Answering the Call: Flipping the Classroom to Prepare Practice-Ready Attorneys

• Author: Alex Berrio Matamoros
• Position: Associate Law Library Professor and Emerging Technologies Librarian, City University of New York School of Law. I am grateful to my colleagues, Sue Bryant and Sarah Lamdan for their extensive comments and feedback, along with the many other CUNY School of Law faculty who commented on various drafts, and to my research assistant Logan Gerrity (C...
• Pages: 113-151

ANSWERING THE CALL: FLIPPING THE CLASSROOM

TO PREPARE PRACTICE-READY ATTORNEYS

ALEX BERRIO MATAMOROS *

I. ABSTRACT

In the rough and changing landscape of the legal job market, legal

employers have called on law schools to prepare “practice ready”

attorneys—newly minted members of the bar with better honed practical

skills than the first year lawyers of the past.1 The increasing emphasis on

legal skills sheds light on an interesting paradox within legal education; in

legal skills courses—those that best lend themselves to active learning

experiences—instructors frequently fill valuable classroom time with

passive lectures to convey the related theory and best practices. Recently,

several legal skills instructors have adopted a flipped classroom model to

remedy this paradox by using commonplace technology to make concise

lecture videos available online for students to view on their own time,

creating additional classroom time for active skills development under the

supervision of an experienced instructor.2

This Article presents an assessment of the literature and limited

empirical studies on the effectiveness of using a flipped classroom model

in higher education courses. After discussing the pedagogical and learning

benefits of flipped classrooms, it then advocates for at least the partial

implementation of a flipped classroom model in legal skills courses to

create more opportunities for active learning with the expectation of

similar increases in student performance that have appeared in other areas

of higher education.

Copyright © 2015, Alex Berrio Matamoros.

* Associate Law Library Professor and Emerging Technologies Librarian, City

University of New York School of Law. I am grateful to my colleagues, Sue Bryant and

Sarah Lamdan for their extensive comments and feedback, along with the many other

CUNY School of Law faculty who commented on various drafts, and to my research

assistant Logan Gerrity (CUNY School of Law, Class of 2015) for his in-depth research

and thorough editing assistance.

1 Cf. Martha Neil, NY State Bar Urges ABA to Encourage Law Schools to Focus on

Educating ‘Practice Ready’ Attorneys, A.B.A. J. (Aug. 5, 2011, 7:59 AM),

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/new_york_state_bar_urges_aba_to_strengthen_la

w_school_focus/ (indicating a state bar association is pushing law school to improve in this

regard).

2 See discussion infra Part III.A.

114 CAPITAL UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [43:113

II. INTRODUCTION

“Rightsizing.”3 “New normal.”4 “Market correction.”5 “Practice

ready.”6 Buzzwords abound in news stories about the changing landscapes

of the legal profession, its job market, and legal education since the

economic downturn in 2008; few buzzwords are more popular than “new

normal” and “practice ready.”7 While the fuzziness of the “new normal” is

beginning to sharpen, there has never been any ambiguity in the call for

law schools to produce more practice-ready attorneys. Law firms and

other legal employers no longer want to spend the time and money to teach

new lawyers the fundamental skills of law practice.8 Instead, they are

calling on law schools to place a greater emphasis on teaching law students

how to be lawyers, not just how to think like lawyers.9 Law schools are

3 Edwin B. Reeser, Law Firms in the Great Recession: Looking for Change in all the

Wrong Places, A.B.A. J. (Sept. 5, 2013, 8:19 AM), http://www.abajournal.com/legalrebels/

article/law_firms_in_the_great_recession_looking_for_change_in_all_the_wrong_places/;

Janet L. Conley, ‘Intentional Rightsizing’ in ’09 Pays Off for Firm in 2010, N.Y. L.J (Feb.

28, 2011), http://www.newyorklawjournal.com/PubArticleNY.jsp?id=1202485778945;

Molly McDonough, Economy Better, But More Partner Layoffs to Come, Survey Says,

A.B.A. J. (June 24, 2009, 4:20 AM), http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/economy_

better_but_more_partner_layoffs_to_come_survey_says/.

4 Victor Fleischer, The Shift Toward Law School Specialization, N.Y. TIMES (Oct. 25,

2012, 12:22 PM), http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/10/25/the-shift-toward-law-school-

specialization/.

5 Bill Henderson, The Competition is for Full-Time, Professional Law-Related Jobs,

Part I, LAW PROFESSORS BLOG NETWORK (June 28, 2013),

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/ legalwhiteboard/2013/06/the-competition-is-full-time-

professional-law-related-jobs.html; Law School Deans Discuss the Crisis and

Transformation in Legal Education, NIAGARA FOUND. FALLS (Nov. 4, 2013),

http://niagarafoundationfalls.wordpress.com/2013/11/04/ legal-education/.

6 Neil, supra note 1; Debra Cassens Weiss, How Law Schools Can Produce ‘Practice

Ready’ Grads: Operate Their Own Law Firms, A.B.A. J. (Aug. 18, 2011, 1:11 AM),

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/how_law_schools_can_produce_practice_ready_gr

ads_operate_their_own_law_firm/.

7 See, e.g., Fleischer, supra note 4; Neil, supra note 1.

8 See David Segal, What They Don’t Teach Law Students: Lawyering, N.Y. TIMES,

Nov. 20, 2011, at A22. See also Jennifer Smith, Identifying the Problems with Law

Schools, WALL ST. J. L. BLOG (Sept. 20, 2013, 2:00 AM),

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2013/09/20/aba-task-force-weighs-in-on-legal-education-crisis/.

9 R. Michael Cassidy, Beyond Practical Skills: Nine Steps for Improving Legal

Education Now, 53 B.C. L. REV. 1515, 1516–17 (2012). See also Fleischer, supra note 4;

Segal, supra note 8, at A2.

2015] ANSWERING THE CALL 115

answering the call, and across the nation schools are expanding their

offering of legal skills courses and beginning to place greater emphasis on

skills development.10

Overhauling a school’s curriculum to introduce intensive small group

instruction on writing, research, and lawyering skills,11 or requiring

participation in a clinic12—both curricular “innovations” some schools

have practiced for decades13—indicates that not only are law schools

giving students more options to prepare for practice by voluntarily taking

elective skills courses, but also many law faculties are realizing that skills

instruction must be more fully embedded in the law school experience.

In all the discussion of preparing practice-ready graduates, little

mention has been made of the ways in which these legal skills courses are

being taught. Any U.S. lawyer can tell you that legal writing and research

instruction usually involves in-class lectures and out-of-class writing or

research assignments.14 Similarly, other lawyering skills courses may

contain lengthy lectures, although some part of the class time is saved for

role-playing or participatory exercises.15 However, ask a law student how

they would like these courses to operate and you will likely hear that,

ideally, the expert instructors would spend as much time as possible giving

them personal attention or small-group coaching in order to guide them

through their skills development. Such guidance is similar to the

10 See Fleischer, supra note 4.

11 See Brian Kelley, Law School Launches New Program, WM. & MARY L. SCH. (Jan. 9,

2013), http://www.wm.edu/news/stories/2013/law-school-launches-new-program123.php

(announcing William & Mary Law School’s new Legal Practice Program, designed to

introduce students to lawyering skills in their first and second years).

12 See A Cornerstone of the Curriculum, U.C. IRVINE SCH. L., http://www.law.uci.edu/

academics/real-life-learning/clinics/ (last visited Oct. 3, 2014) (describing the clinical

program at U.C. Irvine School of Law and the requirement that students complete at least

one semester of clinical education).

13 See Curriculum & Course Descriptions, CITY U. N.Y. SCH. L.,

http://www.law.cuny.edu/academics/courses/curriculum.html (last visited Oct. 3, 2014)

(describing CUNY School of Law’s lawyering skills program and clinical requirement that

has been in place since the school’s founding in 1983). See also Barbara L. Bezdek, T he

CUNY Law Program: Integration of Doctrine, Practice, & Theory in the Preparation of

Lawyers, 9 J. OF PROF. LEGAL EDUC. 59, 60, 63, 66–68 (discussing the early clinic and

conenctration programs).

14 See discussion infra Par t III.C.

15 See, e.g., The Litigation Experience, ARIZ. ST. C. L., https://www.law.asu.edu/

programs/OtherPrograms/TrialAdvocacyProgram/TheLitigationExperience.aspx

(last visited Oct. 3, 2014).