Teaching law students in law school before they become 'baby sharks'
I recently came across a post on Education Week - 'The Secret to Student Engagement' - written by Chip and Dan Heath. The editors identified it as one of their '10 Big Ideas in Education'. It's a short summary of their book 'The Power of Moments'. Their argument is simple - 'meaningful experiences ... stand …
Continue reading Creating law school ‘moments’
'My tutor was disorganised.' It's a pretty common response in student satisfaction surveys. But there are tools out there to help you with planning and improve student satisfaction. In this post, we will look at lesson plans for law school. In an earlier post, we looked at lesson planning specifically for case note writing. But …
Imagine for a minute that you are running your own law school. Got it? Now imagine a wealthy philanthropist gifted you $80 million to improve your law students' performance. But there's a condition. You have to spend the money on individual law teachers' salaries and development. No-brainer right? You'd think that student achievement would improve. …
Continue reading Could collaborative planning improve law students’ performance?
Do a quick search of 'impostor syndrome'. What did you find? What about 'impostor syndrome in law school'? That produces some worrying results. There is a mountain of advice about how self-professed 'impostors' - law students, lawyers and academics - can heal themselves. A lot of it is good advice about talking to other people. …
Continue reading Law school ‘impostors’ need allies not accomplices
Reflective thinking is a professional skill. While the law school curriculum emphasises the development of reflective thinking, there is very little guidance on teaching it. When we think about 'reflection', we have a tendency to define it as remembering something - an event, something someone did, or even something we did. That's important. But that's …
Continue reading The 5 steps of reflective practice as a professional skill in law school