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Abstract:
For years, teachers at all levels have been encouraged to use technology in the classroom, with mixed results. Unfortunately, technology never makes for a better student or a better teacher by itself. What is needed are customized applications designed by teachers with particular educational objectives in mind. Those teachers charged with the difficult task of introducing their students to the art and practice of legal writing often find themselves in the position of a doctor trying to diagnose an illness from a dead body. That is, they find themselves trying to explain a combination of thinking and writing problems after the two have been mixed together, and the resulting mistakes have already been made. If we could more systematically join with our students in the critical thinking and linking steps that must precede good legal writing, we might be able to help them produce better final products. This article describes the use of a particular software program in the teaching of legal research and writing that, if carefully used and implemented, might finally meet that elusive objective.

legal education, legal writing, legal technology, skills training, pedagogy, educational technology

Abstract:
Online learning, once thought of as impossible or ineffective, is becoming increasingly common. Corporations have widely adopted it, and the academy is starting to accept it as well. There are numerous college-level courses, and even a few law school classes, that are taught fully online. One law professor and former Dean has recently suggested that teaching more courses online might be one way to reign in the soaring costs of a legal education.

Given this trend towards broader acceptance of online learning in the academy, it seems only a matter of time before some legal writing teachers will be asked to take on the task of teaching the course in a fully online environment. Although today most legal writing teachers actually offer many online components to their "ground" class, many of them might recoil at the thought of teaching fully online, believing that the special demands of a successful legal writing course would break down in a "distance learning" environment.

But it can be done. This article describes how to adjust generally accepted LRW pedagogy and deliver it in an online environment. The article also describes and explains the myriad technologies that are currently available to deliver online content. It also includes results of some empirical research into the effectiveness of these methods in reaching the goals of the course.

Legal Writing, Online, Pedagogy, Distance Learning, Distance Education

Abstract:
Legal education is at a crossroads. As a media saturated generation of students enters law school, they find themselves thrust into a fairly backward mode of instruction, much of which is over 100 years old. Over those years, legal education has resisted many creditable reports recommending change, most recently those from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and the Clinical Legal Education Association. Meanwhile, the cost of legal education continues to skyrocket, with many law students graduating with crushing debt they have difficulty paying back. All of these factors are likely to reach a crescendo in the next few years, setting the stage for a perfect storm out of which can come significant change.

But legal education has successfully resisted systemic change for many years. Given that dubious track record, the only way significant change can reasonably be predicted is if something is different this time. Fortunately, there is something different this time: the ubiquity of technology. Since the MacCrate report in 1992, the internet has achieved massive growth, and a generation of students have grown up with sophisticated and pervasive use of technology in nearly every facet of their lives.

This book describes how the perfect storm of generational change and the rising cost and criticisms of legal education, combined with extraordinary technological developments, will change the face of legal education as we know it today. Its scope extends from generational changes in our students, to pedagogical shifts inside and outside of the classroom, to hybrid textbooks, all the way to methods of active, interactive, and hypertextual learning. And it describes how this shift can - and will - better prepare law students for the law practice of tomorrow.

Law School, Technology, Education, Pedagogy, Legal Education