21st Century Educational Technology: Friend or Foe?
W. Warren Binford, Willamette University College of Law
This poster presentation provides a brief introduction to 21st century educational technologies including adaptive learning systems, simulated realities, online content delivery, gaming, and digital scholarship. It asks whether emerging learning technology is on a collision course with the intensely personal, face-to-face approach inherent in clinical legal education or whether digital resources will change legal education so completely that virtually all law professors will be engaging clinical methods by the mid-21st century.
Beyond the Classroom: Teaching Context to Better Serve Clients
Laurie S. Kohn, George Washington University Law School
Jane K. Stoever, Seattle University School of Law
Clinical legal education moves students from the classroom into the role of lawyer, where students are presented with clients in crisis and the law in action. Our project gives students out-of-the-classroom experiences to expose them to the broader social, cultural, and political contexts of their clients’ lives, communities, and the legal system. These experiences help students anticipate clients’ legal and non-legal needs, give students tools for critiquing the systems within which they operate, provide community legal education, enhance and supplement students’ cases and class work, and further connect them to what it means to provide client-centered public interest legal services.
Community Economic Development Law Clinic Research Engagement
Uncovering Legal Barriers to Entrepreneurship in the D: Onerous Regulation and Bureaucracy Maze Squelch Detroit Small Businesses
André B. Dandridge, Michigan State University College of Law
Nicole S. Dandridge, Michigan State University College of Law
Detroit, Michigan has been hard hit by the recent economic downturn facing the nation. This poster highlights a research project in-progress by the MSUCOL Small Business & Nonprofit Clinic designed to expose certain regulatory restrictions that interrupt and slow the pulse of the economic beat in Motown, a city that was once a burgeoning mecca for small business owners. The study chronicles specific permits, licenses, and other regulations and procedures that operate to preclude or greatly disadvantage entrepreneurs from starting or expanding a small business in Detroit among a wide range of occupations. Research results will be used by MSU to inform the incoming 2013 Michigan Legislature regarding economic development hurdles that affect the state’s urban core and most populous city, and will offer potential relevant solutions to the current dialogue on making Michigan “business friendly.”
Excuses, Excuses: Uncovering, Understanding and Responding to Student Resistance to Enrolling in Clinic
Elizabeth M. McCormick, University of Tulsa College of Law
Christina L. Misner-Pollard, Oklahoma City University School of Law
Daniel M. Schaffzin, The University of Memphis, Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law
Every semester, clinicians from law schools across the country ponder the same nagging question: “Why don’t the students at my law school want to apply for the clinics we offer?” Clinics are often left with low enrollment numbers and disappointing applicant pools. This phenomenon is particularly puzzling in a post-Carnegie world in which employers are demanding graduates who are better prepared for the modern practice of law. Clinicians from three law schools set out to discover and explore the reasons for student resistance in their respective student bodies -- from the reluctance to engage in public interest work, to misconceptions about necessary bar exam preparation, to political objections to clinical subject matters. This project seeks to create effective responses to the student mindsets standing in the way of clinic participation, to educate students on the realities of clinical legal education, and to provide fellow clinicians with tools to improve clinic enrollment.
Sound Bites and Ledes: Incorporating Media-Based Advocacy in Law School Clinic and Skills Instruction
Kim Diana Connolly, University at Buffalo Law School, The State University of New York
This poster discusses approaches to training law students about media advocacy. The news media (in its various modern iterations) can play a vital role as part of a “wrap-around” advocacy strategy for many clients and matters. Even though media is a changing area – the role of the internet and social media are increasing, traditional media is shifting, the economics of delivering news is in flux – many of the basics remain straightforward. Clients can benefit from media-savvy lawyers, be it dealing with calls from journalists, seeking traditional journalistic coverage of an issue, writing news releases and Op-Eds, participating in blogs or social media campaigns, or simply using the media to understand current trends on client issues
What Our Students Think About When They Think About their Externships: An Empirical Study
Seth M. Lahn, Indiana University Maurer School of Law
This poster presents some research and thinking on the topic of what we can learn by analyzing a body of students’ reflective essays across a broad range of externship placements. Are there taxonomies of experiences that reveal meaningful patterns? For example, do certain types of settings (not-for-profits vs. private firms, or courts vs. prosecutors) tend to produce greater reflection on questions of professional responsibility? Do students at some placements more often report insight into their own strengths and limitations as future practitioners? And what does all this tell us about how to build a better externship?