Last March I wrote an opinion piece for the first issue of the Hastings Herald. Here is a slightly changed version of it, the footnote format is alittle off, my apologies:
Humanizing Law School
Most people tell me that humanizing law school is impossible. Well, don’t lose hope, students of Hastings, change is in the air. There has been a surprising amount of movement on the issue in the law school industry. Recently, a mass of critical scholarly articles and books have been published calling for systemic and cultural reforms that would re-invent law school and the experience of its students. Some schools have started conducting pilot programs, and the top schools have abolished oppressive grading systems.
And it is about time. Rates of clinically significant levels of depression in law school can range as high as HALF of the student body. 1. Medical school, with its similar workload, has nowhere near the depression rates of law school. 1. This pain arises from the hyper-competition and excessive conformity that law school generates in otherwise happy and healthy people. 1. Put simply, this suffering is caused by the design of law school. 1. You know something is wrong with a pedagogical method when half the students who are subjected to it become mentally ill.
The culture of competition and conformity is the specter that stunts our school’s community and traumatizes our peers. 2. Students feel compelled to abandon their ideals and principles, to abandon their sense of self so they can fit into the “lawyer” mold. 2. I know I have been told over and over again that I will have to do things as a lawyer that violate my personal beliefs. Thinking like a lawyer is the primary objective, other pursuits need to fall away because if you aren’t thinking in that specific way, you won’t make the grade. This pressure to conform stifles creative thought and amounts to an all-out assault on our person-hood. 2. People literally lose themselves to law school, losing their self-identity to an institution-generated standard replacement identity. 2.
Identity is deeply intertwined with what motivates us. 2. Law school tends to quash our internal motivations (such as helping others or working for a cause) in favor of external motivations like grades, high profile internships, and high paying jobs after law school. 3. This happens to such an extent that students feel compelled to travel down a very uniform, risk-averse track and make choices that do not reflect their original reasons for going to law school. 2. The compulsion to avoid risks prevents students from taking innovative classes and pushing themselves to make the most of the opportunities afforded by law school. 2. But, I think what is worse is that the pedagogical style of law school conditions us to become insecure, anxious and unhappy. 3. All of this transfers into the legal profession as well, as the trauma of law school has a lasting impact on the psyche of lawyers as well as the practice of law in this country. 3.
By causing the loss of personal principles, self-identity, and purpose, law school emotionally scars its students. 4. All this pain disrupts our personal lives, but more importantly for the school, it hurts our ability to learn, retain and apply knowledge. 5. The policies and pedagogy of law school undermine the entire purpose of school.
Needless to say, when I read about all this, I was quite disturbed. I have noticed the effect law school has had on me, and it has been both scary and enraging. I am sure some people will respond with, “if you don’t like the heat, get out of the kitchen.” Well, this is bigger than just me, this problem affects the entire legal profession. 1. My own brief research has just scratched the surface of these issues, but it seems apparent that humanizing law school is the inevitable path that Hastings must take. Indeed, Hastings has already implemented programs meant to help students and address these problems (like the fantastic Academic Support Program). But further change in the policies, pedagogy and culture of law school is necessary, and to have that we must have a campus-wide discussion. To further that discussion, here are some questions:
What changes can we implement to address these problems?
What would a humanized law school look like?
What specific skills do you wish law school would teach?
Which classes were the most effective at teaching and why?
What are the aspects of law school that you love?
I want to hear your opinions, send in letters to the editor or shoot me an email at pasleyw@uchastings.edu.
Footnotes:
1. Peterson, Todd; Peterson, Elizabeth Stemming the Tide of Law Student Depression: What Law Schools Need to Learn from the Science of Positive Psychology. Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law & Ethics, Issue 2 (2009) (http://www.abajournal.com/uploads/2010/06/PetersonArticle.pdf) Sadly this link no longer works. I have a PDF copy if you want to read it, just shoot me an email.
2. Sturm , Susan; Guinier, Lani; The Law School Matrix: Reforming Legal Education in a Culture ofCompetition and Conformity, Vanderbilt Law Review, Vol. 60, No. 2, p. 515, 2007 (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1018085)
3. Sheldon, Kennon; Krieger, Lawrence , Does Legal Education have Undermining Effects on Law Students? Evaluating Changes in Motivation, Values, and Well-Being. Behavioral Sciences and the Law 22: 261–286 (2004) (http://web.missouri.edu/~sheldonk/pdfarticles/BSL04.pdf)
4. Krieger, Lawrence, Human Nature as a New Guiding Philosophy for Legal Education and the Profession. Washburn Law Journal, Vol. 47, 247-312, 2008 (http://washburnlaw.edu/wlj/47-2/articles/krieger-lawrence.pdf)
5. Fines, Barbara, Fundamental Principles and Challenges of Humanizing Legal Education. Washburn Law Journal, Vol. 47, 313-326, 2008 (http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/profiles/glesnerfines/humanizing.pdf)
Showing posts with label Strategy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Strategy. Show all posts
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Strategic Plan
Hastings is currently considering its first strategic plan, as this blog has mentioned before. Their website is here: http://www.uchastings.edu/strategic-planning/
They have not released more than a preliminary draft, which is here: http://www.uchastings.edu/strategic-planning/docs/SP_draft_vision_Faculty_SubCommittee.pdf
This draft includes many fantastic innovations, including focusing more on the practical side of education lawyers, putting student welfare as a top priority, and an explicit statement for the need for a shift away from the old paradigm of legal education. A new emphasis on different kinds of skills beyond the analytical and logical skills is a welcome change.
But it clearly comes from the faculty's point of view. There is only one page concerning student welfare, and very little discussion of the culture of law school and its serious negative impact on students. Changes to the curriculum will be immensely impacted by the culture and will flop if the plan does not incorporate cultural change.
I highly suggest you give it a look over and post your thoughts on the subject.
They have not released more than a preliminary draft, which is here: http://www.uchastings.edu/strategic-planning/docs/SP_draft_vision_Faculty_SubCommittee.pdf
This draft includes many fantastic innovations, including focusing more on the practical side of education lawyers, putting student welfare as a top priority, and an explicit statement for the need for a shift away from the old paradigm of legal education. A new emphasis on different kinds of skills beyond the analytical and logical skills is a welcome change.
But it clearly comes from the faculty's point of view. There is only one page concerning student welfare, and very little discussion of the culture of law school and its serious negative impact on students. Changes to the curriculum will be immensely impacted by the culture and will flop if the plan does not incorporate cultural change.
I highly suggest you give it a look over and post your thoughts on the subject.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Reforming the Culture Part 2: Solutions
Hastings is embarking on a major curricular shift in the next few years. Our school's first ever Strategic Plan is currently being drafted and if the vision statement they posted on their website is any indication, it intends to change the curriculum some. These reforms will fail if they do not address and alter the culture in the school. Law school culture poses a direct threat to any reforms of the curriculum. The external reward system of "being the best" replaces any vision of personal and professional responsibility or personal values and judgments, and therefore any reform that goes outside of the strict pathway toward "being the best" will be marginalized and remain mostly un-utilized by students.
So how do we change a culture focused on a rank-based competitive reward system? How do we encourage students to take risks with the classes and programs they become involved in? The authors of The Law School Matrix: Reforming Legal Education in a Culture of Competition and Conformity make several suggestions. Their prime suggestion is to focus on cultural change.
They emphasize three areas of mismatch present in law school:
1. The Pedagogical Mismatch. A mismatch between "student idealism (why we came to law school) and what we still mostly study in the identity forming first year"
2. The Training Mismatch. The substance of what we are taught and what young lawyers find useful.
3. The Professionalism Mismatch. The mismatch between the career path law school pushes students onto and the real range of legal need and work in the real world.
The authors note that many reforms have attempted to address some of or all of these mismatches without getting at the root of the culture. All of these mismatches should be addressed in any reform effort, as they are deeply involved with the way students interact with school.
The incentive structure is the next focus. They are skeptical of any reform efforts that do not address the underlying incentive structure present for both students and faculty. Without a fundamental change to the incentive structures, hierarchies of excellence will still be the focus, and any threat or risk to a professor or a student's position in the hierarchy will be marginalized. Incentive structures should be reshaped to integrate the intellectual, personal and professional development of students. They should be "tailored to the learning goals and multiple forms of practice" and push students to use their legal imaginations and take risks in their education.
Translating this advice into the Hastings environment, this means Hastings needs to stop ranking students based on GPA, or anything else for that matter. The curve should be abandoned, because its primary impact is to generate competition and fear. Right now grades feel arbitrary to students and students get very little feedback from professors. ABC grades are impersonal and give only minimal useful feedback to the student about how they are doing, and no sense of how they can improve. A pass/fail system with written feedback about what areas students need to improve in would be a sensible place to start in the design of a new a new grading system.
All stake-holders need to participate in the reform process, according to the authors. This includes students, faculty, alumni as well as those outside the school, such as lawyers, legislators and judges who narrate the law.
Hastings has already done a fairly good job involving students and faculty in the process. Students have been surveyed for input and there is an email address to send suggestions. The faculty have been presented with a draft, and have given their suggestions. I do not know if alumni or other groups have been contacted, but it would be a good idea.
Expand the reform project to include locations outside the classroom and curriculum. Any location that generates culture is game. The authors specifically note incentive structures that define legal education as the technical mastery of the law apart from normative commitments. The emphasis on high student/faculty ratios and unitary grading policies in another important target. Teaching styles that disconnect students from clinical and experiential learning should also be addressed.
Since many law students internalize the law school culture within the first three weeks, this is the crucial point where change is needed. The first year curriculum needs to get away from the Langdell style and execution. Students need to do clinical work their first semester (such as a GAAP-based clinic). The discourse from professors needs to shift from a focus on winning litigation and defeating your opponent to an emphasis on ethical behavior, lawyers being protectors and high-minded professionals. Positive identity-formation that resonates with student's initial identities and internal motivations is essential for the first semester. The authors suggest that the first year be broadened pedagogically, experientially, and substantively to embrace the wide range of meanings and purposes of the law. The emphasis on adversarialism needs to shift to a multi-approach focus. The law's normative responsibility must also be central in the process of identity formation.
Overall, the authors emphasize that this will be a slow and continuous process. It will need to continue beyond the implementation of the the strategic plan. To sum up their findings, the authors created a table in the appendix, on page 553, that outlines a reimagined school this way:
Role of Law: Law as a Plural and Contested Concept that involves reconciling multiple forms of authority, rethinking metrics of symbolic legitimacy, and expanding public problem-solving to foster continuous inquiry about law’s meaning and role, including the relationship between the “is,” the “ought” and the “what might be.”
Pedagogical Goal: Building analytic, strategic, institutional, and problem solving capacity; Developing legal imagination.
Role of Conflict: Multiple forms and formats of conflict explored.
Modeling Expertise: Contextually and collectively constructed, includes ability to exercise leadership in addressing important social problems.
Integration of Personal, Professional, and Academic Goals: Integrated and interrogated through collaboration among faculty, administrators, practitioners, and students.
Evaluating Success: Integrating evaluation into the learning process; Connecting success to personal aspirations and social goals.
Now that is a law school I would love to be a student in.
So how do we change a culture focused on a rank-based competitive reward system? How do we encourage students to take risks with the classes and programs they become involved in? The authors of The Law School Matrix: Reforming Legal Education in a Culture of Competition and Conformity make several suggestions. Their prime suggestion is to focus on cultural change.
They emphasize three areas of mismatch present in law school:
1. The Pedagogical Mismatch. A mismatch between "student idealism (why we came to law school) and what we still mostly study in the identity forming first year"
2. The Training Mismatch. The substance of what we are taught and what young lawyers find useful.
3. The Professionalism Mismatch. The mismatch between the career path law school pushes students onto and the real range of legal need and work in the real world.
The authors note that many reforms have attempted to address some of or all of these mismatches without getting at the root of the culture. All of these mismatches should be addressed in any reform effort, as they are deeply involved with the way students interact with school.
The incentive structure is the next focus. They are skeptical of any reform efforts that do not address the underlying incentive structure present for both students and faculty. Without a fundamental change to the incentive structures, hierarchies of excellence will still be the focus, and any threat or risk to a professor or a student's position in the hierarchy will be marginalized. Incentive structures should be reshaped to integrate the intellectual, personal and professional development of students. They should be "tailored to the learning goals and multiple forms of practice" and push students to use their legal imaginations and take risks in their education.
Translating this advice into the Hastings environment, this means Hastings needs to stop ranking students based on GPA, or anything else for that matter. The curve should be abandoned, because its primary impact is to generate competition and fear. Right now grades feel arbitrary to students and students get very little feedback from professors. ABC grades are impersonal and give only minimal useful feedback to the student about how they are doing, and no sense of how they can improve. A pass/fail system with written feedback about what areas students need to improve in would be a sensible place to start in the design of a new a new grading system.
All stake-holders need to participate in the reform process, according to the authors. This includes students, faculty, alumni as well as those outside the school, such as lawyers, legislators and judges who narrate the law.
Hastings has already done a fairly good job involving students and faculty in the process. Students have been surveyed for input and there is an email address to send suggestions. The faculty have been presented with a draft, and have given their suggestions. I do not know if alumni or other groups have been contacted, but it would be a good idea.
Expand the reform project to include locations outside the classroom and curriculum. Any location that generates culture is game. The authors specifically note incentive structures that define legal education as the technical mastery of the law apart from normative commitments. The emphasis on high student/faculty ratios and unitary grading policies in another important target. Teaching styles that disconnect students from clinical and experiential learning should also be addressed.
Since many law students internalize the law school culture within the first three weeks, this is the crucial point where change is needed. The first year curriculum needs to get away from the Langdell style and execution. Students need to do clinical work their first semester (such as a GAAP-based clinic). The discourse from professors needs to shift from a focus on winning litigation and defeating your opponent to an emphasis on ethical behavior, lawyers being protectors and high-minded professionals. Positive identity-formation that resonates with student's initial identities and internal motivations is essential for the first semester. The authors suggest that the first year be broadened pedagogically, experientially, and substantively to embrace the wide range of meanings and purposes of the law. The emphasis on adversarialism needs to shift to a multi-approach focus. The law's normative responsibility must also be central in the process of identity formation.
Overall, the authors emphasize that this will be a slow and continuous process. It will need to continue beyond the implementation of the the strategic plan. To sum up their findings, the authors created a table in the appendix, on page 553, that outlines a reimagined school this way:
Role of Law: Law as a Plural and Contested Concept that involves reconciling multiple forms of authority, rethinking metrics of symbolic legitimacy, and expanding public problem-solving to foster continuous inquiry about law’s meaning and role, including the relationship between the “is,” the “ought” and the “what might be.”
Pedagogical Goal: Building analytic, strategic, institutional, and problem solving capacity; Developing legal imagination.
Role of Conflict: Multiple forms and formats of conflict explored.
Modeling Expertise: Contextually and collectively constructed, includes ability to exercise leadership in addressing important social problems.
Integration of Personal, Professional, and Academic Goals: Integrated and interrogated through collaboration among faculty, administrators, practitioners, and students.
Evaluating Success: Integrating evaluation into the learning process; Connecting success to personal aspirations and social goals.
Now that is a law school I would love to be a student in.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Starting Up.
This blog is to be used to further a new curriculum at UC Hastings College of the Law. Law school is needlessly harmful to student well-being and the aim of this website is to change that.
The basic goal is to convince the students, faculty and administration to adopt a New Curriculum that will address the harms caused to students and the lack of practical training present in the law school curriculum.
This will be a multi-year process and will require significant student buy-in to be successful. Step one is to become acquainted with the research that is already out there and make summaries of it available to the student body.
The basic goal is to convince the students, faculty and administration to adopt a New Curriculum that will address the harms caused to students and the lack of practical training present in the law school curriculum.
This will be a multi-year process and will require significant student buy-in to be successful. Step one is to become acquainted with the research that is already out there and make summaries of it available to the student body.
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