Meeting Students’ Demand for Models of Good Legal Writing

(Excerpt) First-year legal writing students always plead for model examples of the types of writing we teach. Though most legal writing texts include an appendix of sample legal documents, the students invariably ask for more. They insist that a multitude of samples are needed to fully grasp the structure and organizational approach that is expected of them. Their reasons for wanting models of good legal writing are not without merit. Interoffice memoranda, trial and appellate briefs, as well as the other kinds of legal documents we teach in the first-year writing curriculum are unlike anything our law students have previously seen or written. Through studying samples, students are able to identify the analytical framework used to organize the discussions of varied legal issues and then apply it to their writing assignments. The more samples they have at their disposal, the easier it will be for them to emulate that framework.More samples also reinforce the reality that there is “no one structure which fits all presentations.” Because we teach students to analyze legal problems using traditional paradigms like IRAC, particularly in the first semester, they are often misled into thinking that the presentation of legal analysis must be formulaic and rigid.As the writing assignments become more complicated, we want our students to realize there are different and more sophisticated approaches to organization. This can be accomplished through the use of models

Persuasion in a Familiar Activity: The Parallels Between Resume Writing and Brief Writing

(Excerpt)To succeed in drafting a “winning” brief, you must approach it like you approach any other persuasive piece of writing in everyday life. A résumé is one such type of writing.Although many writers might not realize that composing a résumé is an exercise in persuasion, it is. The résumé’s purpose is simple: to persuade the employer to hire the applicant. Thus, a good résumé will be tailored to the needs of the employer. To achieve this goal, writers of successful résumés will carefully consider the employer throughout the planning, drafting, and revising processes. They will step into the shoes of the employer and evaluate what type of person the employer seeks. Then, they will identify the skills and experiences they have that match the needs of the employer. These are the ones that they will emphasize in their résumé. Not only will they explain them in a clear and concise way, but they will also arrange the information in a way that prioritizes the ones that exactly fit the employer’s needs. This means that every decision—from the placement of information to the selection of words—is a deliberate one, designed to convince the employer to hire them

Lessons from the Carnegie and Best Practices Reports: A Look at St. John\u27s University School of Law\u27s Street Law Program as a Model for Teaching Professional Skills

(Excerpt) The attitude toward professional skills in legal education has improved significantly in recent years. Law schools now recognize that there is a need for greater attention to professional skills instruction. Many law schools are experimenting with teaching methods other than the traditional case style of teaching. In fact, one of the leading academic institutions in the United States, Harvard Law School, has already changed its curriculum to offer more skills-based courses to their students. Other law schools have also followed this trend. In 2007, two very influential institutes published reports that favored this new approach to legal education. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching published its report, Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law , and the Clinical Legal Education Association published its study, Best Practices for Legal Education (collectively, the Reports ). The Reports focus, in part, on the academy\u27s role in preparing students for practice. They conclude that law schools must devote more attention and resources to helping students develop the professional skills they will need in practice. The consensus was that the traditional case method of teaching, alone, is insufficient in training students. The Reports recommend for law schools to broaden the ways in which they teach their students to become lawyers by, for example, incorporating settings and pedagogies different from those used in the teaching of legal analysis. They suggest that law schools can unite formal knowledge and the experience of practice by offering non-traditional curricular offerings, such as clinics, externships, simulations, and other similar opportunities. St. John\u27s University School of Law currently offers a unique externship opportunity that effectively integrates doctrine and practice in the way the Reports advance. The Street Law program allows law students to teach a practical law course to high school students in the local community of Queens, New York. The course, including its name, was inspired by and modeled after the Street Law High School Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center, which was the first law school to offer a program of this nature. Using St. John\u27s Street Law program as an illustration, this article demonstrates how non-traditional course offerings can provide powerful professional development opportunities for students. St. John\u27s Street Law program uniquely incorporates many of the recommendations of the Reports. The students\u27 in-depth approach to the law and contact with the community positively shapes their ability to become responsible and skilled legal professionals. Thus, the program serves as an excellent model for how law schools can integrate the teaching of knowledge, skills, and values into their curricula. First, this article describes the history of Street Law in the United States and the current offering at St. John\u27s. Next, it discusses the relevant parts of the Reports and their recommendations for rethinking legal education. Finally, it explains how the Street Law program meets many of the Reports\u27 objectives. While other clinical, externship, or experiential courses might also advance the Reports\u27 objectives, the Street Law Program is unique in that students learn legal doctrine and practice important lawyering skills mainly through their teaching of the law to non-lawyers

Watch or Report? Livestream or Help? Good Samaritan Laws Revisited: The Need to Create a Duty to Report

In July 2017, a group of five Florida teenagers taunted a drowning disabled man while filming his death on a cell phone. In the video, the teenagers laughed and shouted harsh statements like ain’t nobody finna to help you, you dumb bitch. At the moment the man’s head sank under the water for the very last time, one of the teenagers remarked: Oh, he just died before laughter ensued. None of the teenagers helped the man, nor did any of them report the drowning or his death to the authorities. Because the Good Samaritan law in Florida, like in most states, does not require bystanders to assist another person who they know is in danger or is suffering serious physical harm, the teenagers who chose to film, rather than aid, the drowning disabled man are free of any liability. They face no penalties for their inaction and no punishment for their callousness. This Article urges states to revisit traditional Good Samaritan laws. States need to consider penalizing a person’s failure to aid when another person is clearly in danger of physical harm or death. This need is particularly great given the power of social media and its intersection with a bystander’s ability and decision to help. As technology advances, relationships have become increasingly impersonal, thereby diminishing the individual’s connection to and compassion for others. Social media has added a new dimension to the longstanding debate of whether laws should impose on bystanders a duty to help. In cases where a bystander is observing a crime online, the individual can meet the duty quite simply by alerting authorities to the crime or danger. And in cases where the circumstances might tempt a bystander to use social media rather than provide help, the legal duty will compel the more moral choice. Accordingly, states should adopt duty to aid statutes mandating that bystanders give aid or call for help when they can

Sending the Message to Students That Revising Means Seeing Their Work Through New Eyes

(Excerpt) In my experience, students have a narrow view of what revision entails. They typically equate it with polishing–changing words, editing grammar, and fixing citation. In their minds, it is the final clean-up stage in the process before the assignment is due. If we want to encourage our students to treat it differently–that is, to treat it as an opportunity to discover new legal arguments, resolve dissonance in their analyses, and question their original decisions–then our comments on their drafts need to show that revision entails seeing their work through new eyes

The Case for Limiting the Use of Technology to Teach

(Excerpt) There has been much discussion recently over how best to integrate technology into the classroom to meet the needs of our students, many of whom use computers, the Internet, and other technology to take notes, draft and revise assignments, and conduct research. Before exploring what technology to use to teach, we must first decide how to use technology in the classroom in a way that will benefit our students. Just because students rarely use pen and paper does not mean that they now learn differently. Thus, we might not need to dramatically change our teaching methods, especially when teaching through technology has definite drawbacks

Histologic evaluation of bone healing of adjacent alveolar sockets grafted with bovine- and porcine-derived bone: a comparative case report in humans

To evaluate and compare histomorphometrically the bone response to two xenografts, one bovine and the other porcine, grafted in adjacent extraction sockets in a human. In this case report, two adjacent maxillary premolars were extracted, and the sockets were filled with two different xenogeneic bone substitutes (first premolar with bovine bone, and second premolar with porcine bone) to counteract post-extraction volume loss. Following 6 months bone core specimens were harvested during the placement of implants at the regenerated sites. Histomorphometrically, for the bovine xenograft the percentage of newly formed bone (osteoid) was 26.85%, the percentage of the residual graft material was 17.2% and the percentage of connective tissue 48.73%, while for the porcine xenograft, newly formed bone (osteoid) represented 32.19%, residual graft material was 6.57% and non-mineralized connective tissue was 52.99%. Histological results indicated that both biomaterials assessed in this study as grafts for socket preservation technique are biocompatible and osteoconductive. Bovine bone derived demonstrated to be less resorbable than porcine bone derived. Both xenogenic biomaterials did not interfere with the normal bone reparative processe

Performance of MIMO systems

Demand in high data rate communications, driven by internet and cellular mobile, have increased, specially in wireless local area networks, emerging home audio visual networks and multimedia services in general. The limitation of the available radio spectrum makes it impossible for the data rate needs to be accomplished by an increase in the bandwidth. The deployment of multiple antennas in the transmitter and the receiver, multiple input multiple output (MIMO), a cost effective technology, makes it feasible to meet the high data rate demands. In this work, several scenarios such as the transmission under Rayleigh and Rice channel conditions are analyzed. Different transmission schemes are used, using different numbers of transmit and receive antennas. The focus of the project is an investigation of the fundamental performance tradeoff between bit error probability and bit rate in these systems, related to the number of antennas deployed and the SNR. ______________________________________________________________La demanda de la alta velocidad de datos ha crecido considerablemente debido a internet y a los teléfonos móviles especialmente en redes wifi, en las redes audiovisuales de los hogares y servicios multimedia. La limitación del espectro de radio disponible hace imposible que la velocidad de datos aumente aumentando el ancho de banda. El desarrollo de múltiples antenas transmitiendo y múltiples antenas recibiendo, multiple input multiple output (MIMO), tiene un bajo coste y hace factible el aumento de alta velocidad de datos. En el trabajo, varios tipos de de condiciones de transmisión, como los canales Rayleigh y Rice se han analizado. Se han usado diferentes modelos de transmisión, utilizando numerosas antenas en transmisión y recepción. El objetivo del proyecto es la investigación del rendimiento que se obtiene entre sacrificar la probabilidad de bit y la tasa de transmisión en estos sistemas, relacionándolo con el número de antenas en transmisión y recepción y la SNR.Ingeniería de Telecomunicació

La educación inclusiva en la educación infantil: Propuestas basadas en la evidencia

La educación Inclusiva es un proceso de transformación de la escuela, especialmente de la escuela infantil, cuyo propósito es lograr una oferta educativa de calidad, universal y sin exclusiones que requiere reestructurar las culturas, políticas y prácticas educativas de manera que los centros educativos sean sensibles a la diversidad de todos los niños (Booth, Ainscow y Kingston, 2007). Si bien se ha avanzado mucho en el cambio cultural y político, aún no es una realidad consolidada en las aulas. Desde el presente artículo se pretende aglutinar las prácticas educativas (estructuras, recursos y estrategias) que se están poniendo en marcha en las escuelas de infantil y que han demostrado su capacidad para dar respuesta a la diversidad desde un enfoque inclusivo de la educación.Inclusive Education is a process of transformation of school, especially kindergarten, whose purpose is to offer a quality education and universal education, so it needs to restructuring of cultural, policies and educational practices in order to achieve that schools will be sensitive the diversity of all children (Booth, Ainscow and Kingston, 2007). While progress has been made in the cultural and political change, however it is not established in the classroom reality yet. This article is intended to bring educational practices (structures, resources and strategies) that are being put in place in schools for children and who have demonstrated their ability to respond to diversity from an inclusive education approach