Research and Teaching on Law Faculties: An Empirical Exploration

2017

Murray for their helpful comments on this Article. Thanks to Greg Reilly, Roger Ford, and Brian J. Love for helpful suggestions.

2010

2004

After twenty years of teaching at Western New England College School of Law, I found myself frequently haunted by the maxim: "Those who can, do; those who cannot, teach."! I had left the practice of law after a mere four years. Since that time, I have become increasingly bothered by the fact that I was spending my career preparing students for a world that was more and more removed from my daily existence and memory. Although I stayed in touch with many practicing attorneys, including former colleagues, classmates, students, and lawyers in my community, I personally had not engaged in the practice of law in any meaningful way since 1982 when I joined the faculty of Western New England. I was bothered by the fact that I knew law practice had to have changed in twenty years, but I was only • Professor of Law, Western New England College School of Law. I would like to thank the lawyers at Cantor Colburn LLP in Bloomfield, Connecticut, for so generously and graciously allowing me to visit the firm during the Spring of 2003. In particular, I would like to thank Pamela S. Chestek and George A. Pelletier, Jr., who were remarkably willing to give me their time and attention so that I could learn about their practice experiences. In addition, I would like to thank Dean Arthur R. Gaudio and the administration of Western New England College School of Law for granting me a sabbatical leave so that I could take advantage of the opportunity to visit Cantor Colburn. I also want to thank

2004

After twenty years of teaching at Western New England College School of Law, I found myself frequently haunted by the maxim: "Those who can, do; those who cannot, teach."! I had left the practice of law after a mere four years. Since that time, I have become increasingly bothered by the fact that I was spending my career preparing students for a world that was more and more removed from my daily existence and memory. Although I stayed in touch with many practicing attorneys, including former colleagues, classmates, students, and lawyers in my community, I personally had not engaged in the practice of law in any meaningful way since 1982 when I joined the faculty of Western New England. I was bothered by the fact that I knew law practice had to have changed in twenty years, but I was only • Professor of Law, Western New England College School of Law. I would like to thank the lawyers at Cantor Colburn LLP in Bloomfield, Connecticut, for so generously and graciously allowing me to visit the firm during the Spring of 2003. In particular, I would like to thank Pamela S. Chestek and George A. Pelletier, Jr., who were remarkably willing to give me their time and attention so that I could learn about their practice experiences. In addition, I would like to thank Dean Arthur R. Gaudio and the administration of Western New England College School of Law for granting me a sabbatical leave so that I could take advantage of the opportunity to visit Cantor Colburn. I also want to thank

Journal of Legal Studies Education, 2015

The relationship between research and teaching has long been at the core of the unsettled debate over the development and distribution of human knowledge. When universities emerged as the prototype of higher education institutions and the reservoir of human knowledge in medieval Europe, their mission was attached to the preparation of qualified school teachers alongside the training of priests of the Catholic Church, legal professionals, and medical doctors. 1 Central to medieval universities was the diffusion of human knowledge, which resulted from the intellectual interest of university professors and their individual extramural research. 2 The collaboration of teaching and research was patterned in this way for centuries with teaching at the center of the mission of universities. 3 Yet, with the pursuit for advanced knowledge intensified, extramural research was no longer satisfactory

Indiana Law Journal, 2006

For the rational study of the law[,] ... the man of the future is the man of statistics and the master of economics.'-Oliver Wendell Holmes (1897) "[I]t is vitally important to determine whether the law is based on sound assumptions about how the world works and to what extent a particular law or process is achieving its stated objective and at what cost." 2-N. William Hines, President of Association of American Law Schools (AALS) (2005) Empirical legal scholarship (ELS) is arguably the next big thing in legal intellectual thought. ELS, as the term is generally used in law schools, refers to a specific type of empirical research: a model-based approach coupled with a quantitative method. The empirical legal scholar offers a positive theory of a law or legal institution and then tests that theory using quantitative techniques developed in the social sciences. The evidence may be produced by controlled experiment or collected systematically from real world observation. In either event, quantitative or statistical analysis is a central component of the project. Empirical research in law is not new. 3 Law professors, in the past, offered statistical studies on issues small, say parking violations in New Haven in the 1940s, 4 and large, such as jury versus judge verdicts in criminal trials. 5 Despite Holmes's forecast, however, work of this type was uncommon in law schools through most of the last century. 6 Few legal scholars published empirical studies in law reviews, the primary

2009

Hutchinson, Terry C. (2009) Academic legal research and academic research capacity enhancement working topic : "purposes and objectives of law schools beyond educating students (research, capacity building,community service and outreach)".

2016

Most non-profit law schools generate public goods of enormous value: important research, service to disadvantaged communities, and instruction that both educates students about present legal practice and encourages them to improve it. Each of these missions informs and enriches the others. However, technocratic management practices menace law schools’ traditional missions of balancing theory and practice, advocacy and scholarly reflection, study of and service to communities. This article defends the unity and complementarity of law schools’ research, service, and teaching roles. (For those short on time, the chart on pages 45-46 encapsulates the conflicting critiques of law schools which this article responds to.)

2011

Commentators have observed two apparent trends in the use of legal scholarship by the judiciary. First, judges now cite law review articles in their opinions with less frequency. Second, despite this general decline in the invocation of legal scholarship, judges now cite articles in specialty journals with more frequency. Some commentators attribute the apparent decline in the courts’ use of legal scholarship to the increasingly theoretical and impractical nature of that scholarship. A few studies even suggest that the increasing use of specialty journals by the courts reflects the gap between the content of legal scholarship in general law reviews and the practical needs of the judiciary. Others defend the academy, taking the position that academics continue to write meaningful doctrinal articles and that theoretical and interdisciplinary pieces encourage broader intellectual discourse regarding legal issues. The study underlying this article analyzes and counters the claim of the ...

2011

The After Tenure study, jointly funded by the American Bar Foundation and the Law SchoolAdmission Council, is the first in-depth examination of the professional lives of post-tenure law professors in the United States. It combines a national survey of post-tenure law professors witha set of follow-up interviews conducted with a subset of the survey respondents. A total of 1,174 professors completedthe survey;an additional 48answered substantial parts of the survey.Their responses provide the basis of this report, which contains descriptive statistics from the firstquantitative analyses. Future reports and articles will provide further quantitative and qualitativeresults.