The Benefits of Senior, Junior, and Adjunct Law Faculty

There was an interesting post on the Law Librarian Blog this week concerning the benefits of senior, junior, and adjunct faculty in the classroom. The post can be linked to here. This is a subject that interests me greatly, and readers will remember that I recently wrote a law review article (in the BYU Education and Law Journal) about junior faculty teaching. You can link to my full article here, and to my previous blog posts on the article here and here. The latter post includes an exchange with UCLA law professor Stephen Bainbridge.

The long and short of it is that this Law Librarian Blog post reviews some of the current scholarship on law faculty teaching by senior, junior, and adjunct professors and provides some interesting commentary on this scholarship. Most interesting, perhaps, is the blog's observation that there seems to be little academic literature on the benefits of senior faculty teaching. Personally, I think this is because the common wisdom in the legal academy is that senior faculty are better teachers all around, so why write about it? I disagree with this view, however--and if you are interested in seeing why, look at my BYU article.

Mississippi Secunda and the Lateral Market of Doom

My friend and soon-to-be ex-Mississippian Paul Secunda has written an excellent article on negotiating the vagaries (treacheries?) of the law school lateral hiring market. The article is available on SSRN here. I highly recommend it as general reading for pretty much anyone interested in how law schools work--students, professor wannabees, current profs, and so on.

As Paul points out in the article, there has been a good deal of commentary on the entry-level hiring market for law faculty, but there is a paucity of literature on the lateral hiring market (the market for law profs who move from one school to another). So Paul, who is in the process of moving from the University of Mississippi School of Law to Marquette University Law School, has bravely set out to rectify that.

Personally, I think the article is great for a number of reasons. First, as already stated, it is a great resource. Second, it is an easy and fun read--not a common characteristic of scholarly writing. Third, while the advice is focused specifically on the law school lateral hiring market, some of the advice translates well to any interviewing scenario. Especially helpful, I think, is Paul's point that many of the variables in the hiring process are beyond the interviewee's control. Understand that, accept it, and focus instead on the factors you can control. That likely will increase your chances of success, and it certainly will reduce your stress level a good bit.

And finally, the article is a perfect example of how blogging can directly promote scholarship: parts of the article appeared as a series of blog posts by Paul on Concurring Opinions (see his first of eleven posts here). After all, novels by Dickens first appeared in serialized form, so why not law review articles? Dickens might even have been a blogger were he alive today--although perhaps not a law prof.

The Comparative and Absolute Advantages of Junior Law Faculty

As I write this post I am sitting in my hotel room in New York, where I am attending the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) annual meeting. The theme of this year's meeting is "Reassessing Our Roles as Scholars and Educators in Light of Change." There certainly is a lot of change occurring at American law schools these days, and that topic is a key focus of this blog.

Because of my interest in this subject, I am speaking at the conference on a panel sponsored by the AALS Section on New Law Professors, entitled New Law Faculty as Catalysts for Change. The title of my piece is The Comparative and Absolute Advantages of Junior Law Faculty in the Classroom: Implications for Teaching and the Future of American Law Schools. The paper can be accessed online from my Social Science Research Network (SSRN) page here.

This piece is actually a blend of two areas of interest to me: international trade theory, and law school teaching theory and practice. My piece, as the name indicates, applies the concepts of comparative and absolute advantage to the subject of law school teaching, to see what they might tell us about how junior faculty can be used to improve law school teaching and how we might rethink law school teaching overall. Here's an abstract of the article:

In the ongoing debate about how to improve law school teaching, there is a general consensus that law schools should do more to train junior faculty members how to teach. While this may be the case, this consensus inadvertently leads to an implicit assumption that is not true—that in all facets of law teaching, junior faculty are at a disadvantage compared to senior faculty. In fact, there are aspects of law teaching for which junior faculty can be better suited than their senior colleagues. This Article reviews scholarship concerning law teaching and identifies three teaching factors that generally favor junior law faculty: generational proximity to the law school student body; recency of law practice experience as junior practitioners; and lower susceptibility to the problem of “conceptual condensation”—extreme depth of subject matter knowledge that makes it difficult to see subjects from the students’ perspective.

This Article employs the economic concepts of (a) economies of scale or productive efficiency and (b) absolute and comparative advantage to suggest how these junior faculty advantages could be harnessed to improve law school teaching. With respect to productive efficiency, it is suggested that greater intra-faculty dialogue can increase a law faculty’s output of effective teaching. Currently, senior faculty members often provide assistance or advice to junior faculty in areas of senior faculty expertise or advantage—such as depth of knowledge in a course’s subject matter—but this is largely a one-way flow of information. However, if junior faculty were also to provide insight and advice to senior faculty regarding areas of junior faculty advantage, the quality of law school teaching might be significantly enhanced. Junior-senior faculty dialogue might be promoted through a variety of means, including faculty workshops and even perhaps teaching reviews of senior faculty by junior faculty.

With respect to the concepts of absolute and comparative advantage, this Article suggests that law school teaching could be improved through the specialization of teaching functions. Instead of professors individually teaching separate courses, professors might coordinate their teaching (that is, team-teach) across a number of courses in the law school curriculum, as a means to more effectively harness the respective strengths (and minimize the respective weaknesses) of junior and senior faculty in the classroom. Through the leveraging of junior faculty advantages, overall law school teaching might be significantly improved. This Article concludes by discussing the implications of these recommendations for law school culture in general and for the legal profession as a whole.

(Note: If you are not already a user of SSRN you will need to register to use SSRN, but the registration is easy, and it's free. For those unfamiliar with SSRN, it's an online network through which scholars distribute and share up-to-the-minute research. It's a great and free resource for scholarship in the social sciences.)

Also on the panel with me are Emily Hughes of Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, Geoff Rapp of The University of Toledo College of Law, and Ben Madison of Regent Law School. Moderating the panel is Michael Schwartz of Washburn University School of Law. Having him as moderator is excellent, since he is a leading scholar in the area of law school teaching and an all-around good guy.

I will post more about the panel after it occurs. In the meantime, I welcome any thoughts or input about the article.

Sounds Like the Law

I heard a story on NPR's Morning Edition today that has to be blogged about. Boston University Law Professor Mark Pettit sings in his Contracts class. What's more, his songs are parodies of pop songs, and they are about the cases he teaches in Contracts. I suppose the experience of being in his class, when he sings, must be like learning the law from Weird Al Yankovic.

There is a good bit of scholarly literature on the subject of humor in education, and how humor improves learning. For a list of some scholarly articles on the subject (all of which are presumably not funny), see here.

Pettit is admirably shameless. People remember something when they laugh about it, and words set to music or in poetry are easier to remember. And as the NPR piece demonstrates, Pettit has engaged students both in and outside the classroom: they pay attention in class, they think about the subject of Contracts outside of class, and they write lyrics for Pettit to perform. That's what's called active learning, and it improves the quality of education. And it makes the experience more fun.

Maybe I should have a Contracts lymerick contest next semester. Or for that matter, why not now? So here are are two lymericks-in-progress for my next class, on the subjects of (a) Leonard v. Pepsico (the video referred to in the case is located here) and (b) Empro Manufacturing Co. v. Ball-Co Manufacturing, Inc., 870 F.2d 423 (7th Cir. 1989) (I can't find a free link to the case). Those who have nothing better to do--and those who do have something better to do but would rather do this--can complete the lymericks and post as comments. Feel free, of course, to revise the lymericks as needed. And it goes without saying, but I will say it anyway: keep it clean!

Re PepsiCo:

PepsiCo did firmly reject
Leonard's claim for a Harrier Jet
[Fill in the rest?]

Re Empro:

When its letter of intent was rejected
Empro said "contracts must be respected"
[Fill in the rest?]

Swamped

Apologies for not posting more lately; the graphic says it all. April is always a busy, busy month at law schools, and not just for students preparing for exams. Having said that, I would rather grade them than take them.

I have a number of posts on the way, including exam-taking advice ('tis the season) and advice for 3Ls still searching for jobs (at the request of a student at a law school on the East Coast). But in the meantime, please check out a recent article from the Chronicle of Higher Education called "Don't Give it Your Best." It's not about law school, but it is about the travails of finding a higher education teaching job, and the balance to be struck between classroom teaching and research. And it's a bit depressing. There's an awful lot I could say about it--such as regarding the tensions between interests of students versus teachers versus schools, what schools reward financially (hint: not always teaching or student support), and what helps you land that teaching job--but I will save it for another time when the swamp has been at least partially drained. Until then, any comments or thoughts from readers about this article are much appreciated.

Libel and Slander

On Thursday, March 1, the law students at my law school held their annual "Libel Show." It was open season on 1L profs, including me. There was a skit called "Bowman's Bad Day," in which very brave (or foolish) 1L Leon Cameron channeled me giving a Contracts lecture. Clearly, next year's videographic team needs to get the camera and mike closer to the stage; much of what you hear is the sound of rowdy law students in the audience. But the gist of the skit is this: a self-important professor (where'd that come from, I wonder?) is teaching class hopped up on caffeine (got that one right), and he uses the purchase of a cup of coffee as an example of contract law in action (another bullseye). Of course, the barista gets the order wrong, and the prof goes ballistic.

OK, so I do wave my arms around a lot. And Mr. Cameron did an excellent job of imitating my speech patterns (sans curse words, of course). But here's the part that really struck me: how'd he know that I love cinammon? The coffee gag involves me ordering a cup of joe without any flavoring, and the barista puts cinammon in the coffee, and I go nuts. Now that's spooky. Did I mention my cinammon addiction in class? Or was this pure chance?

I suppose, perhaps, that it's like multiple choice exams: it's nice to know the answer, but once in a while you can get just as many points by being lucky.

Final question: if slander is defined as defamatory statements made in a fixed medium, and libel is defined as defamatory statements in a non-fixed representation (i.e., oral), then why is this show not called the Slander Show? Although I suppose that recording and posting the video on YouTube is slander.

Answering my Mail

So much for my recent holiday (blogiday). As always, there's a lot going on in the law career world, so where to start? Perhaps the best place to begin is by responding to some recent comments on this blog. Much of the purpose behind this blog, after all, is to address gaps--between law school and law practice, between profs and students, between law school education and law school academic success, and so on. And critical to that mission is two-way communication. So here goes.

Comment #1: Why I (Don't) Like Law Profs

This is a great comment, posted recently in response to my Blogiday post:

Law school professors really overrate themselves. At the end of the day, they are nothing more than liberal arts professors who just spend their lives writing law review articles that nobody reads and who develop "theories" that are rarely if ever, used in real world practice. Do you honestly feel like your teaching leads to any PRACTICAL outcome?

Ouch. Somebody is clearly goading me, so let me rise to the bait and respond in two different ways.

My first response is "Yes, I honestly do feel that my teaching leads to practical outcomes." Otherwise I would not do it. If I wanted a career path that was a scam, it would be a scam that made a lot more money.

Second, one of my favorite sayings is, "All generalizations are bad." (Think about it.) To suggest that all law profs are "liberal arts professors" engaged in useless pursuits lumps the good with the bad, both at law schools and in the liberal arts. The implication that some academicians don't impart value, and therefore all of them are useless, is a fallacy of logic. It also smacks of knee-jerk anti-intellectualism, whether intentional or not. That sounds harsh, perhaps, but don't forget that I practiced law for 9 years and served as a judicial clerk too. I have enjoyed both law practice and teaching, and from my first-hand experience I see significant value in both. I am in academia by choice, not by default.

My point is not that you should love all law profs and hold them in awe. Rather, my point is that some do impart value. How many, and how often, is the more appropriate point to debate.

Comment #2: Toxic Torts (and Contracts, and Crim Law, and . . .)

One reader pointed to a panel at the 2007 annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) titled aptly, if not succintly, "High risk/high stakes student problems: New approaches inside and outside the classroom for addressing substance abuse, gambling and other self-destructive student behaviors." That session (discussed in a recent article in Inside Higher Ed) addressed how law school's "mixture of lofty expectations and a high-stress environment" can lead to mental stress and substance abuse. It's an article worth reading, especially now that fall 2006 grades have been turned in at many schools.

Much of the problem is that students are officially or unofficially ranked against one another in law school. Most of them have been at the top of the curve their entire lives, from kindergarten on. Inevitably, however, there is a further shaking out in law school, and some people used to being at the top of the class no longer are. That is hard to deal with.

This is a topic I will return to later, but in the meantime, thanks to this reader for the link to this article.

Comment #3: Moral and Practical Law Schools

Another (or perhaps the same?) anonymous commenter points to another article in Inside Higher Ed on the subject of "moral and practical law schools." That's an interesting topic, since many people believe law schools are neither. It's a subject of interest to me, and I agree with this commenter that this is recommended reading for anyone interested in the subject.

* * * *

So now that I am caught up on my mail, in my next post I will provide some observations on exam-taking, since I just finished grading hundreds of essay exam questions. This won't be a gripe session. It will be an opportunity for me to set forth some thoughts on what works and does not work on law school essay exams.

Getting Called on in Class

This is being my blog, I of course think that everything I post about is interesting. (Modesty, where art thou?) Yet some subjects invariably generate more traction with readers.

My last post was one of those. If you have not read my post entitled "Reading for Class," please do, and please read the comments. It started out as an observation by me about how some students respond when called on, and from there--well, a lot of people had a lot to say. Which is absolutely great. Thanks to all who have commented.

Some of the comments addressed the pros and cons of how professors call on people in class. Different professors of course do it different ways. There is no one right way, but I suppose there are a number of wrong ways. So does anyone have any thoughts? Some points I'd like to see comments on are as follows (feel free to add others as you see fit):

• Is it better to know that you are going to be called on in a particular class, or is a random method preferable?
• Do you like the Socratic Method? Or, for that matter, do you really understand what it is? And if so, do you buy into learning from each other's comments and student-professor discussions in class? Why or why not?
• What method of class participation or in-class commentary is your favorite? (Or perhaps more accurately stated, which method do you least dislike?)
• Should class participation count toward your final grade?
• Does it matter if everyone is called on in class?
• Once you are called on, should you be off the hook for the rest of the semester?
• What do you think of "group projects" or "group presentations" in class?

I am looking for a general sense of what law students across the country might think about the subject of class participation, especially now that the nation's 1L students have nearly a full semester under their belts. This is helpful--helps me keep my finger on the pulse, and all that. Teaching a law school class is not a popularity contest, so the point is not that law profs always should do whatever students like. But profs who do not have a sense of where their students are coming from risk losing touch with their students. And when that happens, it's really sad, both for the students and the profs. Both lose in the bargain.

So please let me know what you think. And thanks for reading.

Reading for Class

Usually I do not post about specific events that happen in my classes, but today I'll make an exception. My point today is this: when the professor calls on a student to brief a case, the range of acceptable responses does not include "Oh, I read the case, but it was a few days ago and I don't remember it very well, but let's see . . . ."

I wish I had a dollar for every time I've heard this. I've heard it several times this semester. On the one hand, sure, fine. Everyone in law school is busy, right? And I think usually students are telling the truth--typically after a few minutes, memory kicks in and the student does fine. And to be even fairer, often one reason this response pops out of students' mouths is that they are worried about looking bad in front of the class and the professor. Having read but not remembered allows one to say (a) I read, so I am putting forth the effort, but (b) I'm not dense, just rusty about this case.

Yet my question is this: would this response cut it in practice? What if you are in court during oral argument? How might a judge react? What if you are giving a presentation to a client? How good will you look?

And my other question is this: could the professor get away with this statement in class?

I have said it before, and I will say it again: when you are a law student, think of law school as your career, because right now it is.

So here's what to do. First, isn't this one of the reasons to brief a case? Yes! So brief the cases, however you might do that. Second, just keep the excuses or apologies to a minimum, and do your best. That's what you would do in court, so that's what you should do in class. The silence may seem deafening as you race to come up to speed and answer the professor's question, but it's not. And again, it's good training.

I have to say in closing that I am really not upset when this happens in my classes. But I do wish students wouldn't do it.

Figuring Out Your Law Professor

At our school, we are starting week 4 of law school. New students are figuring out what direction their classes may be going in, how to brief cases, and what their professors are like in class. Or maybe not. Sometimes law school is a like a semester-long cruise into the great unknown, with a final exam worth 100% of your grade waiting at the end of it all.

So what to do? I've already posted some suggestions previously (here, here, here, and here), but my focus today is slightly different. Based on my own experience as a student and as a professor, there is one thing I think law students sometimes overlook or underemphasize in preparing for class and for exams. Namely, students should always bear in mind that they are taking both a specific subject and a specific professor.

Different people are teaching each of your classes. They have different beliefs and views about the law, different teaching styles and philosophies, different rules about their classes. Some (or maybe perhaps all) have unwritten or unspoken rules about their classes or exams, whether they think they do or not. Maybe even I do, although I try not to. So to really succeed in law school, you need to figure out what each professor wants from you in terms of class performance, and then give it to them. This will certainly include a demonstration of your substantive knowledge of the subject at hand, but it includes more, too.

To be sure, my observation applies to any course of study, but I think it is particularly relevant to law school. For one thing, the grade in many law school classes is based on a final exam. No midterms. You have one shot to get it right, so figure out what the professor wants. But more importantly, as lawyers-in-training you are entering a service profession in which your success--and hence your livelihood--will be based in part on your ability to figure out what your clients and supervising attorneys want. And while some of those people will be really easy or pleasant to work for, many others will be confusing, or difficult, or challenging in some way. But you still have to work for them, don't you? You have to get them to think your work product is valuable, so that they keep you around. So figuring out your professors and adapting to their approaches is in itself a critically important skill to learn.

Now for the caveats.

First, I am not suggesting that those who make better grades are inherently better lawyers. Rather, I am saying that if people thought about the system this way, they might end up improving their grades and honing a useful skill.

Second, I am most certainly not suggesting that professors are looking for "right" or "wrong" answers on the final exam--or that in practice, you are supposed to tell people only what they want to hear. Substantive work product matters in law school and in law practice. Rather, I am suggesting that you listen very carefully for hints (or express statements) regarding how the professor wants exam questions answered, whether class participation can affect your grade, whether volunteering in class matters, whether certain cases are poor precedent, and so on. You'd give your clients or supervising partner a memo in the format they expect, wouldn't you? Do the same in your law school exams and research papers.

Third, I realize this post carries something of a "duh" factor. That is, am I playing "master of the obvious" in devoting an entire post to this subject? Perhaps. Yet I whenever I grade exams I wonder how obvious the advice really is. And even importantly, some of the best advice I have ever received has made me figuratively smack my forehead and wonder why I didn't think of something so obvious myself. So, if this post crystallizes your thinking about class and exam preparation, then good. And if it doesn't, well, hopefully I have caused you no harm.

Of Politics and Law Schools

This is my first post for a while, after coming up for air from a variety of other pressing matters. After not blogging much recently, the question I asked myself was, "On what urgent subject should I pontificate?" I keep a list, you see, and it always grows larger instead of smaller. What's a poor law school professor to do?

How about talking about the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in FAIR v. Rumsfeld? There is a lot out there on this decision (check out other law school reactions to the Supreme Court's decision in the FAIR case here and here). What I would like to talk about, however, is not whether law schools can take federal money and refuse military recruiters access to their campuses. Rather, I would like to discuss the current liberal-conservative political dynamic in the U.S. that underlies this case, and how law schools play into that debate.

First, there seems to be a broadly-held public belief that most law school faculties are overwhelmingly liberal and badly out of step with the times. Doesn't the FAIR Court's WWF-style smackdown of law schools--and the ensuing gleeful public reaction--demonstrate that the U.S. is more politically and religiously conservative than it was a generation ago? Or at least, isn't such conservatism more overt? Ask a conservative about this, and won't she likely tell you that longstanding public resentment of liberal elitism has finally risen to the surface to assume its rightful place in the national debate on morals and politics? Ask a liberal, and won't he likely tell you that the religious right has hijacked the Republic Party and is more interested in Intelligent Design than intelligent debate?

Chances are they would indeed tell you that. The two sides are talking right past one another without doing much listening. Ships in the night, and all that.

Ironically, however, that is where law schools can step in to break the impasse. Arguably, some do step in. Conservative schools have liberal faculty members. And liberal schools have conservative faculty members. That is just the way it should be. We can argue about the proper balance, but not about the question of whether there should be some balance of differing viewpoints.

I think any law professor reading this would think I am stating the obvious. As law faculty, we certainly do hold these truths to be self-evident. But many outside the legal academy apparently don't think it is so obvious. It is all well and good for a parent to say that "I want my child to go to a school that upholds my family values," or for a student to say the same thing. But if that institution is a law school, shouldn't it expose its students to differing views? Law schools aim to teach critical thinking in the realm of law and public policy--after all, the law can be seen as a system of social engineering. (Minimum wage and social security, anyone?) And law students are adults, and they are remarkably adept at identifying their professors' views and filtering class content accordingly.

So obvious though the message may be, it apparently bears repeating.

A recent news story from the West Coast drives this point home. It involves Professor John Yoo at Berkeley, a staunch conservative in a traditionally liberal bastion. Yoo, for those of you know don't know, was an attorney in the U.S. Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush II Administration, and in 2002 he wrote the government's memorandum regarding treatment of captured Al Qaeda operatives.

In the article "Protesting Yoo", the San Francisco Bay Guardian recently reported on weekly protests on Berkeley's campus aimed at Yoo. That's certainly not surprising, and it's in the fine Berkeley tradition, but then the article says the following:

Yet these days, Berkeley administrators look at Yoo . . . as just another qualified professor teaching constitutional law. When asked why the school provides a home for such a polarizing and controversial figure, Louise Epstein, assistant to the law school dean, told us, "We don't know if we can tell you that, because you are asking a heated question that I just don't know we have the answer to."

That is an absolutely astonishing excerpt. A liberal institution is being taken to task for providing a diversity of viewpoints to its students! We have a liberal law school supporting a deserving conservative scholar. The merit of that approach should be self-evident, shouldn't it? And yet the protesters (and the newspaper?) apparently believe it is bad for a proudly liberal law school to have a conservative with strong credentials on the faculty, and that the school should not provide its students with differing viewpoints. Shame, shame.

Even the law school seems uncomfortable with its position on Yoo! Re-read Louise Epstein's waffling statement above. Maybe she was uncomfortable making a statement because she is not on the faculty, so let's not be too hard on her. But I would have liked to see the law school be defiantly proud, since having Yoo on faculty does foment discussion and debate--which are good things in law school.

Interestingly, I haven't found a report about a conservative law school hiring (or refusing to hire) a left-wing liberal, but there are liberal professors at conservative law schools. I work with a few. And, by the way, the diversity of views they bring is a good thing for our students.

By the way, look at the picture at the top of this post again. Justice may not be blind in all cases--but at least it is balanced.

More on Law Professors and Blogging

Following up on my post yesterday about law professors and blogging, I highly recommend a recent post on the very same subject by my colleague Mike McCann on Sports Law Blog. Mike's take on the matter is extremely cogent. He does a very nice job of explaining how scholarly publications fit into the current law professor incentive structure, and how blogs really do not. Which Mike concludes is a shame--and I agree with him, both for the reasons he gives and the reasons noted in my post yesterday.

Should Law Professors Blog?

There is so much written these days about the pros and cons of blogging that inevitably the debate has turned to law professors who blog. And there are a lot of them.

Law professor blogs are often different animals than ordinary blogs. For one thing, many read like they are written by, well, law professors. And clearly many of them are written for consumption by other law professors. (Of law professors, by law professors, and for law professors?) Yet this very inward focus has opened up a lively debate in the legal academy--namely, whether law prof blogging is a good idea overall.

There is a recent National Law Journal article that tees up the issue nicely, as well as a recent post by Brian Leiter on Leiter's Law Reports. Take a look at them; they're good. As they frame the issue, it is whether law prof blogs promote legal scholarship and the sharing of ideas within the academy, as opposed to the traditional slow-motion law review article route. Answers given range from "yes" blogging is useful to "no" because blogging has "nothing to do with scholarship" and is "not very thoughtful."

But I wonder: is this focus entirely correct? Or to be more precise, is this focus incomplete? Should blogging by law profs always be primarily about scholarship? Might some other focuses also be useful for both the professors and their schools?

To my mind, the answer to the last question is "yes." Blogging is the perfect vehicle for outreach to the masses by a traditionally stuffy profession. It is painfully obvious to me, and many others in law, that the legal profession has undergone a period of unprecedented hyper-specialization in recent decades, and that the trend generally continues. The same trend is apparent in law teaching. Specialists in this and that. That does not trouble me so much, but what does bother me is that with such specialization, the gap between the legal academy and its students--and society--is looming ever wider.

What do I mean? Clearly, some of the incentives for law professors are not directly linked to the daily concerns of students. Law review articles are an example of that. Now, I firmly believe that scholarship clearly informs teaching (and vice versa), and I have experienced that sort of synergy first-hand. I love it. (You can link to my articles here). But what about students and members of the public who don't understand what we do? Who think we are nothing but a bunch of naval gazers who sit around and theorize instead of effecting real change in society? How do we convince them otherwise and gain their support for our institutions? By writing law review articles? I think not. In the wake of the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights (see my recent post), George F. Will wrote that "The institutional vanity and intellectual slovenliness of America's campus-based intelligentsia have made academia more peripheral to civic life than at any time since the 19th century." In other words, there is a huge disconnect.

So how to re-engage the legal academy with a society that often sees us as overly liberal and self-important ivory-tower dwellers? One way is through blogs. Take this blog for example. It was never aimed at being solely a theoretically- or technically-inclined legal blog. Rather, it is intended as an outlet for the pent-up frustrations and passionately held beliefs of a one-time practitioner turned professor. A superb example of a strong and engaging law blog is Sports Law Blog. It bridges the gap between accessible and intellectual exceedingly well.

Quixotic though it may be, I believe that law schools and society at large would be better off if we engaged the "real world" a bit more often and if non-scholars (including our students) understood better what we do and why. I suspect there are many in the legal academy who would agree with me on this, so I am not trying to take a self-righteous stance. I am simply suggesting that the debate thusfar has been somewhat incomplete. There will be a conference at Harvard on law blogging in April of this year, and perhaps this can be discussed there. (If not, perhaps I should write a law review article about the problem!)

Professor-Student Relations

No, this post is not about Professor-Student relationships. Rather, it's about how profs and students interact in this modern world of 24/7 access and e-mail. There's a great article in today's New York Times called To: Professor @ University.edu Subject: Why It's All About Me. You can link to the article here. I recommend it heartily.

This article paints a doom-and-gloom picture of teaching and the demise of deference from students to teachers. It's funny too; I never would have dreamed of skipping class and then asking the professor for copies of her teaching notes. And it's true that with e-mail, students are more likely than ever to contact professors, and ask some potentially odd questions.

Here's my take on it: this is just like anything else in our modern, internet-connected society. There's been a general decline in deference in our society for some decades now, but is that so bad, really? Is it better to expect people to earn respect than to automatically give it? Is it so bad to require professors, who live a wonderful life of relative academic freedom and flexible schedules, to be more responsive to their student constituencies? Isn't this a learning opportunity for teaching people how to interact as adults? Maybe some students didn't learn manners at home, and student-teacher relations are a perfect framework for reducing the manners deficit.

I have invariably found that when you tell someone what you expect from them, by and large you get it. I tell my students to be on time for class and to turn in assignments on time, and guess what: they do. I tell them how to analyze specific types of issues on a final exam--not giving the answer, but providing a useful framework for analysis--and guess what? Those who follow my instructions tend to do better on the exam. In the practice of law, the senior lawyer who tells the newbie lawyer what she expects and why is far more likely to get the desired result. So this is an opportunity to train students in the etiquette of proper communication with superiors.

Perhaps I am jaded by my years practicing in a big firm. A few student calls there and there, a few potential intrusions--they're nothing like what I am used to from my practice days. And we should never, ever, discourage professor/student interaction. Manage it, yes. Discourage it? No.

How Law Professors Write Exams

I am admittedly a bit behind the curve here, but now that most law students have finished exams, perhaps they can joyfully relive a bit of exam week by reading about how law professors write their essay exams. In my experience, it takes a bit of time to write a fair exam.

So check out the conversation that took place recently on the law professor blog Prawfsblawg. It is worth reading in no small part because the professors involved inevitably got sidetracked and discussed what they think is wrong with the current law school exam system. Comments from any students still reeling from exams are welcome!

After I finish grading my exams I may post some thoughts on how to avoid common study-related and exam-taking mistakes next semester.