Acknowledgments As A Window Into Legal Academia

Jonathan I. Tietz (Michigan) & W. Nicholson Price II (Michigan), Acknowledgments as a Window into Legal Academia, 98 Wash. U. L. Rev. 307 (2020):

Legal scholarship in the United States is an oddity—an institution built on student editorship, a lack of peer review, and a dramatically high proportion of solo authorship. It is often argued that this makes legal scholarship fundamentally different from scholarship in other fields, which is largely peer-reviewed by academics. We use acknowledgments in biographical footnotes from law-review articles to probe the nature of legal knowledge co-production and de facto peer review in legal literature. Using a survey of authors and editors and a textual analysis of approximately thirty thousand law-review articles from 2008 to 2017, we examined the nature of knowledge co-production and peer review in U.S. legal academia.

Our results are consistent with the idea that substantial peer-review-like vetting occurs in the field. We also found evidence that both authors and editors use the information in acknowledgment footnotes as a factor in article submission and selection. Further, the characteristics of acknowledgment footnotes in articles in high-ranking law reviews differ dramatically from those in low-ranking law reviews in ways that are not simply due to differences in article quality.

Continue reading

Artificial Intelligence In Law Schools

Emily Janoski-Haehlen (Akron) & Sarah Starnes (Akron), The Ghost in the Machine: Artificial Intelligence in Law Schools, 58 Duq. L. Rev. 3 (2020):

ABA Standard 1.1, Comment 8 is vague but leaves the door wide open for attorneys and law schools to define what it really means to be technologically competent. Law schools have a great opportunity to take advantage of Comment 8, and the state's unique adoption and interpretation of Comment 8, to teach law students about being technologically competent before they graduate and begin to practice. Incorporating legal technology skills and knowledge into the curriculum of law schools is the first step to better prepare students for the future of law practice and legal services. It could also lead to more opportunities for access to justice initiatives including better access to legal services for the underrepresented and easier access to attorneys and the legal system using advancements in technology. In addition, the adoption of new technologies in the legal profession has and will continue to lead to the creation of new jobs for law graduates.

Continue reading

An Empirical Study Of Law School Externships

Anahid Gharakhanian (Southwestern), Carolyn Young Larmore (Chapman) & Chelsea Parlett-Pelleriti (Chapman), Achieving Externship Success: An Empirical Study of the All-Important Law School Externship Experience, 45 S. Ill. U. L.J. ___ (2020):

With law school externships more popular than ever, the need for an empirical evaluation of externship success is timely and essential. The promise of getting closer to practice readiness propels many law students to enroll in an externship (also known as field placements). But no study has empirically measured whether and to what extent law students get close to first-year law practice readiness through their externship, and what factors lead to that success. Without such a study, the American Bar Association’s regulation of externships and law schools’ externship design decisions are made without the benefit of critical data. This Article describes the year-long, multi-school Externship Study conducted to concretely measure (1) whether and to what extent externships lead to practice-readiness and (2) which attributes of the law school, the externship placement, or the students themselves are the most important contributors to that success.

In this Article, the authors use statistical models, descriptive summary, and narrative summary to analyze data from hundreds of law students and the lawyers and judges who supervised them in externships. The results reveal a high level of externship success, measured in terms of practice readiness.

Continue reading

How Time-Pressured Performance Tests In Law School Prepare Students For The Bar Exam And Legal Practice

Sabrina DeFabritiis (Suffolk) & Kathleen Elliott Vinson (Suffolk), Under Pressure: How Incorporating Time-Pressured Performance Tests Prepares Students for the Bar Exam and Practice, 122 W. Va. L. Rev. 107 (2019):

Law schools and students are under pressure to gain the competencies needed to gain licensure to practice law and be successful at it. Law schools have an ethical and professional responsibility to best prepare their law students for success on the bar and in practice. Incorporating performance tests into a law school curriculum gives law schools an opportunity to serve a dual role of providing students much-needed practice on bar exam skills and preparing students for practice, as the performance tests assess the lawyering skills required to successfully practice law. This Article offers examples of how law schools can do a better job of increasing students’ minimum competencies to pass the bar, gain employment, and practice law effectively while not requiring a major overhaul of law school curriculum or demanding the expenditure of a huge amount of time and effort by faculty.

Continue reading

Law School Pedagogy Post-Pandemic: Harnessing The Benefits Of Online Teaching

Yvonne Dutton (Indiana-Indianapolis) & Margaret Ryznar (Indiana-Indianapolis), Law School Pedagogy Post-Pandemic: Harnessing the Benefits of Online Teaching, 69 J. Legal Educ. ___ (2021):

Since COVID-19 required a significant shift to increased online teaching and learning in institutions of higher learning in spring 2020, one narrative has been that students do not like online classes, and online classes are inferior to those delivered live and in person. This Article takes issue with this broad and overarching criticism of online course delivery. No doubt, some types of students may not learn as well online as they do in the classroom, and some online classes may not be designed to deliver a quality learning experience. Our experience teaching asynchronous online classes in law school, however, demonstrates that there are many benefits to a well-designed online course that can enhance student learning—benefits that can be incorporated into law school pedagogy even after the pandemic is no longer a threat to health and safety of students and faculty.

Continue reading

The Washington University Law Review's Response To Michael McConnell's Use Of The N-Word In His Stanford Class

Statement by the Undersigned Editors of Volume 97, 97 Wash. U. L. Rev. i (2020):

On May 27, 2020—two days after the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota—professor and former judge Michael McConnell, the author of one of the following Articles, used the n-word in a class at Stanford Law School while reading a quotation he attributed to Patrick Henry. As members of the first legal journal to publish Professor McConnell since May 27, the undersigned editors of Volume 97 of the Washington University Law Review condemn Professor McConnell’s use of the n-word in the classroom. We believe that the use of this word in the classroom is unacceptable and unnecessary, as it significantly disrupts the learning environment and places a burden on Black students that other students do not face.

Michael W. McConnell (Stanford), Statement By Michael McConnell to Stanford Law School Community (May 29, 2020), 97 Wash. U. L. Rev. v (2020):

On Wednesday, in connection with the debates over ratification of the Constitution in Virginia, I quoted an ugly racial epithet used by Patrick Henry. I make it a priority in my class to emphasize issues of racism and slavery in the formation of the Constitution, and directly quote many statements by supporters and opponents of slavery. This was a particularly ugly incident, where the speaker sought to build opposition to the Constitution by stoking the racism of his Virginia audience. I presented the quotation in its historical context, emphasized that they were not my words, and condemned their use. It is vitally important to teach the history of the American Founding warts and all, and not to bowdlerize or sugar-coat it.  ...

I conclude with two points. First, I hope everyone can understand that I made the pedagogical choice with good will – with the intention of teaching the history of our founding honestly. Second, in light of the pain and upset that this has caused many students, whom I care deeply about, I will not use the word again in the future.

John Inazu (Washington University), Scholarship, Teaching, and Protest, 97 Wash. U. L. Rev. vii (2020):

The preceding protest stems from Professor Michael McConnell’s use of an unredacted historical quote containing the N-word in one of his classes at Stanford Law School. Professor McConnell began the quote with a warning and followed it with a condemnation. He intended to show how this nation’s founders were not unblemished heroes but also embodied deeply racist attitudes that have been part of our country’s history since its inception. In other words, Professor McConnell was making an anti-racist teaching point. After talking with concerned students at Stanford, he has said that he will not use the N-word again.

Some members of this Law Review determined this should not be the end of the matter, and this protest ensued. Parts of the protest statement highlight a desire to address racial inequities at our law school and within the Law Review. I applaud that desire. ...

While I stand with the protesters in their desire to address racial injustice, as the faculty editor of the symposium that follows, I object to this protest for four reasons.

Continue reading

AI Report: Humanity Is Doomed. Send Lawyers, Guns, and Money!

Ashley London (Duquesne) & James Schreiber (Duquesne), AI Report: Humanity Is Doomed. Send Lawyers, Guns, and Money!, 58 Duq. L. Rev. 97 (2020):

AI systems are powerful technologies being built and implemented by private corporations motivated by profit, not altruism. Change makers, such as attorneys and law students, must therefore be educated on the benefits, detriments, and pitfalls of the rapid spread, and often secret implementation of this technology. The implementation is secret because private corporations place proprietary AI systems inside of black boxes to conceal what is inside. If they did not, the popular myth that AI systems are unbiased machines crunching inherently objective data would be revealed as a falsehood. Algorithms created to run AI systems reflect the inherent human categorization process and can, in some respects, become a lazy way to interact with the world because the systems attempt to outsource the unparalleled cognitive skills of a human being into a machine.

Continue reading

Frye: A Legal Scholarship Jubilee

Brian L. Frye (Kentucky), A Legal Scholarship Jubilee:

I love plagiarism. Or rather, I love studying plagiarism norms and reflecting on how they illuminate concepts of literary ownership. I have argued that applying academic plagiarism norms to students is unjustified. I have argued that we should teach law students how to plagiarize efficiently. I have authorized people to plagiarize me. And I have commissioned a ghost-written article arguing that academic plagiarism norms are unjustified.

Continue reading

Information For Submitting Articles To Specialty & Non-Flagship Law Journals

Michael Goodyear (Michigan), Information for Submitting Articles to Specialty & Non-Flagship Law Journals:

This document contains charts with information about submitting articles to specialty (non-flagship) law journals at ABA-accredited law schools in the United States, including links to the journal's page, the accepted methods for submitting an article, special formatting or length requirements, whether the journal accepts outside student submissions, and whether the journal offers any non-traditional publishing options. It covers over 450 law journals.

Continue reading

Utah Hosts Junior Scholar’s Conference Today On How To Improve The Impact Of Your Legal Scholarship

Utah hosts the Rocky Mountain Junior Scholar’s Conference virtually today on How to Improve the Impact of Your Legal Scholarship (2:00 PM ET):

Please join us on Zoom as our expert panelists talk about how to improve the impact of your legal scholarship. Learn from our panelists about the following important topics:

• How to become one of the most cited in your field
• How to improve SSRN downloads
• How to improve law review placements
• Whether and when to write books or articles
• How to place quotes and op-eds in national publications

Continue reading

Women's Research Productivity Is Suffering Compared To Men's During COVID-19

Following up on my previous posts:

• COVID-19 Is Disproportionately Impacting Research By Women Faculty
• Women's Journal Submissions Fall During COVID-19

Inside Higher Ed, Women Are Falling Behind:

A new study of enormous scale supports what numerous smaller studies have demonstrated throughout the pandemic: female academics are taking extended lockdowns on the chin, in terms of their comparative scholarly productivity.

Yes, comparative productivity. While other studies using different metrics show that women are publishing much less now than they were before the pandemic, this new paper finds something different: at least in terms of submissions to academic journals from the mega-publisher Elsevier, both men and women’s productivity actually increased during the first few months of the pandemic, relative to the same period of time in 2018 and 2019. But women’s productivity didn’t increase as much as men’s, meaning that women are still trailing behind male peers as a result of pandemic-era increased caregiving responsibilities.

No Tickets for Women in the COVID-19 Race? A Study on Manuscript Submissions and Reviews in 2347 Elsevier Journals during the Pandemic:

Our complete data on all Elsevier journals indicate that the exceptional lock-down and social distancing measures imposed by the pandemic have penalised women academics and benefited men. ... Given the importance of publications and citations for academic career and prestige in the current hyper-competitive academic environment, these gender disparities could have important short- and longer-term effects, which need to be considered by academic institutions and funders. Indeed, those who have already benefited from this COVID19 research inflation may have higher chances in the near future to receive prestigious
grants and obtain tenures and promotion in prestigious institutions. ...

Our analysis shows that men submitted more manuscripts than women during the pandemic (Fig. 1A). The rate of accepted review invitations — i.e., the number of accepted invitations on the total number of invitations sent to potential referees — has been more constant around an average of ≈ 0.45 with only minimal differences between the acceptance rate of women and men (Fig. 1B).

Continue reading

Relationship-Rich Education: How Human Connections Drive Success In College (And Law School)

Peter Felten (Assistant Provost, Elon) & Leo M. Lambert (Former President, Elon), Relationship-Rich Education: How Human Connections Drive Success in College (John Hopkins University Press 2020):

What single factor makes for an excellent college education? As it turns out, it's pretty simple: human relationships. Decades of research demonstrate the transformative potential and the lasting legacies of a relationship-rich college experience. Critics suggest that to build connections with peers, faculty, staff, and other mentors is expensive and only an option at elite institutions where instructors have the luxury of time with students. But in this revelatory book brimming with the voices of students, faculty, and staff from across the country, Peter Felten and Leo M. Lambert argue that relationship-rich environments can and should exist for all students at all types of institutions.

In Relationship-Rich Education, Felten and Lambert demonstrate that, for relationships to be central in undergraduate education, colleges and universities do not require immense resources, privileged students, or specially qualified faculty and staff. All students learn best in an environment characterized by high expectation and high support, and all faculty and staff can learn to teach and work in ways that enable relationship-based education. Emphasizing the centrality of the classroom experience to fostering quality relationships, Felten and Lambert focus on students' influence in shaping the learning environment for their peers, as well as the key difference a single, well-timed conversation can make in a student's life. They also stress that relationship-rich education is particularly important for first-generation college students, who bring significant capacities to college but often face long-standing inequities and barriers to attaining their educational aspirations.

Continue reading

Ryan: Analyzing Law School Choice

CJ Ryan (Roger Williams), Analyzing Law School Choice,  2020 U. Ill. L. Rev. 583:

The contemporary crisis in law school enrollments presents a timely opportunity to evaluate a subject that has received little academic attention: student choice in legal education. In order to address the present lack of understanding about what motivates post-Recession law students to enroll in law school, this article examines several of the factors that bear on the choice to attend law school from the results of an original survey distributed to current law students at a four law schools—a private elite law school, a public flagship law school, a public regional law school, and a private new law school—in the 2017–2018 academic year. This article analyzes the salience of location, information, opportunity cost, and cost sensitivity in the context of a law student’s decision to enroll in law school. The results from this survey indicate that legal education is a highly stratified market for consumers on the basis of their preferences. It is hoped that these results will shed greater light on and knowledge of the most understudied group in professional graduate education—law students.

Continue reading

Black Lawyers Matter: Strategies To Enhance Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion

I am honored to have the opportunity to update my remarks on A Dean's Perspective on Diversity, Socioeconomics, The LSAT, And The U.S. News Law School Rankings as part of a panel at today's virtual conference on Black Lawyers Matter: Strategies To Enhance Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion (more here):

Moderator: 
Leonard M. Baynes (Dean, Houston)

Panelists:
Robert B. Ahdieh (Dean, Texas A&M)
Paul L. Caron (Dean, Pepperdine)
Robert Morse (Chief Data Strategist, U.S. News & World Report)
Victor Quintanilla (Indiana)
Kellye Testy (President & CEO, Law School Admission Council)

Karen Sloan (Law.com), Black Lawyers Matter: The Symposium:

The numbers tell the story of a legal profession divided by race. Less than 8% of first-year law students in 2019 were Black.

In California, 53% of Black bar examinees passed between 2009 and 2018. That figure was 80% for white examinees.

The percentage of 2019 Black law graduates who found jobs requiring a law degree within 10 months was 62%, compared to 80% for white law graduates. And in 2020, white shoe law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore had no Black partners.

Continue reading