CELL Blog | Center for Engaged Learning in the Law

“There is no right answer,” we frequently tell students. “You have to articulate the reasoning.” It seems to me that what we really mean is that there are several ways to write an excellent answer to a final exam. And there are many ways to write not-so-excellent answers. But what are those many ways to write excellent answers? Giving students sample answers of excellent exams is one way to show them. Not just ONE answer, as that suggests that there is A right answer, but several. I ask students who have done well on final or midterm exams for permission to distribute their answers anonymously. No one has refused. I compile the answers and post them to the course website and email them to students. Students also receive scoring sheets for their essays, showing them how they earned the points for each exam answer. I offer to meet with any student who wants to go over their exam answers, but ask them to first compare their exam answer and scoring sheet with the sample answers. Does giving these samples and feedback ensure that students will learn how to improve their answers? No. But for those who are motivated and inclined to learn from the process, it can provide students with tangible information about what they learned, and what they need to work on.

Today is “Super Tuesday,” a mad Babel of election primaries across the country. I have read that many politicians have hired liguists to help them get out their message. The linguists use sociolinguistic frame theory, which essentially posits that how an issue is framed can impact and significantly affect the dialogue about the issue itself. (e.g., Calling a government program a “war on X” is useful because it creates winners and losers in a context people understand.)

I think frame theory also applies to legal education. From a teacher’s perspective, it would be great to know what other constituencies are thinking about legal education, really how they are framing it. For example,

1. What do law students want from their courses? Do they know what they don’t know? Should we ask them?
2. If practitioners want more “practice-ready” students, do they have ideas about how to achieve that goal efficiently? Does it require a revolution in traditional legal edcation? What skills should be emphasized in creating practice-ready students?
3. Can law schools shift their frame of reference to reward teachers for spending extra time teaching instead of writing? Do law schools want to be known as teaching schools or is scholarship the once and only king?

Just some thoughts about framing the debates about the “future of law schools,” and whether the Carnegie or Best Practices Reports have reasonable chances of being embraced and implemented…..Back to the election returns.

– Steve Friedland