Law School Innovation

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.

Up or Down?

Reflecting on the last post, I will admit to noticing a lack of big movements this summer in our field, and I think the down market for legal employment has something to do with it.  I am beginning to suspect that up markets are better for innovation than down markets such as this one, at least for the legal academy (a strong argument can be made for this market forcing innovation on big firm practitioners).

In short, we might expect innovation to come from those who who are most disadvantaged in this market-- that they might try new things to succeed.  In our field, though, entry into the academy (with a legal teaching job) is very tough, and largely locks out those who have been thrust out of other parts of the legal world.  On the other hand, those who already are on the inside may be hunkering down to protect their positions.

In short, innovation comes from risk-taking-- which includes the risk of failure, the risk of being seen as odd, the risk of challenging a status quo.  In a down economy, those who are on the inside are less likely to take risks, and those who are on the outside are less likely to get to the inside.

So, what are the exceptions?  Is anyone hiring lawyers laid off at big firms as tenure-track professors? 

-- Mark Osler

Seeking news, reports, information on serious summer innovations

The summer of 2009 would seem to present a uniquely vibrant opportunity for law school innovations. 

A down job market for both recent grad and summer associates likely creates lots of potential "human capital" for innovative summer law school programming (and a lack of real capital might demand some true inventiveness by Deans to fund and staff such programs).  Meanwhile, a new Administration in DC run by a lawyer and former law professor (which has hired a whole lot of other law professors), as well as a pending Supreme Court transition with Senate hearings scheduled for mid July, could and should present lots of new and perhaps novel topics for public-interest-oriented activities.

Though there may not be a rash of innovative activities this summer, I am hopeful that folks might report in the comments or via e-mail any exciting new happenings at law schools this summer.