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Abstract:
Law schools are under pressure to instill in their students a sense of professionalism, but what exactly does professionalism mean? And what can professors of legal writing do to lay an educational foundation of professionalism? They are, after all, the teachers who at most schools have the greatest interaction with the impressionable first-year students.

Professionalism is frequently used to mean a variety of behaviors that are important for lawyers to exhibit, but that are also important for those in business - outside the traditional professions - to exhibit. In the context of legal education, professionalism is better understood to mean those characteristics of a profession that distinguish it from a business. The most important distinguishing characteristic of a profession is that its essence and primary imperative are public service. The notion that lawyers, as professionals, must prioritize public service over profits is a romantic one, but an essential one for law students to understand.

As a professor of legal writing, my first of what I hope will become many steps in conveying this sense of professionalism to my first-year students is a writing assignment to be completed during the first two weeks of law school. The assignment asks students to analyze whether a fictional personal injury attorney is running a permitted professional office or a prohibited business office under a zoning ordinance. The students write a short inter-office memo applying a real precedent case in which a court ruled an insurance agent ran a business office. In crafting and using this memo assignment, I have dual goals - ensuring my students learn to write and also write to learn (about professionalism).

Legal Education, Legal Writing, Legal Ethics, Professional Responsibility

Abstract:
Privacy law and conceptions of a right to privacy have, of course, evolved considerably since 1890 when future Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and Boston attorney Samuel Warren penned their now ageless article, The Right to Privacy, 4 Harv. L. Rev. 193, in which they argued the law should recognize such a right and impose liability in tort for intrusions on it. But quite apart from any argument about how attenuated the link might be between Brandeis and Warren's specific proposals and the current state of privacy law, is it fair to say, as so many scholars and judges repeatedly do, that Brandeis and Warren's article give birth to its namesake in the lexicon and substance of American law?

A review of the law and the secondary legal and historical literature from the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century strongly supports the argument that The Right to Privacy did indeed "give birth" to a right to privacy. The judicial opinions from1891 until 1911 that addressed claims of invasion of an alleged right to privacy almost invariably cited and discussed Brandeis and Warren's article, and the several opinions recognizing a right to privacy placed substantial reliance on the article as a form of authority. To be sure, Brandeis and Warren had a potent ally, as professional and popular opinion of the era were overwhelmingly and passionately in support of protecting people's privacy in the face of cramped urban conditions and the proliferation of amateur photography and gossip-mongering "yellow" journalism. But to effect change in the legal establishment, that ally needed a cogent and respected voice. The Right to Privacy achieved its early and generalized influence because its authors harnessed the public's outrage at the intrusive elements of the newly urban society, and channeled it into a forceful and well-reasoned appeal for change to the judicial and legislative establishment.

privacy, right to privacy, right of privacy, Louis D. Brandeis, Samuel Warren, Harvard Law Review, legal history

Abstract:
Given the ABA's recent decision to permit law schools to offer a bar exam preparation course for credit, schools now have an enhanced opportunity to increase the percentage of their students who pass the profession's all-important licensing exam. For many law schools, an effective means of taking advantage of this opportunity could be a for-credit course focusing exclusively on the written portions of the bar exam and targeting primarily those students whose law school grades place them at the greatest risk of failing the exam. Offering a for-credit course on only the written portions of the exam, in lieu of a comprehensive bar exam preparation course, taps a strength of law schools - teaching the skills of legal reading, analysis and writing. It also leaves to the omnipresent commercial preparation courses what they best provide and what law schools are disinclined or ill-equipped to provide: comprehensive outlines and rote lecturing on substantive law, and practice multiple-choice questions from the Multistate Bar Exam.

Providing a for-credit course specifically on writing for the bar exam makes particular sense at schools whose graduates take the bar exam mostly in jurisdictions that place greater scoring weight on the written portions of the exam, and at schools whose graduates tend to perform better on the multiple choice questions than on the written ones. Both of these factors hold true at the school where I teach, the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, which offers a two-credit bar writing course. Through invitation letters and a priority enrollment procedure, the law school ensures the course includes a large percentage of students whose academic performance places them at higher risk of failing the bar exam. In the course, students write answers to several practice essays and a performance test under test-taking conditions and receive extensive feedback through various means. Initial lay statistical analysis suggests the course has had a positive impact on the law school's bar passage rate.

bar exam, preparation, for-credit, legal education, analysis, writing, bar passage rates

Abstract:
In 2006 the Pennsylvania Board of Law Examiners added employment discrimination as a tested subject on the essay portion of the state's bar exam, thereby making Pennsylvania the only state to test on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), and the employment title of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). It matters some which substantive subjects are tested on a bar exam, and to that extent, Pennsylvania's decision to add employment discrimination-a subject of considerable prominence in law practice and in the lives of ordinary people-is smart and forward-thinking. Equally wise was Pennsylvania's choice not to test on its own state law variations from the federal employment discrimination laws, which, albeit very important in day-to-day law practice within the Commonwealth, are too arcane to be the stuff of which bar exams should be made. However, Pennsylvania, like so many other states, continues to test on arcane state law variations within so many other subjects, including all those tested on the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE). Bar exams ought to be a means for evaluating fundamental lawyering skills and not the ability to engage in rote memorization of two layers of law within a myriad of subjects. Accordingly, the Pennsylvania Board of Law Examiners ought to follow its own example with employment discrimination and stop testing Pennsylvania law variations from fundamental legal principles or federal law within all subjects.

bar exam, bar, exam, Pennsylvania Bar Exam, employment discrimination, bar exam subjects