Law School Innovation

Mock trial, moot court, and education

From time to time, one of my responsibilities here at Baylor has been to coach mock trial teams.  I have enjoyed the experience, and think it is a worthwhile venture in general.  Certainly, I think it speaks well of our students when they win a national competition (as they did this past weekend at the NTC), and makes public the abilities and work ethic of the school.   My former colleague Kent Stresseman has had remarkable success recently with his moot court teams at Chicago-Kent, and I'm sure the victories there have raised the profile of that law school and helped bring in good students.

Still, I have had heard others criticize mock trial and moot court as an educational experience.  One criticism is that these activities involve so few students.  Others point out that the top schools rarely do well in these competitions.   I think the first group of critics have a point, but schools such as my own have tried to counter that problem by entering more competitions and thus getting more students involved.   As to the second point, I would suspect that the answer to that would vary from school to school, but my sense is that top-ten schools don't put much effort into these competitions.  Should they?

-- Mark Osler

Working with students, chronicled

Like most law profs, I collaborate with students and former students in a variety of ways, including drafting briefs, researching for articles, and working on pro bono cases.   Some students, of course, I remember better than others, and a few have become heroes to me because of their sacrifice and commitment.

David Moore is in this last group.  David was a fascinating non-traditional student in one of my first criminal practice classes.  Like me, he came from a law enforcement background, having been a narcotics investigator in Houston and a task force officer in rural Texas for about 16 years.  In class, his contributions were invaluable, as he offered a real-life perspective on investigations.  I was sad to see him graduate.

A year later, I was approached by Graham Boyd of the ACLU's Drug Law Reform Project to help out on a civil case against the DA in a neighboring county.  The DA had run a drug sweep in a majority-black housing project in the town of Hearne.  The ACLU wanted to sue him for civil rights violations, and I agreed to help.  One obvious challenge was to convince a Central Texas jury that they should find ACLU lawyers credible over the word of local law enforcement officials.   Obviously, we needed someone with local connections.

Walking out of the law school, I ran into David Moore, who was coming in to do some research in the library.  At the time he was struggling with a small practice in rural Limestone County.  He was living in a single-wide trailer with his wife (the secretary to a defendant in the case), who was receiving chemotherapy at the time.  I asked him to help us try the case, and he immediately agreed.

In retrospect, it was a tremendously brave choice to make.  He was agreeing to work on a case pro bono for weeks, one which would jeopardize his wife's job, alienate many of the people he knew, call for him to cross-examine old friends, and perhaps destroy his practice.  And still he said yes, because it was the right thing to do.  It was one of the most admirable things I have ever seen a lawyer do, and it made all the difference in the outcome of the case. 

Now a major motion picture, American Violet, has been made about the case which focuses on David's game-changing contribution.   Veteran (and wonderful) actor Will Patton plays David.  The film was directed by Tim Disney and also stars Alfre Woodard, Charles Dutton, Tim Blake Nelson. and several other familiar faces.  It opens in some places on April 17, and many other cities around May 1. 

David and I went down to Austin last weekend to see the movie at the South by Southwest festival.  It was a surreal experience to sit there as people around us called out to our characters on the screen. 

If ever there was a movie to be made about someone I know, I'm glad it was David's story.   It made me proud to be a teacher, proud of David, and proud of what the law is capable of when facing real injustice.

-- Mark Osler

A not-so-innovative way to deal with tough times: head to law school

At the Wall Street Journal, Nathan Koppel has this new piece headlined "Best Defense? Seeking a Haven in Law School," which reports that a down economy has meant an uptick in law school application. Here are particulars:

The job market for lawyers, hit hard by the recession, seems to reach new lows every day. But that has not done much to discourage the thousands who are lining up to become the next generation of attorneys.

In seeming defiance of logic, many law schools are surging in popularity. At Washington and Lee University in Virginia, for example, law-school applications are up 29% this year over 2008, while Yale Law School and the University of Texas School of Law both enjoyed an 8% increase in applications. Nationwide, the total number of applicants is up by 2% over last year, with the deadline to submit applications having passed at most schools.

College graduates, educators say, are seeking refuge from the economy in the relative tranquility of higher education, hoping that the job market will improve by the time they graduate. Law schools also have been aided by the long-held belief that the legal business is relatively immune from recessions....

School administrators seize on the versatility of a law degree in asserting that it is still a sound investment. Lawyers, they say, will play a central role in navigating a variety of issues, such as the use of natural resources, cross-border trade and government stimulus spending, which likely will play a central role in the economy for years to come.

The very large jump in applications at Washington and Lee seems especially notable in light of its innovative (some might say radical) reform of its entire 3L program (discussed here).  One year's application data does not prove that students are voting with their feet for innovations, but this seems like a possible trend worth watching.

Call for Papers: Lat/Crit Oct 2009, American

LatCrit XIV is being hosted by American University Washington College of Law on Oct. 1-4, 2009.  The theme of this year's conference is: OUTSIDERS INSIDE: CRITICAL OUTSIDER THEORY AND PRAXIS IN THE POLICYMAKING OF THE NEW AMERICAN REGIME.  The conference also includes the LatCrit/SALT Junior Faculty Development Workshop.  The complete call for papers/panels is here.

Please submit your panel and paper proposals through the online process at the LatCrit website (www.law.du.edu/latcrit/index.htm) no later than MONDAY, APRIL 27, 2009.  

(H/T Poverty Law Blog for the concise description.)

Could a new test of lawyer skills really challenge the LSAT?

Earlier this week the New York Times ran this interesting article, headlined "Study Offers a New Test of Potential Lawyers." Here are snippets:

Just what makes a good lawyer? In trying to answer that question, professors at the University of California, Berkeley, have come up with a test that they say is better at predicting success in the field than the widely used Law School Admission Test.

The LSAT, as the half-day exam is known, does not claim to predict much beyond a student’s performance in law school. But critics contend that it does not evaluate how good a lawyer someone will be and tests for the wrong things. They also say it keeps many black and Hispanic students — who tend to have lower scores — out of the legal profession....

To find out what applicant traits should figure in admissions decisions at law schools, [Professors Marjorie Shultz and Sheldon Zedeck] coordinated individual interviews, focus groups and ultimately a survey of judges, law school professors, law firm clients and hundreds of graduates of Berkeley’s law school. They asked, among other things, “If you were looking for a lawyer for an important matter for yourself, what qualities would you most look for? What kind of lawyer do you want to teach or be?”

The survey produced a list of 26 characteristics, or “effectiveness factors,” like the ability to write, manage stress, listen, research the law and solve problems. The professors then collected examples from the Berkeley alumni of specific behavior by lawyers that were considered more or less effective.

Using the examples, Professor Shultz and Professor Zedeck developed a test that could be administered to law school applicants to measure their raw lawyerly talent. Instead of focusing on analytic ability, the new test includes questions about how to respond to hypothetical situations. For example, it might describe a company with a policy requiring immediate firing of any employee who lied on an application, then ask what a test taker would do upon discovering that a top-performing employee had omitted something on an application.

More than 1,100 lawyers took the test and agreed to let the researchers see their original LSAT scores, as well as grades from college and law school. The study concluded that while LSAT scores, for example, “were not particularly useful” in predicting lawyer effectiveness, the new, alternative test results were — although the new test was no better at predicting how well participants would do in law school. Unlike the LSAT, the new test did not produce a gap in scores among different racial or ethnic groups.

But participants might have performed differently on it, had they taken the test when they were applying to law school. Professor Shultz said this was one reason the next step in the research should include tracking test takers over time, from when they apply to law school through their careers.

David E. Van Zandt, dean of the law school at Northwestern, said he would welcome a supplement to the LSAT to evaluate applicants, a sentiment echoed by other law school deans. John H. Garvey, dean of Boston College Law School and past president of the Association of American Law Schools, said, “It would be good for us and for other schools to have other measures that complement the LSAT and that would help us identify promising candidates.”

I have nothing but praise for the efforts here to develop an LSAT alternative, and I hope this project keeps moving ahead.  I also hope that the development of new visions and new assessments of lawyer “effectiveness factors” might also impact law-school testing methods, too.

Posted by DAB

An early report from the folks of LEARN (Legal Education Analysis & Reform Network)

This past week I received a copy of an e-mail from the Steering Committee of LEARN (Legal Education Analysis & Reform Network) describing their project and early activities. Here is the start of the e-mail with a link to the group's first product:

Two years ago, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching published its report on legal education, entitled Educating Lawyers.  Since that time, based on the high level of interest the report generated within the legal academy, the Foundation has joined with a group of law schools and law faculty to engage in further efforts to encourage reflection and innovation in legal education.  Working with Stanford Law School, the Foundation has assembled a group of legal educators from ten law schools which had expressed particular interest in working on this phase of the project. (The ten schools are CUNY, Dayton, Georgetown, Harvard, Indiana-Bloomington, New Mexico, NYU, Southwestern, Stanford, and Vanderbilt.)  The overall project has been named LEARN, which stands for Legal Education Analysis and Reform Network.  We are writing to inform you about these ongoing efforts.

In December 2007 about 40 legal educators (three from each of the ten law schools identified above and ten other faculty members) met in Palo Alto to discuss strategies for change based on the themes explored in Educating Lawyers and other pedagogical goals.  After two days of meetings, we identified three major themes around which these strategies cluster: (a) the structure of the law school curriculum as a whole; (b) the teaching enterprise as practiced by individual faculty members; and (c) the assessment of student learning.  The participants divided themselves up into working groups to continue articulating and planning ways in which these strategies could be developed and pursued.  (A list of each working group’s members appears in the beginning of the linked LEARN Report.)

After further conversations within and among the working groups, LEARN has now drafted an outline of the initial projects it plans to launch. This outline can be viewed at this link.

The three major themes of emphasis seem just right to me, and I am very much looking forward to learning a lot more from LEARN in the months and years to come.

Posted by DAB

Interesting report on a laptop ban experiment

Over at The Volokh Conspiracy one can now find this interesting postfrom Eugene Volokh, titled "Results of Student Survey About My No-Laptop-in-Class Experiment."  Linked there is also this memo that Eugene wrote to his faculty about his experience with a laptop ban.  Eugene provide a lot of interesting and useful information and insights through his post and memo.

I personally continue to view complete laptop bans to be a crude, paternalistic and self-serving response by professors to a technology that at least some students genuinely believe enhance their classroom/learning experience.  That said, I have a lot of respect for Eugene's efforts to experiment with such a ban, to share his experiences, and to suggest "best practices." 

I continue to believe and predict that, within a decade or two, law school faculty will adapt teaching styles and goals in ways that will make laptops (and/or some other student-empowering technologies) seem like an essential learning tool instead of a classroom hindrance.  In the meantime, I hope faculty imposing limits on student use of technology in the classroom do so in ways that replicate Eugene's efforts to make the experience thoughtful and productive and educational for everyone.

Some related posts:

• "The Laptop-Free Zone"
• Forget the laptop debate ... how about cellphones in the classroom?
• Power to the students? The case of laptops in the classroom
• Experimenting with a one-child one-laptop policy
• What if a dean prohibited some faculty use of technology...?
• Shouldn't we just grade class participation rather than ban laptops?

Posted by DAB

Advocacy as scholarship

Earlier this week, I was filling out a grant application which covered "research for scholarly purposes."  It defined such research as going towards "truths not yet discovered."  Eventually, I set the application aside, since the truth I was researching was already known to me.  That is, what I was working on was a piece advocating a specific change in the law to address an injustice.  I knew the injustice existed; what I needed to research was the best way to change it.

Is an advocacy piece like mine legitimate scholarship? 

-- Mark Osler