Curricular Innovation
IAALS’ work in legal education began with a commitment to supporting curricular innovation and collaboration among legal educators.
Objectives:
- Support legal educators and law schools that are taking risks and innovating to improve legal education for the profession, for legal consumers, and for society.
- Collect and develop better tools for assessing programs of legal education.
Through online resources, annual conferences, and the first major evaluation of a non-traditional model of legal education, we developed a broad network of legal education innovators and an expansive collection of resources for educators.
IAALS formerly housed this work under its Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers initiative until 2018.
It has become an Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers Conference tradition to kick off the first day with a series of Ignite presentations. Presenters have 6 minutes, 20 slides, and 18 seconds per slide to share their projects, successes, and innovative ideas with a room full of legal educators and employers. Below is a list of past presentations.
2017:
- Charles H. Rose III: Simulated Client Experiences in Advocacy Competitions
- Kate Kruse, Ana Pottratz Acosta & Leanne Fuith: Client Contact from Day One
- Michael J. Madison: Teaching Leadership from the Bottom Up
- Stephanie Wilson: Law Librarians Embedding in Clinical Courses
- Christine E. Cerniglia: Serving the Community and Students through Courthouse Self-Help Desks
- Robert D. Dinerstein: Structuring Student Self-Assessment to Prepare Entry-Level Lawyers
- Leah Witcher Jackson Teague: Lawyers Are Leaders: Shouldn't Law Schools Better Prepare Students for this Role, Especially Now?
- Megan Riesmeyer, Lucy Johnston-Walsh: Advanced Clinic, Advanced Preparation
- Rona Sisson: Find Yourself, Find Your Clients - An Introduction to the Study of Legal Taxonomy
- Edward Hart: Alternative Legal Research - Going Beyond Wexis!
- Karen Lockwood: Tomorrow's Clients, Tomorrow's Lawyers, Tomorrow's Justice and Democracy
- John Mayer: Can Experiential Learning Solve the Access to Justice Problem?
- Stephanie Ledesma: Cultural Compassion - A New Model of Legal Representation
- Elizabeth Fraley: Helping Recent Grads Improve Access to Justice
- Robert Furnier: Learning to Serve Tomorrow's Clients by Building Technology
2016:
- Nancy Maurer, Christine Chung, Mary Lynch: Alumni Focus Groups and Pathway Competencies: capturing community expertise to inform student learning
- Charlene James: Talking Growth: Thurgood Marshall School of Law’s Faculty Resource Site
- Randy Wagner: Assessing Professional Identity Formation at Denver Law
- Josie Gough: Building a Community of Legal Professionals- A Collaborative Effort
- Rebecca Trammell: Are We Assessing the Right Things? Are We Teaching the Right Things?
- Mike Madison: Tracking Achievements and Competencies: A Digital Badging Strategy
- Orit Shalomson: Structured Simulations for a Large Number of Students in a Short Time
- Benjamin Madison: Remembering Carnegie's Third Apprenticeship: A Learning Outcome and Course Designed to Advance Professional/Ethical Formation and Decision-Making
- Courtney Brooks: Exposing student foundations: professional portfolios in externships
- Timothy Kaye: Feedback: Fixing Problems You Didn't Know You Had
- Elena Baylis: Equipping Law Students with Policy Skills
- David Thomson, Steve Daniels: What Students Say about Experiential Learning: Preliminary Results from a Three-year study at Denver Law
- Leanne Fuith: Integrating Career Development Across the Curriculum
- Jeff Pokorak: Lawyer Professionalism and Law Professorism – We Need a Universal Translator!
2015:
- Erika Pagano: Building the Future of Law Today
- Natt Gantt: Leadership Development for Law Students
- Randy Wagner: Assessing Learning Outcomes Piece by Piece
- Mary Lynch, Rosemary Queenan: Inclusive Strategic Planning and Adoption of Learning Outcomes
- Laurel Terry, Camille Marion: Dickinson Law’s New Curriculum and its Focus on Student Outcomes
- JoNel Newman: Students' Self Assessments of Competency
- Ann Southworth: Teaching Ethics and Professional Identity in the First Year
- Fernando Colon-Navarro: Technology and Assessment in the Legal Classroom
- Mary Bowman: Collaborating for Transfer
- Jerry Slater: Preliminary Outcomes of an Innovation Curriculum
- Andrew Crouse: Mitchell's Hybrid JD Program
- Dan Jackson, Hemanth Gundavaram: Northeastern Law’s Curriculum Transformation Project
- Rodger Citron: The Portals to Practice – Experiential Education at Touro
- Christine Cerniglia Brown: Learning Outcomes and Implementing New ABA Standards
- Docia Rudley, Cassandra Hill: Developing Meaningful Program Assessment
2014:
- David Thomson: The Experiential Advantage Program at the University of Denver
- Jeremy Paul: Law School Assessment, the Positives and the Negatives
- Andrew Schepard: Interdisciplinary Learning Through the RCSDF at the University of Denver
- Michael Madison: The Innovation Practice Institute
- Jay Finkelstein: Collaboration to Produce the Practice Aware Lawyer
- Ilene Seidman: Accelerator to Practice
- Natt Gantt, Ben Madison: Cultivating Professional Identity in Law School
- David Herring: Course Level Assessment to Institutional Level Assessment
- Jennifer Gundlach: Improving Learning Outcomes
- Kate Kruse: Hamline Lawyering Skills Lab
These course portfolios are shared here by professors who have distinguished themselves as leaders in legal education; who have incorporated into their own teaching a commitment to producing more practice-ready and professional graduates; and who demonstrate a willingness to share their expertise and experiences with others who want to develop these courses at their own institutions.
Portfolios include background material, video tutorials, teaching methods, recommendations and strategies for adaptation, and outcomes.
Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers Consortium (2011-2017)
IAALS' Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers initiative partnered with law schools that are committed to our mission of aligning legal education with the needs of an evolving profession. IAALS works with a wide range of law schools across the country and we are especially grateful to the schools below, which joined our Consortium during our formative years. We no longer have a formal Consortium, but we continue to benefit from our partnership with these and many other schools, as well as educators, lawyers, employers, and others who are making a difference in the way we educate tomorrow’s lawyers.
Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers Fellows
The Fellows of Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers are individuals who have distinguished themselves as leaders in legal education; who have incorporated into their own teaching a commitment to producing more practice-ready and professional graduates; and who demonstrate a willingness to share their expertise and experiences with others. ETL honors the Fellows for their achievements.