Lawyers & Life: A Law School Course that Looks to the Future

I really didn’t know what I was getting into when I signed up for the class “Lawyers & Life.” I knew that in the course description, potential enrollees were warned that, if we were not up for a challenging semester, we should beware as this would not be a free ride. For the first day of class, each of the ten of us were required to prepare a short presentation answering each of the following questions:

• What is your personal conception, your vision, of professional success and satisfaction for you as a lawyer?

• How have you arrived at this conception, this vision, of what success and satisfaction mean for you and your career?

• How will you know when (or whether) you achieve your conception, your vision, of success and satisfaction?

• What particular skill or trait do you deem most indispensable for you to have in your arsenal in order to maximize the prospects that you achieve the success and satisfaction to which you aspire? How well is such a skill or trait already developed in you? What plans do you have to more fully develop and refine that skill or trait?

Though it seemed a bit daunting (and I put off the assignment for a while for that reason), I was pleasantly surprised when I began crafting my presentation.  I was really enjoying myself. For the first time since I began my law school endeavor, I felt that a professor was asking questions about me and about my greater career goals.

Continue ReadingLawyers & Life: A Law School Course that Looks to the Future

Study Finds That Second Year Law Students Pay Less Attention Than Their First and Third Year Counterparts

Student use of laptop computers to surf the web during law school classes has been a much debated “problem” in legal education for more than a decade.

A recent study conducted at St. Louis University suggests that the practice is wide-spread, and that second year law students are most likely to use their laptops for “off-task” purposes. According to research conducted in 2010 by Kim Morse, the associate director of writing support at SLU Law School and a doctoral candidate in education, second year law students spent 42% of their in class time involved in “off-class” Internet activities. In comparison, the figures for first year and third year students were 35% and 25%, respectively.

The study also showed that there was no apparent correlation between laptop misuse and poor grades and that students with high LSAT scores were more likely to be surfing the Internet than their lower-scoring counterparts. In addition, classes taught by the Socratic method featured higher levels of laptop misuse than those taught by other methods.

Morse’s survey included just five classes during one semester at one law school. Students in the surveyed classes were told that they were being observed for class participation, but were not told that the way in which they used their laptops was specifically monitored. Given the admittedly small sample size, generalizations based on the study should be made with caution.

Moreover, in a world where multi-tasking has become the norm, one cannot necessarily assume that a student who is looking at unrelated websites is not also paying attention to the class.

 

Continue ReadingStudy Finds That Second Year Law Students Pay Less Attention Than Their First and Third Year Counterparts