Harry Potter, Ruby Slippers and Merlin: Telling the Client\u27s Story Using the Characters and Paradigm of the Archetypal Hero\u27s Journey

This Article focuses on the relationship of mythology and folklore heroes to everyday lawyering decisions regarding case theory when the audience is a judge or panel of judges rather than a jury. This Article adds to the discourse by beginning a conversation about what might be termed “applied legal storytelling.” The term pertains to ideas of how everyday lawyers can utilize elements of mythology as a persuasive technique in stories told directly to judges--either via bench trials or via legal writing documents such as briefs--on behalf of an individual client in everyday litigation. Parts II and III of this Article will review legal storytelling from a fiction writing perspective and will introduce the mythological and psychological perspective of heroes. Part IV will explain the different types of heroic archetypes and show examples of how to select the appropriate hero type for a client. Part V will outline the universal journey and show examples of how a lawsuit may fit into the client\u27s overall journey. In all but one example, the Article draws on more day-to-day lawyering scenarios than on seminal cases. Smaller cases are analyzed in order to demonstrate that lawyers can use heroic archetypes as a routine scaffold rather than as a tool reserved for only the exceptional client scenarios

Preface

The overarching theme of Volume 19 of Legal Communication & Rhetoric: JALWD is how legal communication shapes the law, and how doers of legal writing can use their resources to make it better. The volume begins with a fascinating article from Aaron Kirschenfeld and Alexa Chew, “Citation Stickiness, Computer-Assisted Legal Research, and the Universe of Thinkable Thoughts.” In their article, Professors Kirschenfeld and Chew shed light on whether the switch from print research to digital research has changed the way that law students and lawyers conduct research. To do so, the article uses the “citation stickiness” metric, which analyzes whether a citation appears in at least one party’s brief and again in the court’s opinion. Professors Kirschenfeld and Chew used citation stickiness to study how often parties to an appeal and judges hearing that appeal agreed on the relevant cases to resolve the issues presented, focusing on cases from 1957, 1987, and 2017. Their research shows, surprisingly, that citation stickiness increased over time, meaning that there was less coherence and agreement between advocates and courts in the pre-digital era, not more, as predicted by earlier scholarship

Three 3Ls, Kairos, and the Civil Right to Counsel in Domestic Violence Cases

Article published in the Michigan State Law Review

Implementing Effective Education in Specific Contexts

This chapter of Building on Best Practices: Transforming Legal Education in a Changing World includes contributions from many authors: Section A, The Socratic Method, is by Elizabeth G. Porter Section B, Analysis, Research, and Communication in Skills-Focused Courses, is by Ruth Anne Robbins, Amy Sloan & Kristen K. Tiscione Section C, Use of Technology in Teaching, is by Michele Pistone and Warren Binford Section D, Law Libraries and Legal Education, is by Jonathan Franklin Section E, Cross-Border Teaching and Collaboration, is by Kimberly D. Ambrose, William H. D. Fernholz, Catherine F. Klein, Dana Raigrodski, Stephen A. Rosenbaum & Leah Wortham Section F, Experiential Education, includes: Incorporating Experiential Education Throughout the Curriculum, by Deborah Maranville with Cynthia Batt, Lisa Radtke Bliss & Corolyn Wilkes Kaas Delivering Effective Education in In-House Clinics, by Lisa Radtke Bliss & Donald C. Peters Delivering Effective Education in Externship Programs, by Carolyn Wilkes Kaas with Cynthia Batt, Dena Bauman & Daniel Schaffzin, and Ensuring Effective Education in Alternative Clinical Models, by Deborah Maranvill

Faculty Status and Institutional Effectiveness

Legal education has expanded to incorporate practice-oriented topics and courses over the past several decades, and student academic support services have multiplied in response to changing student populations. As a consequence of these changes, law schools are overdue to address the issue of the status of the individuals they hire to fill the multiple and ever expanding needs and interests of students. Should law schools hire new personnel as teachers, staff, or administrators? If hired as teachers, what titles and governance rights should they be given? Should they be eligible for tenure, presumptively renewable long-term contracts, or short-term contracts? What workloads are appropriate and what courses permitted? Status and fairness issues for law teachers accompanied the rise of experiential programs, including clinical and legal research and writing programs. More recently, similar issues have arisen with academic support teachers, whose courses may be mandatory for certain students, and have intensified for externship teachers at many schools. Best Practices for Legal Education identified as a “best practice to enhance the effectiveness of faculty in experiential courses” that “a school uses qualified faculty, provides professional development opportunities, and assigns reasonable workloads in its experiential education courses.” Faculty status is a key dimension of enhancing the effectiveness of faculty, and this section provides an overview of the issues involved in debates over faculty status.https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/faculty-chapters/1008/thumbnail.jp

Faculty Status and Institutional Effectiveness

Legal education has expanded to incorporate practice-oriented topics and courses over the past several decades, and student academic support services have multiplied in response to changing student populations. As a consequence of these changes, law schools are overdue to address the issue of the status of the individuals they hire to fill the multiple and ever expanding needs and interests of students. Should law schools hire new personnel as teachers, staff, or administrators? If hired as teachers, what titles and governance rights should they be given? Should they be eligible for tenure, presumptively renewable long-term contracts, or short-term contracts? What workloads are appropriate and what courses permitted? Status and fairness issues for law teachers accompanied the rise of experiential programs, including clinical and legal research and writing programs. More recently, similar issues have arisen with academic support teachers, whose courses may be mandatory for certain students, and have intensified for externship teachers at many schools. Best Practices for Legal Education identified as a “best practice to enhance the effectiveness of faculty in experiential courses” that “a school uses qualified faculty, provides professional development opportunities, and assigns reasonable workloads in its experiential education courses.” Faculty status is a key dimension of enhancing the effectiveness of faculty, and this section provides an overview of the issues involved in debates over faculty status.https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/faculty-books/1013/thumbnail.jp

Analysis, Research, and Communication in Skills-Focused Courses

Since the Carnegie Report and Best Practices for Legal Education were published, a new focus has emerged on building students’ traditional foundational skills through increased opportunities for experiential education, including legal research and writing instruction. Although the Carnegie Report explored legal writing pedagogy in some detail, Best Practices devoted little attention to how foundational analytical, research, and writing skills are or should be taught with specificity, which provided the impetus for more extended treatment here. This section identifies some “better practices” being used and urges adoption of best practices. In skills-focused courses, legal analysis, research, and writing should be taught as a fluid and recursive process in a client-centered context, giving students the opportunity to write, reflect, and revise. To build and retain fundamental skills, law students should have at least one significant writing experience each semester of law school. It could take the form of practice-related or “instrumental” writing, “writing to learn” exercises, or other forms. Although the ABA requires two rigorous writing courses in the J.D. curriculum, many schools require that only one be practice-related. Some schools have addressed the inadequacy of the ABA requirements by expanding their legal writing programs from two to three or four semesters. The best practice is also to offer advanced, upper-level courses in analysis, research, and writing. For maximum effectiveness, all foundational writing, research, and analysis courses taught in the first year should be taught in small classes by full-time law teachers with practice experience and equal status

Analysis, Research, and Communication in Skills-Focused Courses

Since the Carnegie Report and Best Practices for Legal Education were published, a new focus has emerged on building students’ traditional foundational skills through increased opportunities for experiential education, including legal research and writing instruction. Although the Carnegie Report explored legal writing pedagogy in some detail, Best Practices devoted little attention to how foundational analytical, research, and writing skills are or should be taught with specificity, which provided the impetus for more extended treatment here. This section identifies some “better practices” being used and urges adoption of best practices. In skills-focused courses, legal analysis, research, and writing should be taught as a fluid and recursive process in a client-centered context, giving students the opportunity to write, reflect, and revise. To build and retain fundamental skills, law students should have at least one significant writing experience each semester of law school. It could take the form of practice-related or “instrumental” writing, “writing to learn” exercises, or other forms. Although the ABA requires two rigorous writing courses in the J.D. curriculum, many schools require that only one be practice-related. Some schools have addressed the inadequacy of the ABA requirements by expanding their legal writing programs from two to three or four semesters. The best practice is also to offer advanced, upper-level courses in analysis, research, and writing. For maximum effectiveness, all foundational writing, research, and analysis courses taught in the first year should be taught in small classes by full-time law teachers with practice experience and equal status