What’s New in the Classroom: Lawyerly Presentations in IIP

I spent the past few months pondering how to improve and experiment with the use of student presentations as part of my teaching in small and medium-sized classes.  Since I started teaching, I have been using presentations in most upper-level classes, not just seminars.  I have always believed that law schools should train students as public speakers, but, apart from extracurricular activities, such as moot court, not much of this training is really done. Yet, future lawyers will have to stand and present in many ways, not just to judges, but often to clients, other lawyers, fellow classmates, and CLE attendees.  And students usually like presentations very much (maybe they are happy to get a break from the professor!), so I always found it natural to build upon and use this interest as a useful tool in my role of legal educator.

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Is It Right to Teach About What Is Wrong?

Milwaukee Common Council President Willie Hines (left) has written a nice piece on values education in the Journal-Sentinel. I know that President Hines and I disagree on many things, but he is someone whose leadership I greatly respect.

In response to the Hines piece, Patrick McIlheran points out an obvious problem. Under current law, it is unclear that schools could effectively incorporate religious perspectives on morality into values education. (There is some room for schools to teach “about” religion, but, in the type of normative education that President Hines is calling for, that distinction — and the lack of clarity about just where it ought to be drawn — would probably preclude any deep inclusion of religious perspectives.)

Marquette alum Tom Foley (the blogger known as “Illusory Tenant”) can’t wait to dismiss Patrick as a “tin pot philosopher,” but he is wrong to do so for at least two reasons.

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The Company You Keep

Today I circulated my beginning-of-semester letter to students. I note it here because it gives me an opportunity to answer the question of the month (the month, admittedly, being this past November). That question was, “Who was your favorite law professor?” From the first post (by our Professor Papke concerning his Professor Bork) and throughout (including several posts by Marquette lawyers on some of our predecessors on the faculty), the conversation was rich and offered much to admire even secondhand.

I contributed only comments not posts, but take this opportunity now. I do it while exercising my prerogative (firmly established by Professors Murray and Morse) to redefine the question: appreciating, not just professors, but those from whom we learned in law school.

For my point, as I note in today’s letter to students, is how much I learned in law school from my fellow students. This was especially true of my closest friend in law school, now a partner in a West Coast law firm, but an accurate statement concerning numerous other friends and associates as well. Sometimes I learned legal doctrine, and other times it was more about different things, such as habits, that are not much less important in law and life. This learning occurred in study groups, during upper-level moot court, on a law journal, and in many other contexts.

I note this here, as we begin the semester, in order to encourage students to take this truth into account as they go about their activities this semester: time spent with fellows concerning the law—not just communing with one’s laptop, but in actual and intelligent conversation with other students—can be among the most valuable investments in your legal education. Truly was it for me.

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