Externships and New Lawyer Mentoring: The Practicing Lawyer\u27s Role in Educating New Lawyers

Law schools and bar associations have begun successful and sustainable programs to assist law students and new lawyers in making the transition from law school to the first year of legal practice. The key to the universal availability of these proven approaches is the willingness of experienced lawyers to become supervising mentors for law school externship programs and for bar association mentoring programs for new lawyers. The traditional roadblocks to implementation of these programs have disappeared by eliminating the heavy costs involved in traditional law school clinical programs and by adding quality controls to bar association programs to assure that the formerly debunked apprenticeship programs operate as they should. Law schools can contribute to a meaningful transition by providing meaningful practice experiences as the method for learning in a capstone apprenticeship semester during the third year of law school. Bar associations can adopt learning oriented plans for mentors to turn a relationship into a meaningful set of educational objectives

Case of Year Round Education in Two Georgia Elementary Schools

This researcher looked at two elementary schools using a year-round education calendar and provided a descriptive account of their experience. A case study format was used. Quantitative data on standardized test scores, discipline, and attendance were collected. Interviews and focus group sessions were conducted at each site. The overarching research question for this study was: What are the experiences of stakeholders in two Georgia elementary schools that have implemented year-round education? A cross-site analysis of the major issues showed that both schools agreed on five areas in which the year round education schedule had a positive impact. These areas were: student achievement/motivation, school climate, intercession, stakeholder perceptions/communications, and facility maintenance/cleanliness. Lemonds County Elementary School (pseudonym) also identified discipline as an area positively impacted by the current school calendar. West City Elementary School (pseudonym) listed teacher acquisition/retention as an item positively affected by the current school calendar. The two elementary schools both indicated two issues to be neutral with respect to the schedule. These were: attendance and community/after school activities. The two schools both identified summer break as an area negatively impacted by the YRE schedule. The researcher concluded that year round education is effective in elementary schools that are part of small Georgia school systems, however, it cannot completely overcome the challenges inherent in the educational setting where a vast majority of the students reside in families from the low socioeconomic category. The researcher also found that the keys to successful implementation of this educational delivery option were: to conduct considerable research prior to implementation, to develop a very detailed implementation plan at a very early point in the process, to involve key stakeholders in the implementation process, and to communicate implementation efforts to stakeholders at all phases of the implementation process. The results of this study largely supported earlier research in this area

Significant but Unheralded Growth of Large Externship Programs

Law schools have offered student externships for several decades. The number of participating students has fluctuated over time. At first, more law students participated in externships than in in-house clinics, but that changed in the 1980s and remained consistent for many years. Starting in the early- to mid-1990s, externship enrollment surpassed in-house-clinic participation again and has continued to increase in the past decade, each year widening the gap between these two primary forms of practice-based experiential learning. Today, externships have never been more important as a means of providing practical legal education to the current generation of law students

Three newly-discovered M-dwarf companions of Solar Neighbourhood stars

We present low-resolution spectroscopy of newly-discovered candidate companions to three stars in the Solar Neighbourhood. All three companions are M dwarfs, with spectral types ranging from M4 to M9.5. In two cases, G85-55`B' (M6) and G87-9`B' (M4), we have circumstantial evidence from spectroscopy, photometry and limited astrometry that the systems are physical binaries; in the third, G216-7B (M9.5), comparison of POSS II IIIaF plate material and the 2MASS image indicates common proper motion. The primary star in this system, G216-7A (M0), appears itself to be an unresolved, nearly equal-mass binary. All three low-mass companions are highly likely to be stellar in nature, although G216-7B lies very close to the hydrogen-burning limit.Comment: Accepted for publication in PASP; 21 pages, 6 figure

An Investigation of Selected Factors on Golfer Attachment

While little change has occurred in the total number of golfers in the United States, the total number of golf courses is rapidly increasing (3). This increase in market competition has made it vital for resort owners and managers to examine the variables which influence golfers to use and return to their facilities. A relationship that appears to form between golfers and golf courses which has been neglected is place attachment. The purpose of this study was to examine whether or not place attachment actually occurs on a golf course. A second purpose was to investigate the relationship between attachment and a golfer\u27s proximity to the course, gender, age, frequency of play, handicap and income. A third purpose was to examine the relationship between attachment to course and overall satisfaction and perceived value. Subjects (N=l,397) were randomly selected by tee times stratified by weekday and weekend and season of the year at six different Cleveland Metro Parks golf courses. Of the golfers that participated, the average age was 49.9, 70.2% were married, 79.9% were male, and the median household income was $50,000 to$59,999. Results show that a distinct variable of attachment emerged from golfers\u27 perceptions. Further, age, frequency of play, perceived value and overall satisfaction were all found to have strong relationships to attachment. Managerial implications and applicability are discussed