Kirschenfeld: The Law School Crisis, Visualized

Aaron Kirschenfeld of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, has posted The Law School Crisis, Visualized.

Here is the introduction:

For the past year, I have been researching changes in the legal profession and the market it has created, but I have had trouble sorting out the story buried in the often cited numbers contained in scam blog posts, academic works, or news reports. On this site, I have gathered a wide variety of source material and data to tell a story and to present a challenge — if you are considering going to law school, will deciding to go really ruin your life? To that end, I’ve prepared several easy-to-grasp visualizations about law school applications, debt, employment after graduation, and the current crisis in the legal market. [...]

The post includes a description of Aaron’s methodology and links to the datasets.

HT @kirschsubjudice

Siems and Mac Sithigh on Mapping Legal Research

Professor Dr. Mathias M. Siems of Durham University Law School and Dr. Daithi Mac Sithigh of University of Edinburgh School of Law have published Mapping Legal Research, Cambridge Law Journal, 71(3): 651-676 (2012).

Here is the abstract:

This article aims to map the position of academic legal research, using a distinction between “law as a practical discipline”, “law as humanities” and “law as social sciences” as a conceptual framework. Having explained this framework, we address both the “macro” and “micro” level of legal research in the UK. For this purpose, we have collected information on the position of all law schools within the structure of their respective universities. We also introduce “ternary plots” as a new way of explaining individual research preferences. Our general result is that all three categories play a role within the context of UK legal academia, though the relationship between the “macro” and the “micro” level is not always straight-forward. We also provide comparisons with the US and Germany and show that in all three countries law as an academic tradition has been constantly evolving, raising questions such as whether the UK could or should move further to a social science model already dominant in the US.

The Online Supplement for this paper is available at the following URL: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2097698

Olszewska & Baker, An Annotated Bibliography on Law Teaching

Mary Olszewska, J.D., & Professor Thomas E. Baker of Florida International University College of Law, have published An Annotated Bibliography on Law Teaching, forthcoming in Perspectives: Teaching Legal Research and Writing. Here is the abstract:

“This annotated bibliography was prepared for the panel on Diverse Teaching Methods Designed to Improve the Education of Law Students at the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Association of Law Schools (Aug. 3, 2009). It is offered as a resource to law teachers. It self-consciously and selectively surveys books and more recent articles with an emphasis on teaching qua teaching. It does not include articles specific to particular courses or subjects. Each entry appears only once. The categories and assignments are somewhat subjective but helpful for canvassing a rich literature. The online resources themselves include still more bibliographies.”

Garvey & Zinkin on Making Law Students Client-Ready: A New Model in Legal Education

Professor John Burwell Garvey of Franklin Pierce Law Center & Anne F. Zinkin, permanent law clerk to Senior Associate Justice Linda S. Dalianis of the New Hampshire Supreme Court have published Making Law Students Client-Ready: A New Model in Legal Education, 1 Duke Forum for Law & Social Change 101 (2009). Here is the abstract:

“This paper examines the current state of legal education and assessment in the United States, as well as a new and innovative method of bar examination, and makes recommendations for institutional change. It first provides a brief overview of the history of legal education and assessment in the United States and discusses many of the factors that have led to our current system. It then reviews recommendations for change, including the recommendations of the1992 ABA Task Force on Law Schools and the Profession, generally known as the MacCrate Report; the 2007 Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching’s report, Educating Lawyers, and; the 2007 Clinical Legal Education Association’s report, Best Practices. In addition to recommendations for change in legal education and assessment, the paper focuses on a licensing alternative to the traditional bar examination currently offered by the New Hampshire Supreme Court through Franklin Pierce Law Center, and known as the Daniel Webster Scholar Honors Program. The paper describes the two-year program in detail, and demonstrates that the program has already implemented most, if not all, of the major recommendations for legal education reform. In addition, the program provides an alternative method of bar examination which addresses many of the criticisms levied by critics of the traditional bar exam. The paper recommends replication of the pilot program in other states, and describes the process for implementation.”

Legal Education at the Crossroads Assessment Conference Resources

This blog will occasionally comment on legal educational assessment methods, because those methods are legal information systems, and because those methods apply to legal educational programs and systems (such as law schools and continuing legal education programs), which are also legal information systems.

Here are some resources respecting Legal Education at the Crossroads Version 3.0: A Conference on Assessment, held September 11-13, 2009 at the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law.

• Videos and materials for many of the conference presentations are available here;
• The ABA Student Learning Outcomes Subcommittee’s draft of the revised ABA “300″ Standards, from the ABA Standards for the Approval of Law Schools, is available, as presented by President Steve Bahls (see President Bahls’s presentation here) (HT Vice President Rensberger);
• Vice President Jeffrey L. Rensberger has written a series of comments about the conference at the Law by the Numbers blog;
• Professor Carolyn Grose’s report on the conference is available here; it is published on the Best Practices in Legal Education blog.