Ensuring Effective Education in Alternative Clinical Models

Best Practices for Legal Education organized its discussion of experiential courses around the “simulation-based courses, in-house clinics, and externships” typology without specifically defining what structures fall within each category or discussing the variations. The discussion of in-house clinics focused on fundamental principles for effective teaching and supervision and the need for appropriate facilities and office support. It only implicitly addressed the range of issues presented by alternative structures for clinics and did not address alternative externship structures or variations that combine features of both.https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/faculty-books/1010/thumbnail.jp

Nonacquiescence: Outlaw Agencies, Imperial Courts, and the Perils of Pluralism

American history has witnessed recurrent conflict between the judiciary and the executive or legislative branches of our government.\u27 The conflict generates heated passions perhaps because it involves both significant struggles for power and fundamental views about the rule of law. New opportunities for conflict have arisen as the number of administrative agencies has grown. In the last decade, administrative agencies and the courts have engaged in a continuing controversy over whether agencies must follow lower court precedents. Although the controversy has touched a number of agencies at least peripherally, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or Board) and the Social Security Administration (SSA) have figured most prominently in the battle. Both agencies on occasion have announced explicitly their intention to disregard judicial precedent, even in cases that arise within the same judicial territory. The NLRB\u27s actions have provoked repeated, angry outbursts from the courts but little detailed analysis, on either a doctrinal or a theoretical level. The SSA has drawn wider attention because the agency\u27s actions were part of a controversial program designed to terminate the benefits of persons who were receiving Social Security disability payments. Several lawsuits explicitly challenged the agency\u27s nonacquiescence in judicial precedent\u27 The press at-tacked the SSA\u27s behavior, which drew the predictable counterattacks.\u27 The attention drawn to nonacquiescence in this context,however, has not produced a thorough understanding of the problem. This Article will analyze the phenomenon of administrative agency nonacquiescence. Section II defines different types of non-acquiescence, surveys current agency practices, and examines the judicial response to various forms of nonacquiescence. Section III identifies the causes of nonacquiescence and the effects of thepractice on litigants and agencies. Section IV analyzes four doctrinal approaches to nonacquiescence and demonstrates that the doctrines do not resolve the nonacquiescence problem because of unresolved fundamental underlying value conflicts between judicial and agency perspectives. Section V then reviews four possible responses to nonacquiescence and the issues that litigants and decision makers who face nonacquiescence must address. The Article concludes that no permanent solution to the problem of nonacquiescence can be expected in light of the unresolved value choices identified in section IV. Greater awareness and knowledge concerning the problem, however, may lead to more desirable provisional solutions

Ensuring Effective Education in Alternative Clinical Models

Best Practices for Legal Education organized its discussion of experiential courses around the “simulation-based courses, in-house clinics, and externships” typology without specifically defining what structures fall within each category or discussing the variations. The discussion of in-house clinics focused on fundamental principles for effective teaching and supervision and the need for appropriate facilities and office support. It only implicitly addressed the range of issues presented by alternative structures for clinics and did not address alternative externship structures or variations that combine features of both.https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/faculty-chapters/1004/thumbnail.jp

Transfer of Learning

A key characteristic of effective education is that students are able to retain and build on the information, skills, and values they learn in their work in later courses and in the world. Doing so is known as transfer of learning. Ultimately, for law students that means they are able to transfer what they learn into the work they do as professionals. Best Practices for Legal Education did not delve deeply into the educational literature on transfer of learning. Underlying its preparation for practice theme, however, was an implicit recognition that both individual law teachers and law schools as institutions must educate students in a manner that facilitates transfer. Law teachers know all too well the challenges of achieving transfer: students often deny having encountered a legal doctrine that was unquestionably covered in another class. While this phenomenon raises other important questions, such as to what extent and for how long do students retain information conveyed in the classroom, it also potentially raises the question of transfer of learning. Even if students remember the information in its initial context, can they draw on it in a new one? Transfer is a core issue for effective teaching and learning, especially in the context of professional education where students are expected to be able to use their skills–even if the skills in question are solely the analytical ones supposedly taught in the conventional law school classroom–when they encounter new problems. Yet, until recently, how to create conditions that will lead to transfer has been a neglected question in legal education. Transfer of learning is critical if law schools intend to educate skilled professionals, but the research suggests that achieving transfer is neither easy nor automatic. Thus, for both the individual teacher and law schools responding to the call to either improve or truncate legal education, it is a best practice to attend to educational strategies to improve transfer of learning, both from individual courses and the curriculum as a whole.https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/faculty-books/1007/thumbnail.jp

Transfer of Learning

A key characteristic of effective education is that students are able to retain and build on the information, skills, and values they learn in their work in later courses and in the world. Doing so is known as transfer of learning. Ultimately, for law students that means they are able to transfer what they learn into the work they do as professionals. Best Practices for Legal Education did not delve deeply into the educational literature on transfer of learning. Underlying its preparation for practice theme, however, was an implicit recognition that both individual law teachers and law schools as institutions must educate students in a manner that facilitates transfer. Law teachers know all too well the challenges of achieving transfer: students often deny having encountered a legal doctrine that was unquestionably covered in another class. While this phenomenon raises other important questions, such as to what extent and for how long do students retain information conveyed in the classroom, it also potentially raises the question of transfer of learning. Even if students remember the information in its initial context, can they draw on it in a new one? Transfer is a core issue for effective teaching and learning, especially in the context of professional education where students are expected to be able to use their skills–even if the skills in question are solely the analytical ones supposedly taught in the conventional law school classroom–when they encounter new problems. Yet, until recently, how to create conditions that will lead to transfer has been a neglected question in legal education. Transfer of learning is critical if law schools intend to educate skilled professionals, but the research suggests that achieving transfer is neither easy nor automatic. Thus, for both the individual teacher and law schools responding to the call to either improve or truncate legal education, it is a best practice to attend to educational strategies to improve transfer of learning, both from individual courses and the curriculum as a whole.https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/faculty-chapters/1005/thumbnail.jp

Feminist Theory and Legal Practice: A Case Study on Unemployment Compensation Benefits and the Male Norm

This Essay explores the application of two key insights of feminist theory to practice. First, the law is often structured to fit male life patterns in a way that creates unstated male norms which are mistaken as inevitable or natural. Second, these male norms often disadvantage women. A recent unemployment compensation case handled in the University of Washington Civil Law Clinic illustrates these insights. The clinic challenged the denial of unemployment benefits to a client who sought only part-time work so she could care for her special needs child. Initially, feminist theory provided a basis for recognizing and challenging the full-time work requirement\u27s differential impact on women, who more often than men work part-time and provide child and elder-care. Feminist theory also provided a basis for recognizing that the structure of the unemployment system is designed for the traditional model of a male head-of-household worker, who must work full-time in order to support a family. Yet the traditionally male need to support a family can be viewed as a domestic responsibility that corresponds to the traditionally female need to care for children. Under the statutory scheme both roles can and should be accommodated

Pathways, Integration, and Sequencing the Curriculum

Law school course offerings have proliferated in recent decades. This development reflects the addition of specialized doctrinal courses, a growing emphasis on interdisciplinary knowledge, and the incorporation of practice-oriented courses. From the perspective of the individual student, an expanded curriculum may create exciting educational opportunities while posing trade-offs between a generalist education and specialization. Law schools face two key challenges. First, they must structure the curriculum so that the experiences of individual law students have some coherence, or, if you will, seem integrated. Second they must incorporate the full range of what the Carnegie Reports referred to as the apprenticeships of formal knowledge, professional skill, and identity and purpose and what the MacCrate Report and Best Practices for Legal Education previously articulated as knowledge, skills, and values. This section discusses three approaches–not mutually exclusive–to structuring the law school curriculum. One way to strive for that goal is through course advising with structured pathways through the curriculum and concentrations. A second approach is to integrate the curriculum: connect the individual courses that a student takes, both those taken concurrently and across the years the student is enrolled in law school. The objective is that students have a sense that the learning in the various courses relates to and reinforces the learning in others. A third approach is to engage in a particular type of integration: sequence the curriculum by structuring offerings from introductory to intermediate to advanced, so that later classes build on the concepts and skills learned in earlier ones. Although scattered integration and sequencing efforts date back decades, empirical research is not available to definitively confirm their status as best practices. Further experimentation with integration and sequencing is warranted as a best practice.https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/faculty-chapters/1006/thumbnail.jp

Pathways, Integration, and Sequencing the Curriculum

Law school course offerings have proliferated in recent decades. This development reflects the addition of specialized doctrinal courses, a growing emphasis on interdisciplinary knowledge, and the incorporation of practice-oriented courses. From the perspective of the individual student, an expanded curriculum may create exciting educational opportunities while posing trade-offs between a generalist education and specialization. Law schools face two key challenges. First, they must structure the curriculum so that the experiences of individual law students have some coherence, or, if you will, seem integrated. Second they must incorporate the full range of what the Carnegie Reports referred to as the apprenticeships of formal knowledge, professional skill, and identity and purpose and what the MacCrate Report and Best Practices for Legal Education previously articulated as knowledge, skills, and values. This section discusses three approaches–not mutually exclusive–to structuring the law school curriculum. One way to strive for that goal is through course advising with structured pathways through the curriculum and concentrations. A second approach is to integrate the curriculum: connect the individual courses that a student takes, both those taken concurrently and across the years the student is enrolled in law school. The objective is that students have a sense that the learning in the various courses relates to and reinforces the learning in others. A third approach is to engage in a particular type of integration: sequence the curriculum by structuring offerings from introductory to intermediate to advanced, so that later classes build on the concepts and skills learned in earlier ones. Although scattered integration and sequencing efforts date back decades, empirical research is not available to definitively confirm their status as best practices. Further experimentation with integration and sequencing is warranted as a best practice.https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/faculty-books/1006/thumbnail.jp