Preaching And Practice: The Nature of Legal Education

Kristin Scheuereman’s thoughtful post on legal education mirrors a debate that has broken out on the law blogs on the nature of legal education and its relationship to what lawyers really do. The critical stance is represented by a forthcoming piece in the South Carolina Law Review entitled Preaching What They Don’t Practice: Why Law Faculties’ Preoccupation with Impractical Scholarship and Devaluation of Practical Competencies Obstruct Reform in the Legal Academy.  The author, Brent Newton (an adjunct at Georgetown) argues that law schools are populated by faculty that have very little practice experience and are far more interested in theory and the more esoteric and sexy elements of the law than in the day to day practice that most of their students will be concerned with. (Even at schools like Harvard, most students do not go on to specialize in constitutional cases of the first impression or international regime change.) An elaboration of the critique is that most law faculty could not – because they never have – first chair a complicated civil case or corporate acquisition.

In response, the argument is that law school is not trade school and the extensive practice experience does not necessarily correlate – in fact may be inversely related to (because, among other things, one can no longer remember what it was “not to know”) – with the ability to teach. Those who have been absorbed with the law as it is may have a hard time engaging in scholarship about the law as it should be.

While I agree with Ed Fallone that Marquette does better than most at teaching skills and at reaching a the right balance between theory and practice, I think that we all can benefit from attending to the debate. Both perspectives have merit.

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The Law School Welcomes Visiting Professor Mary Beth Beazley

This semester, the law school is hosting another highly-esteemed  professor as a Robert E. Boden Visiting Professor of Law:  Mary Beth Beazley.  Professor Beazley is Associate Professor of Law and Director of Legal Writing at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law.  She has taught at Ohio State for more than 20 years, and taught at Vermont Law School and the University of Toledo before that.

Professor Beazley is the author of numerous articles related to legal writing, and one of the most widely-used textbooks in law school Appellate Advocacy courses (including our own):  A Practical Guide to Appellate Advocacy . She served as the Legal Writing Institute’s President from 1998 until 2000; served as editor-in-chief (and member of the board of editors) for Legal Writing:  The Journal of the Legal Writing Institute. She is also the immediate past president of the Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD).

In 2006, Professor Beazley’s excellence in teaching, writing, and service earned her the prestigious Thomas F. Blackwell award, given each year by the Legal Writing Institute and ALWD, to recognize a person who has demonstrated  “an ability to create and integrate new ideas for teaching and motivating legal writing educators and students.” Furthermore, in 2008 she received the Burton Award for Outstanding Contributions to Legal Writing Education.

In short, she is one of the most-accomplished and well-regarded professors in the legal writing field.  It is a privilege to have her teaching here in our program for a semester.

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An apostrophic dilemma

A punctuation debate made the National Law Journal this week.  The current Supreme Court reporter of decisions, Frank Wagner, is retiring at the end of this month.  His NLJ interview included the following discussion of differences of opinion among Supreme Court Justices regarding the use of apostrophes with plural possessives.

I wouldn’t call it a “disagreement,” just a difference in preferences. And I doubt it needs to be resolved, at least at the present. When I came to the Court in 1987, the prevailing rule for a regular plural possessive was simply to add an apostrophe after the word’s final “s.” For example, “Congress’.” Over the years, however, four justices informed my office they preferred to add another “s” following the word’s final s-apostrophe — e.g., “Congress’s” — albeit each in slightly differing circumstances. The justices are all highly capable legal writers committed to maintaining their own individual writing styles. Thus, while we try to maintain a high degree of consistency as to style in the U.S. Reports, the Reporter’s Office has always kept a list, and has attempted to assure the incorporation, of each justice’s individual style preferences in his or her opinions. I have monitored the plural-possessives situation over the years, but because a majority of the Court has always continued to follow the original prevailing rule — which I prefer — I have never felt the need to poll the Court to try to achieve common ground. There seems even less reason to do so now, since only three of the four dissenters from the prevailing view are still on the Court.

As Legal Writing Prof blog points out, this interview should demonstrate to students that they must be prepared for grammar and punctuation sticklers at all levels.

My own view on this particular punctuation dilemma is that if you know the alternatives well enough to debate them intelligently, whichever one you prefer is fine by me.  You will usually be correct by paying attention to whether you pronounce an additional -s sound, or not, at the end of the word.

(Note: It is somewhat confusing that the example Wagner gives regarding a “plural possessive” was written as a singular possessive.  I.e., “Congresses” (not Congress) is the plural of Congress.)

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