Mika, Karin

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Law Faculty Articles and Essays Faculty Scholarship
Spring 2015
How to Have an Effective Student Conference
Karin Mika
Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Cleveland State University, k.mika@csuohio.edu
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Mika, Karin, "How to Have an Effective Student Conference" (2015). Law Faculty Articles and Essays. 853.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/fac_articles/853
On April 27, 2015, Professor Greg Lastowka of Rutgers-
Camden passed away. He was a husband and father, and also 
an IP scholar and author of publications such as Virtual Jus-
tice: The New Law of Online Worlds. I met him at the 2014 
Annual Meeting of AALS. Greg is the starting point for this 
column because he was a wonderful person and professor 
who deserves remembrance as well as emulation. His col-
leagues at Rutgers such as Ruth Anne Robbins have shared 
their great sadness at his loss, alongside so many stories of 
his generosity.  
  
Meeting Greg at an AALS Annual Meeting is emblematic, for 
me, of one of the special strengths of AALS involvement. 
Greg spoke on a panel, “Legal Scholarship Beyond the Law 
Review: Books, Briefs, Letters, and Other Avenues of Influ-
ence.” I went to that panel out of interest in the topic and to 
support my colleague Mary Dudziak, a historian and legal 
scholar. (The opportunity to learn from and support your 
own colleagues from various parts of the law school is anoth-
er special strength of AALS.) 
  
Afterwards I congratulated my colleague on a job well done. 
And then, like the proverbial law-school gunner I never was, 
I approached Greg for a sidebar conversation about some 
ideas for legal-writing hypotheticals about bitcoin. Greg 
thoughtfully shared some ideas, also instantly categorizing 
From the Chair 
Spring 2015 Edition 
Section on Legal Writing, 
Reasoning, and Research 
Inside this issue: 
From the Chair 1 
AALS Section 
Award Winner 
2 
Podia & Pens 3 
Know Thy Student 6 
Tips for a  
Successful Student 
Conference 
10 
How to Have a Great 
Conference 
11 
How to Have a Great 
Conference 
11 
The Key to an  
Effective Student Con-
ference 
12 
How to Make the 
Most Effective Use of 
a One-On-One Stu-
dent Conference 
12 
Announcements 13 
LWRR Section 
Committees 
22 
Section  
Leadership 
23 
Jennifer Murphy Romig 
Instructor, Legal Writing, Re-
search and Advocacy Program 
Emory University School of Law 
them into beginner and advanced, and connecting them to other areas of law. He was later kind 
enough to take part in a follow-up conversation by e-mail as well. By all accounts, Greg was a 
pretty special guy. Not everyone is so gifted at creating a sense of collegiality, nor so willing to 
share and translate expertise with an amateur in the doctrinal area of interest. The conditions that 
made that conversation possible were primarily Greg’s generosity. But I’m really not sure what 
other professional context could have made that conversation possible, other than the AALS An-
nual Meeting. 
  
That year and every year, the Annual Meeting offers numerous opportunities to learn from, en-
lighten, and generally mingle with professors from across the spectrum of legal education such as 
Greg Lastowka, and including a hearty contingent of legal writing professors. Intertwined with 
the meeting’s strength is the fact it is huge and can be unwieldy. Luckily this Section’s Outreach 
Committee and Committee on Committees are focused on making the Annual Meeting as accessi-
ble and rewarding as it can be for our Section members able to attend. Friendly faces can be seen 
and collegial conversations experienced at every program and meeting of the Legal Writing, Rea-
soning and Research section, as many observers of the Section have noted. As Daisy Gatsby once 
pointed out, “Large parties are so much more intimate.” (Thanks to Ruth Ann Robbins for point-
ing out that connection.) 
  
This year marks some new directions in the way AALS Annual Meetings are planned. The dead-
lines for organizing the program have been extended to June of the preceding year, Also the op-
portunities for each section to offer a variety of programs have been expanded. Seizing these new 
Without question, a profes-
sor’s own conferencing skills 
can significantly impact the 
quality of conferences.  But, 
students’ performance at 
conference matters too.  In-
deed, the professor should 
treat the ability to confer-
ence effectively as a lawyer-
ing skill to be taught in the 
course.   
 
Thus, early in the course, 
we introduce students to the 
role, goals, and values of 
conferences and to the im-
portance of conferencing 
skills to students’ success.  
We teach that, to conference 
effectively, students should 
do the following: 
 
1.) Thoroughly prepare for 
conferences by, for example, 
reading the assignment, con-
ducting background re-
search, and, if helpful, out-
lining the analysis. 
2.) Think independently – 
i.e., before a confer-
ence, carefully evaluate the 
matter and attempt to re-
solve any concerns without 
assistance. 
 
3.) Create targeted questions 
– i.e., determine precise con-
cerns and formulate specific 
questions to address them.  
If a professor agrees to re-
view a portion of a student’s 
draft, the student should 
understand that the profes-
sor will do so only to address 
a particular concern (e.g., 
whether the text is precise or 
concise) rather than to deter-
mine whether the draft is 
flawless.   
 
4.) Devise a realistic number 
of questions, and priori-
tize them. If a professor 
doubts whether the student 
has properly prioritized the 
questions, the professor may 
wish to review all of the 
questions before answering 
any of them and to help the 
student to prioritize them. 
 
5.) Bring hard copies of any 
text about which the student 
has questions.  If the profes-
sor allows students to bring 
laptops to a conference, stu-
dents should expect that the 
text may be reviewed on the 
laptop.  In this instance, stu-
dents should disable email 
and other alerts and should 
ensure that their documents 
are open and in an easily 
legible font.  Students should 
also highlight the text at is-
sue to avoid the need to 
scroll through the document. 
 
6.) Understand that, to en-
c o u r a g e  i n d e p e n d -
ent thinking and problem-
solving, a professor may pro-
vide guidance rather than a 
direct answer. 
a redraft.  It would be easy to 
write off these students as 
not worth our time, but in 
many situations, the stu-
dents themselves need to be 
taught how best to use the 
comments on the draft for 
purposes of a rewrite and 
also, how best to make use of 
the conferencing time. 
 
There are various ways to 
attempt to engage the unen-
gaged student.  Personally, I 
think the worst way to begin 
a dialogue is to remind or 
reprimand the student for 
(perhaps) not following di-
rections in terms of prepar-
ing for the conference by 
reviewing your comments 
and/or formulating ques-
tions about their drafts.  I 
think the best way to engage 
the student is to determine 
The core mission of any stu-
dent conference is getting 
through to the student and 
seeing the proverbial light go 
on.  Making the light go on, 
however, is often the chal-
lenge. 
 
I believe the key to a great 
student conference is follow-
ing the advice to we give to 
our students when they do 
writing assignments – know 
your audience! 
 
We all relish in the student 
who arrives for a conference 
with revisions that are spot 
on as well as intelligent 
questions, but the students 
who most need our help are 
students who arrive either 
with no preparation, or are 
so lost that they do not know 
what to do with draft com-
ments, or how to even begin 
what the student’s level of 
understanding is about his/
her writing issues and then 
figure out whether there is a 
way that the student can be 
made to understand what 
steps can be taken toward 
improvement that do not 
necessarily involve the com-
ments made on the draft.  In 
other words, sometimes the 
best thing to do is to start 
from scratch – for you, in 
terms of how content is com-
municated, and for the stu-
dent, in terms of his/her 
understanding about how to 
grasp what is being 
taught.  The most important 
concept, however, is to make 
sure you do your best to fig-
ure out how best to connect 
to each student, even if the 
student seems unwilling or 
unable to connect with you. 
How to Have a Great Conference, by Joel Atlas & Estelle McKee 
How to Have a Great Conference, by Karin Mika 
Page 11  
Joel Atlas 
Director of Lawyering 
Program and Clinical 
Professor of Law,  
Cornell 
Karin Mika 
Legal Writing Profes-
sor, Cleveland-Marshall 
Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning, and Research 
Estelle McKee 
Clinical Professor of 
Law, Cornell 


How to Have an Effective Student Conference

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