Democratizing Legal Education

Democratizing Legal Education
Author: Renee (Newman) Knake Jefferson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 37
Release: 2013
Genre:
ISBN:

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Millions of Americans lack representation for their legal problems while thousands of lawyers are unemployed. Why? Commentators and academics offer a range of answers to this question, from economic factors to regulatory constraints. Whatever the root cause, clearly a massive delivery problem exists for personal legal services. Most individuals simply do not realize when a lawyer might be necessary or helpful. This Article, written at the invitation of the Connecticut Law Review for their Volume 45 Symposium entitled "Are Law School's Passing the Bar? Examining the Demands and Limitations of the Legal Education Market," suggests that democratizing legal education -- i.e., systematically providing basic information about how to access legal services to the general public -- offers a solution to the unmet need for those services, as well as to the unemployment crisis among the legal profession more broadly. Law schools have an important role to play in this effort. This article offers three recommendations.

Law Democratized

Law Democratized
Author: Renee Knake Jefferson
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2024-01-09
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1479820407

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A practical plan for providing legal help to all, regardless of resources Millions of people in the United States face legal problems without lawyers to help them. Why? How do we educate and inform the public about the law so they can understand when the services of a lawyer are necessary or desirable? When can individuals solve legal problems on their own or with the assistance of a specialist without a traditional law degree? In short, how do we democratize the law? Law Democratized offers a blueprint to increase legal help for everyone, regardless of their ability to pay. Building on more than a decade of research into innovation in legal services, the book advances a series of recommendations inspired by success stories from around the globe. Renee Knake Jefferson outlines different paths pursued by bar associations, courts, entrepreneurs, law schools, nonprofits, and others, evaluating the promise and pitfalls of each. She analyzes regulatory reforms employed in other nations, along with emerging efforts in a handful of US states. If the rule of law is the bedrock that American democracy rests upon, then the justice transformed system must be open and user-friendly to all. Law Democratized makes a compelling argument for transforming the American legal landscape through engaged citizenship, ethical innovation, expanded education, and regulatory reform, in order to democratize law and make legal help more accessible.

Legal Education and Technology

Legal Education and Technology
Author: Russell G. Pearce
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2023
Genre:
ISBN:

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The current technological transformation of legal education, including computer-based, interactive, and online modes of instruction, represents “one of the most dramatic technological revolutions in history, if not the most dramatic.” As the AI-based technological revolution accelerated dramatically in the 1990s, many commentators responded to the “commercial spread of the Internet” with utopian faith in its potential to equalize and democratize knowledge and power. This faith gave way to a second wave of comments criticizing the “damages... to historically subservient groups”, the threat of “disinformation” and polarization of democracy, the consolidation of power in Big Tech and authoritarian governments, and the threat to privacy in general. Today's commentators are challenged to determine if and how to address these harms while realizing the potential benefits of AI-powered technology, especially given the impact and use of technology during the forced experimentation that took place during the COVID-19 pandemic. In assessing the potential impact of technology on legal education, this paper focuses primarily on legal education in the United States, although we will include some comparative ideas. Part I provides the context for our analysis - how legal education functions today to maintain hier- archy and inequality regardless of any specific reliance on technology. Part II examines the way law schools currently use online legal education, and its minimal impact on democratizing legal education. Part III will explore the potential of technology to improve legal education, including democratizing legal knowledge and power.

Democratizing Legal Services

Democratizing Legal Services
Author: Laura Snyder
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2016-10-11
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1498529801

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We live in a “law-thick” world. For individuals and organizations in both the public and private sectors, navigating the large number of complex laws, rules, institutions, and procedures that pervade American life is virtually impossible without some assistance. Some argue that "there are too many lawyers." Others argue that the unmet need for legal services is so high that it constitutes a human rights crisis. This book exposes why it is easy to access legal services for some, while it is virtually impossible for others, and why some lawyers have successful careers, but others cannot. This book argues that the problems plaguing legal services in the US can be only be addressed by a radical overhaul of the rules that govern how legal services may be delivered, as well as radical changes to who exercises the power to make those rules. Through interviews with those with experience with alternative legal service providers, this book exposes the formidable obstacles that exist along the path to those changes, as well as the opportunities that await. More information can be found at: www.notjustforlawyers.com

Law School 2.0

Law School 2.0
Author: David I. C. Thomson
Publisher: LexisNexis/Matthew Bender
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2009
Genre: Computers
ISBN:

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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 credible reports recommending change, most recently those from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and from 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 has 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 practice of tomorrow.

The Export of Legal Education

The Export of Legal Education
Author: D. Wes Rist
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2016-03-16
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1317032292

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This collection is the multifaceted result of an effort to learn from those who have been educated in an American law school and who then returned to their home countries to apply the lessons of that experience in nations experiencing social, economic, governmental, and legal transition. Written by an international group of scholars and practitioners, this work provides a unique insight into the ways in which legal education impacts the legal system in the recipient’s home country, addressing such topics as efforts to influence the current style of legal education in a country and the resistance faced from entrenched senior faculty and the use of U.S. legal education methods in government and private legal practice. This book will be of significant interest not only to legal educators in the United States and internationally, and to administrators of legal education policy and reform, but also to scholars seeking a more in-depth understanding of the connections between legal education and socio-political change.

Diversity Judgments

Diversity Judgments
Author: Roy L. Brooks
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 657
Release: 2022-03-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108424325

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Shows how the Supreme Court can repair its diminished legitimacy in a society committed to diversity and inclusion.

Legal Education and the Reproduction of Hierarchy

Legal Education and the Reproduction of Hierarchy
Author: Duncan Kennedy
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2007-03
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0814748058

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This well-known 'underground' classic critique of legal education is available for the first time in book form. This edition contains commentary by leading legal educations.