New attorneys may graduate with a depth of legal knowledge, but they often don’t have the practical skills they need to succeed in today’s law firm. Many law schools, bar associations and law firms are taking a fresh look at mentoring as a way to accelerate the transition from academia to the professional world. In this paper, Mark Korf, director of new lawyer training at West LegalEdcenter, tasks the legal industry to leverage existing real world and online social media networks to create innovative, effective mentoring initiatives and embark upon an empirical study to assess mentoring program effectiveness. 

Read the full paper:
http://bit.ly/8ZpMcE

We are now one week closer to the start of the semester, and we should all be one week closer to being ready in our mission to teach the eager minds of our students.  Last week I mentioned four things you could do between now and the start of the semester to maximize your payoff in terms of student learning.

One of those was to ‘do all the easy things that will make a difference to your students. This idea is too important to leave to just a bullet point on my list so I decided to write a second blog going more in depth.  You are probably wondering: What are those easy things you can do to make a difference? Here are a few suggestions I have for you:

1.  Memorize your students’ names as quickly as possible; I make flashcards and have them memorized by the end of the first week. 

2.  Relentlessly communicate high expectations, both in terms of what you ask of them and in terms of your belief that your students can meet your expectations.  The research in this area is rock solid; students live up or down to our expectations of them.

3.  Manifest respect for, caring about, and interest in your students. 

        i.  Have students fill out index cards on which they tell you why they are in law school, what they hope to learn in your class, and one other interesting thing about them.

       ii.  When a student asks a question, any question, walk towards him or her, listen carefully, and think about the question before you respond.  Your students will learn that you  respect their courage in asking.      

      iii.  When a student asks a question or makes a comment that, at first glance, seems to reflect a lack of preparation or thought, take a deep breath and figure out the intelligence that underlies the error.  Try it once; you will be surprised how easy it is to find insight in student mistakes.  You can also critique any error, but your effort will allow you to mix in the positive feedback your student needs to hear, too.

      iv.  Solicit your students’ feedback about the class frequently and systematically.  Once each week, ask them to take out a half sheet of paper, give them three minutes and ask them to anonymously: tell you what is working and what is not working, summarize the key concepts they have learned this week, identify anything that is confusing them.  Your students will learn that you care about their learning and respect their opinions.

       v.  Know what else is going on with your students and wish them well.  Are on-campus interviews going full force?  Do they have a legal writing paper due in a week?  Is one of your students getting married? Having a baby? Becoming engaged?  Receiving an award?

Have a great year!

Professor Michael Hunter Schwartz
Co-Director, Institute for Law Teaching and Learning
Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Development
Washburn University School of Law

It comes every summer for all law teachers, that moment when you realize that your May dreams of a summer of scholarly production, productive class preparation, and family connection have melted away like ice cream on a 100° August afternoon.  The good news is that your students are on the way, bringing their excitement, enthusiasm, and insight.  The bad news, of course, is that your students are on the way, and you are not ready for them yet. 

So, what can you do between now and the beginning of the semester to maximize the payoff in terms of student learning?

      1.  Know your stuff and be organized.  Students will forgive a lot if they perceive that you know your subject, have taken the time to provide structure to the class, are working as hard as they are, and care as much as they do.

      2.   Be yourself.  It is tempting to adopt the mannerisms and methods of your favorite law teachers.  Students can see through us if we fake it.  If you have never set cases to music and sung them to an audience, don’t start now!

      3.  Do all the easy things that will make a difference with your students. 

               A.  Look for part two if this blog post next week, where I will explore this idea in greater depth.

      4.   Consult help from those who have been where you are before.  If you are interested in learning more about teaching and learning in law school, I recommend our website: http://lawteaching.org/.  Here you will find dozens of law review articles, some books, videotapes, and both a teaching article of the month and a teaching idea of the month.

Have a great year!

Professor Michael Hunter Schwartz
Co-Director, Institute for Law Teaching and Learning
Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Development
Washburn University School of Law

Legal academics and law firm leaders alike agree that new lawyers enter the practice of law lacking the real-world skills necessary to effectively serve clients. This 50-year-old topic of discussion has been made even more germane in light of the legal industry’s “new normal,” which is emerging from the recent recession. This white paper presents viewpoints and specific recommendations for implementing effective skills training from 10 lawyer development professionals at leading law firms and the National Institute for Trial Advocacy. These recommendations spell out action items for law schools, law firms and continuing legal education providers. From developing core competency frameworks to transforming formal classroom training into learning-by-doing opportunities, and blending training with knowledge management, the authors of this paper seek to catalyze a new and needed discussion around the future of legal education. 

Read the full paper:
http://bit.ly/8ZpMcE

As this rascally economy has deprived many of our law students the typical law firm summer associate program experience, Chapman University School of Law developed its own summer associate program this year—The Practical Legal Skills Institute. As an Associate Professor of Legal Research and Writing at Chapman, having run many a summer program at my East Coast law firm, I jumped at the opportunity to teach a practical summer course on Civil Discovery & Depositions.

The course required students to work on a case for a hypothetical law firm client, reviewing “real” fact documents and drafting and responding to all types of discovery. The six-week course led up to a final class in which individual students were responsible for conducting their very own deposition of a party witness.

While preparing my syllabus, I contacted Thomson Reuters’ LiveNote Team to see if we could use a LiveNote court reporter in the deposition class. Well, Thomson Reuters went one step further, and offered a pilot program to use their West Case Notebook and Case Timeline products in the classroom. Both were a huge hit.

Students at Chapman conduct a deposition of a witness with LiveNote court reporter.

The students learned how to integrate client documents and create a graphic timeline of events. They practiced tracking case witnesses, pleadings, and discovery documents in one electronic location. And most importantly, they visually experienced in class—up on a wide screen—how a video deposition works and how a Realtime transcript is generated. Rising Chapman 2L Jan Breslauer commented: “With the LiveNote software showing those depositions on the big screen in real time, the learning experience became that much more vivid and tangible. Knowing about the latest in litigation technology is something you can put in your pocket for the real world.” The last day of class, the students interacted with a LiveNote court reporter as they conducted live depositions using Case Notebook on a laptop like seasoned litigators.

As a professor, having Case Notebook enabled me to bring practical skills to life for the students. Instead of suffering through a one-dimensional lecture, they could touch, see, and feel for themselves how a case really works.  As rising Chapman 2L Chelsey Newsom remarked, “The LiveNote software is exactly the kind of real world exposure that law schools need to provide for their students.”

Heidi K. Brown
Associate Professor of Legal Research and Writing

Professor Brown began her legal career as a litigation associate with the Virginia law firm of Watt, Tieder, Hoffar & Fitzgerald, LLP, specializing in complex commercial contract litigation. After six years, she relocated to New York City and joined Thacher, Proffitt & Wood as a senior litigation associate. For the past five years, she has served as Of Counsel with the construction litigation firm of Moore & Lee, LLP, specializing in briefwriting. Throughout her legal career, Professor Brown has been heavily involved in her firms’ summer associate, recruiting and associate training programs. She is the author of Fundamentals of Federal Litigation, published by Thomson-West Publishing. Her book is a training manual for new litigators, based on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and is in its fifth edition. Professor Brown also co-authored an article entitled, Recoverability of the Cost of Borrowing in Construction Contracts, 17 Public Contract Law Journal 17 (Fall 1997).

Editor’s Note: Welcome our first guest blogger, Mark Osbeck.  Mark’s article below explores the relationship between print and digital books, assuring us that no matter the media of choice in the future there will always be a need for librarians.

Is it true that paper books are dying a slow death?  Or if they are not dying, are they perhaps going the way of LP records: becoming collectors’ items reserved solely for sentimentalists and purists?   A lot of people find that to be a troubling prospect.

Yet there are some good reasons to believe that in fact paper books are headed towards increasing obscurity.  For one thing, electronic books will likely have a significant cost advantage over paper books once the technology becomes well-established, since they require no raw materials to produce, and a publisher can reproduce them virtually at will with little added expense.  Furthermore, electronic books are much more portable than paper books. You won’t need a suitcase to take your 25 favorite books to a desert island, and law students won’t need backpacks to carry multiple case books to class. To be sure, paper books do hold a special place in our hearts. Sitting around a fire with a favorite leather-bound classic conjures up a warm and cozy feeling that is difficult to reproduce with an electric device.  But is that feeling really enough to keep paper books in widespread use? I for one have my doubts.

As for legal research, there are still some good reasons to use paper resources, at least some of the time.  Most importantly, paper research is often more cost-effective, assuming one has access to a good law library.  Additionally, some of the more obscure print resources are still not available online.  And some people maintain that it is easier to work with books than computers when it comes to certain types of sources.  But are any of these reasons likely to win the day in the long run, as technology keeps advancing?  Again, I have my doubts.

Yet even while the future for paper research sources looks sketchy, I am confident that there is another venerable legal research institution that will not soon fade away: the law librarian. For even if law libraries ultimately become little more than fancy internet cafes, law librarians will remain important because they possess expertise in finding and using sources of law. Regardless whether these sources of law are stored in electronic databases or in print, law students can benefit significantly from the expertise of law librarians.  And that is not likely to change, even as we move toward increasingly sophisticated electronic research tools such as WestlawNext.

One other important aspect of legal research will also remain unchanged in the electronic age:  the need for lawyers to adopt a sound strategy for solving research problems.  For unless lawyers are taught to approach legal research in a systematic manner—properly following the necessary research steps from beginning to end—they run the risk of wasting time and missing important authorities.  Thus, from a pedagogical perspective, the important point is not whether law students use the library or the computer; the important point is whether they learn to follow a sound, strategic approach to legal research.

Mark Osbeck is a professor in the Legal Practice Program at the University of Michigan Law School, and the author of Impeccable Research, A Concise Guide to Mastering Legal Research Skills. He also serves as a law-firm consultant on complex commercial litigation matters. Prior to joining the faculty at Michigan, Professor Osbeck practiced law for 15 years, first in Washington, D.C., and then in Denver, Colorado, where he was a partner with a large law firm.

The AALL meeting in Denver was a great success! With over 1,600 librarians attending, the city of Denver had a vast resource of legal knowledge walking the streets. We had a host of innovative and dynamic tools and resources available for law schools. From solutions for law school clinic needs to the Law School Exchange community, Thomson Reuters had something new to show you that can make your life and that of your faculty easier.

Some key highlights:

• TWEN & Online Learning: Explore grade book redesign with 26 new enhancements, TWEN integrations with WestlawNext as well as key online learning opportunities
• Law School Exchange: Where you can share, digitally publish, and find scholarship and teaching materials in collaboration with an online community of peers
• Law School Solutions: Tour our robust collection of clinical tools including public records, Westlaw video transcripts, and productivity tools, for more efficient and effective management of casework.
• Law School Specialized Content: New content sets available for your Westlaw plan include unique Tribal law content and Rise of American Law, a collection of historical legal materials.

For more information on any of these resources, visit west.thomson.com or contact your West sales representative.

The world of legal publishing is changing right before our eyes and for you, our customers, the world of legal education and librarianship is shifting as well. I think the question on all of our minds is: where is it going?

I know you all have been talking and thinking about what the library and law school classroom of the future look like: what do all the electronic methods of distributing and searching for legal information mean to the future attorneys you educate? What does this mean for the resources and tools you use to educate? You can bet we are thinking about the same things. Except our perspective is more like: how does the next step we take really help our customer be better at what they do—be they educator, practicing attorney, or government legal professional?

Our hope is that this blog will offer a place for discussion on topics and questions relevant to law school librarians and faculty as well as to our company. It is a tool for us to reach out and participate in the discussion. We would love to hear your ideas, thoughts, and topics of passion for this blog.

Look forward to guest bloggers from the legal field, hot topics of conversation, links to relevant resources, and the latest on our new products and services as they become available. And yes, we might just throw in a contest with a giveaway or two, so keep your eyes open!

See What’s Next:

• The Great Debate: ebooks and libraries: it’s all over the blogosphere, we all have the same questions, just no answers.  MIT and NC State University are lending out iPads—there’s even a blog chronicling students using them
• Westlaw and Print: setting aside the ebook debate, how does one do the most effective legal research utilizing these two resources? Are students coming out of law school appropriately trained in law firm librarians’ eyes?
• Move Toward Practical Training: focusing on preparing students to practice law versus preparing for the bar.