The Effect of Clinical Education on Law Student Reasoning: An Empirical Study

During the past thirty years, clinical legal education has become an important component of most law school curricula. In clinics, students, typically in their second or third year of law school, represent clients in actual cases in a legal aid office at the law school, pursuant to a court approved student practice order. \u27 Under the supervision of faculty members, students interview and counsel clients, investigate facts, research legal rules, negotiate with opposing parties, draft documents, and try and argue cases in court. Proponents of clinical education have urged the development and expansion of clinical programs to train students in the skills necessary to apply legal doctrine in practice. While few have argued that the traditional law school curriculum be replaced with an entirely clinical curriculum, many have suggested the introduction of courses using clinical methods during the first year and increased clinical offerings in the last two years. Just recently, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching published a major study of legal education lauding clinical education as one of the law school\u27s primary means of teaching students how to connect the abstract thinking formed by legal categories and procedures with fuller human contexts. And in the recent report, Best Practices for Legal Education, which professes to present a vision and road map for legal education, the authors argue that contextualized learning, such as clinical training, is the most effective and efficient way for students to develop professional competence. While the proponents of clinical education identify a number of virtues for this pedagogy, much of the literature on the subject focuses on one major benefit: teaching modes of planning and analysis for problem solving in unstructured situations. Advocates of clinical education argue that traditional legal education has focused too narrowly on legal rules and doctrinal analysis. In his seminal article on the purposes of clinical legal education, Anthony Amsterdam complained that traditional legal education taught students only three kinds of analytic thinking: case reading and interpretation; doctrinal analysis and application; and logical conceptualization and criticism, while ignoring other modes of analysis that are essential for the practice of law. These neglected modes of analysis include: (1) ends-means thinking; (2) hypothesis formulation and testing in information acquisition; and (3) decision making in situations where options involve differing and often uncertain degrees of risk and promises of different sorts

Teaching Problem-Solving Lawyering: An Exchange of Ideas

In the last issue of the Clinical Law Review, StefanKrieger argues that clinical law teachers who emphasize problem-solving approaches to lawyering incorrectly downplay as a necessary prerequisite to learning effective legal practice the significance of domain knowledge, which he mainly identifies as knowledge about legal doctrine(FN1) Among the writings on clinical law teaching criticized by Krieger are those of Mark Aaronson, who has articulated as a teaching goal helping students learn how to improve their practical judgment in lawyering, which he describes as a process of deliberation whose most prominent features are a contextual tailoring of knowledge, a dialogic form of reasoning that accounts for plural perspectives, an ability to be empathetic and detached at the same time an intertwining of intellectual and moral concerns, an instrumental and equitable interest in human affairs, and a heavy reliance on learning from cumulative experience.(FN2) Krieger stresses the foundational importance for law students of acquiring substantive legal knowledge; Aaronson focuses on developing the ability of students to think critically and appropriately in role as a lawyer. In this brief exchange of ideas, Aaronson comments on Krieger\u27s critique of problem-solving teaching in law schools, to which Krieger then responds

Accessing Law: An Empirical Study Exploring the Influence of Legal Research Medium

The legal profession is presently engaged in an uncontrolled experiment. Attorneys now locate and access legal authorities primarily through electronic means. Although this shift to an electronic research medium radically changes how attorneys discover and encounter law, little empirical work investigates impacts from the shift to an electronic medium. This Article presents the results of one of the most robust empirical studies conducted to date comparing research processes using print and electronic sources. While the study presented in this Article was modest in scope, the extent and type of the differences that it reveals are notable. Some of the observed differences between print and electronic research processes confirm predictions offered, but never before confirmed, about how the research medium changes the research process. This Article strongly supports calls for the legal profession and legal academy to be more attentive to the implications of the shift to electronic research

A Time to Keep Silent and a Time to Speak: The Functions of Silence in the Lawyering Process

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Identifying Unique Neighborhood Characteristics to Guide Health Planning for Stroke and Heart Attack: Fuzzy Cluster and Discriminant Analyses Approaches

Socioeconomic, demographic, and geographic factors are known determinants of stroke and myocardial infarction (MI) risk. Clustering of these factors in neighborhoods needs to be taken into consideration during planning, prioritization and implementation of health programs intended to reduce disparities. Given the complex and multidimensional nature of these factors, multivariate methods are needed to identify neighborhood clusters of these determinants so as to better understand the unique neighborhood profiles. This information is critical for evidence-based health planning and service provision. Therefore, this study used a robust multivariate approach to classify neighborhoods and identify their socio-demographic characteristics so as to provide information for evidence-based neighborhood health planning for stroke and MI.The study was performed in East Tennessee Appalachia, an area with one of the highest stroke and MI risks in USA. Robust principal component analysis was performed on neighborhood (census tract) socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, obtained from the US Census, to reduce the dimensionality and influence of outliers in the data. Fuzzy cluster analysis was used to classify neighborhoods into Peer Neighborhoods (PNs) based on their socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. Nearest neighbor discriminant analysis and decision trees were used to validate PNs and determine the characteristics important for discrimination. Stroke and MI mortality risks were compared across PNs. Four distinct PNs were identified and their unique characteristics and potential health needs described. The highest risk of stroke and MI mortality tended to occur in less affluent PNs located in urban areas, while the suburban most affluent PNs had the lowest risk.Implementation of this multivariate strategy provides health planners useful information to better understand and effectively plan for the unique neighborhood health needs and is important in guiding resource allocation, service provision, and policy decisions to address neighborhood health disparities and improve population health

Therapeutic hypothermia for acute ischaemic stroke. Results of a European multicentre, randomised, phase III clinical trial

Introduction: We assessed whether modest systemic cooling started within 6 hours of symptom onset improves functional outcome at three months in awake patients with acute ischaemic stroke. Patients and methods: In this European randomised open-label clinical trial with blinded outcome assessment, adult patients with acute ischaemic stroke were randomised to cooling to a target body temperature of 34.0–35.0°C, started within 6 h after stroke onset and maintained for 12 or 24 h, versus standard treatment. The primary outcome was the score on the modified Rankin Scale at 91 days, as analysed with ordinal logistic regression. Results: The trial was stopped after inclusion of 98 of the originally intended 1500 patients because of slow recruitment and cessation of funding. Forty-nine patients were randomised to hypothermia versus 49 to standard treatment. Four patients were lost to follow-up. Of patients randomised to hypothermia, 15 (31%) achieved the predefined cooling targets. The primary outcome did not differ between the groups (odds ratio for good outcome, 1.01; 95% confidence interval, 0.48–2.13; p = 0.97). The number of patients with one or more serious adverse events did not differ between groups (relative risk, 1.22; 95% confidence interval, 0.65–1.94; p = 0.52). Discussion: In this trial, cooling to a target of 34.0–35.0°C and maintaining this for 12 or 24 h was not feasible in the majority of patients. The final sample was underpowered to detect clinically relevant differences in outcomes. Conclusion: Before new trials are launched, the feasibility of cooling needs to be improved

A half-site multimeric enzyme achieves its cooperativity without conformational changes

Cooperativity is a feature many multimeric proteins use to control activity. Here we show that the bacterial heptose isomerase GmhA displays homotropic positive and negative cooperativity among its four protomers. Most similar proteins achieve this through conformational changes: GmhA instead employs a delicate network of hydrogen bonds, and couples pairs of active sites controlled by a unique water channel. This network apparently raises the Lewis acidity of the catalytic zinc, thus increasing the activity at one active site at the cost of preventing substrate from adopting a reactive conformation at the paired negatively cooperative site – a “half-site” behavior. Our study establishes the principle that multimeric enzymes can exploit this cooperativity without conformational changes to maximize their catalytic power and control. More broadly, this subtlety by which enzymes regulate functions could be used to explore new inhibitor design strategies