Law School Academic Support Blog

Editor: Goldie Pritchard
Michigan State University

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Orientation and Professional Identity Formation

Orientation is a time of exuberance and great excitement. It is the first step in a three year journey which will take students on a roller coaster ride of hard work, emotion, exhaustion, confusion, hope and discovery. Orientation presents an opportunity to help students understand that law school is more than just learning the law.  Students should seek to obtain a whole range of skills. As described in Best Practices for Legal Education, “Rogelio Lasso concluded that good lawyers possess four competencies:  1.  Knowledge which includes technical and general knowledge.  This competency involves the cognitive and analytical skills that have been the principal focus of legal education since the advent of law schools.  2.  Skill which includes two types of lawyering skills:  ‘those needed to obtain and process information and those which enable the lawyer to transform existing situations into those that are preferred.’  3.  Perspective which is the ability to consider the historical, political, ethical and moral aspects of a legal problem and its possible solutions.  4.  Personal attributes which refers to qualities of character that pertain to the way lawyers go about their professional activities and relate to others.” Rogelio Lasso, From the Paper Chase to the Digital Chase: Technology and the Challenge of Teaching 21st Century Law Students, 43 Santa Clara L. Rev. 1, 12-13 (2002).  Invite your new students to be active participants in their education.  Have them think carefully about the classes they choose.  Encourage them to participate in extracurricular activities to enhance their learning and to obtain skills not taught in the classroom.  Urge them to develop relationships with their classmates and to take risks.  Most of all, make students aware of the “Third Apprenticeship” as described in the Carnegie Foundation report.  “The third apprenticeship, which we call the ethical-social apprenticeship, introduces students to the purposes and attitudes that are guided by the values for which the professional community is responsible…” Best Practices for Legal Education, p. 62.  Helping students to develop the competencies to effectively represent clients includes developing behaviors and integrity in situations.  Ask them to be mindful of their conduct in their interactions inside as well as outside of law school.  Tell them you expect them to display civility, honesty, integrity, character, fairness, competence, ethical conduct, public service and respect for the rule of law, the courts, clients, other lawyers, witnesses and unrepresented clients.  As adopted by the New Mexico Commission on Professionalism, 2000.  Law schools can have a lasting impact on legal education right now by taking these simple steps. (Bonnie Stepleton)

August 5, 2014 in Orientation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Monday, August 4, 2014

more in common than you think . . ..

Recent graduates, who have just taken the bar exam; students about to return to law school; and students about to enter law school have more in common than you think.  Sure they are all heading toward legal careers.  But in addition to the obvious, all of them may find themselves with time on their hands.  All can benefit by reading good books. Recent bar takers can get to books that they had little or no time for in the recent past.  Returning and new students can read for pleasure in the time remaining before the start of the fall semester.  To quote one of my legal writing colleagues, "a good way to improve one's writing is to read good writing."  

Taking my own advice and, once again, relying on my blogging son, I've turned to a book that he suggested: The Checklist Manifesto, by Atul Gawande.  Gawande, a surgeon, begins with the premise that failures can stem from either lack of knowledge or ineptitude.  Gawande then addresses the use of checklists – in multiple disciplines – to manage extraordinary amounts of knowledge and expertise.   

Checklists help to ensure that any task is done completely.  For example, law students preparing to submit a writing assignment can use checklists as they edit the assignment.  Additionally, as law students prepare for exams, they can use their course outlines, to prepare checklist for addressing the legal issues that may be tested in each course.  

Similarly, both newly admitted and experienced attorneys can develop and use checklists in a variety of contexts.  For example, transactional attorney can use checklists – tailored to any transaction – to ensure that they fully perform all necessary tasks. 

(Myra Orlen)

August 4, 2014 in Advice, Books | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Sunday, August 3, 2014

Law School Action Comics #4

Lsac4

(Alex Ruskell)

August 3, 2014 in Miscellany | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Saturday, August 2, 2014

The Importance of Writing for Long-Term ASPer's

My article is due to go out to law reviews on Friday. I have learned many, many things while writing the article,  but the most important lesson learned is about teaching. Specifically, the process of submitting my piece to outside reviewers has given me renewed insight into what our students experience when they receive feedback. I know the research on students and feedback. However, it is completely different to experience getting feedback. If you have been in ASP for a while, you probably haven't received feedback since law school. Getting feedback is very tough. To write something, to spend weeks and months preparing, and then weeks and months writing, is emotionally draining and personally exhausting. You cannot help but feel that your admittedly flawed, incomplete article is a part of yourself. But then you have to let it go out to reviewers. If you are lucky, you will have tough, critical reviewers who are willing to tell you everything that is wrong with the piece, so that you can make it better before the submission process. I have been blessed with some really tough reviewers, and my piece is immeasurably better because they spent hours telling me just what is wrong with my flawed, incomplete article. I am confident that what goes out on Friday morning is no longer flawed or incomplete, but a fully-realized articulation of a problem. And it is better, stronger, and complete because of the feedback I received from outside reviewers.

The process of receiving feedback has reminded me how tough it is on our students. They spend all semester struggling with the material, and then they are judged on their learning just once or twice a semester. They cannot help but feel like they are being personally judged, evaluated, and measured. Part of our job is to help our students see that critical feedback is not meant to measure  failures and self-worth, but to show them how to be stronger, better, and smarter.   It is a part of the "invisible curriculum" of law schools (to use a Carnegie term) that criticism will produce stronger lawyers. We need to make that visible to students; we need to explain that we give them critical feedback because we believe they can be smarter, stronger, better thinkers and writers.

If you are a long-term ASPer, try writing an article for a law review. It may not help you in your professional evaluations, you may not need it for tenure, but you should do it because it will make you a better teacher. Reading about feedback is not the same as receiving feedback. Write because it will help you understand your students.

RCF

August 2, 2014 in Academic Support Spotlight, Advice, Encouragement & Inspiration, Miscellany, Publishing | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Friday, August 1, 2014

"Barmageddon" and Other Post Bar Exam Musings…

Most of you have likely heard about the nationwide ExamSoft malfunction that occurred during the administration of the bar exam this week.  If not, as you can imagine, ExamSoft did not perform as expected and many bar exam takers were left with error messages when they tried to upload their bar exams.  Above the Law even collected tweets from infuriated bar applicants and compiled them on their blog.  Take a look, my favorite is the one referencing the Titanic. 

While rational minds realize that this software snafu is not a catastrophic event (since uploading can happen once the system is not being overtaxed), bar applicants are not rational.  Applicants who are sitting for the bar exam are at peak performance; but, they are also at the pinnacle of stress.  Anything can set them off.  Some examples from this week include:  the temperature of the room (in WA it was like the icebergs in Titanic); toe tapping from a tablemate; bad breath wafting from a tablemate (yuck); shortened lunch break on MBE day; not being able to take highlighters into the exam; a cluster of sobbing test takers during the MBE day; and (my favorite) a driver’s license accidentally being flushed down the toilet.  None of these situations led to permanent bodily harm, but some left scars on test takers psyches.

If you took the bar exam, you can somewhat relate to what these examinees went through this week.  However, I find that once there is distance from one’s bar exam experience, an individual is likely to brush off its intensity.  Since I feel as if I go through, at least some of, the rigors of this exam twice a year, I do have a soft spot when I hear about anything that may have messed with an applicant’s mojo.  As we know, there is a bit of mojo required for bar passage.

 Luckily in Washington, bar applicants have a few days to upload their essays and PTs; so, many of my students were not adversely affected by the ExamSoft debacle.  However, I will add “Barmageddon” to the numerous other stories that I have accumulated over the years.  There is one when the earthquake happened in 2001 (and the examiners called out "keep working" as students climbed under their tables), the one where someone went into labor during the test, and the one where a student threw up on their exam (toe tapping is fine in comparison)…  I will share these stories and a few others with my future students so that no matter what happens, they will “keep calm and carry on” when it is turn in the hot seat.

Lisa Bove Young

August 1, 2014 in Bar Exam Issues, Bar Exam Preparation, Bar Exams | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)