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Caste Revisited
August 13th, 2021 / By Deborah J. Merritt
I’ve written several times about the caste system in legal education: a hierarchy that favors professors who teach torts, contracts, and other legal “doctrine” over those who teach legal writing, clinics, and other legal “skills.” This favoritism includes higher pay, more job security, and greater respect. Many schools maintain third and fourth classes that rank even lower than the second class citizens of clinics and legal writing. Academic support professors, teaching fellows, contract faculty, adjuncts, librarians, and other staff members often occupy those lowest rungs of the academic hierarchy.
California Western Steps Up
I’m returning to this topic because several related items recently hit my inbox. First, I received a press release from the California Western School of Law announcing that it had adopted a unitary tenure track that “creates opportunities for its clinical, Legal Skills, and other skills professors who were hired as full-time faculty to achieve tenure, with the same faculty governance and voting rights that come with an existing tenure-stream faculty position.” Kudos!
The press release, however, leaves several open questions. Will pay be equalized for professors on this unitary tenure track? Or will some professors still be more equal than others? How much research will be required for professors to join this unitary tenure track? Will the currently tenured professors turn their noses up at the scholarly focus of their new colleagues? And what about professors who choose not to join the unitary tenure track? Will the school recognize their ongoing contributions through higher pay and respect?
I’m not trying to rain on California Western’s parade: they have taken a hard step that many other schools are still resisting. I hope they will also find answers to these remaining questions, which schools face whether or not they embrace a unitary tenure track. What type of distinctions are appropriate among employees in a single organization? How do we value different types of contributions to the overall enterprise? Are the answers different for an academic institution and a manufacturing plant?
(more…)What’s Your Story?
October 6th, 2018 / By Deborah J. Merritt
I’ve been attending the SALT Teaching Conference, hosted by Penn State Law in the aptly named Happy Valley, Pennsylvania. It was a great conference, with many thought-provoking ideas: I hope to share several of them over the coming days.
Here’s my first pass-along idea: Mariela Olivares from Howard University’s School of Law told us that she asks students in her Immigration Law course to write their personal immigration stories. When did members of their families arrive in the United States? Was the immigration voluntary or forced? What challenges did they face? What opportunities? Mariela allows students to choose whether these stories are confidential (for her eyes only) or can be shared with the rest of the class.
What a great way to engage students in the course content! As the course proceeds, students can reflect on how the laws affected their own family’s experience–and how that experience might differ under contemporary regulations. Even a class of 20 students will generate a rich set of stories that, if students are willing to share, could illuminate many corners of the course content.
This is also a wonderful way to build empathy in a doctrinal classroom. Empathy begins with self knowledge, and Mariela’s exercise requires students to confront their own history and feelings about the immigration system. Then, as students share their stories with others, they can begin to experience the system from a variety of perspectives.
I think it would be easy to expand this technique to almost every course in the curriculum. A Torts professor could ask students to write about an incident in which they or a family member suffered a physical or emotional injury. As with immigration stories, the exercise probably would generate stories relevant to every legal principle covered in the course. Which injuries could have been addressed by the tort system? Which ones were left out? Why? If the student/family member did not seek redress, why not?
Even courses about procedural rules could incorporate stories. Next time I teach Evidence, I may begin the semester by asking students to write about an incident in which a piece of evidence contributed to a decision they made–and they later discovered that the evidence was false or misleading. I won’t be looking for stories about the courtroom, but about everyday life. I suspect that the everyday stories may help me illuminate the problems with character evidence, hearsay, eyewitness identifications, and other evidence challenges.
So what’s your story? And how could personal stories kick off a course that you teach?
You Too Can Check Out Quimbee
July 30th, 2018 / By Deborah J. Merritt
Since I posted about Quimbee, several colleagues have asked if there are ways to check out this new study aid. That’s easy: just sign up for a free 7-day trial. The trial really is free. You don’t need to enter credit card information; nor will Quimbee hound you to purchase the service when the week ends. I signed up for a free trial before writing my blog post and, other than a polite email noting that my trial was about to expire, Quimbee did nothing to pressure me for money. Nor have I gotten spam since my trial ended. So, if you wonder what your students are reading on Quimbee, go ahead and check the site out.
Can We Teach Students to Read Cases?
July 24th, 2018 / By Deborah J. Merritt
I suggested in my last three posts that law students don’t learn how to read judicial opinions as carefully and thoughtfully as they should. Can we fix this? Can we modify legal education so that JD’s develop stronger case-reading skills? Solving this problem is important in itself: most lawyers interpret appellate opinions at least some of the time. Considering how to fix this problem, furthermore, can shed light on other pedagogical challenges. (more…)
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But Can They Read Cases?
July 8th, 2018 / By Deborah J. Merritt
I recently suggested that the case method fails to achieve one of its central goals: teaching students how to read and synthesize judicial opinions effectively. I identified three reasons for this shortfall: the format of law school exams, a growing emphasis on teaching doctrine, and the impact of contemporary study aids. But is it true? Are law students failing at case analysis?
An empirical study led by education scholar Dorothy Evensen suggests that they are. Evensen collaborated with Laurel Oates, an internationally recognized expert on legal analysis, and two other empiricists (James Stratman and Sarah Zappe) to examine the case reading skills of more than 300 students at five different law schools. The four published their study ten years ago, but it is just as relevant today. Let’s take a look at the study’s method, findings, and import. (more…)
Quimbee
July 2nd, 2018 / By Deborah J. Merritt
What is Quimbee? It’s a database of more than 13,800 case briefs summarizing the cases presented in almost 200 casebooks. The covered casebooks include all of the bar subjects plus many more: antitrust, copyright, counterterrorism, cyberspace, education law, health, insurance, oil and gas, sports law, and others. The briefs seem thoughtful, complete, and well organized. If users discover an error, Quimbee invites them to submit a correction.
About two dozen law schools (including heavy hitters like Yale, Berkeley, and Northwestern) have signed up for Quimbee; students at those schools use Quimbee for free. Students at other schools can access Quimbee for a modest fee: just $15 per month for all of the site’s case briefs. For $24 per month, students can use the briefs, flashcards, video lessons, multiple choice questions, essays with model answers, and professional development courses.
Even the ABA has lent its endorsement; students who elect Quimbee’s platinum subscription receive an ABA premium membership as part of the deal. For a one-time payment of $499, these students get three full years’ of access to Quimbee’s case briefs and other services, downloads of course outlines, and the ABA membership. That’s a law school career of case briefs and other study aids (plus a bit of networking) for the price of two casebooks.
Plenty of other publishers have developed attractive study-aid subscriptions. There are also websites that offer case briefs and law school outlines for little or no charge. I focus here on Quimbee because it’s a good example of the resources that today’s law students use. These easily tapped sources raise the question: How much pedagogic value does the case method deliver when most students are using canned case briefs and course outlines? (more…)
The Strange Case of the Case Method
June 29th, 2018 / By Deborah J. Merritt
The case method is legal education’s signature pedagogy. Law professors point to the method with pride, and that pride has considerable foundation. In theory, the case method accomplishes at least five pedagogic goals:
- It demonstrates that law is not static; law evolves through judicial interpretation. On some topics, students also see how the law evolves through legislation and administrative regulations.
- It teaches students how to read and synthesize judicial interpretations. Depending on the subject, students also learn how to read statutes and harmonize them with judicial opinions.
- It prepares students to advocate for changes in the law–primarily in the courts, but with some approaches that can be used with legislators and other decision-makers.
- It develops critical thinking skills (careful reading, analogical reasoning, identification of patterns and distinctions) that are transferable to many other contexts.
- It instructs students on the doctrinal principles discussed in the cases and accompanying statutes.
Can the case method accomplish all of these goals–especially when it is used in a large classroom with a single end-of-semester exam? I doubt that the method ever achieved as much as it claims, except perhaps for the highest achieving students in a classroom. Today, the method has been quietly subverted to accomplish primarily the fifth goal: instructing students on doctrinal principles. Law schools stake their value on teaching the other four cognitive skills listed above, but we deliver less of that learning than we believe. (more…)
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Professional Skills
May 2nd, 2018 / By Deborah J. Merritt
Robert Kuehn has written a thoughtful review of the history of professional skills education in legal education. As Bob notes, the ABA has been notably reluctant to require law schools to educate students on the skills they will use in law practice. Our accrediting body did not require any instruction in professional skills until 2005 and, even then, the accreditors required only “one solid credit” of that training. More recently, the ABA mandated six credits of experiential work for every law student–a total that still seems grudging for skills that lawyers use heavily in practice.
Students and some law schools have been more foresighted. As Bob documents, one-fifth of law schools now require all students to complete a clinic or externship; ninety percent have enough clinic or externship spots to accommodate all of their students. Students, meanwhile, show increasing interest in learning professional skills: enrollments in clinics, externships, and simulation courses have all climbed during the last decade.
This is a good news/bad news report. Student demand for professional training has increased, schools have shown an ability to meet that demand, and the ABA has finally imposed a meaningful requirement for experiential education. At the same time, tenure-track faculty continue to distance themselves from these educational experiences and the six-credit requirement is unrealistically light for students who will build their professional success on their skills.
Salaries and Scholarship
January 13th, 2018 / By Deborah J. Merritt
Law professors teach a wide variety of subjects: Property, Civil Procedure, Legal Writing, Law & Economics, Business Associations, Feminist Legal Theory, Law Clinics. Professors bring diverse backgrounds to this teaching. Some hold JDs, some hold PhDs, some hold both. Some have practiced law, while others have not. Some earned high salaries before joining a law faculty, while others drew more modest paychecks in government, legal aid, nonprofits, or other academic fields.
Despite this variety, there is one constant: professors who focus their teaching on legal writing or clinical courses earn significantly less money than those who teach other types of classes. This is true regardless of degrees, prior professional experience, or past salary level. What explains this pay gap? And what does the gap tell us about our values in legal education?
Before answering those questions, we have to understand the size of the gap. Academics shy away from salary discussions, but silence can hide inequity. To break that silence, I have been gathering information from salary databases released by public universities. I don’t have information on every public law school, but a surprising amount of data is available.
In this post, I will refer to salaries at one leading law school. US News ranks this school among the top 25 schools nationally, and it is a clear leader in legal education. The salaries at this school, which I’ll call the Myra Bradwell College of Law, do not reflect salaries at every law school. They do, however, illustrate the type of salary gap our schools maintain between professors who teach clinics/legal writing and those who teach other subjects.*
New Year’s Resolutions for Law School Professors
January 1st, 2018 / By Deborah J. Merritt
- Keep your brain healthy by trying new types of mental exercise. Commit to learning at least one of these cognitive skills during the new year: fact gathering, client counseling, interviewing, or negotiating. Then help your students exercise their brains by teaching these kinds of cognition in the classroom.
- Cut back on fatty law review articles. The legal academy is showing dangerous signs of scholarly obesity. Writing law review articles is like eating chocolate cake: best done in moderation.
- Meet new people. Talk to practitioners and clients in the fields you teach. How do practitioners approach their clients’ problems? What matters most to the clients?
- Help the disadvantaged. Teach your students the doctrine and cognitive skills they need to serve low- and moderate-income clients.
- Challenge your biases–and those of your institution. Do you value some types of scholarship and teaching more than others? Does your institution award higher salaries and status to colleagues who teach case analysis rather than other types of cognitive expertise? How do those biases affect the provision of legal services?
Embrace change: This is the 6,576th day of the new millennium.
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