In Too Deep?

 

b9df7f5b8b1280964519cb1f0cd53f13Thank you, Professor O’Hear and Professor Slavin for inviting me to share my comments with the Marquette University Law School community. 

On my first day of law school, former Marquette Professor Eric Goldman informed our orientation group that, much to his own dismay, the practice of law is nothing like it is portrayed on television.  “What?”  I thought, “You mean cases can’t be tried start to finish in one hour?”  

Although I never truly expected that practicing law would resemble the television shows, I realized that there was value to be gained by watching these shows.  Not only do they offer a bit of light-hearted entertainment, but also an opportunity to test those years of legal education. 

One of the most recent newcomers to legal television is ABC’s new dramedy, “The Deep End.”  In “The Deep End,” five new associates join L.A.’s most prestigious law firm—Sterling, Huddle, Oppenheim, & Craft.  As the show’s title would imply, these associates are immediately thrown into the deep end.   I can appreciate that filming document reviews and the preparation of written discovery would not make for entertaining television.  I also understand that filming legal research in a law library filled with Pacific Reporters is better cinema photography than filming.  Thus, within their first week of practice, the legal neophytes are handling motion hearings, taking depositions, meeting with the firm’s major clients, and of course, groping each other, their support staff, and their clients. 

Continue ReadingIn Too Deep?

Langdell’s Curse

langdell_portrait_vinton_03Michael Ariens has, through a number of blog posts, shared with us his thoughtful sentiments about American legal education.  This post is an attempt to continue that dialogue and to consider how we can better prepare our students for practice by contextualizing legal education.

Most legal commentators believe the primary purpose of law school is to prepare students for practice.  While there isn’t a single interpretation of what that means, it must at least include the ability to help clients “solve” their legal problems. (I use quotation marks around the word “solve” because legal problems are not like most mathematical problems in which there is only one solution.)

While that objective might seem obvious to some, especially the legal practitioner, it isn’t necessarily obvious to everyone, especially in light of the pedagogical approach to legal education that most law schools take.  This is because most law school courses teach substantive law, as well as fundamental legal skills like legal reasoning, through the vehicle of the case method.

The use of the case method as we know it can be traced to at least as early as 1870, when Christopher Columbus Langdell first instituted it at Harvard Law School in an effort to make the study of law more rigorous.  The idea was to treat the law as a science, and to treat cases (the source of the law) as if they were to be poked at and dissected in order to reveal their legal principles.  By requiring students to learn the law through such demanding exercises, the case method achieved its goal – law school became a more rigorous enterprise.

Continue ReadingLangdell’s Curse

Long Live Fred Rogers

mr_rogersIt’s been seven years since Fred Rogers died, so it’s not exactly a surprise that the era of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood is waning on television. But the announcement that WMVS-TV (Channel 10) is discontinuing weekday broadcasts of “Mister Rogers”gives fresh reason to mourn his absence and praise what he did for several decades-worth of very young children. 

In 2001, Marquette University presented Mister Rogers with an honorary degree. I was a  reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel at the time and I proposed going to Pittsburgh, Mister Rogers’ long-time home and the base for his programs, to do a profile story to run in conjunction with presentation of the degree.

 I don’t claim to have been professionally neutral in approaching this. My own children had watched the show almost daily when they were pre-schoolers and, overcoming my initial adult-based reaction, I had come to think the program was a work of genius. (I bet everyone who scoffs at that is not between three and five years old.)

If you looked at the show through a child’s eyes, it had very substantial content – over time, Mr. Rogers dealt with issues such as divorce, death, fear, loss, and a wide array of relationship matters. Sometimes very directly (“It’s such a good feeling to know you’re alive” or “People like you just the way you are”) and sometimes through the context of what he did (the gentleness, the way his fantasy characters treated each other, good and bad), his character education messages were healthy, well developed, and (I hope) formative to millions of children.

Continue ReadingLong Live Fred Rogers