Legal Commentary

I am looking for suggestions / self- or other-nominations of law professors who use singing as part of their classroom teaching. Turns out, many do and students love it! HLS's Dean Bob Clark for example is well-known for having composed approximately 50 jingles that he then sung to his corporations classes. The Committee on Curricular Reform is planning to showcase some of these musical talents at the AALS plenary on teaching this year in San Diego.

Following the success and great interest (record attendance according to the AALS administrators) of last year?s plenary session on Rethinking Legal Education for the 21st Century, this year the Committee on Curricular Reform is organizing a three hour plenary session of demonstrations, panels and discussions, entitled Workshop on Redesigning Legal Education. Here is a brief description put forth by our committee chair, Vanderbilt?s Dean Ed Rubin:

Getting down to specifics this year, we will address some of the most promising -- and most troublesome ? possibilities in legal education: the integration of academic and skills training, the use of technology in the classroom and beyond, the assessment of student learning, the lessons that pedagogic theory offers about standard, often unexamined legal teaching methods, and the appropriate level of formality or informality between the classroom teacher and the students. At the core of these various issues, which will be presented through suitably varied formats, is a central question: What should law professors do to be effective teachers? Should they incorporate simulations into lecture classes, ask students to answer classroom questions en masse over the Internet, employ evaluation devices during the course of the semester, alter their approach in light of contemporary psychological theories, sing a song at the beginning of class? The workshop will offer a (necessarily brief) overview of path-breaking developments on these topics, and provide resources for further exploration.

The program itself will include segments on assessment (organized by committee member, and my former dean, Dan Rodriguez (Texas), learning theory (organized by Bill Sullivan), integration of clinical and skills training in academic programs (organized by Larry Marshall) and demonstration of technology in the classroom (organized by Larry Cunningham).

To warm things up, we are planning a short segment at the beginning of our program of ?legal education and song singing? or ?musical law teaching,? followed by a brief discussion about pedagogic distance -- how informal a teacher should be with her students? I am in charge of organizing this first part and I am looking for suggestions as to those fabulous courageous teachers who use the technique of singing songs about torts, contracts, common law cases, law and policy as part of their teaching. You can either post comments or email me directly with names. The workshop as a whole is a rich and exciting program and I am sure many will find it highly relevant to their work as teachers and educators. Stay tuned!