After months of review by faculty and administrators, the School begins the millennium with a newly approved curriculum that includes intensive instruction in legal analysis and writing

Leary, Betty Lynne

English

NELLCO Consortium Legal Scholarship Repository

Plotting a New Course

Digital Commons @ UM Law

"Change, indeed, is painful yet ever needful . . ." -Thomas Carlyle, 19th-century English essayist, historian and philosopher In some ways, not much has changed in the 200 years since Thomas Carlyle penned his musings. Change, indeed, is still painful and often resisted. When the School of Law administration initiated an extensive review of its curriculum, they anticipated rancorous debate and even dissension in the ranks. They discovered, however, an energetic faculty willing to cast a critical eye on the curriculum and take the necessary steps to create a better legal education for the coming generations. Thirty years have pasSed ~ince the curriculum carne lmder compre-hensive scrutiny at the University of Maryland. Rena Steinwr, professor and co-director of the EnVironmental Law Clinic, leads the review effortS although she admits having known little about the subject before being asked to chair the review committee. "I was off in my own 1itde corner of the universe," Steinwr says. "What I knew about law school curricula was frozen in time in the late '70s when I graduated from Columbia University." The exhaus-tive study began in fall 1999 and incl uded the examination of the nations top 20 law schools and five of Maryland's peer schools. The committee also conducted one-on-one interviews with almost every single faculty member, surveyed a host of current law school students, and talked with graduates and practicing attorneys to gauge opinions on Maryland's curriculum. "We needed a period of study on the state of the curriculum that reflected the facul ty's, students' and graduates' shared vision of what legal education should be," she adds. In-Depth Instruction in Legal Analysis and Writing Out of this process, the committee prepared a report outlining the fundamental reforms they felt were needed ro update the curriculum. They emphasized three critical areas. "T he first is that the vast majori ty of our peers have consolidat-ed their first-year courses," Steinzor explains. "By completing basic courses in one semester, you leave room for newer subjects that have become im portant for lawyers. " First-year students would be free ro choose an elective such as a perspective course or a beginning sequence in a specific discipline such as business or admin istrative law. "This gives students a jump-start on beginning ro specialize as the law has become enormously complex," Steinzor says. "T his gives them the ab ility ro focus on an area and also teaches them more fung ible skills." Second, the committee agreed ro reta in the Cardin requirement in the curriculum. One of the major facrors in Maryland's reputa-tion, the Cardin requirement mandates that a student must take an experiential course under the direct supervision of a facul ty mem-ber before graduating. " It's a very expensive, intensive legal education," Steinzor relates. "I tell the students in the Environmental Law C linic, 'You're get-ting your money's wo rth. It's a safe place to learn where you can be coached by someone who is concerned about your learning. '" Perhaps the most ambitious component of the report involves expanded instruction in legal analys is and writing. Dubbed LAWR for Legal Analysis, Writing and Research, the three-semester sequence of courses offers students an immersion into some of the most important components of legal education including analysis, legal reasoning, and the oral and written communication of com-plex, well-organized discussions. "The first-semes ter course will be taught by full-time faculty members only, " Steinzor emphasizes. "Very few schools do that, bur we want to have the best full-time facu lty members teaching when students are most impressionable, to give them concentrated attention, to make them think like lawyers. " T he second-semester course, LAWR II , focuses on the anatomy of a case at the trial level. Students learn to work with facts, develop theories, and use research and writing ski lls to advance those theories. One credit of this course is devoted to research instruction taught by full-time library staff. In LAWR III, taken in the first semester of the second year, students refine their skills in the appellate context. After researching and writing an entire appellate brief, students deliver an oral argument on the brief, perhaps in conjunction with the fall Moor Court Competition . An Advanced Research Requirement With their initial review and report completed, the comm ittee began a series of meetings with facu lty to discuss the proposed changes to the curriculum. Steinzor describes the meetings as very well-attended and a good institution-building process. "We had the most vigorous debate on how to teach LAWR I , II and III ," Steinzor notes. "The participation by the faculty was great. People were very engaged and very interested." The final pro-posal allows faculty to teach LAWR I either as a small section broken out from a required course that he or she was already teachi ng or as a small section that can be coord inated with a large section of a required course taught by someone else. "We're going to try it and we think students will benefit a lot," she says. "The committee has pledged to revisit these new programs and fin e-tune them if needed." Other items in the final proposal, which was accepted by a faculty vote on Dec. 11, 2000, include expanding the criminal procedure course and changing it from a requirement to an elective and altering the upper-class writing requirement so that students must work intensively with a faculty member on a seminar paper. Work on peer-run journals will no longer satisfy this requirement. "We're also very excited about the advanced research requ irement," Stei nzo r says. The library staff wi ll develop specialized research courses in specific areas such as business or environmental law to train students where and how to find information from the stagger-ing number of resources available. "T his is an example of facu lty going our of their way to ask for more work," Steinzor says laughing. "Students must know how to find good, reliable information, not just print a three-foot stack of paper from the Internet. " Committed to Improving Legal Education With the first major faculty vote behind them, the committee is looking ahead to a review of elective courses in the upper-level curriculum. Although they've already put in countless hours of study and debate, Steinzor and the committee members remain upbeat and committed to improving Maryland's legal education. "We're going to have a new building, a refined curriculum and we have a wonderful new dean," she says. "There's much to celebrate in the millennium. " JD MAGA ZINE SPR ING 200 1 23 

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Plotting a New Course

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