I would advocate using Legal Practice Workshop as a test run for the type of course that would involve consistent feedback from instructor to student. What might be a good idea is combining Legal Methods, LPW, and Legal Research into one course, but keeping the intensive 3 weeks and the final for LM. Would there be any way to have Legal Methods sections of maybe 40 students, taught by more professors (including 1L core class professors), and have the full professor who teaches LM continue to be involved in the LPW class until the very end? Obviously this would require more work by the professors.

I would agree with switching to a letter grade to encourage students to take the work more seriously.

One part of LM should be exam taking skills. The first couple weeks of LPW- same thing. This might eliminate a lot of anxiety around exams if people know what to do to study, how to outline, take practice exams, etc.

We could spend one credit hour a week on learning how to write, research, construct arguments, and another on having speakers or learning about the legal profession. The school could have a "speaker database" the Associates-in-Law could use to find speakers. We could have public interest lawyers, private practitioners, judges, politicians, professors.

The course should be increased to 2 credit hours per week, Legal Research should probably be merged with LPW. Attendance at my LR section was rather low, as was student participation (although that might have had something to do with the early morning hours). I think directly tying it in to LPW would be successful. That would bring total credit hours per week to a manageable 14 during the semester (not counting LM).

We should increase the amount of feedback dealing with actual research, including smaller research assignments exploring both Westlaw and Lexis, before we have to write the memo.

The problem is that any expansion of the LPW class might be opposed by students and professors because it increases their workload.

-- JonathanWaisnor - 11 Feb 2010