clinicians with not enough to do

Uniform Bar Exam Drawing Closer to Reality

States' adoption of the test reflects the legal profession?s nationalization

Leigh Jones

The National Law Journal

It could mark one of the biggest changes for lawyers joining the profession since the first U.S. bar exam was given in Delaware in 1763 -- a single bar exam aimed at standardizing attorney credentials nationwide.

Next year, at least 10 states are expected to switch to the so-called Uniform Bar Exam, and 22 other jurisdictions are positioned to adopt the test in the next few years. The test, developed by the National Conference of Bar Examiners, will allow law school graduates to transport their bar scores across state lines without re-taking exams. And backers say a uniform exam will improve the quality of bar exams, particularly in states with small test-development budgets.

The test still has big hurdles to overcome. Several of the biggest legal markets have yet to sign on: New York, California, the District of Columbia, Florida, Illinois and Texas so far have taken a pass. Some worry the test will give short shrift to important state law concepts. Others have scheduling problems and scoring concerns. And the test puts a great deal of power in the hands of the NCBE, which gives some state-level bar officials pause.

Even so, the fact that several states have accepted one test may mean a major shift for the profession. Individual states have doggedly clung to their autonomy in testing lawyers, and this would mean giving up that power. "Roughly 10" states have indicated that they will give the uniform test by 2011, said Erica Moeser, president of the NCBE, though she wouldn't provide specifics on which states will actually sign on. However, officials in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri have said they are considering the test. Next month, representatives from the states that will be among the first adopting the test will gather in Phoenix to discuss late-stage details of implementing the exam.

"It's got to start somewhere, and it's happening," said John J. McAlary, executive director of the New York State Board of Law Examiners. New York, which administers some 15,000 bar examinations each year, is considering the uniform exam. That said, McAlary doesn't expect the state to make a move anytime soon. "There are significant challenges with it," he said. New York will not send representatives to next month's meeting.

To read the rest of this piece, go to http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202434472731&rss=newswire

Unfortunate Marketing

Undignified Marketing Alert

from Feminist Law Professors by Bridget Crawford

The image at left is taken from the Northeastern University School of Law publicity that landed today in my faculty mailbox.  The text in the tan box in the upper left corner reads, “Faculty and students advocate together for those too-often underrepresented in the justice system.” 

That’s a nice message.

A woman sitting on the floor gazing upwards adoringly at a professor is not a nice message. 

It is as if the school is saying, “At Northeastern, our professors tower over all others.  Here, women sit on the floor and beam at their older male professors.  We like that image so much we wanted to share it with the world.  It represents a typical interaction at our school.”

Who suggested this shot?  Why did the faculty member agree to it?  Why didn’t the students object?  Why didn’t the Marketing/Communications staff reject it?  Hey, Northeastern, you can do better.

-Bridget Crawford

Hiring for Political Diversity?

On Hiring - Hiring for Political Diversity? - The Chronicle of Higher Education

By David Evans



One of my favorite higher-education blogs is Tenured Radical, by Claire Potter, a history professor at a top liberal-arts college in the Northeast. Her latest entry takes up the issue of intellectual diversity -- specifically, the hiring of conservatives -- in academic searches. She looks at that issue with a characteristic combination of thoughtfulness, analytical rigor, and lack of dogma that is perhaps at odds with the title of her blog.

As I've said before, I'm in English, and came of age academically during the "canon wars" and the debates over "political correctness." I am, by personal inclination, what you might call a pragmatic leftist (if my conservative friends and colleagues will grant that such a category exists at all), and "should," by the predictive models of some critics of higher education, be an exemplar of exclusionary hiring practices that strongly favor liberals or radicals.

I have overseen a tremendous number of faculty searches, and have been party to a huge number of discussions about search parameters and desiderata, as well as conversations about particular candidates at various points in the process. The surprising thing about those experiences is actually how little "politics," in the sense of dividing up the pool into left and right, has ever come into play.

There have certainly been a few instances where dogma of some kind (and it's not always been leftist dogma) has had some impact on a search process. But in general, I'm pleased to say that my colleagues have genuinely looked for the best teacher, scholar, and colleague according to professionally reasonable measures rather than ideology. As a result, we've hired a mix of people with a mix of political positions and attitudes.

Something that Tenured Radical's entry doesn't really bring up is the interesting dichotomy between "political" conservatism and "academic" conservatism, and I think that distinction is worth probing. I don't think, for example, that a strong interest in Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton necessarily makes one a political reactionary even if one's approach to those texts is traditional in the extreme. Similarly, I have known some quite conservative colleagues who have had pretty radical scholarly and pedagogical programs in areas like Queer Theory. I've even known a couple of leftist bibliographers!

The point really is that academic politics -- in the macro sense rather than institutionally -- are pretty complex. We tell our students to avoid simplistic dichotomies and to develop comfort with ambiguity, inconclusiveness, and honest debate. When it comes to the politics of our colleagues, I think we ought to model that approach ourselves.

JOBS: CUNY lawyering

The City University of New York career opportunity
CUNY School of Law
Title		Law School Instructor
Location/Department		Faculty – Lawyering Seminar/Skills/Doctrinal
Position Detail		Teaching
FLSA Status		Exempt
Compensation		$39,832-$86,595, commensurate with experience
Web Site		www.law.cuny.edu
Notice Number
Closing Date		Open until filled, review of resumes begin Nov. 9, 2009
Position Description and Duties
	The Law School seeks applicants with a demonstrated commitment to our social justice mission for a full-time teaching position. The Law School Instructor hired in this cycle will primarily teach First-Year Lawyering Seminar, the foundational course in CUNY School of Law's nationally recognized lawyering curriculum, with particular focus on the training development of public interest/public service lawyers. Spanning all three years of law school, the Law School's lawyering curriculum was hailed by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in its 2007 Report, Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law. CUNY Law innovatively and successfully integrates students' learning of practical skills and the ethical demands of professional identity with their learning of legal theory and doctrine. The Law School's First-Year Lawyering Seminar teaches legal analysis, legal writing, professional responsibility, and other lawyering skills by integrating clinical methodology with substantive, theoretical, and doctrinal material. Using simulation exercises and hypothetical cases, students role-play lawyers, clients, judges, and/or legislators confronted by legal issues arising from material in their other first-year courses. The Lawyering Seminar focuses on the ways in which lawyers work and think in various areas of practice, with a focus on public interest law. Students develop their analytic skills by writing and revising legal documents on which they receive feedback and critiques. They also acquire new qualitative skills, such as active listening, collaborative problem solving and decision making, self-evaluation, and ethical reasoning. Students are encouraged to develop critical awareness of the social, legal, philosophical, political, and psychological content of their work. The Law School views these perspectives as central to a future lawyer's understanding of his/her status and role, including the mandates and aspirations of the New York Rules of Professional Conduct. Second-Year Lawyering Seminar and required clinical courses in the third-year build on the skills learned in the first year.   The instructor may, in accordance with the law school's needs, teach additional lawyering seminars, a doctrinal course, and/or provide academic skills instruction or other program support. This position is full-time and the instructor will be expected to teach and/or assist with the design and development of curriculum materials during the summer.       The Law School Instructor will be responsible for committee work and such administrative, supervisory, and other functions as assigned. In their first two years of service, Law School Instructors may opt into participating in faculty meetings, pursuant to the CUNY School of Law Governance Plan. Instructors may assume other faculty governance responsibilities and serve on committees as appointed by the Dean or Committee on Committees. Upon reappointment for three or more years of continuous service, Law School Instructors may participate in governance activities without an annual opt-in process.   Law School Instructors will perform other related duties as necessary or as directed by the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs.
Qualification Requirements
	For appointment as Law School Instructor, the candidate must have demonstrated outstanding qualities of personality, character, legal ability, and commitment to public service or public interest law. S/he must have a minimum of five years' practice experience, excellent writing skills, and substantial experience teaching in the areas of legal writing, lawyering, and legal analysis/legal methods. Additional doctrinal teaching experience is a plus, particularly in the area of commercial law. S/he must show a willingness to cooperate with others for the good of the institution. S/he must also have a J.D. or LL.B. from an accredited law school.
To Apply		Send cover letter and resume to:
		facultyappointments@mail.law.cuny.edu Maureen McCafferty, Coordinator of Faculty Recruitment Please indicate the position for which you are applying
questions		Email:
		Susan Markus, Director of Legal Writing Center Instructor Search Committee markus@mail.law.cuny.edu

I Can't Believe We Didn't Make the List!

From our friends at the TaxProf blog:

100 Best Professors Who Blog

OnlineCollege released 100 Best Professors Who Blog.  Here are the "Law & Politics" blogs on the list:

1. ImmigrationProf Blog: These bloggers offer a law professor’s view on immigration.
2. TaxProf Blog: Paul Caron is a professor of tax law at the University of Cincinnati.
3. Patently-O: This blog offers a look into patent law.
4. Instapundit: Glenn Reynolds is a law professor, author, and more.
5. ProfessorBainbridge: Check out this blog to read about the life and work of a corporate law professor.
6. The Volokh Conspiracy: The Volokh Conspiracy offers a look into the US legal system and courts.
7. Concurring Opinions: Concurring Opinions discusses the law, universe, and more.
8. PoliBlog: Read about the master science of politics on PoliBlog.
9. The Faculty Lounge: On this blog, you’ll find conversations about law, culture, and academia.
10. Discourse: Discourse writes from the fringes of the public sphere.
11. The Hugh Hewitt Show: Hugh Hewitt discusses politics and current events.
12. Indisputably: On this blog, you’ll learn about negotiation, mediation, arbitration, and dispute resolution.

Lawyering from the Heart

	Lawyering from the Heart Deborah Kenn, Syracuse University College of Law 2009. 230 pages. ISBN: 978-0-7355-8652-9.
	ABOUT THE BOOK Lawyering from the Heart features interviews with twenty-two talented law school graduates who stayed true to their dreams of using their education for the benefit of society. They embarked on careers as public interest lawyers. Informative, motivating, and inspiring, their stories show the satisfaction and rewards they found by living their values and following their passion. Authored by committed public interest lawyer and law professor Deborah Kenn, Lawyering from the Heart features: A candid and inspiring look at the quality of life of public interest lawyers Illuminating interviews conducted by the author A diversity of experience — from lawyers who graduated in the past five years to others who have been practicing for more than thirty Practical information about career development as a public interest lawyer Helpful advice for minimizing debt and making ends meet Extensive appendices that list state and law school Loan Repayment Assistance Programs (LRAPs) and Public Interest Law Resource Groups Are any of your students wondering whether it would be financially feasible or realistic for them to pursue careers as public interest lawyers? Now there’s a short but powerful paperback that you can recommend that will provide students with the courage and inspiration to live their values: Lawyering from the Heart, by Deborah Kenn. SUMMARY OF CONTENTS

Juvenile Justice conference

REGISTER NOW!  

http://www.law.ufl.edu/centers/childlaw/juvenilejustice/conferences/

Juvenile Justice:  Passages, Prevention, and Intervention

 

February 19 and 20, 2010

 

Sponsored by:

Juvenile Justice Project

Center for Children and Families

University of Florida Levin College of Law

 

In collaboration with the Center for Race and Race Relations, University of Florida Levin College of Law

 

Co-sponsors:  Child Advocacy Project, Harvard Law School and the Juvenile Justice Clinic, Georgetown University School of Law

 

Plenary Speakers:  Geoffrey Canada, founder of the Harlem Children’s Zone

Shay Bilchik, director, Center for Juvenile Justice Reform,               Georgetown University

 

 

 

Juvenile Justice Project website:  http://www.law.ufl.edu/centers/childlaw/

 

Conference website:

http://www.law.ufl.edu/centers/childlaw/juvenile justice/conferences/

 

Is Tenure Conservative?

October 20, 2009

The ultimate in job security discourages the challenging, innovative scholarship it was designed to protect, writes Mark Kingwell.

Is the institution of tenure supportable? No, but not for the reasons you may think. Routine complaints about iron-clad job security and lack of accountability miss the point. But so do pleas for academic freedom from outside (and largely notional) political forces. The real danger of tenure is that it threatens academic freedom instead of protecting it.

The issue is now more acute than ever because financial stresses have created a situation in which normal academic job competition and jockeying for position have been raised to a fever pitch, a desperate scramble among scores of talented people for a slice of the shrinking academic pie. At the same time, public awareness of the costs of maintaining university professors has underlined a significant social change: Taxpayers no longer believe anyone, however brilliant or productive, should get a lifetime guarantee of job security. And they suspect, rightly, that many of those enjoying that privilege may not be so brilliant or productive.

But, while some professors now privately admit an opposition to tenure, many more continue to view it as their rightful inheritance, equal parts compensation for the uncertainties of graduate school and mark of professional advancement in a system where incremental rises in status are as important as pips on the collar of a subaltern. No tenured professor has any reason to criticize his gravy train. Nor does any tenure-track junior professor, sweating out the first few years of professional review.

» View full article

JOBS: MORE AT SUFFOLK

 

1)       We will be hiring a Clinical Internship coordinator/instructor for juvenile law related placements.  The person who fills this position will be responsible for developing quality placements with juvenile judges, prosecutors, youth related agencies and in non-profit legal services organizations.  At Suffolk we require a two hour classroom component with all externships, so the person hired will also have to develop and teach that required co-requisite.

2)      We will also be hiring a juvenile delinquency staff attorney.  As part of our grant obligations, we need to make sure that we represent clients in the delinquency courts in a way that maximizes our educational impact on the practicing bar.  Applicants for this position need to be members of the Mass. Bar (or able to waive in on our state’s generous short term bar admission rules) with at least three years of  practice experience in the juvenile field.

 

Both the above positions will begin in December and will last for one year with a likely extension until at least July, 2011.

 

3)      Suffolk will also be seeking a clinical teacher to start a consumer arbitration clinic (focusing primarily on consumer issues in the investment context).  This position will also begin January 1, 2010 and will be available for a minimum of three years.

 

Currently, these three jobs are non-faculty appointments, but I hope to improve on that in time.  Formal job announcements are available from me.  

Jeffrey J. Pokorak

Director, Clinical Programs

Suffolk University Law School

120 Tremont Street

Boston, MA  02108-4977

617-305-1645

THINKING BEFORE TWEETING

National Law Journal:  Professor wants law students to think before they tweet

Karen Sloan

October 19, 2009

Drake University Law School professor Melissa Weresh is on a mission to get law students and young attorneys to think twice before they hit send on an e-mail, post a photo to their Facebook pages or update their Twitter accounts. New technology has made communication faster than ever before, but also has led to a widening gap in the way younger and older generations communicate and differing opinions on what is professional and appropriate.

"They way [law students and young attorneys] are accustomed to communicating is just so different," Weresh said. "Everything is immediately available, and they've almost been exclusively communicating through electronic mediums in ways that older generations may see as inappropriate."

Weresh has been holding seminars at Drake and across the country to get young attorneys and would-be attorneys to be more deliberate in their electronic communications and to think about the ethical problems that can arise from new technology. The National Law Journal spoke with Weresh about the mistakes she sees young attorneys making and how those pitfalls can be avoided. Her answers have been edited for length.

read the rest here

Carrie Kaas and Mary Lynch’s Best Practices Presentation, or NECESSITY IS THE MOTHER OF INVENTION

From our friends at the Best Practices Blog:

When in North Dartmouth (Massachusetts), go with the flow, and be creative.  That’s what Carrie and Mary did today, Oct. 15,  at their Best Practices presentation at Southern New England School of Law (SNESL).  They adjusted to a colossal late-night technological glitch (Mary’s laptop crashing prior to sending Carrie the slides!) without a hitch (or at least without their audience noticing the hitch).  None of us could tell that they had finished their preparation in the car on the way from Connecticut to North Dartmouth! 

While there was a bit of “preaching to the converted” with Justine Dunlap’s and my presence, several participants had never heard of the BP movement in advance of the meeting, and others had only engaged with it once, a couple of summers ago at an informal gathering at my house.  The level of participation was impressive, and included full-time faculty along with writing faculty, adjuncts, and graduate clinical fellows.  In addition, the participants’ willingness to engage the presenters’ requests — by breaking-off into small groups to address questions Carrie and Mary assigned us – indicated, may I suggest, a willingness to work both individually and cooperatively to improve how we do what we do at SNESL.  The questions Carrie and Mary asked us to address in our small groups included the following: (1) where people thought SNESL was, within the context of the BP movement, (2) what SNESL does well, and (3) where we can improve.  What was encouraging, given that the group has on the whole been working together for many years, was the level of enthusiasm in the small groups; it was difficult for our leaders to get us to break out of the small groups and return to the larger group to share our findings.  But when we did, there were some clear themes.

While I can’t judge the level of enthusiasm with which the participants approached the event, it was clear that, while it lasted nearly 2 hours, several participants would have stayed longer had the room not been overtaken by students coming in to take a midterm (which, our presenters noted, was a positive sign, given that assessments were being done at mid-semester!).

 I’m writing at the end of this energizing day, before receiving the presenters’ feedback: a summary of both the responses to the small-group questions and anonymous responses we were encouraged to offer.  It may, then, be too soon to judge whether we at SNESL will use today as our starting point for a serious commitment to the Best Practices Movement.  But I do feel confident that, whether or not the group as a whole moves together into the Movement, some of us within the group will surely address our self-identified “could be improved” aspects (assessment being frequently mentioned) and, through that work, join with the Movement towards the future of legal education.

SSRN: Law Educator Journal

Best Practices for the Law of the Horse: Teaching Cyberlaw Through Simulations

Ira S. Nathenson, St. Thomas University School of Law

Legal Reading and Success in Law School: The Reading Strategies of Law Students With Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)

Leah M. Christensen, Thomas Jefferson School of Law

The Forgotten Sovereigns

Tonya Kowalski, Washburn University School of Law

Making Law Students Client-Ready: A New Model in Legal Education

John Burwell Garvey, Franklin Pierce Law Center
Anne F. Zinkin, New Hampshire Supreme Court

Watch, Listen, and Learn

Kathleen Elliott Vinson, Suffolk University Law School

The Student Centererd Law School

Student Centered

from PrawfsBlawg by laborprof lpb

My University prides itself on being “student centered”.  For years, I taught here without giving much thought to the phrase.  I thought it was pretty meaningless – I mean, aren’t all schools student centered?

Well, no.  I learned, when I was participating in the University 10-year plan, that student centered meant, to our University anyway, (1) a commitment to small class sizes, and (2) in response to any issue, always asking first: “what solution would most benefit students?”.

Many law schools seem very faculty centered.  We teach three or (gasp!) four courses a year, meaning either that student tuition must be raised to hire more of us or that schools must outsource much of the teaching load to adjuncts.  We zealously guard a tenure system that, for too many of us, translates not into a freedom to engage in academic discourse, but into a freedom from engaging in academic discourse.  We jealously guard this tenure system from encroachment by skills teachers and clinicians and writing teachers, notwithstanding the fact that these teachers are teaching students the material often most directly relevant to the students’ future law practice.  (As an aside, I’ve noticed that many of the tenured folks who argue most vociferously against tenure for non-doctrinal teachers are also the weakest links in teaching, scholarship, and service – they need tenure to be exclusive to maintain their own stature, because their stature isn’t so impressive on merit alone.)

read the rest here

Rick Bales

My University prides itself on being “student centered”.  For years, I taught here without giving much thought to the phrase.  I thought it was pretty meaningless – I mean, aren’t all schools student centered?

Well, no.  I learned, when I was participating in the University 10-year plan, that student centered meant, to our University anyway, (1) a commitment to small class sizes, and (2) in response to any issue, always asking first: “what solution would most benefit students?”.

Many law schools seem very faculty centered.  We teach three or (gasp!) four courses a year, meaning either that student tuition must be raised to hire more of us or that schools must outsource much of the teaching load to adjuncts.  We zealously guard a tenure system that, for too many of us, translates not into a freedom to engage in academic discourse, but into a freedom from engaging in academic discourse.  We jealously guard this tenure system from encroachment by skills teachers and clinicians and writing teachers, notwithstanding the fact that these teachers are teaching students the material often most directly relevant to the students’ future law practice.  (As an aside, I’ve noticed that many of the tenured folks who argue most vociferously against tenure for non-doctrinal teachers are also the weakest links in teaching, scholarship, and service – they need tenure to be exclusive to maintain their own stature, because their stature isn’t so impressive on merit alone.)

read the rest here

Rick Bales

“Changing the Subject: From Welfare to Poverty to a Living Income”

Poverty Law

New Article: “Changing the Subject: From Welfare to Poverty to a Living Income”

October 19, 2009 · Leave a Comment

New Article: Peter B. Edelman, Changing the Subject: From Welfare to Poverty to a Living Income, 4 Nw. J. L. & Soc. Pol’y 14 (2009).  The article is short, 16 pages, yet covers a lot of ground in that space.  The abstract, pulled from the intro is below:

For nearly forty years, the dominant political discourse about poverty in the United

States has focused on welfare rather than poverty itself, even as disparities between the

wealthiest and those at the bottom widened spectacularly. With the new century and a

new administration, public attention has returned to issues of poverty and inequality.

This Article explores the relevant history of the last four decades and suggests a

comprehensive policy framework for substantially reducing poverty in the short run and

for investing in the future.

For nearly forty years, the dominant political discourse about poverty in the United States has focused on welfare rather than poverty itself, even as disparities between the wealthiest and those at the bottom widened spectacularly. With the new century and a new administration, public attention has returned to issues of poverty and inequality. This Article explores the relevant history of the last four decades and suggests a comprehensive policy framework for substantially reducing poverty in the short run and for investing in the future.

teaching legal drafting and transactional skills

a gold mine for teaching legal drafting and transactional skills:  FROM LEGAL WRITING PROF BLOG

Have you started thinking about next spring's courses? Is your school looking for ideas for incorporating more skills education into the legal education curriculum? Whether you teach (or want to teach) an entire course on drafting, or teach drafting in connection with a clinical or doctrinal course, or whether your basic legal writing curriculum includes some drafting components, you need to get your hands on a special issue of Transactions, the Tennessee Journal of Business, Teaching Drafting and Transactional Skills: The Basics and Beyond, 2009 Transactions 1 (click preceding link to download the entire issue). The issue represents proceedings of the May 2008 conference hosted by Emory
University School of Law's Center for Transactional Law and Practice, “Teaching Drafting and Transactional Skills—The Basics and Beyond.”

Devoted in its entirety to the teaching of drafting and transactional skills, the issue features the following presentations by experts in the field. There is something here for everybody.

• George W. Kuney, Introduction to the Special Report, 2009 Transactions 1.
• Tina L. Stark, Conference Introduction: My Fantasy Curriculum & Other Almost Random Thoughts, 2009 Transactions 3. 
• Robert C. Illig, Therese H. Maynard, Cherie O. Taylor & Irene Kosturakis, Teaching Transactional Skills through Simulations in Upper-Level Courses: Three Exemplars, 2009 Transactions 15.
• Wayne Schiess, Craig Smith, Pamela Wilkins, Danton Berube & Irene Segal Ayers, Teaching Transactional Skills in First-Year Writing Courses, 2009 Transactions 53.
• Anthony J. Luppino, George W. Kuney & Jamison Wilcox, Pedagogic Techniques: Multi-Disciplinary Courses, Annotated Document Review, Collaborative Work & Large Groups, 2009 Transactions 73.
• Praveen Kosuri, Daniel Jaffe, Jeff Leslie & James F. Hogg, You Too Can Create a Simulation Exercise (or Even a Course), 2009 Transactions 101.
• Travis Dale Jones, Rosemary Dillon, Lisa Penland & Sue Payne, How to Create Contract Drafting Exercises, 2009 Transactions 127.
• Tina L. Stark & George W. Kuney, Transactional Skills Training: Contract Drafting--the Basics, 2009 Transactions 139.
• Phillip Knott, Thinking Like a Lawyer: An English Interpretation, 2009 Transactions 179. 
• Tracy L. McGaugh, Pedagogic Techniques: Using Collaborative Writing Technology to Teach Contract Drafting, 2009 Transactions 189. 
• Serge Martinez & Robert Statchen, Teaching Transactional Skills in a Clinic, 2009 Transactions 203.
• Susan M. Chesler, Karen Sneddon, Elizabeth August & Mark Need, Teaching Multiple Skills in Drafting & Simulation Courses, 2009 Transactions 221.
• Scott J. Burnham, Larry A. DiMatteo, Kenneth A. Adams & J. Lyn Entrikin Goering, Transactional Skills Training: Contract Drafting--Beyond the Basics, 2009 Transactions 253.
• Robin A. Boyle, David Epstein & Sue Payne, How to Critique & Grade Contract Drafting Assignments, 2009 Transactions 297.
• Christina L. Kunz, Debra Pogrund Stark, Richard K. Neumann, Jr. & Cynthia M. Adams, Incorporating Transactional Skills Training into First-Year Doctrinal Courses, 2009 Transactions 331.
• Douglas Godfrey, Charles Fox & Edward C. Harris, Transactional Skills Training: All about Due Diligence, 2009 Transactions 357.
• Rachel Arnow-Richman, Lisa Bliss, Sylvia B. Caley & Michael A. Woronoff, Teaching Transactional Skills in Upper-Level Doctrinal Courses: Three Exemplars, 2009 Transactions 367.
• Leslie Larkin Cooney, Judith Karp, Maggie Finnerty & Howard E. Katz, More Pedagogic Techniques: Online Exercises & Integrating Skills into Different Kinds of Courses, 2009 Transactions 389.
• Charles R. Beaudrot, Jr., Transactional Skills Training: Opinion Letters, 2009 Transactions 405.

JOBS: Visitor At West Va.

Visiting Assistant Professor

Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Law Program

West Virginia University College of Law 

West Virginia University College of Law’s Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Law Program seeks a visiting assistant professor beginning in Spring of 2010. The initial term for the position is 2.5 years, and is thus ideal for faculty candidates who desire experience as well as time and resources devoted to scholarship before entering the law professor job market. However, all applicants will be considered, and the initial term may be renewed for candidates who desire longer term contracts. The position is not tenure-track at this time and, like other contract positions, time spent in the position will not count toward tenure.  

The EILP seeks candidates with outstanding academic credentials as well as practical experience in areas that relate to entrepreneurship. Responsibilities include coordinating with the faculty director to: manage and teach in the Entrepreneurship Law Clinic, including supervising student lawyers; coordinate conferences and other outreach; assist with the development of curriculum; and pursue scholarly interests related to entrepreneurship, innovation, and law. 

Founded in 1878, and accredited by the Association of American Law Schools and the American Bar Association in 1914 and 1924, respectively, the College of Law is the sole law school serving the State of West Virginia and values close student/faculty interaction.  It is an equal opportunity employer with a strong history and commitment to diversity, graduating its first woman in 1895 and its first African-American in 1949.  The College of Law continues its commitment to creating and maintaining a diverse faculty and student body. 

Located in Morgantown, West Virginia, a vibrant university town ranked one of the top three small cities in the east, College of Law faculty and students enjoy the convenience and lower cost of living in a small city and the cultural opportunities of a larger one.  Major cities are easy trips: Morgantown is approximately 1.25 hours from Pittsburgh and 3.5 hours from Cleveland, Ohio, Washington, DC, and Baltimore, Maryland. 

Please send C.V., Statement of Interest, and any supporting materials to Michael Risch, Associate Professor and Faculty Director – Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Law Program, West Virginia University College of Law, Box 6130, Morgantown, WV 26506-6130. Email applications accepted (Michael.Risch@mail.wvu.edu). 

Request for Help with Schools' Refusal to Enforce Orders of Protection

The issue:

What is a public school district’s (middle/high school) obligation to enforce a protection from abuse order that is obtained by one student against another student? We are seeing this in dating violence situations, where the schools are not doing anything about the protection order or are taking measures that impact the victim only, such as making her change classes if plaintiff and defendant have shared classes. 

 

There is nothing addressing this in the Maine Education Statutes (Title 20-A of the Maine Revised Statutes) or in the protection from abuse and harassment statutes (PFA 19-A MRS 4001 et seq and PFH is 5 MRS 4651et seq).

Similarly, do colleges and universities have the same obligations as elementary/secondary schools?

We’re unsure if there is anything in Title IX, No Child Left Behind, or elsewhere.  Any thoughts?

With appreciation,

Sara Meerse

Directing Attorney

KIDS LEGAL
at Pine Tree Legal Assistance 207.774.8246 x.1202