 **Editors Note**
Editor's Note: Yesterday's issue #3 of this newsletter was erroneously dated July 30, 2010 and should have been dated September 28, 2010. Here is another copy of it with the correct date so your archive will be correct and so, if you wish to forward it to
anyone--and we hope you do--they will get an accurately dated copy. I apologize for two emails in 24 hours! Chuck Bingaman
 Equipping Our Lawyers Newsletter Issue #3!
See www.equippingourlawyers.org for a detailed look at the University of New Hampshire's Daniel Webster Scholars program that introduces students to practice during law school and, upon completion, admits them to the bar without the traditional bar exam. (They DO have to pass the Multistate Ethics Examination and a character and fitness check.)
The New Hampshire program has been in 'pilot' status for four years but has recently been given permanent status by the New Hampshire Supreme Court and the New Hampshire Board of Law Examiners. (In case the University of New Hampshire School of Law is not familiar to you, it was the independent Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord until three weeks ago.)
North Carolina Bar Sponsors Full-Day Summit on 'Preparing Lawyers for Tomorrow's Profession: The Future Is At Hand'
On September 10, the North Carolina Bar hosted nearly 100 lawyers, judges, and law school deans and faculty to discuss issues facing the profession in the state.
As NCBA President Gene Pridgen put it, the purpose was 'to begin the dialogue and see where it takes us.'
Keynote presentations and breakout sessions touched on many of the topics in last year's Equipping Our Lawyers Summit and on the Recommendations that came out of the Summit. Several North Carolina leaders stressed the interrelationships between the practicing bar that depends of the state's law schools to produce qualified young lawyers and the law schools that rely on the bar to offer employment opportunities. And they explored ways in which those interrelationships have fallen out of balance in recent years with more law school graduates than the bar can absorb, especially in the current economic downturn, and less time and resources in the bar to provide the practice training that law school graduates need.
While the final report of the NCBA conference is not yet complete'we will try to share it on the Equipping Our Lawyers website when it is ready'all agreed that it was a useful and enlightening dialog exposing immediate and serious problems that all elements of the profession must address.
 Sources of New'and Proven'Ideas for Law School Teaching and ALL Law Teaching!
Improving the teaching of law students and all lawyers throughout their careers is at the core of the Summit Recommendations. Summit Recommendations #1 reads as follows:
Each law school must define the content and teaching methods for its curriculum to ensure that its graduates are capable of serving as effective beginning professionals. To do so, it must...
- Define the learning outcomes it wishes to produce
- Design the curriculum and engage faculty to produce those outcomes
- Use proven teaching/learning methods that will produce the desired outcomes
- Evaluate its success at achieving the learning outcomes
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A significant resource for aiding law school deans and faculty members, CLE directors and in-house training leaders is Teaching Law by Design: Engaging Students from the Syllabus to the Final Exam by Washburn School of Law Prof. Michael Hunter Schwartz and Sophie Sparrow (2009 Carolina Academic Press ISBN #978-1-59460-497-3). In it, Schwartz and Sparrow review the latest research in teaching/learning and apply it to the needs of law and law students. The Appendix, 'Selected Resources'Books, Articles, Newsletters, Videos and Websites', is a comprehensive, invaluable addition to the library of anyone interested in improving teaching and learning in law.
Two other valuable resources for those interested in improving teaching and learning, not focused on the legal scene but valuable and relevant nevertheless, are What Great Teachers Do Differently: 14 Things That Matter Most by Todd Whitaker (2004 Eye on Education, ISBN #1-930556-69-1) and Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques That Can Put Students on the Path to Colleges by Doug Lemov (2010 John Wiley & Sons).
Teach Like a Champion is the result of the authors studying'and videotaping'great teachers and breaking down their techniques to identify and explain the subtle moves they make that set them and their results apart. And you get a CD with many of the videos along with the book. Each of these great books would support worthwhile faculty or staff discussions or strategic plans for improving teaching and learning for lawyers.
 English Group Considering Periodic Bar 'Reaccreditation'
Old friend Alan Treleaven of the Law Society of British Columbia sent along the following article from the August 19 (English) Law Society Gazette online edition...
'JAG plan for advocate reaccreditation 'every five years'
Law Society Gazette online Aug. 19 2010
All criminal solicitor-advocates and barristers including Queen's Counsel would face compulsory reaccreditation every five years under proposals put forward by the Joint Advocacy Group (JAG) last week.
The JAG was established by the Bar Standards Board, the Solicitors Regulation Authority and ILEX Professional Standards to develop a scheme to quality assure criminal advocacy across the three professions.
It proposes that the new accreditation scheme should include four levels of criminal advocacy, ranging from work in the magistrates' court at level 1, to complex Crown court work at level 4, similar to the levels used by the Crown Prosecution Service. Advocates would be assessed against a common minimum standard of advocacy at each level.
All advocates would be subject to reaccreditation by various methods, including judicial evaluation and performance portfolio, with a 'traffic light' system used to weed out underperformance.
Under the plans an independent body, the Performance of Advocacy Council, would become the central assessor body, chaired initially by a senior criminal judge.
The JAG said the scheme proposed was cost effective, proportionate and straightforward, but accepted there was 'considerable' work still to do to bring it into operation.
The new scheme is scheduled for introduction by July 2011. The consultation will end on 12 November.'
Ed. Note: Of course such a proposal is beyond the subject and geographical scope of our Summit Recommendations, but I share Alan's thought that it might be of interest to readers of this newsletter. We will be looking into attempts to define needed practice competencies and how and when to teach them, and that leads toward issues related to testing for their possession by practitioners. To see the Gazette, visit www.lawsocietygazatte.co.uk. CCB
Spreading Word of This Newsletter and the Related Website
You can help build momentum for the Summit Recommendations by alerting interested people to our website, www.equippingourlawyers.org, and urging them to sign up for this periodic newsletter to keep abreast of developments in strengthening the continuum of legal education. They can sign up for the newsletter on the website homepage. Or, if you have a governing committee or board that you wish to keep abreast of the continuum new developments in the continuum of legal education from law school through practice, you can send their email list to chuck@chuckbingaman.com for future newsletter issues. (Of course we make no other use of the email addresses, and subscribers are free to unsubscribe at any time.)
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