Implementing Best Practices and Educating Lawyers
Session 7 Workshops

Wednesday, June 24, 2009 – 1:15-2:30 p.m.

[A] Understanding Learning Disabilities and Implementing Effective Teaching Methods to Assist Law School Students Affected by Learning Disabilities

Jacob M. Carpenter, DePaul University College of Law

By understanding what a learning disability is, and is not, professors will realize that law students with learning disabilities can succeed in law school and as attorneys. During this workshop, attendees will participate in exercises that (1) demonstrate various learning disabilities common among law students and (2) replicate the difficulties law students with various learning disabilities encounter. The workshop will then address numerous techniques professors can use to assist students with learning disabilities more quickly and easily grasp the class material. Further, many of the techniques will benefit all students, not just those with learning disabilities.

[B] It's All About Becoming a Lawyer: A First Class for Any Course

Mary Lu Bilek, CUNY School of Law

This interactive workshop puts participants in role as students in the first class of any course. The class is designed to set the stage for the kind of learning environment I hope to foster, as well as to situate the students on a path to professionalism and to suggest that the three years of law school are not just an academic enterprise, but rather an opportunity to develop professional identity, skills, habits, and values. The workshop has two parts. The first part is the actual class, which is very interactive and during which Institute participants will be in role as students. The second part asks participants to deconstruct the experience, working backwards to identify the explicit and implicit messages about learning and professionalism embedded in the class.

[C] Teaching Students How to Frame a Jury Case for Maximum Persuasion

Gerald R. Powell and James E. Wren, Baylor Law School

The workshop uses two fact situations as our working story samples. Workshop participants briefly tell the story as an advocate for either the plaintiff or defendant in each case, and then retell the story with adjustments. We explore how changes to the "framing" of the story change the effect. In the process, students absorb three principles of persuasive framing:

  1. The first conduct examined frames the rest of the story;
  2. Jurors are looking for conscious choices because motive matters; and
  3. All people – including jurors – crave significance, so communicating the importance of the verdict matters.

[D] Cultivating the Formation of Professional Identity–from the First Year to the Third Year

Timothy Floyd, Mercer University School of Law

At Mercer, the formation of professional identity is at the heart of the first-year curriculum, in a required course on professionalism. The course reflects a belief that ethics teaching should focus on developing virtues that allow lawyers to serve clients, fulfill public responsibilities, and find meaning in their work. Our upper-level externship course follows up this emphasis by making formation of professional identity the primary educational goal through readings, reflections, discussion, and exercises. This session will describe and demonstrate ideas for fostering professional identity in both a large first year class and in an externship.

[E] You've Got to Move It, Move It: Motivating and Moving Kinesthetic Learners

Maureen B. Collins and Sonia Bychkov Green, John Marshall Law School

This presentation features two lessons that involve all students but are designed to reach kinesthetic learners in particular, a group often overlooked in traditional law school instruction. Professor Collins will demonstrate her "living outline" lesson as participants identify related rules and create a human rule hierarchy. Professor Green will involve the participants in her lesson on rule interpretation and learning style identification with the use of a soccer ball and the "off-sides" rule. The goal is to get the audience moving and learning at the same time and show how this can be done in a classroom.