Building on neuroscience research on multiple intelligences, this concurrent session will introduce participants to a novel framework for analyzing intelligences of the effective lawyer so that we can consider how to nurture these intelligences in, and evaluate effective lawyering by, our law students. Drawing on the theories and writings of Howard Gardner, author of Intelligence Reframed – Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century, Professor Mike Norwood has identified five intelligences of an effective lawyer: Navigation, communication, collaboration, exploration, and reflection.
We will present the framework of the five intelligences, with a group discussion of their definitions and how our current concept of skills possessed by the effective lawyer fit into this rubric. As a group we will discuss methods for nurturing the development of these intelligences through our clinical teaching in order to prepare our students to be closer to “practice ready” and to be able to transfer their clinic learning to professional practice. Also important, we will discuss measurement of the five intelligences and reflect on them as a way of defining student success and student learning outcomes.
Goals and objectives for this session include defining the five intelligences and exploring ways to measure them and nurture them in our students. This session is designed to help us to become more effective teachers of transferable lawyering skills. A handout will be distributed, with the intelligences and other terminology and definitions, in order to categorize effective lawyering skills into the intelligences.