Tuesday, December 4, 2018
From Podcasts To Treasure Hunts: Using Technology To Promote Student Engagement
Marcia L. McCormick (Saint Louis), From Podcasts to Treasure Hunts—Using Technology to Promote Student Engagement, 58 St. Louis U. L.J. 127 (2013):
Three influential calls for reform in legal education, the MacCrate Report, the Carnegie Report, and most recently the Stuckey Report, have all recommended that professors use teaching methods to provide greater opportunities for students to practice problem solving skills and receive feedback on their performance. Being a lawyer is much more than memorizing rules; students need to be able to understand the big picture and use the details to problem solve. This article details how to use audio and written podcast summaries to help students see the big picture in a subject and how each smaller topic fits together into that bigger picture. On the detail side, quizzes and “Treasure Hunts” get students to read statutes apply them to different problem situations.
December 4, 2018 in Legal Education, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (0)
FBA Tax Law Student Writing Competition
The Federal Bar Association Section on Taxation invites J.D. and LL.M. students to participate in the 2019 Donald C. Alexander Tax Law Writing Competition (flier):
The Federal Bar Association Section on Taxation sponsors an annual writing competition and invites law students to participate. The Section on Taxation has named this annual competition—the Donald C. Alexander Tax Law Writing Competition—in honor of former IRS Commissioner Don Alexander, who passed away in 2009. Throughout his career, Mr. Alexander was both a widely admired role model and an advocate for writing skills and style in tax law.
December 4, 2018 in Legal Education, Tax, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (0)
Friday, November 30, 2018
Dorothy Brown Receives Emory University Teaching Excellence Award
Emory Law Professor Dorothy Brown Receives Teaching Excellence Award:
Dorothy Brown has been selected to receive the Vulcan Teaching Excellence Award, given through the Georgia Independent College Association (GICA). The award recognizes outstanding faculty members who demonstrate strong academic skills in the classroom and provide leadership and support in the other areas of campus life.
Dorothy Brown is a nationally recognized scholar in tax policy, race, and class and has published extensively on the racial implications of federal tax policy. She is highly sought for her expertise in workplace inclusion issues, a respected speaker in the legal community, and a regularly engaged expert by media including CNN, National Public Radio, The New York Times, National Law Journal, The Washington Post and Forbes. She is currently working on a book entitled The Whiteness of Wealth.
November 30, 2018 in Legal Education, Tax, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (1)
Wednesday, November 28, 2018
How To Grow A Lawyer: A Guide For Law Schools, Law Professors, And Law Students
E. Scott Fruehwald, How to Grow A Lawyer: A Guide for Law Schools, Law Professors, and Law Students (2018):
We live in a world of accelerating change. Yet, legal education still relies mainly on a teaching approach developed in 1870. Is this any way to grow a lawyer?
Law schools need to radically transform legal education. They must base this transformation on research of education scholars both within and without legal education. They must reject everything from the past that does not grow effective lawyers.
This book shows how law schools and law professors can use the new scholarship to become better teachers and how they can help their students become better learners. In brief, legal education should involve active learning, teaching students metacognition, and formative assessment. This book contains exercises, particularly reflection exercises, at the end of each subsection to help the reader better absorb the new approaches to teaching and learning.
November 28, 2018 in Book Club, Legal Education, Scholarship, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (0)
Sunday, November 25, 2018
Fifty Ways To Promote Law School Teaching And Learning
Gerald Hess (Gonzaga), Michael Hunter Schwartz (Dean, McGeorge) & Nancy Levit (UMKC), Fifty Ways to Promote Teaching and Learning, 67 J. Legal Educ. ___ (2018):
In 1999, the Journal of Legal Education published an important article for law schools seeking to improve the quality and quantity of faculty scholarly output, James Lindgren’s Fifty Ways to Promote Scholarship, 49 J. Legal Educ. 126 (1999). ... Professor Lindgren detailed numerous ideas for improving scholarship and the intellectual life of a law school. ...
This article addresses the other side of the coin, teaching. Most law schools make claims about the high-quality instruction students will receive. And we believe that all law school faculties and nearly all individual law professors aspire to excellence in the classroom. This article focuses on the efforts law schools and professors can make to fulfill that aspiration.
November 25, 2018 in Legal Education, Scholarship, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (0)
Monday, October 8, 2018
2019 Tannenwald Tax Writing Competition
The Theodore Tannenwald, Jr. Foundation for Excellence in Tax Scholarship and American College of Tax Counsel are sponsoring the 2019 Tannenwald Tax Writing Competition:
Named for the late Tax Court Judge Theodore Tannenwald, Jr., and designed to perpetuate his dedication to legal scholarship of the highest quality, the Tannenwald Writing Competition is open to all full- or part-time law school students, undergraduate or graduate. Papers on any federal or state tax-related topic may be submitted in accordance with the Competition Rules.
Prizes:
- 1st Place: $5,000, and publication in the Florida Tax Review
- 2nd Place: $2,500
- 3rd Place: $1,500
October 8, 2018 in Legal Education, Tax, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (0)
Saturday, September 29, 2018
2018 IFA International Tax Student Writing Competition (Sept. 30 Deadline)
2018 IFA International Tax Student Writing Competition:
Subject: Any topic relating to U.S. taxation of income from international activities, including taxation under U.S. tax treaties.
Open to: All students during the 2017-18 academic year pursuing a graduate degree. Any appropriate papers written in fall 2017 or spring and summer 2018.
Submission Deadline: September 30, 2018.
Prize: $2,000 cash, plus expenses-paid invitation to the IFA USA Branch Annual Meeting in Feb 2019.
Here are the recent winners:
September 29, 2018 in Scholarship, Tax, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tuesday, September 25, 2018
Online Law School Classes Deliver Results For Law Students
Yvonne Dutton, Margaret Ryznar & Kayleigh Long (Indiana-Indianapolis), Assessing Asynchronous Online Learning in Law Schools: Students Say Online Classes Deliver, 96 Denv. L. Rev. ___ (2019):
This is the first article to provide empirical data on the effectiveness of distance education in law schools since the ABA this summer approved increasing the total number of credits that law students could earn through online classes from 15 to 30. Our data, composed of law student surveys and focus groups, reveal not only the success of distance education in their experience, but also the methods that are most effective for them.
Margaret Ryznar, Insights on Online Teaching:
September 25, 2018 in Legal Education, Scholarship, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (0)
Friday, September 21, 2018
Teaching Symposium: How A Law Faculty Stays Ahead Of The Curve
Symposium, Upward! Higher: How a Law Faculty Stays Ahead of the Curve, 51 Ind. L. Rev. 413-70 (2018):
Full-time and part-time faculty of the IU McKinney School of Law convened together with campus and university partners from the IUPUI Center for Teaching and Learning and Indiana University e-Learning Design and Services for the second annual “Upward!” teaching symposium at the beginning of Fall Semester 2017. The two-day gathering involved panel discussions on topics including online teaching, online course design, teaching externships, designing lessons for the law school’s active learning classrooms, teaching international students, and teaching with an eye to the bar exam. Participants enjoyed a field trip to IUPUI campus offices supporting the university’s teaching mission, including the Center for Teaching and Learning and the recording studio. Panelists contributed to this joint publication, which includes sole- or joint-authored submissions by Professors Adams, Baker, Boyne, Huffman, Ryznar, Shope, and Sullivan; an introduction by Dean Klein and Professor Huffman; and reactions to the primary papers. These submissions reflect a variety of scholarly methods, drawing from empirical study, anecdotal observation, and theoretical analysis.
September 21, 2018 in Conferences, Legal Education, Scholarship, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (1)
Wednesday, September 19, 2018
Cracking Student Silos: Linking Legal Writing And Clinical Learning Through Transference
Mary Bowman (Seattle) & Lisa Ellen Brodoff (Seattle), Cracking Student Silos: Linking Legal Writing and Clinical Learning Through Transference:
Why do highly competent and hard-working law students struggle to apply what they learn in legal writing to later clinical courses and law practice? The authors of this article are uniquely qualified to answer this question and to provide strategies for helping students overcome these common struggles. The authors direct the nationally renowned legal writing and clinical programs at Seattle University School of Law, where they have engaged in cutting-edge collaborative teaching projects for nearly a decade. Even so, they found that their students, when faced with the messiness of real client representation, struggled with typical research and writing problems even as the legal writing faculty exclaimed "We know we taught them that!" So the program directors extensively studied the educational literature on transference, then spent nearly two years taking each other's courses to understand more deeply how we could help our students apply what is taught in each program to future client work. This article describes what we learned from these endeavors.
September 19, 2018 in Legal Education, Scholarship, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (0)
Friday, September 14, 2018
Stark: Implementation Negotiation
Tina Stark, a leader in transactional skills education for lawyers (Fordham, Emory, and Boston University), Implementation Negotiation: A Transaction Skill that Builds on and Transforms Classic Negotiation Theory, forthcoming, Transactions, The Tennessee Journal of Business Law.
Implementation negotiation is the specialized negotiation in which deal lawyers engage after the principals negotiate the business terms of the transaction. Classic negotiation principles guide these deal term negotiations. But once the parties agree, the dynamics, tone, content, and purpose of the negotiation change. Parties are no longer looking at whether they can find a way to agree. They do agree. Now, the lawyers must transform the clients’ bare bones agreed-on business terms into a contract that memorializes the parties’ joint vision. This is implementation negotiation, a new way of thinking about contract negotiations. Implementation negotiation theory does not displace classic negotiation theory. It simultaneously builds on that framework and transforms it to work in a different context. This article begins by reviewing classic negotiation theory and principles and then explains how implementation negotiation builds on and transforms those principles, including why BATNA recedes to the background, why seasoned negotiators know the parties’ interests and issues and the expected zone of agreement, even before negotiations begin. The article next details the multiple subcategories of implementation negotiation through narrative and a series of illustrative, simulated negotiations. It concludes by briefly discussing the implications of this new pedagogy for legal education.
When the business parties have agreed on the basic terms of a deal typically requiring far more complex documentation, it now falls upon the lawyers to get it done without blowing the deal. This essay, chock full of examples, is in the tradition of James Freund's iconic Anatomy of a Merger, teaching both how to see the forest and how to deal with the trees.
September 14, 2018 in Legal Education, Scholarship, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (0)
Wednesday, September 12, 2018
ABA Tax Section Releases 18th Annual Law Student Tax Challenge Problem
The ABA Tax Section has released the J.D. Problem (rules; entry form) and LL.M. Problem (rules; entry form) for the 18th Annual Law Student Tax Challenge:
An alternative to traditional moot court competitions, the Law Student Tax Challenge asks two-person teams of students to solve a cutting-edge and complex business problem that might arise in everyday tax practice. Teams are initially evaluated on two criteria: a memorandum to a senior partner and a letter to a client explaining the result. Based on the written work product, six teams from the J.D. Division and four teams from the LL .M. Division receive a free trip (including airfare and accommodations for two nights) to the Section of Taxation 2019 Midyear Meeting, January 17-19, 2019 in New Orleans, where each team will defend its submission before a panel of judges consisting of the country’s top tax practitioners and government officials, including tax court judges. The competition is a great way for law students to showcase their knowledge in a real-world setting and gain valuable exposure to the tax law community. On average, more than 50 teams compete in the J.D. Division and more than 30 teams compete in the LL .M. Division.
IMPORTANT DATES
September 12, 2018 in ABA Tax Section, Tax, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (1)
Thursday, September 6, 2018
How Faculty Can Build Resiliency In Law Students Through A Growth-Mindset Culture In Our Classrooms
Susan Shapcott (Bath), Sarah Davis (Wisconsin) & Lane Hanson (Wisconsin), The Jury Is In: Law Schools Foster Students’ Fixed Mindsets, 42 Law & Psychol. Rev. 1 (2018):
The legal education community remains concerned with the resiliency of law students and lawyers. In other fields, a growing body of research suggests that students' mindsets are linked to their resilience, and it is assumed that the findings will hold in legal education. However, to date, there has been no empirical research to support these assumptions. This article describes an empirical study of law students' mindsets based on responses from 425 students at six law schools across the United States. Our results unveil a troubling trend in law students' mindsets at different stages of the law school experience.
This article reports our findings that law schools may foster maladaptive mindsets in their students. It also offers some pedagogical interventions that might counter this trend and points law schools in a direction that could not only improve performance, but also students' resiliency as they move from law school into legal practice. It is written from the normative position that fixed mindsets are maladaptive and growth mindsets should be fostered. Based upon research to be outlined, this article subscribes to a belief that when law students are struggling—an inevitable part of law school and practicing law—their mindset will differentiate their ability to learn from mistakes, persist, and remain resilient.
September 6, 2018 in Legal Education, Scholarship, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (1)
Tuesday, August 28, 2018
Building A Culture Of Assessment In Law Schools
Larry Cunningham (St. John's), Building a Culture of Assessment in Law Schools:
A new era of legal education is upon us: Law schools are now required to assess learning outcomes across their degrees and programs, not just in individual courses. Programmatic assessment is new to legal education, but it has existed in higher education for decades. To be successful, assessment requires cooperation and buy-in from faculty. Yet establishing a culture of assessment in other disciplines has not been easy, and there is no reason to believe that it will be any different in legal education. A survey of provosts identified faculty buy-in as the single biggest challenge towards implementing assessment efforts. This article surveys the literature on culture of assessment, including conceptual papers and quantitative and qualitative studies. It then draws ten themes from the literature about how to build a culture of assessment:
August 28, 2018 in Legal Education, Scholarship, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tuesday, May 8, 2018
In Defense Of Student Evaluations Of Teaching
Following up on yesterday's post, Why We Must Stop Relying On Student Ratings Of Law School Teaching — Like The University Of Oregon Is Doing: Chronicle of Higher Education op-ed: In Defense (Sort of) of Student Evaluations of Teaching, by Kevin Gannon (Grand View University):
[W]e know student evaluations matter. Perhaps the better question is: Should they? Given their many demonstrable and potential flaws, why would we still use them to gather feedback on teaching and learning? It turns out the answer is more complicated than appearances suggest.
Certainly, students are not experts qualified to evaluate us on, say, whether we used the best and most applicable course readings. But they are experts on what they experienced and learned in a course, and they ought to have a voice. Just because their feedback is sometimes misused doesn’t mean it’s invalid or unnecessary.
In fact, course evaluations — despite their many problematic elements — may still provide the most accurate information available on teaching effectiveness. Elizabeth Barre, whose research into student evaluations — in particular, the metastudies of the subject — is essential reading, observed that "we have not yet been able to find an alternative measure of teaching effectiveness that correlates as strongly with student learning. In other words, they may be imperfect measures, but they are also our best measures."
And therein lies the rub: We need to assess teaching, and we often have to rely on not the best, but the least worst, option. ...
May 8, 2018 in Legal Education, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (0)
Monday, May 7, 2018
Why We Must Stop Relying On Student Evaluations Of Law School Teaching — Like The University Of Oregon Is Doing
Chronicle of Higher Education op-ed: Why We Must Stop Relying on Student Ratings of Teaching, by Michelle Falkoff (Northwestern Law School):
Few academics will be surprised to hear that more evidence has come out showing that student evaluations of teaching are often biased.
The latest study [Gender Bias in Student Evaluations], released this year by the American Political Science Association, found that the "language students use in evaluations regarding male professors is significantly different than language used in evaluating female professors." The study also showed that "a male instructor administering an identical online course as a female instructor receives higher ordinal scores in teaching evaluations, even when questions are not instructor-specific."
Kristina Mitchell, one of the study’s authors, summarized its findings in Slate last month and concluded: "Our research shows they’re biased against women. That means using them is illegal." Academic institutions must stop giving an inordinate amount of weight to student evaluations when making employment decisions, she argued, until the institutions can account for, address, and eliminate bias.
Unfortunately, there’s no consensus on how best to do that, and gender isn’t the only kind of bias at issue. Still, it’s time for academic institutions to do better on this front. ...
[I]t’s time to stop relying primarily on one approach — in this case, student evaluations of teaching — and move to a more holistic strategy in which multiple factors contribute to a more accurate, consistent, and well-rounded assessment.
I was convinced of that by my experience as director of the program in communication and legal reasoning at Northwestern University’s law school.
May 7, 2018 in Legal Education, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (3)
Thursday, May 3, 2018
Call for Papers: New Voices In Tax Policy And Public Finance (2019 AALS Annual Meeting)
The AALS Tax Section committee is pleased to announce the following Call for Papers:
CALL FOR PAPERS:
AALS SECTION ON TAXATION WORKS-IN-PROGRESS SESSION
2019 ANNUAL MEETING, JANUARY 2-6, 2019, NEW ORLEANS, LA
NEW VOICES IN TAX POLICY AND PUBLIC FINANCE
(co-sponsored by the Section on Nonprofit and Philanthropy Law and Section on Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation)
The AALS Section on Taxation is pleased to announce the following Call for Papers. Selected papers will be presented at a works-in-progress session at the 2019 AALS Annual Meeting in New Orleans, LA from January 2-6, 2019. The works-in-progress session is tentatively scheduled for Saturday, January 5.
May 3, 2018 in Conferences, Legal Education, Scholarship, Shuyi Oei, Tax, Tax Profs, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tuesday, April 17, 2018
More Evidence That Student Evaluations Are Biased Against Women
Following up on last week's post, Students Rate Male Professors More Highly Than Female Professors: Daily Tar Heel, NC State Research Shows Male Professors Receive Higher Ratings Than Female:
For professors, student evaluations are used to assist decisions on promotions, raises and tenure. But research from North Carolina State University shows that the evaluations a professor receives are linked to their gender, with male professors receiving higher and more favorable ratings than female professors [What’s in a Name: Exposing Gender Bias in Student Ratings of Teaching].
In 2014, researchers at N.C. State used online courses, where an instructor’s gender could be hidden, to test this gender bias. Four sections of an online class were taught by two instructors: a female instructor and a male instructor. Each taught two sections, using their true identity for one and adopting a name of the opposite gender for the other.
April 17, 2018 in Legal Education, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (4)
Wednesday, March 14, 2018
Global IFA Writing Competitions
Following up on my previous post, 2018 IFA International Tax Student Writing Competition: Global IFA Writing Competitions (2018):
- IFA President YIN Scientific Award
- Mitchell B. Carroll Prize
- Maurice Lauré Prize
March 14, 2018 in Tax, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (0)
Friday, March 2, 2018
University Of Minnesota Study: Enhanced Individualized Feedback In One Core 1L Class Improves Student Performance In Other Classes
Daniel Schwarcz (Minnesota) & Dion Farganis (J.D. 2017, Minnesota), The Impact of Individualized Feedback on Law Student Performance, 67 J. Legal Educ. 139 (2017):
For well over a century, first-year law students have typically not received any individualized feedback in their core "doctrinal" classes other than their final exam grades. Although this pedagogical model has long been assailed by critics, remarkably limited empirical evidence exists regarding the extent to which enhanced feedback improves law students' outcomes. This Article helps fill this gap by focusing on a natural experiment at the University of Minnesota Law School.
March 2, 2018 in Legal Education, Scholarship, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (2)
Wednesday, February 28, 2018
2017 IFA International Tax Student Writing Award; Call For Entrants In 2018 Competition
The winner of the International Fiscal Association's 2017 International Tax Student Writing Competition is David Maranjan (Virgina), What’s in a Name? XILINX, ALTERA, and Why Using “Arm’s Length” as a Catchall is Causing Problems for Treasury, 47 BNA Tax Mgmt. Int'l J. ___ (2018)
Faculty Sponsor: Ruth Mason
2018 IFA International Tax Student Writing Competition:
Subject: Any topic relating to U.S. taxation of income from international activities, including taxation under U.S. tax treaties.
Open to: All students during the 2017-18 academic year pursuing a graduate degree. Any appropriate papers written in fall 2017 or spring and summer 2018.
Submission Deadline: September 30, 2018.
Prize: $2,000 cash, plus expenses-paid invitation to the IFA USA Branch Annual Meeting in Feb 2019.
Here are the recent winners:
February 28, 2018 in Scholarship, Tax, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (0)
Sunday, February 25, 2018
NY Times Op-Ed: The Misguided Drive To Measure 'Learning Outcomes'
Here at Texas Tech University School of Law we are gearing up for our ABA site inspection. In the past few years the ABA has required law schools to create "Learning Outcomes." Here's the language from Section 3.02:
A law school shall establish learning outcomes that shall, at a minimum, include competency in the following:
(a) Knowledge and understanding of substantive and procedural law;
(b) Legal analysis and reasoning, legal research, problem-solving, and written and oral communication in the legal context;
(c) Exercise of proper professional and ethical responsibilities to clients and the legal system; and
(d) Other professional skills needed for competent and ethical participation as a member of the legal profession.
This is the first year that the site teams will be evaluating a law school's compliance with the new standard. We knew it was coming and I have been on a committee for the past three years that has been trying to translate this standard into operation. While I believe we have done a good job with it, I also believe the standard to be of questionable value.
I read with pleasure this New York Times op-ed by Molly Worthen, The Misguided Drive to Measure 'Learning Outcomes'. I especially like its concluding line: "[T]here's just no app for that."
February 25, 2018 in Bryan Camp, Legal Education, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (7)
Friday, February 23, 2018
Charleston Law Students Win 7th Consecutive National Tax Moot Court Competition
Post and Courier, Charleston School of Law Moot Court Team Defends its Dynasty With 7th National Title:
To the uninitiated, tax moot court might sound like a bit of a snoozefest.
Unlike the academic marathon of a spelling bee or the sassy courtroom repartee of "Judge Judy," deliberations over the finer points of U.S. tax code do not make for a lively spectacle.
But to the Charleston School of Law, the 2018 National Tax Moot Court Competition in St. Pete Beach, Florida, was a chance to defend a dynasty. The school's Moot Court Board had won the championship six years in a row leading up to the event on Feb. 1-3, and its team was ready to notch a seventh national title. ...
February 23, 2018 in Legal Education, Tax, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (0)
Thursday, February 22, 2018
2017 Tannenwald Tax Writing Competition Winners
The Theodore Tannenwald, Jr. Foundation for Excellence in Tax Scholarship has announced the winners of the 2017 tax writing competition:
First Prize ($5,000):
David Berke (Yale), Reworking the Revolution: Treasury Rulemaking & Administrative Law
Faculty Sponsor: Anne L. Alstott
Second Prize ($2,500):
Daniel W. Blum (NYU), Treaty Shopping and its Prevention in a Post-BEPS World Limitation-on-Benefits, Beneficial Ownership and the Principal Purpose Test: Evolution, Underlying Rationales and Interrelation
Faculty Sponsor: H. David Rosenbloom
February 22, 2018 in ABA Tax Section, Legal Education, Scholarship, Tax, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (0)
Sunday, January 21, 2018
Colker: Stop Banning Laptops In Law School Classrooms!
Ruth Colker (Ohio State), Universal Design: Stop Banning Laptops!, 39 Cardozo L. Rev. 483 (2017):
Banning laptops in the classroom constitutes a needless barrier to academic performance that is increasingly common at the university level. In this article, I review the existing literature that is cited to support laptop bans and show how that literature does not, in fact, support such a ban. Further, I report a modest empirical study that reflects that students who use laptops in a large lecture class do as well as students who do not use laptops so long as Internet use of the laptop is clearly and effectively banned. The article concludes that a permissive laptop policy should be on the list of Universal Design features that supports effective learning for all students.
January 21, 2018 in Legal Education, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (5)
Friday, January 12, 2018
American College of Employee Benefits Counsel Student Writing Competition
The American College of Employee Benefits Counsel is sponsoring its 14th Annual Employee Benefits Writing Competition on any topic in the field of employee benefits law. The competition is open to any J.D. and graduate (L.L.M. or S.J.D) law students enrolled at any time between August 15, 2017 and August 15, 2018.
January 12, 2018 in Legal Education, Tax, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (0)
Friday, January 5, 2018
From Business Tax Theory To Practice In Law School Clinics
Alina S. Ball (UC-Hastings) & Manoj Viswanathan (UC-Hastings), From Business Tax Theory to Practice, 24 Clinical L. Rev. 27 (2017):
The past decade has seen a dramatic increase in the number of business law clinics in legal academia. This increase in clinical transactional courses has not, however, resulted in a proliferation of transactional tax clinical offerings. Although tax issues, including federal, state, and local tax matters, are an integral consideration of nearly every business transaction, most business law clinics explicitly exclude tax representation from their client services. For clients of business law clinics that are social enterprises — companies that combine market-based business strategies and social mission — this lack of tax-focused representation is problematic for two reasons.
January 5, 2018 in Legal Education, Scholarship, Tax, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
An Empirical Analysis Of Law School Learning Strategies
Jennifer M. Cooper (Tulane) & Regan A. R. Gurung (Wisconsin), Smarter Law Study Habits: An Empirical Analysis of Law Learning Strategies and Relationship with Law GPA, 62 St. Louis. L.J. ___ (2018):
Non-empirical law school study advice that emphasizes reading and briefing cases, memorizing rules, and outlining without frequent self-testing and formative self-assessment is contrary to cognitive science and leads to a "law school learning trap." Law students fall into a "law school learning trap" by focusing on memorization of cases and rules for "class prep," putting off practice application of the law as "exam prep." Law students and legal educators misjudge the power of testing as a learning tool, instead relying on non-empirical, anecdotal resources to guide law student study methods.
Empirical research from a Law Student Study Habit Survey shows that practice application of the law through self-testing, self-quizzing, and elaborative strategies positively correlates with academic success in law school, while reading and briefing cases, weak critical reading skills, and rote memorization of rules without practice applying the law negatively correlates with academic success in law school.
November 28, 2017 in Legal Education, Scholarship, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (0)
Sunday, November 26, 2017
The Socratic Method
The Socratic method is much maligned these days. I do not personally use it when teaching Tax. I use a problem method where I lecture on a topic then assign homework problems to the students which we then go over in the next class period.
But I do use the Socratic method of teaching when I teach my first year students Civil Procedure. I confess I am not great at it, but I think that, properly used, it really helps students learn how law is both determinate and indeterminate at the same time. It's not determinate when you are trying to predict the legal outcome (is the deduction allowable or no? does the court have personal jurisdiction over the defendant or no?). But it becomes determinate once the legal authority rules! That was the point of my post the other week about the power of fact-finding.
Here's a nice opinion piece in the Washington Post about how Socrates would not make it as a teacher in today's high schools.
November 26, 2017 in Bryan Camp, Legal Education, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (2)
Wednesday, November 22, 2017
2018 Tannenwald Tax Writing Competition
The Theodore Tannenwald, Jr. Foundation for Excellence in Tax Scholarship and American College of Tax Counsel are sponsoring the 2018 Tannenwald Tax Writing Competition:
Named for the late Tax Court Judge Theodore Tannenwald, Jr., and designed to perpetuate his dedication to legal scholarship of the highest quality, the Tannenwald Writing Competition is open to all full- or part-time law school students, undergraduate or graduate. Papers on any federal or state tax-related topic may be submitted in accordance with the Competition Rules.
Prizes:
- 1st Place: $5,000, and publication in the Florida Tax Review
- 2nd Place: $2,500
- 3rd Place: $1,500
November 22, 2017 in Legal Education, Tax, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (0)
Saturday, October 28, 2017
A 'Marvel'ous Dinner
On October 19th the Tax Court was in Lubbock in the person of Chief Judge Paige Marvel. The Court’s involvement with the ABA Tax Section is well known, but I did want to give a shout-out to its equally important involvement with legal education. Each year the tax faculty at Tech Law (myself, Alyson Outenreath, Steve Black, Vaughn James, and Terri Morgeson) hold a Tax Careers Panel at the Law School (graciously sponsored in recent by the Texas State Bar Tax Section). We always time it so that we can invite the Tax Court Judge to be on the panel. We are delighted that every judge has participated.
October 28, 2017 in Bryan Camp, Law School, Legal Education, Miscellaneous, Tax, Tax Profs, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tuesday, October 10, 2017
FBA Tax Law Student Writing Competition
The Federal Bar Association Section on Taxation invites J.D. and LL.M. students to participate in the 2017 Donald C. Alexander Tax Law Writing Competition:
The Federal Bar Association Section on Taxation is once again sponsoring an annual writing competition and invites law students to participate. The Donald C. Alexander Tax Law Writing Competition is named in honor of former IRS Commissioner (1973-1977) Don Alexander, who passed away in 2010. Mr. Alexander was a widely admired role model and advocate for writing skills and style in the area of tax law throughout his career.
October 10, 2017 in Legal Education, Tax, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (0)
Sunday, September 24, 2017
IFA International Tax Student Writing Competition
The International Fiscal Association is sponsoring the 2017 International Tax Student Writing Competition:
Subject: Any topic relating to U.S. taxation of income from international activities, including taxation under U.S. tax treaties.
- Open to: All students during the 2016-17 academic year pursuing a graduate degree. Any appropriate papers written in fall 2016 or spring and summer 2017.
- Submission Deadline: September 30, 2017.
- Prize: $2,000 cash, plus expenses-paid invitation to the IFA USA Branch Annual Meeting in February 2018.
Here are the recent winners:
September 24, 2017 in Legal Education, Scholarship, Tax, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (0)
Saturday, September 9, 2017
ABA Tax Section Releases 17th Annual Law Student Tax Challenge Problem
The ABA Tax Section has released the J.D. Problem (rules; entry form) and LL.M. Problem (rules; entry form) for the 17th Annual Law Student Tax Challenge:
An alternative to traditional moot court competitions, the Law Student Tax Challenge asks two-person teams of students to solve a cutting-edge and complex business problem that might arise in everyday tax practice. Teams are initially evaluated on two criteria: a memorandum to a senior partner and a letter to a client explaining the result. Based on the written work product, six teams from the J.D. Division and four teams from the LL .M. Division receive a free trip (including airfare and accommodations for two nights) to the Section of Taxation 2018 Midyear Meeting, February 8-10, 2018 in San Diego, CA, where each team will defend its submission before a panel of judges consisting of the country’s top tax practitioners and government officials, including tax court judges. The competition is a great way for law students to showcase their knowledge in a real-world setting and gain valuable exposure to the tax law community. On average, more than 50 teams compete in the J.D. Division and more than 30 teams compete in the LL .M. Division.
IMPORTANT DATES
September 9, 2017 in ABA Tax Section, Legal Education, Tax, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tuesday, August 15, 2017
McMahon Wins University Of Cincinnati 2017 Teaching Award
2017 Goldman Prize for Excellence in Teaching:
For over 30 years, students at the University of Cincinnati College of Law have had the opportunity to recognize excellence in teaching by recognizing professors who distinguish themselves in the classroom, and whose accomplishments in research and public service contribute to superior performance in the classroom.
Congratulations to this year’s Goldman Prize for Excellence in Teaching awardees: ...
Stephanie McMahon, Professor of Law
Professor Stephanie McMahon goes above and beyond the standard for teaching. Wrote a student in her nomination letter, “She is one of those professors you remember forever who has the ability to change your view on a subject that most expect to dislike.”
August 15, 2017 in Legal Education, Tax, Tax Profs, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (0)
Monday, August 14, 2017
Bird-Pollan Wins University Of Kentucky 2017 Teaching Award
UK Law's Jennifer Bird Pollan is 2017 Duncan Teaching Award Recipient:
Jennifer Bird Pollan, James and Mary Lassiter Associate Professor of Law, is the recipient of the 2017 Duncan Teaching Award at the University of Kentucky College of Law.
Every year, a UK Law faculty member is recognized for excellence in the classroom, courtesy of the Robert M. and Joanne K. Duncan Faculty Improvement Fund – established in 1982 to promote outstanding teaching performance at the college.
Professor Bird-Pollan joined the UK Law faculty in 2010. She teaches a variety of Tax Law courses, including Basic Income Tax, Corporate Tax, Partnership Tax and International Tax. She is fully engaged in the academic welfare of her students and they enjoy her both inside and outside the classroom.
August 14, 2017 in Legal Education, Tax, Tax Profs, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (0)
Saturday, August 5, 2017
Turing on AI and Lawyer-Automatons
As I've mentioned previously, the Savannah Law Review is hosting a colloquium on September 15, 2017 entitled The Rise of the Automatons, examining the legal implications of automation. Ominous predictions like "the Singularity is coming" usually provoke me, and this one prompted my project for this summer, Halting, Intuition, Heuristics, and Action: Alan Turing and the Theoretical Constraints on AI-Lawyering, now available.
I'm unimpressed with frenzied reactions generally and in this area particularly. Here's the abstract:
August 5, 2017 in Colloquia, Legal Education, Scholarship, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (1)
Tuesday, August 1, 2017
Winners Of The 2017 Tax Analysts Student Writing Competition
2017 Tax Analysts Student Writing Competition:
Tax Notes:
- Jeremy Mandell (Illinois)
- Christopher Massie (Illinois)
- Zoe Nutter (Sydney)
State Tax Notes:
- Ben Livni (Loyola-L.A.), The Storm of Cloud Computing Taxation
- Shelby Miner (UCLA), The Use Tax Problem: Practicality or Propriety?
August 1, 2017 in Legal Education, Scholarship, Tax, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (1)
Wednesday, July 5, 2017
Finkelstein On How And Who To Teach Transactional Skills
What is the optimum mix (if there is to be a mix at all) in legal education as among theory, doctrine, and "skills"? And as to the "skills," who is going to teach them? And as to transactional skills, historically the least amenable to either simulation or clinic pedagogy, add "how" to the question of "who." Oh, and by the way, what do law professors have against getting practitioners actively involved in both the "who" and the "how"?
Those are the subjects of a provocative article, Barriers to Entry: Putting it Together School by School (to be published in the Journal of Experiential Education) by Jay Finkelstein, a corporate and securities partner at DLA Piper in the D.C. area.
July 5, 2017 in Legal Education, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (6)
Tuesday, May 16, 2017
Alice Abreu Receives Temple University's Great Teacher Award
Temple Law Professor Alice Abreu Honored with Great Teacher Award:
From the volume of letters offered in support of her nomination, it is clear that Temple Law Professor Alice Abreu has been a Great Teacher for a very long time. On April 25th, Temple University made that official by honoring her with the Great Teacher Award, the highest honor bestowed by Temple upon its faculty.
Temple Law Dean Gregory Mandel took the opportunity to heap praise upon Professor Abreu, tempered with light-hearted teasing for her “boundless and infectious passion for tax law.” “Yes, you heard me correctly,” he confirmed to laughter from the faculty in attendance. “I realize that phrase has never before been uttered.” Mandel went on to describe the “universal admiration of all who know Professor Abreu,” not only for her “zeal for tax law,” but also for her “passion for teaching… and her excitement for drawing colleagues into the intersection of tax law and their practice areas.”
May 16, 2017 in Legal Education, Tax, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (1)
Tuesday, February 21, 2017
2017 Tannenwald Tax Writing Competition
The Theodore Tannenwald, Jr. Foundation for Excellence in Tax Scholarship and American College of Tax Counsel are sponsoring the 2017 Tannenwald Tax Writing Competition:
Named for the late Tax Court Judge Theodore Tannenwald, Jr., and designed to perpetuate his dedication to legal scholarship of the highest quality, the Tannenwald Writing Competition is open to all full- or part-time law school students, undergraduate or graduate. Papers on any federal or state tax-related topic may be submitted in accordance with the Competition Rules.
Prizes:
- 1st Place: $5,000, and publication in the Florida Tax Review
- 2nd Place: $2,500
- 3rd Place: $1,500
February 21, 2017 in Legal Education, Tax, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (0)
Saturday, January 28, 2017
Northwestern Study: Excellent Teaching Is Unrelated To Excellent Research (And Vice Versa)
Brookings Institution: Are Great Teachers Poor Scholars?, by David Figlio (Northwestern) & Morton O. Schapiro (Northwestern):
Colleges and universities must balance many goals, and research universities in particular aspire to excellence in both teaching and research. University administrators and policymakers alike are interested in ensuring that publicly-supported private and public universities operate at high levels of instructional and scholarly quality, but to date we know little about whether scholarly excellence comes at a cost in terms of teaching quality, or vice versa.
We bring to bear unique matched student-faculty data from Northwestern University, a midsized research university that is one of the 26 private universities among the 62 members of the Association of American Universities, to investigate the relationship between teaching and scholarly quality. Using the full population of all first-year undergraduates enrolled at Northwestern between fall 2001 and fall 2008 (over 15,000 students in all), we empirically generate two new measures of teaching quality—one an indicator of inspiration (the rate of “conversion” of non-majors to majors) and the other an indicator of deep learning (the degree to which a professor adds lasting value to students’ learning that is reflected in success in future classes). We also investigate two measures of research quality—one based on a measure of the relative importance of a scholar’s research in the field, and the other a measure of national or international prominence as reflected by major awards.
January 28, 2017 in Legal Education, Scholarship, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (5)
Wednesday, January 11, 2017
The Course Source: The Casebook Evolved
Stephen Johnson (Mercer), The Course Source: The Casebook Evolved, 44 Cap. U. L. Rev. 591 (2016)
Psychologist Abraham Maslow once noted that “it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” Law students are changing, law schools are criticized for failing to prepare practice-ready lawyers, and there is nearly universal consensus that legal education must transform. However, the principal tool that many faculty rely on to prepare their courses, the Langdellian casebook, is ill-suited for the transformation. The prototypical casebook that is still the standard for many courses today was designed for the Socratic dialogue and case method mode of instruction. While there is still a place for that method of instruction in legal education, other methods of instruction, the carriage bolts and lag screws of modern legal education, cannot be hammered down with the traditional casebook.
January 11, 2017 in Legal Education, Scholarship, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (1)
Sunday, December 18, 2016
2016 Tannenwald Tax Writing Competition Winners
The Theodore Tannenwald, Jr. Foundation for Excellence in Tax Scholarship has announced the winners of the 2016 tax writing competition:
First Prize $5,000:
Jesse Boretsky (Yale), Redefining a Blurry Line: A Proposal to Reform the Taxation of Pension Fund Business and Investment Income
Faculty Sponsor: Yair Listokin
Second Prize (tie, $2,000):
December 18, 2016 in Scholarship, Tax, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (0)
Thursday, September 1, 2016
Chodorow: Snape On Taxes
TaxProf Blog op-ed: Snape on Taxes, by Adam Chodorow (Arizona State):
Every fall, as I prepare to teach again after a 3-month hiatus, I am reminded of a scene from the first Harry Potter book. The students, some bright-eyed, others fearful, file into Professor Snape’s dungeon classroom for their first Potions class. Glaring out at his students, he introduces them to the subject he loves, but which he fears they will barely comprehend. The passage reads as follows:
You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making,” he began. He spoke in barely more than a whisper, but they caught every word – like Professor McGonagall, Snape had the gift of keeping a class silent without effort. “As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don’t expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses…I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death – if you aren’t as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach.
What if Snape taught tax? Many of our students would likely equate the two subjects. Regardless, with apologies to J.K. Rowling, here’s what I imagine he would say:
September 1, 2016 in Celebrity Tax Lore, Legal Education, Tax, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (1)
Friday, August 19, 2016
Call For Participants In Tax Discussion Group: Summer 2017 SEALS Annual Conference
From Alyssa DiRusso (Cumberland);
I am in the process of proposing a discussion group for SEALS 2017 to discuss assessment and pedagogy in tax courses. Because this will be a discussion group and not a “panel,” participants are still permitted to join a panel presentation as well. Please let me know if you are tentatively interested in being part of the discussion group for purposes of the proposal. You do not need to be a member of SEALS to participate, so long as at least half of the group consists of members. The annual meeting of the Southeastern Association of Law Schools will be held at The Boca Resort in Boca Raton, Florida, from July 30-August 6. Here is the draft of the discussion group proposal:
Discussion Group: Pedagogy and Assessments in Tax Courses
August 19, 2016 in Conferences, Tax, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (0)
Thursday, August 18, 2016
Larson: Developing Critical Thinking Skills And Practice-Ready Lawyers
Joni Larson (Indiana Tech), To Develop Critical Thinking Skills and Allow Students to Be Practice Ready, We Must Move Well Beyond the Lecture Format, 8 Elon L. Rev. 443 (2016):
Casebooks are constructed around the case method of teaching - reading appellate opinions to understand the law. However, when the case method approach is compared to what an attorney is expected to do in practice, there is a definite gap. If students are to emerge from law school with practice ready skills, they must be given the opportunity to learn and practice a variety of skills and develop the necessary qualities that will allow them to effectively and efficiently enter the practice of law.
August 18, 2016 in Legal Education, Scholarship, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (0)
Friday, August 12, 2016
13th International And European Tax Moot Court Competition
13th International and European Tax Moot Court Competition 2016-2017:
KU Leuven (Brussels) and IBFD will organize in academic year 2016-2017 the 13th edition of the International and European Tax Moot Court Competition. ...
Students will work intensively on a case drafted by IBFD researchers specifically for purposes of this competition. They will draft memoranda and present their case to a panel of renowned judges selected from academia and private practice. The Academic Chairman of the IBFD, Professor Pasquale Pistone, will serve as Arbitrator.
The 13th edition contains two parts. A first, written, phase runs from October till December 2016. The second, oral, phase will be held in Leuven from 26 March till 1 April 2016. There is no pre-selection based on the written phase, hence, all participating teams will defend their case during the oral pleadings.
The 2016-2017 Competition is open to sixteen universities. Universities are invited to send in their application by the specific deadline depending on the start of the academic year:
August 12, 2016 in Legal Education, Tax, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (0)
Saturday, August 6, 2016
SEALS 2016 Annual Conference
The Southeastern Association of Law Schools 2016 Annual Conference continues today in Amelia Island, FL. Among today's highlights:
Philosophies and Approaches to Law School Teaching
What are the philosophies of teaching held by experienced and effective law professors? How do these teachers approach the law school classroom? More specifically, how do the professors define their learning goals for their students? What are the things these teachers do that make them effective? This panel answers these and other questions about the art and science of teaching.
August 6, 2016 in Conferences, Legal Education, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (0)
Friday, June 10, 2016
Brunson: Is It Time To Ban Clickers In The Law School Classroom?
The Surly Subgroup: Teaching Tax — On Clickers and Laptops, by Sam Brunson (Loyola-Chicago):
I’ve used clickers in class ever since I started teaching. In fact, thanks to Paul Caron’s tireless advocacy, I’ve known I was going to use clickers since before I entered academia.
And, like Paul, both I and my students have found clickers tremendously helpful in the classroom. In my experience, they do three main things:
- They force all students to actively engage with the class. It’s easy enough to sit back in class and passively absorb (or not) the content. Sure, whomever I call on has to actively engage, but I can only call on a small portion of my class on any given day. But clicker questions allow students to not only listen, but actually answer, at least a handful of questions.
- They tell me how well the students grasp what I’m teaching. If most of the students get the right answer, I know my explanation and the discussion were helpful. If a significant portion get it wrong, I know that I need to go back and address it again (and, depending on the answers they choose, I may be able to figure out where I or they went wrong).
- They tell my students how well they grasp what I’m teaching. If most of the students get the problem right, a student who gets it wrong knows that she may need to go back and review the topic. Or ask a question. Or do something else.
But I have a problem: ...
June 10, 2016 in Legal Education, Teaching | Permalink | Comments (3)
