Archive for May, 2008

May 30 2008

Want to Contribute to a Book on Law Teaching and Learning?

Published by under Innovation

The Center for Engaged Learning in the Law (CELL) plans to publish a short book on law teaching and learning this fall with the Carolina Academic Press. The goal of the book is to provide a handy and concise reference guide from the perspectives of practitioners, students and teachers. While much of the book will be taken from posts on this blog, additional contributions are sought. Comments on the following topics are especially desired:

I.    Before Class Begins – Course “Under Construction”
a.    Syllabus
b.    Materials
c.    Resources – Phone Numbers, Web Sites, Books and People
d.    Evaluation
e.    What Students Say
f.    What Practitioners Say
g.    “To Do” Lists

II. During Class
A.    Communicating With Your Mouth Shut
a.    Physical Layout
b.    Other Mechanical Issues
B.    Communicating With Your Mouth Open:Questioning Techniques
C.    Innovation
D.    What Students Say: Do’s and Don’t’s
E.    What Practitioners Say: Do’s and Don’t’s

III.    After and Outside Class
h.    Mobile learning
i.    Other learning
j.    Innovations
k.    What Students Say
l.    What Practitioners Say
m.    Technology Tips and Resources

IV. Inspiration

V. What Practitioners Say Law Schools Should and Should Not Do

VI. Helpful Resources: Helpful Law Teaching Web Sites; and
Helpful Books & Articles

Comments should range from one sentence to one page and can be submitted as a comment to this post or to sfriedland2@elon.edu or jlaw@elon.edu. You will be notified by September 1st if your contribution will become part of the book.

thanks,

Steve Friedland

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May 21 2008

Thinking Like a Lawyer

Published by under Advice

Like many entering law students today, I came to law school with the understanding that its purpose was not to teach me rules, but to teach me how to think like a lawyer. This puzzled me because we seemed to spend a lot of class (and exam) time on rules. And I was never sure if or when I was thinking like a lawyer.

If you are or are about to be a 1L and you share my understanding of the purpose of law school, I hope what I’m about to say here is helpful. You do have to learn a lot of rules, but knowing rules is not an end in itself. You learn rules so that you can make arguments about their application to novel factual situations, and the process of making such arguments (in the classroom and on exams) is what you may consider thinking like a lawyer.

Because rules are helpful to you only insofar as you can use them to support or undermine their application to new factual contexts, you should also be suspicious about the advice to identify an opinion’s “holding.” All holdings are contingent, because their meaning depends on how they are interpreted in future cases. In other words, what a case “stands for” is a matter of argument, and an appellate court judge can no more forever determine what a case “stands for” than an author or a painter can forever determine how readers or viewers will interpret their works.

I hope that this general perspective on what law school is all about, particularly for 1L’s, is helpful to you.

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May 18 2008

Too easy? NOT!

Published by under Advice

There’s this weird worry I get as a teacher – that I am making things too easy. Fortunately for my students, I chant the mantra of a senior colleague: “you can’t make it too easy.”

So true. Each time I write problems or tests, I worry that students will lose all respect for me. That they will resent studying so hard and then being tested only on the easy stuff. I will be revealed to be an intellectual lightweight, a complete law professor fraud.

And then I remember the mantra. If I were a student taking a test, would I really be mad if the test were straightforward and easy? Answer: No. I would be relieved and happy. I would be ok being able to leave an exam early.

To get a reality check, I have a colleague read the exam. How long does it take just to read the test? What distracted you? What was confusing about the call of the question?

This spring, students had spent a lot of time working on problems – essentially a series of mini essays, similar to those on an exam. I had provided lots of sample answers. The exam was open book, open everything. I worried. Too easy?

I gave the exam to my colleague. There were 3 essay questions, yes, all with subparts. My colleague said it was not too easy. She suggested that the first question looked basic, the second a little more challenging, the third more complex. I agreed. I stopped worrying.

After the exam, I ran into some of the students. Another reality check. Too easy? No, they said. In fact, it was hard to complete the exam within the three hours. These were bright bright students, the ones who soared in all their courses. It’s hard to make an exam too easy. Even when we think it is simple, we forget that we have years of experience and legal training that gives us such an edge over even the most studious 3L.

Too easy? Not!

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May 14 2008

A Contracts Hypothetical (Or: That Sound You Hear is the Sound of My Falling GPA….Wait for it……Wait for it…….SPLAT!)

The Problem:

Two-hundred students sign duly executed contracts with Spiral University of Rhetorical and Rancorous Engagement in All [but the] Law (hereinafter “SURREAL”) whereby they agree to pay (or finance) an astronomical sum of money at 6% interest over 3 years in exchange for a legal education, parceled out in 2-3 hour courses taught by a variety excellent professors with excellent pedigrees, excellent professors without excellent pedigrees, and professors with only excellent pedigrees. SURREAL assures these students, in writing, they will be well-prepared to pass their courses and the Bar exam throughout these 3 years, thus constituting the required consideration for its part of this contract.

Of the 200 students having signed contracts with SURREAL, 35 choose an elective course called “Procedural Adventures In Neverland” (hereinafter “PAIN”) and study diligently, often compiling 55-page outlines complete with tables of contents; translating hundreds of pages of impenetrable Supreme Court Sanskrit; creating PowerPoint slides to rival the gods; and actually paying more attention to the professor (who falls into Category Three Pedigree, above) than to the most current Scrabble game. These 35 students were told the course would be graded on the basis of a single, final exam. This exam was advertised in writing in the syllabus, but only after two weeks of the course had already gone by. Still, the 35 students remained in PAIN, prepared to take this final examination, having studied PAIN diligently and worked hard to understand the basics, as-taught by the professor (who was, they were told, an expert in PAIN). Prior to the exam, the professor assured the students the exam would cover topics taught throughout PAIN, and the students prepared to be tested in PAIN accordingly.

Upon receiving the exam, the 35 students of PAIN realized they had either been misled or that they had received the wrong examination. None of the 35 students recognized the call of the question, nor did any of them have any idea what the question was asking them to do. None of the words used in the calls of any of the questions bore any relationship to PAIN although, ironically, the questions did manage to illicit a lot of agony, despair, hopelessness, panic, and even prayer (I’m told Jesus just laughed and mumbled something about having had nothing to do with that convoluted pile of _____). None of the outlines of any of the students were of any use to any of them, nor was the textbook, nor any of the cases, nor any of the facts in the 2-page fact pattern preceding the question itself. As one student aptly analogized afterward, “It was like being trained to be a mechanic – learning how to fix the problems of a car that was already right in front of you based on general principles of car maintenance – and then showing up for your mechanic’s exam and being asked not to fix a car, but rather to design and build one from scratch. Obviously, the mechanic would fail, and obviously, so did all of us.”

Your Task:

You are a law student (or law professor) having already taken Contracts I and II. Thirty-five students come to you telling you this tale of SURREAL PAIN, asking for your advice. Prepare a blog comment in the space provided below outlining the following:

(1) whether SURREAL is liable for an affirmative misrepresentation of PAIN;

(2) whether the SURREAL professor of the course is liable for an affirmative misrepresentation of PAIN;

(3) whether the SURREAL contract was unconscionable on the basis of PAIN;

(4) whether the delay in receiving the PAIN syllabus constitutes a breach of the SURREAL contract, or any part thereof, or whether the students remaining in the course after having received said syllabus 2 weeks late constitutes implied acceptance of PAIN’s terms on their parts;

(5) whether, under the UCC, receipt of a final exam bearing no resemblance to the one for which the students contracted constituted a breach of the contract without a corresponding letter of accommodation, or whether the taking of the exam in spite of this fact constituted the acceptance of non-conforming goods via counter-offer by the students

As you write, bear in mind to following quote by someone who, granted, did not go to an American Ivy League school, but did go to Oxford, which is way better than American Ivy League schools anyway. In considering this quote, please discuss its relationship to the Separation of Powers Doctrine and to the Doctrine of SURREAL PAIN.

“Pain is an event. It happens to you, and you deal with it whatever way you can.”

– Hugh Laurie, The Gun Seller

Yes, indeed, Hugh. Yes, indeed. PAIN is, indeed, an event, and you deal with it whatever way you can. Like, for instance, by blogging… or by failing miserably.

…………SPLAT!

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May 12 2008

I Never Much Liked Standup Comedy (Or: Save It for the Stage, Gallagher!)(Or: No Really – Sometimes We Really Do Have To Teach Ourselves the Course)

I’ve come to realize a lot of professors (maybe all of them?) seriously chafe at the phrase, “I had to teach this course to myself.” And I can understand why. Here you have a professor who has studied longer and who has earned more degrees than the students – who has prepared (I use that term rather loosely in some cases) a syllabus and chosen a book – and who has come to class day in, day out, and done their best (I hesitate to use this term at all in some other cases) to teach you something. And what do they get? Told by their students that they really didn’t teach at all.

In all honesty, a lot of time that phrase is uttered in empty frustration, and beneath it lies not the fact that the professor didn’t teach, but only the fact that the students feel they didn’t learn very much, which may very well be due to a number of variables too numerous to discuss. And a lot of times, what students are griping about is little more than the unthinkable fact that they had to work really hard to understand a concept that was never easy for anyone to explain/understand, and their professor hasn’t made it the essence of clarity either.

But then there are those classes you really do teach to yourself, and I have been privileged enough to have taken such a course.

Let me say from the outset: I gave up on this course early on (about week 5), attended only because each attendance was mandatory in the syllabus, and used my class time to vastly improve my Scrabble game. I admit this straight out, right here, from the beginning.

But why did I – a pretty darn studious nerd by most standards – give up on a course so early and to such an extent? And where do I get off telling an expert in the given field that I had to teach the course to myself?

Well, to start with, I never much cared for standup comedy. I mean, I used to like watermelon-smashing Gallagher back in the day, but aside from him, standup comics never really held my attention very well. When the standup comic is my law professor, the result is just disastrous. Don’t get me wrong: I think my previous blogs have made my preference for comedic relief pretty evident, and I love when a professor is a funny professor as well as a good one. But when the professor is only funny…

The first few days of this particular course were darn funny. We liked this professor. This professor amused us. But then we all started to realize we were really only being amused, and this course was a little lacking in substance. Actually…no…it was a LOT lacking in substance. And this book was a wretched plague upon humanity (I submit that no book should be 1/3 text, 1/3 parenthetical phrases, and 1/3 footnotes. NO BOOK. EVER. It’s evil and vile and wrong.) so no help there. And… wait… did the professor just start blatantly substituting opinion for fact…? Oh my. I know that isn’t what the Court held… Maybe it’s what you think it should have held… But… Um… It didn’t. For the sake of my own GPA, I think this would be a good time to tune this one out.

Scrabble, anyone? Yes, indeed. And this time, I wasn’t playing against the slackers. Oh no! I was playing against the top brass, kids. The cream of the crop. The presidents, the editors, and the holders of really impressive GPAs. We had all given up.

But the proof is in the pudding, as they say, and my proof that I really did have to teach this course to myself (and that I could, which amused me terrifically) came during the days leading up the exam. I was sent an outline by a student who had clearly done nothing but transcribe everything our amusing professor said. I read this outline to see if I had, in fact, missed anything important in those mandatory lost hours. Beneath the tears of laughter streaming down my face was the realization that this entire outline – a loose transcription of the entire course – was just pure gibberish. It made NO logical sense. Something to do with an eight-year old… everything is “clearly” this or that, except that it’s all about as clear as mud… oh, wait… now something to do with due process of law…grandmothers…hookers… were the grandmothers also the hookers…? I passed this outline around to my friends – also rather studious types – and watched as their eyes grew wide and they started doubling over in laughter (well, those of them that didn’t leap to their feet to find the poor person who was perhaps relying on these 30 pages of total bunk).

And then we all got to the tedious act of starting all over from scratch – the much-debated outline of one of my favorite profs in-hand of course (which saved my butt, thank you very much) – and teaching the course to ourselves. We went to Westlaw and printed the syllabi of every main case (a daunting list). We put them in binders. We read them start to finish. We made them into chronological lists to see patterns over time (our book liked to talk in chronology but have us read the cases from the middle outward in all directions). We printed law review articles covering the policies behind the more prominent cases. We debated the pros and cons. We made mock tests for each other based off other (reliable) outlines and supplements. We read other texts and mountains of cram books. And in four days, we taught ourselves the basics of the course. And I’m pretty sure my friends and I passed (perhaps only by the Grace of God, but we passed).

I’m told this sort of occurrence – standup comedy in lieu of teaching – happens as a result of knowing one’s subject so well, and having written so many books containing naught but your own opinion on the subject, that, when teaching, one forgets to mention the rule to which one’s opinion applies. One neglects to account for the fact that most students can’t really debate the subtleties of the policies behind a rule until they, you know, know the rule. And one perhaps forgets that one’s own opinion is not how it is, no matter how much that’s how one believes it should be.

So when your students tell you they had to teach a course to themselves, keep this little diatribe in mind. I’m sure the vast majority of you will immediately defer to my blog about whiny students, assured as you are that your teaching prowess is second-to-none and certainly a lot better than Gallagher standup. But if perchance you should have a doubt or two, here remains a little food for thought.

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May 08 2008

Hopes and Fears

Published by under Inspiration

Thursday, May 8, 2008, 10:39 AM –
Posted by Gerry Hess

One of my colleagues organized a meeting of all the faculty members who will teach first-year students next year. The purpose of the meeting was for us to discuss our goals for first-year students and to explore ways to collaborate to achieve those goals.

I was hopeful. I was skeptical. My hopes and fears were realized.

Some of the meeting descended into faculty whining about students – indifferent work ethic, failure to listen, deficient writing skills, etc. I think these faculty members needed to get these comments out before moving on to more productive matters. The semester had just ended and my colleagues were feeling a bit of burn out.

However, I believe that my colleagues care about their students and work hard to be effective teachers. Much of the meeting reflected my colleagues’ commitment to their students’ learning.

We explored what level of analytical sophistication we should expect from students by the end of the first semester.

We agree that we needed to help students integrate their learning in their first year courses.

We discussed our obligation to give feedback to students in the first semester of law school and committed to giving a midterm exams (graded or practice) in October.

I left the meeting with hope. We had taken a small step to collaborate for the benefit of our students. We had reaffirmed the need for us to support one another’s efforts to help our students become effective lawyers.

Big changes start with little actions.

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