Faculty Publications

The legal writing class is the heart and soul of the first-year experience. This is largely so because much of the vital work legal writing professors do is outside of the actual curriculum. In addition to teaching substantive legal writing skills, legal writing faculty also teach process-based skills—how to manage time, how to study effectively, how to maintain mental well-being, and how to begin to develop a professional identity.

This article will discuss the importance of expanding the role of legal writing TAs to create a robust, school-supported peer mentoring program (“PMP”) and suggest a model for such a program.

Experiential learning is all the rage in legal education today. And yet, educators throughout history have known that involving students in their learning and exposing them to practical applications of what they are learning increases student engagement and retention. But legal education is coming to this way of thinking somewhat late. This article, based on a presentation that the authors gave at the AALS conference in New York in January of 2014, suggests that technology opens up new possibilities for law schools by allowing students from different schools to participate in complex inter-school simulations that can, if carefully prepared, teach important lessons about lawyering skills, behavior, and provide rich opportunities for the development of professional identity. It can, in short, deepen and enrich the experiential learning opportunities that law schools offer. The article does not propose that law school faculty should teach or grade students from another school, but that the faculty can collaborate on problems that are more elaborate and complex than could realistically be produced within one school, and that students from different schools can work together as co-counsel, or in opposition to each other, in a variety of projects, with students from other schools serving as judges or arbitrators, witnesses, and clients.

Scholarship. For many academics, the word is filled with a combination of excitement, anticipation, obligation, and dread. Academics are expected to reliably produce scholarship, much like sculptors are expected to produce art, baristas cappuccinos, and stockbrokers profits. While “scholarship” has perhaps traditionally been viewed as strictly words on a page, some scholars view it to be a multidimensional enterprise, something that encompasses the many aspects of the life of a scholar. The idea of scholarship as comprising more than just the generation of a tangible written product is taken up in Maksymilian Del Mar’s Living Legal Scholarship, which asserts “five responsibilities of legal scholarship: the responsibility of reading, writing, teaching, collegiality, and engagement.” Del Mar emphasizes that “[t]he five responsibilities must be understood holistically: they work together to provide a picture of the ethical life of a legal scholar.” This article tells the story of how the authors’ journey has led them to the belief that planning and presenting at legal writing conferences is a powerful way to engage in many (and at times perhaps all?) of Del Mar’s “five responsibilities of legal scholarship.” The article concludes with practical guidance based on the authors’ experiences on how seizing the opportunity to do your own conference planning and hosting can benefit you, your school, and the broader legal writing community.