[ I have cleaned up the copy I used to make editorial marks. ]

Teaching Lawyers

Introduction

Columbia is blessed with faculty committed to teaching, but cursed by dreadful instruction. As a former teacher and trainer of teachers and their managers, I am confident that our professors posses the ability and desire to do great things in their classrooms. Unfortunately, they lack foundational elements necessary to ensure student success.

• I think the phrase "lack foundational elements" might be understood as precisely the sort of personal criticism you are striving to avoid. These guys don't lack foundational anything, I believe is sort of your very polite claim. They just don't have the right context in which to bring their lucid and powerful minds to bear.

The Ideal

Vision, Assessment, and Planning (VAP)

Teach For America, after investigating successful classroom instruction, found that student achievement is predicated upon (1) a vision (2) aligned plans and (3) strong assessments.

• You might want to point out that this isn't rocket science. It's an attempt to reduce the basics of what we know from our attempts to learn what actually works in classrooms, and it's not different if you're trying to teach people (1) reading, (2) how to run a nuclear submarine, and (3) how to be effective negotiators in the course of diplomatic relations. There is some tendency among people who teach people how to be lawyers to disbelieve that effective ways of teaching second grade are either necessary or sufficient in law school.

VAP in the Classroom

Clear goals are essential for student learning. Teachers must know exactly where they are going and what their students will know and be able to do when they get there. Otherwise, the classroom is aimless - often based on content coverage rather than student mastery. By itself, however, even an ambitious goal is insufficient. It must be broken down into units, weeks, classes, and activities – each aligned to the one before – so that every moment is used purposefully. Finally, assessments must be used both to gather information about student learning and to reveal teacher effectiveness: good teachers use assessments to improve their teaching.

• You might want to point out that the idea of disciplined teaching is not actually regarded anywhere as optional. Even if one's attitude about curricular delivery involved a different way of expressing the goals of the class and the means of attaining them, there should still be an accountable process for converting class minutes into progress towards goals.

Teaching as Leadership

This framework is not unique. It simply applies fundamental characteristics of strong leadership to the classroom. When Eben says “all it takes to achieve a goal is to know exactly what you want to accomplish and exactly how to get there,” he is articulating the same concept. When Barry Goldstein prepares a class action lawsuit, he first identifies the desired settlement and then traces back the steps required to get there. This is what leaders do. While thinking this way is unnatural to some, it can be taught, developed, and mastered. One can learn to be a leader.

Current Practice

Instruction at Columbia Law School Lacks Teacher Leadership.

I spoke with each of my professors about their (teaching) practice. Only one mentioned specific objectives for student learning. Others articulated broad goals around critical thinking or speaking, but nothing concrete. Their focus is content coverage not depth of understanding. This was true whether they taught 31 (or 14) students as well as 90. Success can happen in large or small class settings. What is necessary is not constant individual attention, but rather a strong sense of purpose that comes with working towards a meaningful goal.

• You might want to save words elsewhere to add some here. The form of the traditional law school course does not give the convened group any common purpose, despite the enormous technical improvements in collaboration now available. Using those tools, everyone in a large group is a potential front-rank collaborator, with no upper limit on the availability of engagement.

Assessment, too, is almost uniformly disastrous. Despite daily opportunities for informal assessment, syllabi are adjusted only due to time constraints. Where teachers should be determining student mastery and adjusting course, they are, instead, going through the motions of the Socratic Method, student by student, until they reach the end of their list. As a result, participation becomes an exercise in holding student attention rather than information gathering.

• This is the point set up above. Both syllabus and method are flawed by an absence of collaboration. It may not make complete sense to describe second grade as a work of collaboration between teacher and class, but in law school that should not only be a potential metaphor, but an actual reality.

As for planning, the syllabi we receive are not roadmaps from ignorance to content mastery, but checklists covering various topics within a doctrine. Forcing students to conform to generic plans, rather than adapting instruction to their needs, prevents the majority of students from maximizing their achievement. The “read the next three cases in the casebook” approach to curriculum mapping is evidence of a misunderstanding of purpose.

• Once again, this is actually a potential source of fruitful disagreement. Those who think students should follow the structure of doctrine as it is ideally supposed to be inferred from a reading of appellate decisions--though this is not actually the way they themselves think about the content of the law--may want to attempt a reasoned, principled defense of the forms of didactic material they not only use but also profitably help to create in proprietary form.

It is possible that the poor teaching during 1L year is due to instructor apathy. However, almost without exception, each of my professors has been committed to my learning. In fact, the great majority of them are teaching 1Ls particularly because they sought out the opportunity. Professors want us to do well and they want to help, they just don’t seem to know how.

• Perfect.

Improvement

We must provide an opportunity for Columbia’s committed instructors to align their practice with the teaching as leadership framework. The first step is to support those professors who are leaders in other aspects of their lives to apply leadership skills to their classrooms, while developing leadership in those whose leadership is dormant.

• This, I fear, cannot help but offend the amour propre of those who would be supposed, even at a stretch of imagination, not to be leaders. As well as fanning the antagonism against anyone who was anointed by this process as possessing leadership. Yet it must be said, somehow, I suppose.

Quick Wins

First, I reject the idea that our professors do not take teaching seriously. Jack Greenberg, for example, doesn’t need to teach another day in his life. He is here because he enjoys it. The same can be said about most (all?) of his colleagues. Faculty members are accessible, if not eager to assist, and already spend time preparing for class. Just as colleges and grade schools provide professional development, we should, in addition to opportunities to discuss current developments in the law, create space for faculty to learn about current developments in education. Armed with the tools necessary to improve student learning across the board, many would take the initiative to adapt their practice: ensuring their ability lives up to their ambition.

• I think you would actually benefit substantially from leaving out anyone's name in that first sentence. Your argument is still profoundly and beneficially general.

Second, the class curve masks teacher effectiveness. If every class has the same grade distribution, outcomes are not tied to teacher input. Grades should reflect how close students came to meeting ambitious classroom goals as both a reflection of student ability and teacher performance. Such a change would encourage teachers to ensure that every student reached their maximum potential without sacrificing the precise knowledge about individual achievement necessary to make judgments about a particular student’s work. A holistic approach to assessment is warranted. Professors should aggregate various information about individual student achievement (class participation, written assignments, etc.) and compare it both to the class goal and the individual student’s baseline ability. If anonymity in formal assessment is insisted upon, it can be done by designing assessments prior to instruction, aligning them to an objective rubric, and having a third party distribute grades.

• Ah, yes, that. It isn't going to be possible, and it's hardly necessary to provide a mechanism, but thank you for presenting one that could work, if only we didn't know themselves that we'd never abide by it.

Finally, the law school community must reward successful teachers as they do successful academics. Professors who mentor students into careers that suit their interests and desires should be celebrated.

• Too absurd to be thinkable.

Conclusion

By aligning instruction to the basic principles of leadership, classes will be more focused, student mastery will increase, and, therefore, Columbia will graduate more proficient lawyers. Since many (if not the vast majority) of the faculty already have the requisite desire to see students succeed, equipping them with the tools necessary to ensure success will create a 1L curriculum focused on student learning.

• I think a faculty discussion of this essay, if it were made still more diplomatic at one or two spots for sensitive dispositions, could be arranged, and would be fascinating. I think you have done a very fine job in presenting a simple and compelling case. It would prove a useful jumping off point, if people would let themselves listen.

This is in response to a point Eben made more than something you said Adam. I'm not convinced that teaching law is the same as teaching math. I don't think you can teach philosophy the same way as you can teach math. The Premise of all the legal realism stuff we read at the beginning of the semester implies that understanding the law is a little like understanding the soft sciences, and people do develop different conceptions and different understandings of different things in the law. I agree that there are a lot of teachers at Columbia who could do a lot of things better. But, maybe the reason that the teachers can't clearly articulate their goals is because they're just trying to teach us how to think and analyze things on our own, under the assumption, that afterwards, we'll be able to teach ourselves anything. How do you assess the answers to questions that have no right answers? Should the Supreme Court apply strict scrutiny to gender inequalities the way it does to race inequalities? No one can "teach" you the answer to that question.

So, while i agree that there's much room for improvement, ie, there's a lot about the actually practicing law that we all realize we learn virtually nothing about here, i still disagree with the premise that teaching law like second grade math is the solution. I for one, would like to discover the law more than have it taught to me, and i feel like some aspects of the current method are good, because they leave room for me to pave my own way to some degree, in my law school experience.

-- OluwafemiMorohunfola - 08 Apr 2008

"They're just trying to teach us how to think and analyze things on our own."

Maybe we should cut the faculty and give some of their salary back as tuition grants since we're paying to teach ourselves?

-- KateVershov - 08 Apr 2008

Kate, in the classroom, teaching the theory of law is doable; teaching the practice of law is an impossible task. This probably seems obvious, but my instinctual suggestion is that the best you can do for now is to sign up for as many 2L clinical credits as you can -- at least that will get you partly out of the classroom and into real cases. I do think the school sees a problem here and is trying to address it; it's a shame that the whole 3L year couldn't be built around clinical-type experiences, though.

-- BarbPitman - 09 Apr 2008