How academics dress for a lecture doesn't affect how students perceive them — at least in the long run.
That was the conclusion of a study at North Hennepin Community
College that measured students' perception of an instructor based on
what type of clothing she wore to her lectures.
Yasmine L. Konheim-Kalkstein, who holds a doctorate in educational
psychology, grouped four sections of an introductory psychology course
she taught last fall into two "casual" classes and two "formal"
classes, each of which were held at different times and on different
days.
On the first day of the study, Ms. Konheim-Kalkstein wore jeans, a
drab-colored T-shirt, and gray sneakers to the casual class, and black
pants, a button-up, black-and-white-striped shirt, and a small heel to
the formal class. Students were surveyed about their initial
impressions of her approachability, her ability to teach, her age, and
her teaching style.
Dressing casually "felt very awkward at first, but I got over it
very quickly," she says. "As soon as you start lecturing you forget
about it."
For the next four weeks, she continued the routine, but often wore
the same shirt — either a button-up blouse or a plain T-shirt — with
both her casual and formal outfits. Students were surveyed again at the
end of four weeks.
The data showed that Ms. Konheim-Kalkstein's clothing made a small
difference in perceptions of her on the first day of class, with those
students in the "formal" classes finding her more qualified and
approachable than did those in the informal classes. But four weeks
into the semester, wearing less-formal clothes had about the same
effect on student perceptions as wearing formal clothes.
Ms. Konheim-Kalkstein says she still prefers teaching in formal
clothing, but now she feels more comfortable wearing casual clothes in
lectures as well. She says she'd like to do further research that takes
into account gender differences, as well as the environmental context
of the college or university.
"I work at a college where professors wear a variety of things," she
says, "Some wear suits and ties and others wear shorts, so regardless
of which class I was dressing for, I didn't really stand out."
That would not be true at every institution, Ms. Konheim-Kalkstein
observes. "My husband is going to start teaching at West Point," she
says. "If he showed up in sneakers, I think he would have a much
stronger reaction there from his students."
On
the Cutting Edge: Charting the Future of Sexual
Orientation and Gender Identity Scholarship
AALS Annual
Meeting January 6-10, 2010 in
New Orleans, Louisiana
Thirty
years ago, Rhonda Rivera published “Our Straight-Laced Judges: The Legal
Position of Homosexual Persons in the United States,” the first
comprehensive law review article of its kind. Since then, the sexual
orientation and gender identity legal literature has exploded, with hundreds of
articles considering all imaginable aspects of the law’s relationship to gender
identity and sexual orientation. At the same time, political demands of
lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender have both multiplied and moved to
the center of cultural debates, and the body of case law addressing these issues
has likewise grown exponentially. What, then, are the next steps for legal
scholarship?
The program’s aim is
to highlight new issues, new theories, possibilities for linking theory and
practice, and visions of the field for the decade(s) to come.
Because the program
aims to spark new ideas, this Call for Papers is for short essays – from 1000 to
2000 words – rather than for full-length papers. Submissions will be
considered for two purposes:
Program participation
– One submission will be selected for presentation at the SOGII program at the
Annual Meeting, which will be held from 10:30 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. on Saturday,
January 9, 2010, in New Orleans. The selected author will have to rely on his
or her own institution for funding to attend the conference.
Publication –
Up to twenty submissions will be selected for publication in a special
volume of the Sexuality & Law Journal(published at Tulane Law
School) dedicated to the panel topic.
The SOGII Section
executive committee will serve as the selection committee. For both purposes,
essays must be no longer than 2000 words, including footnotes.
The deadline to
submit a draft essay is Tuesday, September 1, 2009. Essays can be
revised, subject to the approval of the Journal editors, through the fall
semester, although 2000 words will remain the outer length limit. Please submit
the draft paper to Professor Suzanne B. Goldberg, Chair of the Section on Sexual
Orientation and Gender Identity Issues, as an attachment to an e-mail at
suzanne.goldberg@law.columbia.edu. Submissions will
be reviewed by members of the SOGII Section's Executive Committee. Decisions
will be communicated by late September 2009.
Glen Weissenberger, the popular dean of DePaul University’s College of Law, has been ousted — and he claims it was because he exposed “inaccurate’’ information given by the school to its accreditors.
Weissenberger, the school’s dean since 2002, said in an e-mail to law school staff that he was fired for alerting the American Bar Association that DePaul administrators had recently given the ABA “inaccurate” information on its funding.
But DePaul spokeswoman Denise Mattson on Friday disputed Weissenberger’s claims. She said he was terminated because the relationship between the dean and university administrators was “poor and it wasn’t improving.”
DePaul Provost Helmut Epp said in an e-mail to to faculty and staff this week that “the working relationship between the dean and the administration had deteriorated to the point where it had become difficult to accomplish the college’s work, hence my recommendation to the president for this action.”
Epp, who praised the Law School’s accomplishments under the dean’s tenure, didn’t offer any specific examples in his email of that deteriorating relationship.
Weissenberger couldn’t be reached for comment Friday. But in his e-mail to the law faculty and staff, he said “I want to assure you that I was not terminated for any wrongdoing of any kind.”
He said his firing was “based specifically” on a June 16 letter he sent to the ABA claiming the university gave wrong information about the distribution of law school tuition funds during its accreditation process. He claimed the university had violated an agreement to give 75 percent of tuition funds paid by law students back to the law school — a charge the university denies.
A group of mostly law school students — both past and present — is circulating a petition in support of Weissenberger’s reinstatement.
“It has upset many of us and has disheartened us that the university has made this decision,” wrote DePaul’s Student Bar Association President Patrick Tran. “Though the university’s reasoning has been vague, the university has always been resistant to Dean Weissenberger’s initiatives to improve our law school.”
Weissenberger was appointed to a second five-year term in 2007. Before coming to DePaul, he spent 27 years teaching at the University of Cincinnati Law School.
He remains a tenured member of the DePaul faculty.
An interim dean of the College of Law has been hired, and his name will be made public early next week, Mattson said.
Epp has scheduled a private meeting with the law school’s faculty and staff Monday to answer questions about the administration’s decision to fire Weissenberger and about the future of the law school.
In 1996, when Barack Obama was running for the Illinois Senate, he was asked in a survey by Outlines, a gay community newspaper in Chicago, if he supported same-sex marriage. Unlike most candidates, who merely indicated yes or no, Obama took the unusual step of typing in his response, to which he affixed his signature. Back then not a single state permitted same-sex marriage, and sodomy was a crime. Nonetheless, Obama took a position on the progressive edge of the Democratic Party, and he did so with unmistakable clarity: "I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages."
Since then, as Obama traced his dazzling arc to the presidency, his stance on gay rights has become murkier, wordier, less courageous, more Clintonian. During his 2004 US Senate bid, he stated that he supports domestic partnerships and civil unions instead of same-sex marriage. When speaking to gay audiences, he explained his new position as "primarily just...a strategic issue." But on bigger stages he cited his Christian faith as grounds for his belief that marriage is between a man and a woman, a view he reiterated during the 2008 presidential election even while he also asserted, inconsistently, that religion should not dictate a state's approach to gay rights.
As president, Obama has made similar equivocations on gay rights. As a senator and as a candidate, he won the vocal support of the vast majority of gays and lesbians by calling for the repeal of both the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and the miserable failure that is "don't ask, don't tell," and by supporting full federal partnership rights (but not same-sex marriage) and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would make it illegal to fire someone because of his or her sexual orientation. But he has so far spent no political capital to turn these promises into reality. Quite to the contrary, Obama's slide hit what one hopes will be a nadir on June 12 when his administration filed a brief defending the legality of DOMA by comparing same-sex marriage to incest and pedophilia.
It is impossible to accept that a president who owes so much to movements for civil rights and social justice, never mind the Obama of 1996, believes in such right-wing bigotry; the only plausible explanation can be one of political calculation. The memory of Bill Clinton's early failure to integrate the military, as well as the aftermath of the 2004 election, when same-sex marriage was blamed for John Kerry's loss, looms large in the minds of top Democratic strategists. Guided by veterans of the Clinton-era culture wars like chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, the prevailing wisdom in the White House seems to be that a forward push on gay rights can only endanger what the Democratic Party hopes will be a lasting majority and would squander precious political capital better used on issues like healthcare and economic reform.
Such logic, however, is quickly becoming obsolete. Six states have legalized gay marriage. Democrats like Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd and New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine have renounced support for civil unions and embraced same-sex marriage, with Corzine having done so as a centerpiece of his re-election bid. Gen. John Shalikashvili, Clinton's chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a cadre of military leaders have publicly called for an end to "don't ask, don't tell." Huge majorities of Americans, 89 percent in a 2008 Gallup poll, support workplace rights for gays and lesbians. Steve Schmidt, John McCain's campaign manager, and former Vice President Cheney have announced their support for same-sex marriage; and Utah's Republican governor, Jon Huntsman, came out in favor of civil unions, a switch that has not eroded his popularity in Mormon country one bit. At this rate, Obama is in danger of being outpaced on gay rights not just by the American people but by the nonsuicidal wing of the Republican Party.
There is still time for a course correction. In the wake of an uproar from gay activists and progressives, Obama signed a memo extending limited benefits to partners of gay federal employees (but not healthcare or inheritance rights); reiterated his intent to repeal DOMA; and voiced support for legislation that would, in the interim, give healthcare to same-sex partners of federal workers. But words are no longer enough. Now is the time for Obama to act with the full authority of his office and his character to pass a gay rights agenda that, in the end, will be seen as neither particularly radical nor particularly partisan but as a simple matter of fairness under the law.
A promising first step would be to fast-track passage of ENDA. A previous version passed the House by a vote of 235 to 184 in 2007, with thirty-five Republicans in favor, before dying under the threat of a Bush veto. Congressman Barney Frank introduced a stronger version that includes protections for transgender people on June 24, just before the fortieth anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York City, which ignited the modern gay rights movement.
In those forty years, and especially in the past decade, the arc of the moral universe, as Obama is fond of saying on other matters, has bent toward justice. So much so that the question is no longer, Can the Obama administration afford to support gay rights with full-throated passion—but rather, Can it afford not to?
This
exchange of letters picks up where Professors Adrienne Davis and Robert Chang
left off in an earlier exchange that examined who speaks, who is allowed to
speak, and what is remembered. Here, Professors Davis and Chang explore the
dynamics of race, gender, and sexual orientation in the law school classroom.
They compare the experiences of African American women and Asian American men
in trying to perform as law professors, considering how makeup and other gender
tools simultaneously assist and hinder such performances. Their exchange
examines the possibility of bias that complicates the use of student
evaluations in assessing teaching effectiveness. It hypothesizes that the mechanism
by which this bias manifests itself is a variant of stereotype threat, one that
they call projected stereotype threat, where stereotypes of incompetence or
accent are projected onto the bodies of teachers marked by difference. They
examine how institutions respond or, as is more typically the case, fail to
respond to these problems. They conclude with some suggestions for change,
asserting that if institutions want to pay more than lip service to the goal of
diversity, the success and employment conditions of women and minorities will
improve only through the hiring of more women and minorities and by addressing
directly the issue of bias to educate students about bias and its
discriminatory effects on instructors whose bodies are marked by perceived differences
and how such bias interferes with their learning.
An online law school
graduate who sued the high court of Massachusetts for the opportunity to take
that state's bar examination is now a newly minted Massachusetts lawyer. Last
November, Ross Mitchell won his case against the state's Board of Bar
Examiners, which denied his bid to bypass a requirement that U.S.-trained
applicants be graduates of an American Bar Association-accredited law school.
The court allowed Mitchell to sit for the bar because the ABA is mulling
changes to its accreditation standards.
If I need some insight into the future of
medicine, I might head over to Stanford Medical School. If I
wanted to learn about likely directions in finance and hedge funds, I
might visit Penn's Wharton. If I were looking to make investments in
computing, I might arrange a tour of a lab at MIT. If I decided to
learn something about where legal practice, law firms, and legal
departments will be in 2014, where would I go? Not to law school.
Relative
to other professional schools, law schools are extremely disengaged
from professional practice-- they seek neither to understand nor to
influence it. As I have said previously in this space, law has lagged
behind the world of global competition--and technology-driven
clients--over the last 15 years. It's now entered a whiplash period
where it must catch up. If clients have to change 20 percent, then law
firms must change 30-40 percent (see Jordan Furlong’sgreat post
on how U.K. changes will migrate to the U.S.), and the "supply chain"
to law firms (e.g., law schools and certain companies and service
providers) will experience the most dramatic change.
Over the
past six months, I have participated in a number of symposia at law
schools and have visited with eight deans, including David
Van Zandt at Northwestern and Rick Matasar at New York Law School. How
did we get here? In the simplest terms, we can identify three phases of
legal education.
Phase I was the apprenticeship system, where
folks "read" law under more senior lawyers. Some refer to this model as
"Lincoln's way" because it produced great thinkers and advocates like
Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Justice John
Marshall, and most of the signers of the Constitution. This 1:1
apprenticeship model gradually evolved into a trade school model, where
practicing lawyers would supplement their meager income by lecturing on
law at the local YMCA night law school.
Phase II, pioneered by
Dean Christopher Columbus Langdell at Harvard, created the professional
school, and centered the curriculum around the case method and
classroom discussion, which is the template for every law school in the
country. The American Bar Association and later the Association of
American Law Schools worked to eradicate the trade school model,
ratcheting up admissions standards and driving the emergence of the
faculty as a distinct profession.
Phase III reflects the last
generation or so, where law schools have grown more distant from the
profession, and the legal academy has come to define itself as
primarily engaged in a scholarly pursuit (like, say, literature or
history), as opposed to a professional pursuit, like, say, medicine or
business.
Some obvious problems with the Phase III model include:
--Students
graduate
from law school with a lot of debt but without client-marketable
skills, so their
primary option is to serve long apprenticeships in law firms, beginning
with very rote work, which is less intellectually engaging than law
school or judicial clerkships. While law students who get the
higher-paying law firm jobs achieve good salaries much faster than
medical
students, their time to professional independence is longer. This is
not because law is more complex or riskier than medicine, but because
legal training is inferior.
--It's no surprise
that law
graduates don't acquire client-marketable skills, since so many law
faculty don't care much about the practice of law. Even in 1981, when I
went to law school, the faculty generally held law firms in low
regard, and clients were presumed unethical without the constant
guidance of lawyers (when I spoke to a law school dean the other day,
she immediately equated client with "Enron"). It's nuts for law school
to be primarily about understanding appellate decision making and not
at all about understanding clients.
--Law
school is weak on empiricism--unlike, for example, medical school,
which is moving in the direction of being ever more evidence-based.
Almost every argument in law school is a hypothetical grounded in
abstraction and unproved in experience.
If
law schools aren't figuring out the future, who is? Or is the future of
law practice not important? If law schools don't imagine a future any
different from the present, is it any wonder many lawyers embrace the
fallacy of an unchanging and unchangeable profession?
As I have suggested previously, general counsel are pushing for big discounts for junior associate time, and law firms are deleveraging,
which
means straight-from-law-school-hiring is going to drop for at
least three years and probably forever (tell me again why we're flying
to Duke Law School to interview so we'll have an inexperienced lawyer
for a project in 2013 and who, if everyone
is really lucky, may become eligible for partnership in 2022?). Law
schools will have to produce fully functioning lawyers who can quickly
become economically viable--not just proto appellate clerks.
Let me suggest some likely elements of change (some of which already are in play at Northwestern and elsewhere):
--An
accelerated curriculum, with no more than a year of case method, a year
of clinical, and then a year of externship with subject area focus,
along the lines of medical school.
--More practice orientation in teaching, with far more adjunct faculty
who are active practitioners (a random e-mail I received yesterday said,
"One of the reasons I chose Northwestern for law school is I believe in
the type of changes that Dean Van Zandt is trying to make. My favorite
instructors were not academics but adjuncts who were successful
practicing attorneys.")
It’s Gay Pride time here in New York City. Specifically, did you know that today is the 5th Annual Trans Day of Action? It’s a tradition we started / revived in the queer/trans people-of-color community around here for several reasons.
First, because we felt the need for another annual landmark to celebrate the lives and struggles of living trans people, in contrast to the somber, autumnal Trans Day of Remembrance. Second, because of an old tradition from decades past: gay pride parades that wanted to be “respectable” forbade trans people from marching on Sunday, so trans folks started their own march-in-exile on the Friday before. Third, because every year there is a lot of bullshit going down that threatens the lives and well-being of trans people, especially those who are marginalized and endangered by poverty, racism, disabilities, criminalization, unjust incarceration, homelessness, immigrant status, and much more. You can read the current list here, which is what the TDOA march was about today.
Here on the internet, there are a bunch of much more symbolic, less immediately-material issues bubbling up that have really been annoying me. Not as much as the city government here discriminating against trans people applying for welfare, but still very annoying in that internet way. Since I’ve built up a backlog, I thought I’d share them with you. An overview first, and more thoughts further down.
First of all,this website. Tranny-Alert.com. That’s right, Tranny Alert. Let me just quote their mission statement.
Your site for all things tranny. Tranny spottings. Tranny news. Tranny everything! We are all trannies, all the time. Our site cannot survive without your submissions! Spot a tranny or suspected tranny around town? See a hot tranny mess? Observe a guidette in New Jersey with tranny style? Notice trannies on TV/Radio/Billboards? Find yourself at a Lady Gaga concert? WE WANT TO KNOW!
So it’s like a celebrity-spotting blog, except they take pictures of random trans women on the subway and publish them. Guess what they just Twittered this afternoon? “omg trannies are marching in union square right now is anyone with a camera in the area?” That’s right, it was the Trans Day of Action march that I mentioned earlier. Seriously, I hope some cameras explode in some trans-stalking faces.
And finally, the increasingly common trend of everyone under the sun using the word “tranny” all the time. We’ve already talked about what’s most obvious: how it’s not OK for Christian Siriano and other non-trans to toss this term around for cred, especially with negative connotations. It’s a slur, folks. More recently, I came across a couple brilliant pieces of writing by iphisol and cedar (part 1 and part 2) about why it’s not really OK for anyone but trans women, who have been historically slurred with this term, to appropriate and throw it around like it’s hilarious hoppin’ party time. I agree with them.
This article lists some general apps that one may want to add to an iPhone. The one that caught my eye, however, is the Federal Rules of Evidence. The company that provides the Rules, The Law Pod, also offer the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, Federal Rules of Bankruptcy, Federal Rules of Evidence, and the U.S. Constitution. Apparently more apps are to in the works too. If the company updates them wirelessly, these apps could be quite useful (FYI The Law Pod folks are smart enough to offer the products for Blackberry users as well).
Furthermore Law Pod claims “Because rather than embracing a traditional business model, after-tax profits from the sale of these applications will be used to provide financial aid in the form of grants and scholarships to law students in need.” That is a nice touch.
This move reminds me of an old film about medical school where med students pretended to know what they were doing and then pulled out a handy reference guide to check a diagnosis. To be clear, looking up information is a good thing. If I remember correctly, Akhil Amar urged his students to keep a pocket copy of the Constitution with them. This service solves the problem of carrying extra paper around. Of course, if one is giving a closed book exam, one now had even more reason to have students surrender all phones during the exam.
Jeff Jeffrey The National Law Journal June 23, 2009
Starting this fall, Howrey will begin selling recruits on a new program at the firm in which associates will spend their first two years serving as "apprentices" before taking on significant client work.
As part of the two-year program, associates will spend the majority of their time at the litigation-heavy firm attending training seminars where they will learn the practical skills of lawyering, said managing partner Robert Ruyak in an interview.
During their first year at the firm, associates will take classes on legal writing and research and will work on pro bono projects to give them hands-on experience without charging clients. In the second year of the program, associates will be embedded at client sites for several months at a reduced billing rate of between $150 and $200 an hour. They will also continue to take classes on litigation skills such as trial tactics, cross examination, and mediation and arbitration.
Howrey started working on the program about two years ago when the firm decided it was going to move away from lockstep compensation for its associates. (In January, the firm did away with its lockstep model for associates, instead paying them based on measured levels of competency.) To hammer out the details, Howrey hired a consultant and discussed the program with partners and associates. The firm announced the change to partners in a meeting at noon and to associates in a meeting at 2 p.m. today.
Ruyak compares the new program to medical residency and accounting secondment, in which younger accountants are placed with clients for a period of time to learn how their businesses work.
"The old model is broken," Ruyak said. "You're bringing on these extremely bright individuals and letting them waste their careers buried in documents where they aren't really learning the practical skills it takes to be a lawyer."
The firm will be recruiting a smaller class this year, he said, with the goal of making sure that the associates who are hired are joining the firm for the long haul. In the first year, the firm will hire 20 associates and then bring on another 10 from judicial clerkships or from U.S. Attorney's Offices during the second year. "Clerkships and the U.S. Attorney's Office are great because you're learning how trials work. You're learning what the rules are," Ruyak said. "But there just aren't enough clerkships to go around because there are only so many federal judges. This allows us to give associates the experience they need in a much more organized fashion than the way most firms use younger lawyers."
Ruyak said the firm plans to pay associates slightly more than the $80,000 or so they would be making as a clerk but less than the $160,000 many top law firms currently pay. From now on, when associates join the firm, they will be paid $100,000 in salary with an additional $25,000 to, in most cases, help pay off loans from their last semester of law school. During the second year, that amount goes up to $125,000 with an additional $25,000 bonus if they finish the program successfully. Ruyak added that the firm will not be changing any other pay levels.
The reduced pay will also have the benefit of "weeding out the lawyers who are only in it for the money and not to be trial lawyers," Ruyak said. The people hired under the apprenticeship program will report to the firm earlier than usual, in September 2010, for orientation and training.
While associates will be paid less in their first two years, Ruyak said the new approach is not a way to save the firm money. In fact, he said, it's going to cost between $3 million and $4 million to implement once training costs and the unbilled hours the associates work are thrown in.
"The way we see it though is that it's going to cost more in the beginning because we're creating something from scratch, but once we get going and we start having a group of young, experienced lawyers coming out ready to handle client matters, we're going to turn a profit much more quickly than we would under the old model," Ruyak said.
He said that the firm would spend that same amount to train associates anyway, only it would be spread out across seven years. "This way, we just get it out of the way in the beginning."
So far, clients have responded to the change positively, Ruyak said, and many have offered to have first- and second-year associates join them for a few months to learn the ropes of their business. He says the firm has also been speaking with federal appellate judges about having associates serve as extra clerks with them for several months.
Ruyak said that it's easier for a firm that does primarily litigation to implement an apprenticeship program, but he sees it as the future for the profession. "Law firms are way behind on this kind of thing. Other professions like medicine have been doing this for years. The way we have been doing things simply doesn't make sense."
Above the Law Ed. note: Welcome to the latest installment of "Notes from the Breadline," a column by a laid-off lawyer in New York. Prior columns are collected here. You can reach Roxana St. Thomas by email (at roxanastthomas@gmail.com), follow her on Twitter, or find her on Facebook.
We've all heard the statistics about attorney layoffs, unemployment, and the sad state of the economy. But do the hard numbers tell the full story of life in the breadline? Inspired by the Harper's Index, today I offer you the Notes from the Breadline Index.
Months in the breadline: 6
Estimated number of jobs applied for: 266
Estimated number of responses received to job inquiries: 23
Follow-up phone calls returned: 2
Soup recipes developed: 4
Meals consisting primarily of soup: 87
Approximate hours spent online trolling for potential jobs: 745
Average number of times, per day, email inbox checked for responses to job inquiries: 28
Percentage of times inbox check followed by fleeting thought that email has stopped working: 8
Number of evil cats currently freeloading off meager household income: 2
Number of times I have seriously considered the employability of cats: 3
Half-knitted scarves finished now that I have "time on my hands": 0
By Elie Mystal from Above the Law, A Legal Tabloid
A new federal program promises student loan forgiveness for people who qualify after they've dutifully paid their debts for ten years. The program will also cap monthly loan payments depending on income. The act, passed in 2007, is set to become effective on July 1st. The National Law Journal reports the awesome news:
Some members of the class of 2009 will have less to complain about, however. A new federal program intended to help borrowers manage their student debt goes into effect on July 1. The legislation -- called the College Cost Reduction & Access Act -- will cap monthly loan payments according to income and forgive student debt balances after designated periods of time. For attorneys, the main beneficiaries will be those who go on to have long-term public interest careers. But the program will also make loan payments more affordable for all attorneys with high debt loads and relatively low incomes.
"There are a lot of things that are making it tough for new graduates, with the tight job market and the deferrals," said Heather Jarvis, a senior program manager at Equal Justice Works, an organization that encourages attorneys to undertake public interest law careers. "But there has never been a better time to graduate, as far as student loans."
Essentially this is the best piece of news for the class of 2009 since they got into law school in the first place. The government will forgive outstanding loans after ten years of payments for people who work in public interest and other qualifying organizations.
A Message from the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network:
Dear Colleague,
As you know, this week we mark the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. As Barney Frank noted last week, we have made significant progress since then, but, unfortunately, discrimination still exists – and we have much more hard work ahead of us.
At SLDN we have been thinking of an appropriate way to honor those who took to the streets 40 years ago in Greenwich Village to fight for our freedoms. And, at the same time, we want to honor the estimated 65,000 service members currently serving in silence every day under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." We also want to recognize and appreciate the 13,000 patriotic service members who have been discharged under the law.
Like those who fought back four decades ago and took to the streets, we, too, say, "Enough!"
Led by the fighting Cook v. Gates plaintiffs (service members discharged under DADT), we will be marching to the White House on Saturday, June 27 to call upon President Obama to break his silence on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." The first 265 marchers will be veterans and service members. This is the number of service members discharged since January 20 when the President took office. In addition, family and friends of service members will be attending to implore the president to lead the way with lawmakers to get repeal done in this Congress and to end discrimination in the military.
We hope this can be a real community-sponsored event and that you and your organizationcan help make this an appropriate and spirited Stonewall commemoration. One doesn't need to be a veteran or on active duty to show up and support our LGBT troops, one only needs to be committed to equality for all. We will meet in Farragut Square (17th & K St NW) at 2:00pm and march to the White House from there.
Even if you can’t make it to Washington, D.C., you can still play an important and hands on role in the demonstration…
·Become an official sponsor of the march. We would love to add your organization’s name to the growing list of official co-sponsors. In turn, we encourage you to spread the word about the march to your supporters and feature information on your website.
·Call the White House switchboard on Saturday. While we’re marching to the White House, you and your supporters can join us by calling the White House switchboard at 202-456-1414. Help amplify the call for President Obama to break his silence on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
·Call your members of Congress. Your supporters can also take action by calling their members of Congress to urge they co-sponsor the Military Readiness Enhancement Act (H.R. 1283) – the bill to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and replace it with a policy of non-discrimination. Click herefor more information about calling members of Congress.
Together, we have a real opportunity to deliver a powerful message to the White House, Congress, and to the American people, and to let our service members know they have not been forgotten. Let me know your thoughts and if you have any questions.
We look forward to your feedback and participation. If you wish to be added today as one of the official sponsors, please let me or Ben Mishkin (bmishkin@sldn.org), SLDN Grassroots Organizer, know.
Thank you,
Aubrey
Aubrey Sarvis
Executive Director
Servicemembers Legal Defense Network
202.621.5409
Don’t Ask Don’t Tell:
This week SALT sent aletter to President Obama urging him to use his leadership to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and to adopt an anti-discriminatory policy towards service by gays and lesbians in the military.Please distribute these documents. Visit theSALT Website for more information.
Oh wait this isn't vintage, this company exists today. Sociological Images (which is increasingly my go-to place for great break-downs of visual sexism) has a great breakdown of their not-so-funny marketing claims.
At her Chicago office, Kelly Huang connects with a friend in New York via Facebook. AP
If you're a boss, what do you do about employees who love to tweet, text and social network throughout the day? It's a question companies are grappling with as the generation gap threatens to create a communications divide.
Eric Pro, a 19-year-old electrical engineer at Aquas Inc. in Bethesda, Md., takes a few seconds out from his workday to send a quick text message on his T-Mobile Sidekick. He says he's in trouble with his girlfriend and he's trying to smooth things out.
While Pro may be worried about how things stand with his love interest, recent studies show real tensions are rising between Gen Y, or 20-something employees; Gen X, or 30-something workers; and their older, less tech-savvy, baby boomer bosses.
Culture Clash
"I'm old-school, but I am willing to learn," says 56-year-old Carmen Larsen, the president of Aquas, an engineering and IT company. Larsen says she typically reaches for a phone before a keyboard. But her daughters, who work with her, help with the learning curve.
"People go out of the office to take a cigarette break for 10 minutes, people take coffee breaks and people take Facebook breaks," says Emma Evans, Larsen's 19-year-old daughter. "It's kind of become built into our way of life."
In fact, 62 percent of Gen Y workers say they engage in social networking from work. That's according to LexisNexis, an online information service. The results of LexisNexis' Technology Gap Survey show vastly different attitudes about appropriate technology use among various generations in the work force. And this is creating a clash of cultures — especially during meetings.
Debate Over Multitasking
"You can have Gen Y-ers who are busy looking at their BlackBerrys. They've got their laptops flipped open, they're engaging in social networking right during the course of a meeting, and you have a boomer rolling their eyes, not understanding it," says Michael Walsh, the CEO for LexisNexis U.S. Legal Markets. "Two-thirds of boomers that were surveyed indicated that they felt that use of devices, technology — such as e-mail, social networking, the Internet, etc. — contributed to a decline in office etiquette."
Meanwhile, Gen X-ers are caught between having to manage and bridge the gap.
Walsh says the generational divide is most intense in Fortune 500 companies because senior management is typically made up of baby boomers. But it's also an issue that small companies like Aquas — with just over 30 employees ranging in age from 18 to 68 — have to contend with.
Social Networking's Reach
According to a workplace study on social networking and reputation risk by consulting giant Deloitte, nearly three-quarters of employees surveyed say they think it's easy to damage a company's reputation using social media.
Companies are cognizant of the far-reaching impact employees can have on their brand through social networking and other online activities. In April, when two Domino's pizza employees posted a video online showing one of them sticking cheese up his nose and sneezing on food, it sent shock waves through the corporate world.
Still, Deloitte's study also found that more than half of employees say their social networking is none of their employer's business.
Sharon Allen, chairman of Deloitte's board, says employers shouldn't put too many rules and restrictions into place: "We do believe as well that the ability to touch base with friends and family during the course of the day allows them to have a better mix of work and life."
Like it or not, technology is blurring the lines between work and leisure. In his book Elsewhere, U.S.A., New York University professor Dalton Conley even coined a term for it: "weisure."
In light of the events in Iran, many may laud the power of tools such as Twitter and Facebook as they allow information to reach the world. Here in the United States, however, a few stories highlight how social networking tools and blogs run into ideas of fairness, honesty, and even justice. First, the FTC is planning on investigating bloggers who are paid for their posts but who do not disclose their affiliation. The article claims “The common practice of posting a graphical ad or a link to an online retailer — and getting commissions for any sales from it — would be enough to trigger oversight.” Second, the Ninth Circuit has just ruled that a woman’s blog posts about her co-workers and job environment were not protected speech. As such, her demotion was lawful. Third, a recent Law.com article makes a strong argument that tweeting while on a jury should not be allowed and jeopardizes the fairness of a trial.
The FTC action seems too aggressive, yet it shows that the idea of blogs having some sort of purity is not always the case. But if it prompts bloggers to be more forthcoming about their affiliations and to develop some best practices (as the article suggests), that could be a good outcome. It also seems to embrace the idea of more information is better which may keep many online happy. Those who think tweeting is some sort of anointed right err. The trial context shows that rather well. As for the blog and speech case, I need to find the decision. The article claims that the court “concluded that [the plaintiff's] speech was not a ‘public concern’ but rather was ‘racist, sexist, and bordered on vulgar,’ and it characterized her behavior, in part, as ’salacious’ and ‘mean spirited.’” I leave it to the First Amendment folks to unravel that one, but I wonder whether this case will be appealed to the Supreme Court.
In any event, these three events show that while we can say that tools that enhance free speech are wonderful in the extreme cases such as the situation in Iran, the more subtle cases raise on-going questions about the contours of speech. As always the issues are familiar. Now, however, simply saying keep your hands off the Internet or keep it free is an insufficient guideline. Too many people are online and too much online behavior tracks offline experiences and problems. In other words, although the technologies seem to make the questions different and requiring special treatment, they may only make the old questions and responses more salient.
Subtitled version of "INJA KOJAST INJA IRAN AST SARZAMINE MANO TO" (link below) - a woman speaking about the state of her country while filming the rooftop shouting of "Allah-o Akbar" in Iran on Friday June 19th.
June 17, 2009--The Society of American Law Teachers—SALT—sent the Obama Administration recommendations to immediately revise nine categories of immigration policy through executive orders and administrative directives while Congress tackles the task of comprehensive immigration reform. The SALT recommendations result from the accumulated experiences of clinical law faculty operating immigration law clinics in law schools across the country.
“The SALT recommendations acknowledge the need for national security balanced with due process, the rule of law, and human dignity, which are the heart of American jurisprudence,” said Professor Raquel Aldana, co-chair of SALT’s Human Rights Committee, and in-coming co-president of SALT. “Our country’s traditions require that we treat all men and women, and their children, fairly and protect them from exploitation while acknowledging the role immigration has played in the history of our country.”
The nine categories of immigration policy include criminalization of immigrants; federal immigration enforcement policies, including workplace raids, gang-related immigration enforcement, and bus sweeps within our borders; immigration enforcement by local authorities; treatment of immigration detainees; rights of asylum seekers; right to counsel at immigration proceedings; exclusion of intellectuals, poets, artists, and activists for ideological reasons; immigrant labor and worker rights issues; and human trafficking.
We have added a lunch panel to the Friday schedule of our upcoming conference on Masculinities and the Law (September 11-12). I have attached the revised schedule to this email with another copy of the registration form for your convenience.
The Teaching Methods section is sponsoring poster presentations at the 2010 AALS Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana (January 6-10, 2010).We invite you all to consider submitting a poster.Information regarding posters is noted below.You may also contact any member of the Teaching Methods poster committee.Posters are a creative way to share your ideas about effective teaching methods.
Please note the deadline of September 4, 2009.Submissions are sent directly to AALS.
In response to several inquiries of Albany Law School’s Family Violence Litigation Clinic students concerning tax issues related to separation and divorce, we decided to engage in an experiment that turned out to be a huge success. The Low Income Taxpayer Clinic (”LITC”) and Family Violence Litigation Clinic (”FVLC”) students were asked to prepare and present an interactive class to share the knowledge that they had gained throughout the semester in a manner targeted to the unique issues faced by each Clinic. We followed a Best Practices approach of integrating substantive doctrine, skills, theory and social science all in one class and the feedback from the students was very positive.
In preparation for the class, the LITC students were asked to collaborate, research and prepare a presentation on tax issues that most commonly affect survivors of domestic violence. The FVLC clinic students were asked to collaborate, research and prepare a presentation on the challenges faced by survivors of domestic violence. The goals of the exercise were (i) to provide an environment for the students to collaborate, (ii) to give the students an opportunity to exercise their public speaking muscles, (iii) to provide a forum to express what they had learned throughout the semester and (iv) to cross pollinate.
During the first hour of class, the LITC students discussed issues such as filing status, dependent exemptions, the Earned Income Tax Credit, Innocent Spouse Relief and entitlement to refunds. The FVLC students asked questions of the LITC students that were targeted and practical, which required the LITC students to apply doctrinal tax rules to practical questions in a concise and expeditious manner in front of a room of their colleagues. Throughout the second hour of class, the FVLC students presented a Power Point presentation entitled Domestic Abuse and Financial Abuse for Tax Professionals. The FVLC students explained various domestic violence issues as they might arise in family law, such as custody, child support orders of protection and financial abuse. Of particular relevance to the LITC students, the FVLC students discussed financial abuse and explained how to recognize when a client is being abused.
If you ask the students, it was the best class of the semester and they snicker because they taught it. Little do they know, by encouraging collaboration we taught them a thing or two as well.
The National Immigration Law Center (NILC) is seeking a Policy Director for its Washington, D.C. office. This an exciting leadership opportunity for someone committed to immigrant rights and social and economic justice with demonstrated experience in legislative and administrative advocacy, and other aspects of government relations. The Policy Director will help to develop and implement NILC’s advocacy agenda, supervise mid-level management staff and provide technical and strategic assistance to all policy staff. The Director will assume a leadership role at the agency, helping to develop and implement the strategic plan to further NILC’s mission.
On June 11, the Justice Department filed its first brief defending DoMA since the Obama administration took office. DoJ argued that DoMA satisfies the Due Process clause because there is no fundamental right to federal benefits associated with marriage, thus largely sidestepping the question of whether the right to marry is fundamental for same-sex couples. [As a back-up, however, the brief argued that the summary affirmance in Baker v. Nelson more than 35 years ago is still good law on the point that there is no federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage. Baker v. Nelson was the appeal from a federal court ruling that Minnesota did not violate the U.S.Constitution by denying a marriage license to a gay couple. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed without an opinion. 409 U.S. 810 (1972)]
The brief also argued that DoMA's limitation of federal benefits to different-sex spouses does not violate equal protection rights because, under rational basis review, Congress has the flexibility to limit marital benefits to the kind of marriage recognized by all 50 states.
The brief was filed in support of DoJ's motion to dismiss the complaint in Smelt v United States, the most recent iteration in a one-couple campaign (against the advice of the advocacy groups) to challenge the marriage exclusion in California. The primary defense argument appears to be lack of standing: DoJ argues that Smelt cannot challenge the validity of DoMA because he has not applied for and been denied any federal benefits.
Given the standing argument, there's a good chance that the court's ruling in Smelt may not even reach the merits of the constitutionality of DoMA. But you can bet that a similar version of this brief from DoJ, based on the same arguments, will be filed in two weeks in federal court in Boston. There, a much better crafted case filed by GLAD challenges DoMA's constitutionality on behalf of a number of married Massachusetts couples, all of whom have applied for and been denied the federal benefits that are the subject of that suit.
It is clear from this brief that DoJ will be carrying out its role of defending the constitutionality of DoMA, as it does for all federal statutes almost without exception. These lawsuits - especially the one filed by GLAD - could help nudge Congress to repeal DoMA. And it is in Congress where the heaviest obligation rests on the Obama administration to make good on its stated desire to see the law repealed. The repeal effort cannot be successful overnight, but the President should lead it, not wait passively for the congressional Dems to send legislation to him.
The Smelt case also challenges the constitutionality of Prop 8. The California AG's office filed a motion to dismiss that part of the case, arguing that the plaintiffs lack standing to bring that claim because their marriage is unaffected by Prop 8, since the California Supreme Court upheld the validity of marriages performed before last November's election.
The Justice Department brief tries to put a benign spin on Congress's adoption of DoMA by casting it as a choice to recognize for purposes of federal benefits only those marriages recognized by all states. Only problem is ...that's not true. Before DoMA, the feds recognized any marriage that was valid in an individual's state of residence, and the states differ on recognition rules for some different-sex marriages (such as between first cousins). Federal law still accepts marriages not valid in all states, with the one exception of same-sex marriages.
What's missing from the brief is also interesting. The Justice Department did not rely on the legislative history of DoMA, which contains a lot of anti-gay language about the purpose of the law. The Justice Department did not offer deterrence of homosexuality as a justification for upholding DoMA. Small victories.
Excerpts from the Justice Department brief after the jump.
Congress had long conferred various financial and other benefits on the basis of marriage in light of the central role the institution has played in advancing a variety of societal interests. When States began to consider adopting historically novel forms of marriage, Congress took a wait-and-see approach. It codified, for purposes of federal benefits, a definition of marriage that all fifty states had adopted... At the same time, it cautiously declined to extend federal benefits on the basis of a newer definition of marriage that no States had adopted at the time of DOMA's passage (and only a very small minority of States have since). Thus ...Section 3 of DOMA simply maintained the status quo...
DOMA in no way prohibits same-sex couples from marrying. Instead, the only right at issue in this case is a right to receive certain benefits on the basis of a same-sex marriage. No court has ever found such a right to federal benefits on that basis to be fundamental...Likewise, DOMA does not discriminate , or permit the States to discriminate, on the basis of a suspect classification; indeed, the Ninth Circuit has held that sexual orientation is not a suspect classification....
[Congress's] measured response to society's evolving understandings of marriage is entirely rational. ...DOMA ...maximizes democratic flexibility under our federalist scheme, by simply preventing some States from requiring ... the federal government to grant benefits to forms of marriages that, under [its] own constitution, [the] federal government [is] not obligated to recognize...
Congress may subsequently decide to extend federal benefits to same-sex marriages, but its decision to reserve judgment on the question does not render any differences in the availability of federal benefits irrational or unconstitutional.
So it's just me, folks. You'll therefore have to be content with one post a day for the next couple of weeks. Unless any of you want to pitch in. It's okay, you'll survive. There's always Facebook to keep you occupied.
Golden Gate University School of Law, San Francisco, CA
Vulnerable Populations and Economic Realities:
an interdisciplinary approach to law teaching
Golden Gate University School of Law and the Society of American Law Teachers—SALT—are presenting a two-day teaching conference bringing new data and theories from the social sciences, communications and media, and education about our most vulnerable populations for use in law teaching across the curriculum.
Watch for the call for proposals in late August 2009.
For more information watch the SALTLAW.org website or contact Michele Benedetto at 415 442 6575 or mbenedetto@ggu.edu.
This conference is being supported through a generous grant from the Elfenworks Foundation.
Up
until now, my favorite evaluations have included "Drinks too much Diet
Coke" (not true any more) and (from an 11-year-old sitting with her mom
in my class, when asked how I compared to other professors) "I don't
know; I'm only 11 years old."
But today, having turned in my
grades for one of my courses, I was treated to a new all-time fave.
The question in our evaluation form is how available the instructor is
to his or her students. The student's evaluation of my availability?
"She's married, dude. Don't be a tool."
University of Miami School of Law, Coral Gables, Florida
March 4-6, 2010
The University of Miami and the conference organizing
committee invite your proposals for presentations for the fifth national
conference on legal externships.Externships 5 will explore how externships respond to and advance changes
in the legal profession, legal education, and the economy B changes both past and future. The
questions to explore include:
How can externship clinics advance
the promise of Carnegie and Best Practices?
How should changes in our students’
career prospects affect our programs?
How might changing roles for
lawyers affect our teaching and clinical supervision?
How might new ABA Standards affect
the externship community?
We encourage you to come forward with any topic that will challenge
us to reflect on how we foster our students=
professional development through clinical teaching in externships. We also
encourage proposals designed to address clinicians new to the externship model
of teaching.
We seek presentations in several different formats. We solicit
proposals for concurrents in longer (75 min.) and shorter (60 min.) formats. We
also encourage workshop/discussion proposals for those who would like to meet
by region, by subject matter (e.g. prosecutorial externships), or by experience
(e.g. new externship clinicians). We welcome proposals to present scholarly
works-in-progress. Finally, we hope to offer several short, quick “great idea”
presentations of between 10 - 20 minutes
Judge Rejects Former Student's Lawsuit Against Regent U. and Pat Robertson
A
federal judge in Virginia has dismissed a lawsuit filed by a former
Regent University law student who was suspended after posting on the
Internet an unflattering picture of Pat Robertson, the Christian
institution’s founder and chancellor, the Associated Press reported.
The student, Adam Key, accused the university and Mr. Robertson of violating his free-speech and due-process rights.
But Judge Jerome B. Friedman of the U.S. District Court in Norfolk
rejected Mr. Key’s argument that because the private university
accepted some federal funds, it was subject to the same free-speech and
due-process standards that apply to the government. In an opinion
issued last Friday, Judge Friedman wrote that a university’s receipt of
public funds alone does not make its decisions acts of the state. —Charles Huckabee
Most of us have had the experience of receiving e-mail with an attachment, trying to open the attachment, and finding a corrupted file that won't open. That concept is at the root of a new Web site advertising itself (perhaps serious only in part) as the new way for students to get extra time to finish their assignments.
Corrupted-Files.com offers a service -- recently noted by several academic bloggers who have expressed concern -- that sells students (for only $3.95, soon to go up to $5.95) intentionally corrupted files. Why buy a corrupted file? Here's what the site says: "Step 1: After purchasing a file, rename the file e.g. Mike_Final-Paper. Step 2: E-mail the file to your professor along with your 'here's my assignment' e-mail. Step 3: It will take your professor several hours if not days to notice your file is 'unfortunately' corrupted. Use the time this website just bought you wisely and finish that paper!!!"
RESEARCH IN BRIEF New research developments A
surprising trend in wealth inequality, the biological determinants of
poor children's academic performance, the long-term effects of job
displacement, and other cutting-edge research.
GOING GLOBAL: ANTIPOVERTY LESSONS FROM AROUND THE WORLD Flexicurity Joshua
Cohen and Charles Sabel argue that the time has come to build a 21st
century labor market modeled on key principles of Denmark's
"flexicurity" system. Pro-Poor Stimulus: Lessons from the Developing World Martin
Ravallion looks to antipoverty programs in developing countries to
understand how developed nations like the United States can provide
stimulus while reducing long-term poverty. Combating Poverty by Building Assets: Lessons from Around the World Ray
Boshara describes the key features of asset-building programs
throughout the world and examines how the United States can apply them
to achieve economic security for the poor. Northern Exposure: Learning from Canada�s Response to Winner-Take-All Inequality Jacob
S. Hacker describes how the United States and Canada have taken two
different roads and why the Canadian road provides lessons that the
United States might take to heart.
Martha Minow, the Jeremiah Smith, Jr., Professor of Law at Harvard Law
School, will become the dean of the Faculty of Law on July 1, President
Drew Faust announced today (June 11).
A member of the Law School faculty since 1981, Minow is a
distinguished legal scholar with interests that range from
international human rights to equality and inequality, from religion
and pluralism to managing mass tort litigation, from family law and
education law to the privatization of military, schooling, and other
governmental activities. She is also a widely admired teacher who
chaired the Law School’s curricular reform efforts of recent years and
was recognized with the School’s Sacks-Freund Award for Teaching
Excellence in 2005.
THE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL
OF LAW invites applicants for its new Clinic Faculty Fellows program. The fellowship is designed to train talented lawyers to obtain
an academic teaching post, ideally including clinical teaching, and to help
provide teaching coverage in the law school’s Clinical Affairs program. The
fellowship will provide feedback, mentoring and assistance in developing
clinical pedagogical skills and academic legal scholarship. The fellow’s
teaching assignment will be in the direct-supervision criminal justice clinic
and may include a course outside the clinic. Candidates should be eligible to
practice law in Missouri (i.e., a member of
the Missouri bar or eligible for admission without examination pursuant to Missouri Supreme
Court Rule13.06),[1 have experience in
criminal law, demonstrate promise as a legal scholar and teacher, and have a
commitment to pursuing a career in legal academia. The Washington University
School of Law is committed to diversity in the legal profession and in legal
academia and is interested in applications from persons of color, women,
disabled persons and other under-represented groups, and regardless of sexual
orientation. The presumption is that the fellow will be appointed for two
consecutive academic years, to begin summer, 2009. The expectation is that the
fellow will participate in the entry-level teaching market beginning in the
fall of the second fellowship year. The fellow will be offered mentoring,
intensive feedback, and other institutional support to develop his or her legal
scholarship and teaching skills. The fellow will have the opportunity to
participate fully in the intellectual life of the law school, including faculty
workshops, colloquia and conferences and will have no teaching or case coverage
responsibilities over the summer. It is expected that the fellow will complete
one scholarly article by the end of summer 2010. The fellow will be expected to
present his or her writing to the faculty at a faculty workshop or seminar in
order to refine the work and prepare for the scholarly give-and-take that
occurs in the entry-level job talk. The fellow will receive a competitive
annual salary along with employee benefits and support for research and
teaching. Interested applicants should submit a résumé, official law school
transcript, a list of references, copies of any prior scholarly publications,
and a brief description of the candidate’s scholarly agenda or interest in
entering academia. Please submit an application and materials no later than
July 1, 2009 to: Professor Annette Appell, Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs,
With the summer break upon us, this is a great time to get
supportive, non-evaluative feedback on a scholarly work-in-progress from a
clinical colleague with shared expertise in a substantive area. The
Scholarship Committee of the AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education offers
this peer network. If you have a work-in-progress and would like to be
paired with a clinical colleague at another school, send a request to this
address: clinicalpeernetwork@gmail.com.
If you are willing to offer constructive feedback, join our extensive
database of subject-matter experts at this link: http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pZsCVzJPWhtPxGN_ikLSZMQ&email=true.
This is not a commitment to serve as a peer reviewer. You will simply be
in our database, and when an author in your area of expertise asks for peer
review, we will contact you to see if you are interested. If you have
questions, email Michele Gilman at clinicalpeernetwork@gmail.com.
Happy writing!
The
Harrison Institute for Public Law seeks applicants for a two-year fellowship in
its policy clinic that would begin in July or August of 2009.Georgetown fellows supervise upper-class law
students in the clinical program, participate in curriculum development and
teaching, and undertake research and writing projects.
This
fellow will primarily work with the Georgetown Climate Center, which explores
the roles of states and the federal government in two aspects of climate
policy.One is to mitigate greenhouse
gas emissions through improvements to fuel standards, transportation systems,
and land use planning.The other
dimension is to help states and localities adapt to climate changes that affect
public health, for example, heat island effects in northern cities and coastal
flooding in the southeast.
The
fellow will help lead teams that monitor, map, analyze, and implement state and
local policies.There may also be
opportunities for the fellow to participate in aspects of the Institute’s
health or trade law practice, both of which overlap with climate policy.
Upon
completion, Georgetown awards clinical fellows the degree of Masters of Law
(Advocacy).Fellows receive an annual
stipend of $51,150 (taxable), health and dental
benefits, and full tuition benefits in the LL.M. program.
We
seek applicants with an academic background in environmental law and/or public
policy, knowledge of climate policy alternatives, and relevant work
experience.You must be a member of the
D.C. Bar or eligible to waive into the D.C. Bar as a member of a state
bar.To apply, please send your letter
of interest and resume to Prof. Robert Stumberg, preferably by email, to stumberg@law.georgetown.edu; the
mailing address is:Harrison Institute,
111 F St., NW – Suite 120, Washington, DC 20001-2095.
We are writing to send you a link to the new website of the Institute for Law Teaching and Learning: http://lawteaching.org <http://lawteaching.org/> .The website includes a wide variety of materials on teaching, learning and curriculum design and reform, including: Best Practices for Legal Education (2007); a featured monthly teaching idea and a featured monthly law review article; other selected law review articles; information about upcoming conferences addressing teaching, learning, and/or curricular reform; all past issues of The Law Teacher; bibliographies of articles and books on law teaching and learning; and some web links you might find useful.
Coming soon will be two additional books, Techniques for Teaching Law (1999) and Outcomes Assessment for Law Schools (2001), three videos addressing teaching and learning topics, and additional law review resources.
We welcome your feedback.Please share this message with your colleagues.
Sincerely,
Professor Michael Hunter Schwartz, Washburn University School of Law Professor Gerald F. Hess, Gonzaga University School of Law Co-Directors, Institute for Law Teaching and Learning
Gerald Hess
Professor of Law
Co-Director, Institute for Law Teaching and Learning Gonzaga University School of Law PO Box 3528, Spokane, WA 99220-3528
Saint Louis University School of Law has several job
openings for the coming academic year, including two newly-created spots in our
Legal Clinic. There are also positions in the Legal Research and Writing
Program and administrative positions. The link below will allow you
access to all of the openings and the process for applying.
Clinical
legal education has a relatively short history in Australia of some thirty
years. By contrast, the US has a much longer and diverse history of clinical
pedagogy and has been successfully teaching and assession students in
University legal clinics for over half a century. Traditional law school
teaching methodology relies heavily on the Langdellian style of lectures,
tutorials and then a form of summative evaluation. Clinical pedagogy is a radical
departure from this style and as such assessment of clinical students
necessitates a different approach. Clinicians have a duty to offer assessment
regimes which ciomplement the clinical technique of law teaching.
For months, the ABA's law school accrediting body has quietly been working on a comprehensive review of its often-controversial standards governing legal education.
The most significant change in the Standards for Approval of Law Schools is likely to be a move away from evaluating law schools on the basis of criteria that measure “input”—such things as faculty size, budget and physical plant. Instead, the Legal Education Section would evaluate law schools more heavily on the basis of “outcome” measures.
The undertraining of law students documented in a century?s worth of
critiques of legal education, most recently by the Carnegie Foundation,
has different and much more detrimental consequences for the post-J.D.
careers of women and minority attorneys. However, studies of their
early careers focus primarily on problems with law-firm mentoring and
pay little, if any, attention to how the earlier training that these
lawyers received (or failed to be given) in law school might have
contributed to the later career obstacles they face. Conversely,
studies of the ways that law schools undertrain law students pay little
or no attention to how the deficiencies in the current model of law
school education may disproportionately disadvantage women and minority
law students later in their careers. This article examines an emerging
literature, narratives of professionalization by women attorneys of
color, and puts those narratives into the dual context of critiques of
legal education (exemplified by the Carnegie Report) and critiques of
law-firm practice (exemplified by the recent A.B.A. study ?Visible
Invisibility: Women of Color in Law Firms?) in order to demonstrate how
law schools contribute to the career difficulties faced by women and
minority attorneys. Two types of undertraining occur: 1) formal
curricular undertraining; 2) self-undertraining, caused by the
disengagement produced by law school culture. Only by reforming the
curriculum and culture of legal education can law schools live up to
the democratic civic mission they espouse as proponents of equal
opportunity.
There is a movement right now (2008) toward humanizing legal
education and the profession as a whole. Stories abound of the toll
taken by the stress and overwork that characterize the typical lawyer's
life. Studies show that these problems begin as early as the first year
of law school. Studies also show the toll taken is exacerbated when the
law student or lawyer is an outsider -- a racial minority member, a
first-generation college graduate, or someone who for some other reason
feels marginalized. This article discusses the experiences of such
individuals -- where the stresses of legal education intersect with the
stresses inherent in being an outsider. The article offers some
recommendations for faculty and administrators seeking to advance the
well-being of such students.
Over on the clinic listserv, Chris Lasch, our colleague who will be teaching a criminal clinic at Suffolk this year, posted this intriguing question:
Folks, I'm interested to learn what efforts clinicians have been making to conform assessment and grading to the suggestions of Chapter 7 of "Best Practices." Specifically, I'm interested in finding clinicians who believe they have assessment mechanisms that meet the requirements of "validity" (mechanism actually tests what it purports to test) and "reliability" (mechanism is sufficiently objective that it provides consistent results across students and is not so subjective as to allow for fudging or "halo" effect). Alternatively, I'd be interested to hear from people who are just darned happy about how they do assessment and might tell me I'm overthinking this problem.
As usual, folks have already posted some very helpful responses and I wanted to join the conversation to suggest that yes, Chris, I am darned happy about how I assess and you are overthinking the problem. We should not worry about validity or reliability. As I have argued in a prior list serve posting on the subject of grading, we should only worry about how we can give every student an A. And if I have your attention, please join me in the jump.
The Scholar: St. Mary’s Law Review on Minority Issues is soliciting articles for upcoming volumes. Our publication is committed to raising the awareness of those individuals in our society who traditionally have been voiceless. The Scholar furthers legal discourse on issues that concern race, ethnicity, class, religion, gender, and sexual identity, as well as other countless groups in our society. Accordingly, we will consider any article that focuses on a legal issue of concern to disenfranchised groups.
We are currently looking for articles to begin editing on June 29, 2009. Accordingly, we would need to have a version to review by June 17. Any author extended an offer would be published by August 3, 2009. Additional information regarding The Scholar may be found at The Scholar's website.
Thank you for your consideration. We look forward to hearing from you. Elizabeth Kaigh,Executive Articles Editor, The Scholar:St. Mary’s Law Review on Minority Issues, elizabethkaigh@gmail.com.
If you are a proven leader in the field of domestic violence and are looking for an exciting new opportunity, the New Jersey Coalition for Battered Women invites you to become a candidate for the position of Executive Director. On the eve of celebrating our 30th anniversary, the NJCBW rests on a strong foundation with 28 member agencies in 21 counties across the state and over 100 years of collective staff experience in the field of domestic violence. A leader in the evolving issues in the field, the NJCBW has an active voice within the state and a substantial record of accomplishment in such key areas as advocacy; training, standard setting and diversity offered through such innovative entities as the NJCBW Domestic Violence Education and Training Institute; the Domestic Violence Specialist Certification; and the Diversity Outreach Project.
The successful candidate will both preserve the best of what has been achieved and lead the NJCBW with a new vision for what is possible. Reporting directly to the Board of Trustees. The Executive Director is the principal resource to the Board, the NJCBW staff, domestic violence programs, and all relevant governmental and community organizations. The Executive Director provides visionary leadership and, in collaboration with the Associate Director, also directs the activities of the Coalition Office and staff. As the chief spokesperson for the NJCBW, the Executive Director must be a strong advocate who effectively communicates its mission and garners support to achieve the goals and objectives of the NJCBW.
Applications will be considered as they are received and will be welcomed until a successful candidate has been identified. Please send your applications to Judith Hain at: Judith.Hain@gmail.com and/or mail to Judith Hain, 8901 Montgomery Ave., Wyndmoor, Pa. 19038 to be considered for this position.
The salary will be competitive and commensurate with the qualifications and experience of the successful candidate. The anticipated start date is negotiable.
The NJCBW is an Equal Opportunity Employer. People of color and from other marginalized communities are strongly encouraged to apply.
For
months, the ABA's law school accrediting body has quietly been working
on a comprehensive review of its often-controversial standards
governing legal education.
The most significant change in the Standards for Approval of Law
Schools is likely to be a move away from evaluating law schools on the
basis of criteria that measure “input”—such things as faculty size,
budget and physical plant. Instead, the Legal Education Section would
evaluate law schools more heavily on the basis of “outcome” measures.
The essential difference is that outcome measures would focus on
what students actually take away from their educational experience at a
particular law school rather than what the school teaches, and how,
explained E. Christopher Johnson Jr.
Johnson was one of three members of the Accreditation Standards
Review Committee of the ABA’s Legal Education Section who gave a status
report on the committee’s work at a program held in Chicago on Friday
during the 35th ABA National Conference on Professional Responsibility.
Johnson, who directs the graduate program in law and finance at
Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Auburn Hills, Mich., and the other
committee members participating in the panel said the shift in focus
from input measures to outcome measures could have a major effect on
how the Legal Education Section evaluates law schools.
“It is a sea change to tell law schools you should focus more on
outcomes as measures,” said committee member Steven C. Bahls, the
president of Augustana College in Rock Island, Ill. He chairs the
outcome assessment subcommittee.
The accreditation standards contain a provision providing that they
undergo a comprehensive review every five years. The most recent review
was initiated in 2003 and completed in 2006. The U.S. Department of
Education also urges accrediting agencies to review their standards on
a regular basis.
The Department of Education recognizes the Legal Education Section
as the official accrediting agency for law schools in the United
States. Currently, 200 law schools have been accredited by the section.
Other key issues the Standards Review Committee
will look at include “security of position” for law school professors
and other teachers, which will encompass the tenure structure. The
committee also will consider ways to make the law school accreditation
and review process more transparent.
With
the recent publication of the Best Practices in Legal Education,(1) and the
Carnegie Report on the Advancement of Teaching,(2) law professors today have an
opportunity to adopt pedagogies that have been successfully used in other
professional disciplines that, like law, integrate skills and theory. In this
article, we focus specifically on the ?see one, do one, teach one? approach
used in medical education because medical students and law students develop
early professional reasoning skills in parallel ways.(3)
This article dissects medical education?s signature pedagogy by focusing on the
use of simulation and samples, active learning exercises, and peer teaching
opportunities as a corollary to using visualization, application, and
demonstration in the medical context. The article guides legal educators
through the process of implementing the methodology. This article concludes
that utilizing the ?see one, do one, teach one? methodology facilitates student
engagement with course material on a deeper analytical level, by providing
context for the students, and allowing students to internalize and transfer
that knowledge.(4) Accordingly, borrowing the signature ?see one, do one, teach
one? pedagogy from medical education will ultimately help students better
bridge the gap between law school and the practice of law.
(1) ROY STUCKEY AND OTHERS, BEST PRACTICES FOR LEGAL EDUCATION (2007).
(2) WILLIAM M. SULLIVAN, ANNE COLBY, JUDITH WELCH WEGNER, LLOYD BOND & LEE
S. SHULMAN, EDUCATING LAWYERS: PREPARATION FOR THE PROFESSION OF LAW (2007).
(3) See Stefan H. Krieger, The Development of Legal Reasoning Skills in Law
Students: An Empirical Study, 56 J. LEGAL EDUC. 332, 351-53 (2006).
(4) Carol McCrehan Parker, Writing Through the Curriculum: Why Law Schools Need
It and How to Achieve It, 76 NEB. L. REV. 561, 583-84 (1997).
The Feminism and Legal Theory Project is pleased to announce its next upcoming workshop, "Masculinities and the Law,"on September 11-12, 2009. This workshop will explore the relevance of masculinities studies to feminist legal theory and activism. We have long struggled, both within and without the academy, to understand how law defines the feminine by articulating, constructing, and regulating women and the female body. Similarly, and more broadly, feminisms have focused on the place of gender in the construction of social relations that too often fail to protect the interests of women. This work notwithstanding, the place of masculinity has received relatively little attention. We hope to facilitate social and cultural resistance to assertions of hyper-masculinity, particularly those that arise in response to feminism itself.
From
America's inception through the Civil War, legal education was entirely
practice-oriented; it was based not on academic study at a university, but
consisted almost exclusively of apprenticeship with a practicing lawyer. As the
study of law moved from apprenticeships in law firms to university-based law
schools, the method of study became more theoretical. After the 1870s,
Langdell's case method became the dominant model of studying and teaching the
law. Gradually, law schools became more abstract and theoretical, and less
grounded in the practice of law. Increasingly, practicing lawyers and judges
complained that law schools were not preparing law students who were ready for
the practice of law in terms of either the skills or the values necessary for
effective practice. This article explores the history of legal education, the
calls for greater relevance, and the ways law schools such as the University of
Wisconsin can reform their curricula to respond to these concerns.
For nonacademics, summer "break" is probably one of the least
understood elements of our profession. I once had a neighbor who would
regularly tease me, "You guys get the whole summer off. Wish I had such
a sweet deal!" No amount of enumeration of research projects, summer
teaching, or service commitments could convince him that I was not
getting a free ride at the taxpayers' expense.
But many professors, especially early on in their careers, have
trouble valuing summer as well. When you are a graduate student, your
schedule for June, July, and August is often dictated by others:
courses you need to take or perhaps teach; conventions for networking
or job hunting; exams to study for; dissertations to plug away at; and
so on. But as an assistant professor, you face an array of options, and
it is sometimes hard to choose among them or best exploit the ones you
have selected.
The most important thing to keep in mind about summer while you're
on the tenure track is that the promotion-and-tenure clock does not
stop. In fact, whether you are at a community college or a high-powered
research university, deciding what work to do over the summer and
completing it efficiently may be crucial determinants of your ascent up
the career ladder.
Before we begin a list of proscriptions and prescriptions for a
P&T-friendly summer we must deal with the main existential issue of
the so-called break — money versus productivity, especially for those
in research universities. I have seen, and heard of, many an assistant
professor start June with grand intentions to both teach summer classes
and finish articles, crunch big data sets, and even write books. Then
suddenly, it's the middle of August, the research took a back seat to
teaching, and it's time to prepare for the fall semester.
Certainly the monetary payoff of summer teaching may be too
attractive to turn down, especially in these times. If you can juggle
an intensive summer-class schedule with your research obligations,
great. But for many young scholars, the extra cash can be a career
deflater in the long run if it obstructs the scholarly work that would
put them over the finish line.
Now, we can review the summer dos and don'ts.
Don't overcommit. The first step in a productive P&T
summer is to avoid becoming hypnotized by the alluring vastness of a
quarter of a year spent with many fewer daily commitments. Summer can
fly by while you are working on that big book project as much as it did
in the halcyon days of sleepaway camp when you were a tweenager. So
don't be overambitious about the goals you set and the projects you
undertake. What is your top priority? Is it writing a book, producing
several research articles, prepping for new courses, completing a major
service project, or reorganizing your files or your lab?
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