are we over-doing it? What would be the right balance?

-- Mark Osler

The Professor-Driven Curriculum

One of the classes I teach is White Collar Crime.  It is a three-credit class, one credit more than my sentencing class, appeals and habeas, and juvenile justice. 

Many, if not most, schools offer a class on White Collar Crime-- it is a sexy, intriguing area of the law with real societal importance and great stories embedded within the cases.  Questions of greed, morality, celebrity, and the culture of affluence twist through much of the reading and analysis in the field.   Moreover, those who practice in this area tend to be high-paid partners in large firms rather than the solo practitioners we find in the rest of criminal law.   It's no wonder, either-- there is real money in defending or consulting on these issues.  One firm, for example, billed 1.5 million hours in connection with the recent SEC settlement with Siemens (including the hours of the accountants they retained).

Few if any the students in my class will ever have a significant practice in prosecuting or defending major white collar crimes.  My WCC class may turn out to be one of the least practical classes that they take.

Meanwhile, my school does not offer a similar class in Narcotics law, which also covers a sexy, intriguing area of the law with real societal importance and great stories embedded within the cases.  Importantly, nearly all of my students who go into criminal law will handle drug cases.  This class, if it existed (and I don't know if it exists anywhere), would be one of the most relevant classes a future prosecutor or defense attorney could take.

Given the similarities between this real and imagined class, why is it that the one covering material less relevant to my students' futures is a part of the canon, while the more-relevant class is not?

My hunch is that part of the answer is that America's law professors are more comfortable teaching about white-collar crime than drug crime.  We professors tend to come from a background where we have a better understanding of securities transactions than meth sales, and often our practical experience is at exactly the type of firm which does that kind of work.

Is it right that the professors' interests and backgrounds shape the curriculum, rather than the needs of the students?  It does strike me as a production-driven model (that, is the Soviet "you will consume what we make") rather than the consumption-driven pattern Americans usually prefer.

For what it is worth, any blame at my school for not offering narcotics law is mine-- it never occurred to me until now to propose that class to our curriculum committee.

-- Mark Osler

   

Google Fast Flip

Google FastFlip may offer a new way to quickly read news stories. It certainly looks like one can flip through headlines and first paragraphs faster than previously. For a preview see here.

News stories on google fastflip can be found here and here.

ellen s. podgor

Watching Kanye West Rather than Your Professor

Farhad Manjoo has a reminder of the remarkable amount of time we might spend away from our work pursuing digital distractions available online.

It seems useful to remind students to avoid such distractions during the course of this coming school year.  It is hard to imagine the email or Facebook status update that requires immediate review or response during class.

Distractions from work, of course, are not the purview of students alone--emails and news often distract me during my own writing.

Anupam Chander

Great Law Schools, Great Football?

College football and the legal academy are two worlds that both seem obsessed with rankings.  What may be surprising is how little overlap there is between those two worlds.  Intriguingly, those rankings, at least at the very top, are nearly mutually exclusive.  As of today, only one school (Cal) has both a top-10 law school and a top-10 football team. 

Of course, the dearth of great football programs coinciding with great law schools is in part due to prioritization by schools.  The Ivy League chose not to continue with high-cost I-A football long ago, and thus it is not surprising that Yale, Harvard, Columbia, and Penn are not powerhouses.  NYU and Chicago play in Division III, at the other end of the spectrum from their academic reputations, and Duke, Northwestern and the University of Virginia often lose more games than they win in Division I-A (as did Michigan last year).

A few intriguing questions arise from comparing these lists.  First, there are a number of football powerhouses that also host excellent law schools just outside the top rank, including USC, the University of Texas, and Ohio State.  What if... they funded their law schools like their football programs?  Would that be enough for them to break through? 

Second, is it just about money?  Consider the one school on both lists, Cal-Berkeley.  It is the flagship school for a state under severe budget restrictions, which has been feeling a pinch for a while and certainly is not as well-funded overall as many of the other top schools.  How do they do such a good job at both simultaneously?

At a superficial level, the job of improving a law school's ranking is similar to bumping up a football program.  Hiring is crucial, and getting the right students into the program.  However, in football there is an objective measure that trumps all others:  performance on the field.  How different would our rankings be if they were based on such an objective measure?  And what does it say about us that when we do consider "objective" measures, it almost always has to do with scholarship rather than the outcomes of our students' lives? 

-- Mark Osler

"The recession makes externships a sweeter deal for students"

The title of this post is the headline of this interesting recent article from the National Law Journal. Here is how it starts:

Without summer associate programs to rely on, law students are turning to alternate ways of gaining practical experience and making connections that could lead to full-time employment.

Many students are doing externships to fill that need. They work, unpaid, for credit under the supervision of faculty and an on-site attorney at a government agency, nonprofit organization or sometimes a corporation. (By contrast, internships can be for credit or for pay.) American Bar Association rules prohibit law firm externships.

Once thought valuable but not essential, externships are gaining a new stature as students do everything they can to land a job. Demand for, and participation in, externships have increased significantly, according to law school administrators.

As the economy batters law students' hopes for employment and law firms cut back or eliminate summer-associate programs, law schools are answering the criticism that they have done a poor job preparing law students for real legal work. Schools are revamping their programs, enlarging their focus to include many more opportunities for practical training. Externships are part of that picture.

"Reality's knocking: The recession is forcing schools to bow to reality"

The title of this post is the headline of this effective new National Law Journal article which highlights the various ways in which lean economic times are impacting law schools.  Here is a snippet that spotlights necessity being the nuturing mother of innovation:

The movement to incorporate practical skills into legal education isn't new, but legal educators and researchers report that the floundering economy is increasing incentives for law schools to revamp their curricula to prepare students for the realities of the legal profession. "A lot of the changes are in response to the marketplace," said David Van Zandt, dean of Northwestern University School of Law. "Students are concerned about getting jobs, and everybody wants to be relevant."

Graduates face stiff competition for law firm positions, and clients are balking at footing the bill to train new attorneys. Consequently, law school leaders consider it more important than ever to send students into the profession armed with practical skills, not just extensive knowledge of case law and legal theory.  More law schools are modifying coursework and adding practical classes to help students develop the skills past graduates have had the luxury of learning on the job. In that vein, a growing number of law schools are emphasizing teamwork, leadership, professional judgment and the ability to view issues from the clients' perspective.

"I think we are at a moment of historical change across the landscape of legal education," said Washington and Lee Dean Rodney A. Smolla. "When we look back at this period in five to 10 years, we will mark it as the time when the whole mission of law schools made a fundamental turn."

Some related recent posts:

• Is the bad economy going to change the relatiohsip between schools and firms?
• "Law school pays students to stay away"
• The bad summer
• Susskind on "The End of Lawyers? The End of Law Schools?" - liveblog
• How do tough times and tuition increases impact law school innovation?

Posted by DAB

Vanderbilt Law: America's Best Orientation?

In response to my earlier post regarding orientation, I received a detailed response from Suzanna Sherry, who has revamped the orientation at Vanderbilt.  One striking innovation is that they treat orientation as a class-- with tests and credit.  The basis for the class is the book Suzanna wrote with Tracey George, "What Every Law Student Really Needs To Know."  In whole, there are many aspects of the Vanderbilt orientation that other schools should consider emulating, including the time commitment, the breadth of what is covered, and the idea of treating orientation as a separate class.

 

Suzanna's description of this effort is below. 

 

The course is called "The Life of the Law," and meets for 3 hours a day for four days (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in two 90-minute blocks, and Friday in one 3-hour block; Monday is reserved for welcoming and administrative matters). There's an objective-question exam on Friday afternoon. The course is pass-fail. Last year two of us co-taught it to all 225 incoming JD & LLM students in one room (!). This year we added two more faculty and broke the students into two sections, each co-taught.

 

Basically, the course introduces them to law school, to pervasive legal concepts, and to techniques for reading, understanding, and using legal materials.

 

Tuesday we start with a brief description of law school and law school classes, including making them read made-up excerpts from a case, a statute, and a contract and answer simple questions (their first of three increasingly difficult case-reading exercises to get them up to speed for their first day of the regular semester). Then we review American civics, and describe the different sources of law, the basic methods of legal interpretation, and the court system(s) in the U.S.

 

On Wednesday we cover reading and reasoning. They read an excerpt from Morse v. Frederick (the BONG HiTS 4 JESUS case in the Supreme Court) and learn how to decipher case citations, distinguish law from fact and substance from procedure, brief cases, and anticipate the professor's questions (their second case-reading exercise). We also lead a discussion that tries to apply Morse as precedent to hypotheticals involving high school bans on various t-shirt slogans. We teach them about analytical and analogical reasoning. (We also play a "Legal Knowledge" game as a midweek review of what they've learned so far.)

 

Thursday is all about concepts. We start with the pervasive legal doctrines that all their professors think someone else is teaching them, like standards of review, burdens of proof, stare decisis, states of mind. We also cover basic law and economics concepts (like efficiency, market failure, and transaction costs), and some basic behavioral economics (cognitive biases) as well as a grab-bag of other tools for legal argument, including slippery slopes, baselines, and the difference between normative and positive.

 

On Friday they do their final case-reading exercise, which comes pretty close to a regular class. We hand out a 3-page excerpt from a recent Supreme Court case, lecture on the background concepts they need to understand it, and then question them Socratically. They also get a library tour (which took much less time than allotted, incidentally).

 

-- Mark Osler

 

 

Alienation of the Big-Firm Associate

In this economic climate, I know that most people are happy to have a job.  That said, the big-firm associates I am hearing from may be glad to be employed, but for the most part they appear to be profoundly unhappy.  While this is not true for all, certainly, it is true for enough of those I come in contact with that I suspect it may be a majority.

If I were to search for a single word to describe their feelings, it would be "alienated."  In short, they feel marginalized by the partners they work for, disengaged emotionally from the work itself, and wholly lacking in passion for what seems to be at best an amoral vocation.  Their work consumes their lives, and that work is not fulfilling.  The economic problems have divorced these talented people even more from the partners, who seem wary of developing any kind of attachment to these workers who may or may not be around next year, and true mentoring relationships seem rare.

My question is this:  Do I have a duty to pass along this observation to the students who come to me seeking job counseling?  I have my own thoughts on the issue, but wonder what others do in a similar situation.

-- Mark Osler

Orientation Time

While there is a lot of cross-school dialogue about classes and methodology, I haven't seen much relating to how we all handle orientation.  Based on what I have heard from colleagues at other schools and my own experience, orientation sessions fall into a few basic types:

1)  How things work-- the basic directions on where things are and how the school functions.

2)  Beginning legal instruction-- a short course in legal research or how to read and brief a case.

3)  Inspiration-- motivational sessions often relating to the identity of the school or profession.

Is anyone doing anything special or innovative with orientation?  Undergraduate schools have radically remade their sessions in recent years, with some introducing camp-type sessions in the weeks before school begins.  I haven't heard of similar innovation within legal education, but I hope I am wrong...

-- Mark Osler

Are there any must-reads (beyond Heller) for my Second Amendment Seminar?

Regular readers of my home blog know I am interested in the intersection of the Second Amendment and the criminal justice system in the wake of Heller.  My interest is finding expression this coming fall semester — which starts tomorrow(!) at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law — through the teaching of a Second Amendment Seminar.

Though I am going to have students help shape the direction and content of the seminar, I want to make sure I cover modern Second Amendment essentials.  But, as I assembled a reading list, I started thinking that the only essential read in the modern corpus is just the Supreme Court's decision in Heller. 

Of course, there are lots of cases and lots and lots and lots of commentary — both pre-Heller and post-Heller — discussing the Second Amendment.  I plan to cover key post-Heller issues like incorporation and standards-of-review in the seminar, and I will have students read cases and commentaries on these and other topics.  But I am not sure if anything qualifies as a true must-read for discussing and debating the modern Second Amendment other than Heller itself.

Perhaps readers have a different view, and I would be grateful for any input on the topic in the comments.

Cross-posted at SL&P (by DAB)

Is the bad economy going to change the relatiohsip between schools and firms?

This new article available via law.com, which is headlined "Fordham Law School Bans Reed Smith After Firm Pulls Out of On-Campus Interviews," has me wondering whether the rough economy is changing for the worse the relationship between law school and law firms.  This passage also lead me to wonder if legal employers might be interested in changing the long-standing norm of looking for legal talent among students just starting their 2L year:

Reed Smith will have a summer program next year but it will be smaller than in the past so the firm had to make some adjustments to its recruiting. [Michael B. Pollack, global head of strategy at Reed Smith] said Reed Smith would still be interviewing Fordham students but at its offices and not on campus. "It's unfortunate that it didn't fit within Fordham's schedule and calendar, but we're trying to manage this thing as best we can," Pollack said.

He said he thought the firm was up-front with the schools about its decision to pull back from some recruiting. Many firms are doing a number of different things as every sector of the legal industry has to re-examine the way it does business. "Does interviewing in August make sense when you're trying to project [what your needs will be] two years from now?" Pollack asked. "I suspect not."

Law schools and law firms need to have a serious dialogue on the issue, he said. While not everyone is fully aligned yet, he said he hopes these issues can be worked out so a similar situation doesn't happen again.

How do tough times and tuition increases impact law school innovation?

This recent article from the National Law Journal, which headlined "At public law schools, tuition jumps sharply: Students may pay as much as 20% more at some state institutions," has me wondering about the relationship between lean times and law school innovation.  First, here is a excerpt from the start of the article:

Double-digit tuition increases loom for students at some of the country's top public law schools. School administrators say that the unusually large tuition hikes for the coming academic year are largely spurred by cuts in public funding — with endowment losses, initiatives to improve their schools and pressure to keep up with competing institutions also playing a part.

Even with the higher tuition costs next year, public schools will remain generally cheaper than their private counterparts. But the shrinking public/private tuition gap has led administrators and professors to worry about whether public institutions are fulfilling their mission of remaining affordable....

The recession is having a "much more pervasive effect" on law school budgets than did past recessions, said Susan Westerberg Prager, executive director of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS). Specifically, it's hitting hardest at law schools dependent on state appropriations or revenue from endowments.

Administrators planning substantial tuition increases note that they are putting some of that additional revenue toward financial aid. Even so, the tuition increases are bound to heighten the financial burdens of public law school students, who already graduate with an average of $71,436 in law school debt, according to the latest available statistics from the American Bar Association.

There is, of course, the old cliche that necessity is the mother of invention.  Thus, one might expect and hope that law schools needing to make less money go farther would develop cost-effective new programming for its students.  And yet, I have an inkling that tough times might lead deans and faculties to be more conservative in their ways based on the (justified?) fear that prospective law students are now more likely to demand more traditional forms of instruction for their law school dollar.

Posted by DAB

ABA Journal provides review of state of new Irvine law school

The August 2009 Issue of the ABA Journal has this new piece on the new UC law school, which is titled "Irvine by Erwin: Can a top legal academic create a law school that is both innovative and elite?".  The piece highlights innovations in various ways, as highlighted by this snippet:

With its first class — which has a median GPA of 3.65 and a median LSAT score of 167 — descending on campus this month, the 56-year-old Chemer­insky’s ambition is about to be put to the test. Can UC Irvine be both among the best law schools and among the most innovative?

If not, it will not be for lack of trying.  “There isn’t a need for another law school that replicates the others that are there,” Chemerinsky says.  “We have the wonderful benefit of a blank slate and the chance to create the ideal law school for the 21st century.”

UC Irvine will include an interdisciplinary curriculum and a mandatory semester in one of the planned eight law clinics.  Students will be required to conduct intake interviews for legal aid clients and to study international law in the first year — a subject that is merely optional in the upper classes at most schools.

Another innovation is the course titled “The Legal Profession.”  The two-semester class will bring in speakers from many areas of practice “so that students can gain a sense of the different kinds of work the profession does,” according to an online description of the curriculum.

Chemerinsky wants to maximize “serendip­itous interaction with faculty and students.”  That’s why lounge chairs sit outside the faculty offices, so the students don’t have to sit on the floor while waiting. The chairs are arranged in groups to encourage discussion.

Rocking chairs, modeled after one owned by librarian Beatrice Tice’s mother, will be placed near the library windows to promote serenity.  Reproductions of paintings of SoCal scenery, copied from some on view in the Orange County Art Museum, will further the Zen vibe.

The innovations extend beyond the learning environment.  Each student will be assigned a practicing lawyer as a mentor.  Financial planners will be invited to campus to help students with budgeting and — for those in the second class and beyond — managing the burden of law school loans.  Students will have multimedia portfolios to show potential employers, in addition to ordinary resumés.  They’ll receive grades, but there will be no class rankings.

The bad summer

Reports are dribbling back to me from some students regarding their summer jobs, and it is a little grimmer than usual (as we all would probably expect).  At the largest firms, there is a great deal of uncertainty about future hiring, and many firms expect to put out fewer offers this year to the current crop of summer associates.  Moreover, the job of being a summer associate seems much less pleasant than it was even last year, as partners and associates are anxious and sometimes unable to make clear what is expected from the law students.  The experience varies greatly by firm, of course.

One possible outcome, and one that I hope for, is that more of our top students will consider government work and jobs in criminal law.  Quality improvement in those areas is good for everyone, and may be a positive outcome of this down economy.

-- Mark Osler

PLI becomes first (but surely not the last) to put its law books on the Kindle

As detailed in some of the posts linked below, various folks have chatted for years in this forum about the Kindle and other e-readers as a possible platform for legal materials.  This press release spotlights the first major legal publishing entrant:

Practising Law Institute (PLI), the nation's leading provider of continuing legal education, announces that it is now releasing its wide-ranging line of authoritative legal practice books on Amazon Kindle store, becoming the first professional publisher to take advantage of this breakthrough wireless reading format....

There are currently 67 PLI titles available on Kindle, covering such areas as business, corporate and securities law, banking and commercial law, intellectual property law, estate and tax planning law, real estate law, insurance law, elder law, and litigation.

By year-end, the line will expand to over 100 titles, including new titles addressing the global economic crisis from a variety of legal perspectives important to today's attorneys - the growing number of government investigations and lawsuits, ensuring compliance with existing corporate and securities regulations, and preparing for the increased regulation to come....

"We're very excited about our new collaboration with Amazon to bring our titles to the Kindle store," said William C. Cubberley, PLI's Publisher. "We're already on the cutting edge when it comes to meeting attorneys' growing information needs through the presentation of practical legal programs designed for various electronic technologies. So it makes perfect sense that we take this next big step and now make our many books as easy to access as our institutes and seminars."

Related prior posts:

• When will e-books become a platform for casebooks?
• Kindle-ing Legal Publishers
• Kindle won't catch fire in law schools
• Another Perspective on the Kindle
• Who will get the first e-book into the law school classroom?

• Coming to a Textbook Near You, the Big Screen Kindle

"Law school pays students to stay away"

The title of this post is the headline of this recent piece from the National Law Journal.  Here are excerpts from an effective piece:

The unstable economy created a tricky situation for law school admissions offices this year. Would the downturn prompt more applicants to accept offers of admission? Would the prospect of thousands of dollars of law school debt dissuade accepted applicants from enrolling at the last minute?

Admissions officials didn't know whether they could rely upon the formulas they traditionally have used to determine how many admissions offers to extend to reach their desired incoming class size. For at least one school, experience was little help.

The University of Miami School of Law saw a significant increase in its so-called yield rate — the percentage of accepted students who enroll — and has offered incentives for students to defer their starts until the fall of 2010....

The law school was aiming for an incoming class of 400 to 420 students, said university spokeswoman Karla V. Hernandez.  She would not disclose how many students the law school accepted for next fall, but said that the yield rate increased from 28% last year to 36% this year.

Those who opt to delay for a year will receive a $5,000 scholarship when they complete 120 hours of public service and will have a better chance at receiving a $75,000 scholarship, among other incentives.

Officials at the Law School Admissions Council declined to comment on Miami's situation, but a spokeswoman said it's not unheard of for schools to grapple with an undesirably large incoming class. "When some schools find themselves with more depositors than they expected, it's common to invite students to defer," said counsel spokeswoman Wendy Margolis.  However, it is unusual for a law school to offer deferral incentives to its entire incoming class, according to Sarah Zearfoss, assistant dean and director of admissions at the University of Michigan Law School....

Law school applications were up overall this year, but they didn't surge the way many had predicted. Conventional wisdom holds that more people seek out graduate programs during bad economic times to avoid a tough job market. According to the admissions council, law school applications increased nationally by 4.3%.

I would be eager to hear more about Miami's experience here and also about any other schools being as innovative as Miami in dealing with this new numbers problem.  I suspect that this story is just one of many potential examples of how necessity becomes the mother of law school innovation.

Posted by DAB

What is the latest state of multiple-choice testing in law school?

I am trying to catch up on some law school readings this summer, and I noticed this interesting-looking piece on SSRN.  The piece by Janet Fisher is titled "Multiple-Choice: Choosing the Best Options for More Effective and Less Frustrating Law School Testing," and here is the abstract:

Multiple-choice testing presents challenges and frustrations not only for the students who take the tests, but also for the doctrinal faculty who prepare and score the tests and for the academic support faculty who work with students having difficulty with multiple-choice tests. This article discusses means by which the multiple-choice testing experience in law school could be improved for both students and faculty.  After a brief overview of the history of multiple-choice testing, the article describes problems that arise in connection with multiple-choice testing and the possible effects of flawed multiple-choice questions.  The article then reviews basic multiple-choice item-writing guidelines and some general principles of test validity.  For this, the article draws upon the work of law professor Michael Josephson and testing authority Thomas Haladyna. Finally, the article evaluates appeal and answer-justification procedures that could be used to enhance multiple-choice testing.

In addition to being eager to engender a debate over the use of multiple-choice testing in law school, I am curious to know if anyone has tried to quantify how many settings in which law schools are using multiple-choice testing is utilized.