CFP: 2016 SALT Teaching Conference this Fall in Chicago!

Dear colleagues:

Below, please see the call for panels and papers for the 2016 Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) Teaching Conference!  The CFP is also available online here.  Proposals are due by June 15, 2016.  We look forward to seeing you in Chicago this fall!

Friday and Saturday, September 30 and October 1, 2016 

The John Marshall Law School, Chicago, Illinois

Call for Panels and Papers

Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) Teaching Conference, in partnership with the
LatCrit-SALT Junior Faculty Development Workshop

www.saltlaw.org

Friday and Saturday, September 30 and October 1, 2016  

The John Marshall Law School, Chicago, Illinois

The LatCrit, Inc./SALT Tenth Annual Junior Faculty Development Workshop (FDW) will take place on September 29, 2016, immediately preceding the SALT Teaching Conference.  The FDW is designed for critical, progressive, and social justice oriented pre-tenure professors, including clinicians and legal writing professors, as well as those who may be contemplating a law teaching career.  The FDW is designed to familiarize junior faculty with LatCrit and SALT principles and values and support them in the scholarship, teaching, and service aspects of professional success.

From the Classroom to the Community: Teaching and Advancing Social Justice

In 2015, law school applications hit a fifteen-year low. The drop reflects a radically changed employment market and a prevailing view that law school is no longer a sound investment. To attract qualified applicants and respond to a changing marketplace, many law schools have embraced experiential learning mandates and other “practice-ready” curricular shifts. The plunge in applications has also prompted law schools to lower admissions standards. In turn, the admission of students with below-average LSAT scores and modest college grade point averages has created new concerns about bar passage, job placement, and prospects for long-term professional success.

In this environment, the legal academy is faced with unprecedented challenges. On one hand, pressure exists to ensure that students are adequately prepared to navigate a courtroom, draft legal documents, and exhibit other “practice-ready” skills upon graduation. At the same time, law professors are urged to cover a wide spectrum of theory, rules, and doctrine to increase prospects for bar passage. In the struggle to achieve both goals, the critical need to integrate social justice teaching into the curriculum is often overlooked, rejected as extraneous, or abandoned in light of time constraints.

To the contrary, social justice teaching plays an essential role in improving legal analysis, enhancing practical skills, and cultivating professional development. Moreover, social justice teaching can help instill passion, commitment, and focus into students burdened with debt and facing an uncertain job market. Most important, as the legal marketplace contracts, access to counsel for lower- and middle-income people continues to grow -- creating a pressing need for effective and committed pro bono lawyers.

In response to new educational and professional challenges, law schools and the legal profession must join in a concerted effort to integrate social justice teaching into the classroom and expand social justice throughout the community. This conference will provide opportunities to engage in broad, substantive, and supportive discussions about the role of legal education and the legal profession in teaching students to become effective social justice advocates and the ways faculty can set an example through their own activism.

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

1. Innovative methods to incorporate social justice concepts into the law school curriculum.

2. Strategies to encourage students to become more engaged in academic and community activism.

3. Collaborative efforts between law schools and the legal profession to respond to the need for greater access to legal services.

4. Techniques to help law students and new lawyers develop resilience, stamina, and “grit” to face the enduring challenges of social justice advocacy.

5. Responses to the ever-increasing cost of legal education and its impact on social justice and access to justice.

We welcome other related topics and encourage a variety of session formats.  You may submit a proposal as an individual speaker, as a panel, or group.  Whatever your topic and format, please use the required format as provided below for your proposal.   

Please send your proposals to Hugh Mundy ([email protected]) by June 15, 2016.

Other members of the SALT Teaching Conference Committee include Margaret Barry ([email protected]), Emily Benfer ([email protected]), Davida Finger ([email protected]), Allyson Gold ([email protected]), and Aníbal Rosario Lebrón ([email protected]). Please share information about the Teaching Conference with your colleagues, particularly new and junior faculty, who are not yet members of SALT.  Visit www.saltlaw.org for additional details.

Required Format for Proposed Presentations

Please submit all proposals by using the bolded headings set forth below.

1. Title of proposed presentation
   
2. Presenter name and contact information
   

Submit contact information for each individual who will participate in the presentation; however, you must identify one person to serve as the primary contact person.  The contact person is responsible for receiving and transmitting information about the SALT conference to the other members of the panel. 

Contact person:

Presenter’s school (as listed in the AALS Directory) and mailing address

E-mail

Office phone number

Mobile phone number

Fax number

     Other panel members (if applicable):

Presenter’s school (as listed in the AALS Directory)

E-mail

3. Summary of the proposed presentation.

The description or narrative portion of the proposal should accurately and succinctly describe the content, format, and anticipated duration of the presentation. The ideal length of the summary is approximately one page of double-spaced text.

4. Related papers or documents (if applicable).

We do not expect all submissions to include related scholarship or documents- especially at this early point in the process; however, if you have any related documents that help to support or illustrate your proposed presentation, feel free to attach them to your submission.