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Renee Nicole Allen and Alicia Jackson, Winning! 5 Key Strategies for an Effective Conference Presentation, Learning Curve (2017)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Alicia Jackson, The Big Bad Wolf: Helping Students Conquer their Fear of the Bar Exam through P.A.S.S. — Preparation, Assessment, Self-Regulated Reflection, and Support, Learning Curve (2017)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
In light of the national decline in bar pass rates, coping with and addressing a law school’s bar passage rate is viewed by some as an insurmountable undertaking. However, I see it as an invaluable opportunity to redefine who are as law professors. Most importantly this challenge provides an opportunity for us as educators to train future attorneys to become self-aware, confident, and component to handle the challenges presented by the legal profession.
The American Bar Association (“ABA”) has made it quite clear to accredited law schools and those seeking accreditation that bar passage is now a paramount factor in retaining and obtaining accreditation. To that end, year after year, proposals are being reviewed by the ABA with the overall goal of defining what is an acceptable bar passage rate for ABA approved law schools. As a result, some law schools find themselves scrambling to implement programming and courses aimed at facilitating success on the bar exam. While some will argue the bar exam itself should be the major focus of a law school’s curriculum, others will argue in the alternative that the bar exam does not accurately assess the worthiness of a law school graduate to practice law. Irrespective of the side of the argument you take, it is undeniable that helping students to acknowledge and conquer their fears associated with the bar exam is a necessary step to assist them in passing the bar exam.
Often bar examinees’ fears are rooted in familial or community pressure to pass, as well as standardized testing anxieties, past failures, self-doubt, or fear of the unknown. For many bar takers, irrespective of their rank at graduation, the bar exam is cloaked in mystery, which in turn perpetuates the “Big Bad Wolf” phobia associated with the exam. While some students are able to turn the fear and anxiety into motivation to pass the bar exam, far too many become paralyzed by it. Ultimately it is that very fear and anxiety that results in students’ failing the bar exam, before they even begin. In addition to the emotional toll on graduates, failure on the bar exam can wreak havoc on a law school’s chances of being in compliance with ABA Standards, and affect both the reputation and rank of the school.
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Stephanie Vaughan, Experiential Learning: Moving Forward in Teaching Oral Advocacy Skills by Looking Back at the Origins of Rhetoric, 59 S. Tex. L. Rev. 121 (2017)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
What could make all the difference in a law student’s employment potential in today’s legal market? The answer is skills training. The American Bar Association (ABA) has required that law students be better prepared for practice by implementing experiential learning requirements for law students, which they must complete before graduation. One way to fulfill this experiential requirement is through oral advocacy.
This Article exemplifies how giving law students opportunities to orally advocate will help fulfill the experiential learning requirement and produce practice-ready graduates. It will explain the reasons that oral communication is so important and will give directives on how law schools, in compliance with the ABA standards, can help achieve the goals of graduating students who are ready to begin a legal practice from the minute they receive their bar results. This Article is among the first to explore the boundaries of experiential learning under the new ABA standards. It employs an historical analysis of the classical foundations of oral advocacy in order to develop best practices for law schools in “shifting the curriculum” to both comply with the ABA standards and to help students become successful practitioners in today’s global society.
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Roy Balleste, Worlds Apart: The Legal Challenges of Suborbital Flights in Outer Space, 49 N.Y.U. J. Int'l L. & Pol. 1033 (2017)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Susan D. Rozelle, Keep Tinkering: The Optimist and the Death Penalty, 70 Ark. L. Rev. 349 (2017)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Cynthia Hawkins DeBose and Alicia Renee Tarrant, Child Sex Trafficking and Adoption Re-Homing: America’s 21st Century Salacious Secret, 7 Wake Forest J.L. & Pol'y 487 (2017)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Kristen David Adams, Living with Banks: Trends and Lessons from the First Five Years, 46 Stetson L. Rev. 391 (2017)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Ellen S. Podgor, “What Kind of a Mad Prosecutor” Brought Us This White Collar Case, 41 Vt. L. Rev. 523 (2017)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
Prosecutors have enormous charging and plea discretion, although this discretion is not “unfettered.” This Essay examines this discretionary function when prosecutors in white collar cases stretch statutes beyond the statutory language, congressional intent, or policy. This Essay looks at three areas of white collar crime that have seen prosecutorial statute stretching: fraud, obstruction-of-justice, and bribery. Within each of these areas, there are examples of cases requiring judicial oversight to halt these prosecutorial practices. This Essay concludes by noting that prosecutors who stretch statutes do a disservice to our criminal justice process, as it is important to strictly construe white collar statutes to assure that criminal conduct is recognized and conformity with the law is promoted.
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Jason Bent, Searching for Common Law Amid the Statutes: A Report on the Restatement of Employment Law, Chapter 4, 21 Em. Rts. & Emp. Pol'y J. 459 (2017)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Ellen S. Podgor, Salman: The Court Takes a Left-Hand Turn, 49 Conn. L. Rev. 1 (2017)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.