Legal Writing Conference Aims at Getting Law Students Prepared

An upcoming conference at Duquesne is expected to draw nearly 100 experts from universities and law schools across the nation whose concern is preparing students for law school success and the bar exam.

The daylong conference, to be held on Saturday, Dec. 6, in the law school, is titled Teaching the Academically Underprepared Law Student. Designed to benefit a variety of legal education professionals—including legal writing professors and those focusing on bar-exam preparation as well as academic success instructors, librarians, academic advisors and administrators—the event marks the fourth annual national legal writing conference to be held at Duquesne.

According to Jan Levine, associate professor and director of School of Law’s nationally ranked Legal Research and Writing Program, meeting the needs of underprepared law students is an increasingly critical issue. Today’s college students, Levine explained, may not have developed critical thinking skills. Consequently, they could enter law schools without the same facility in reading, writing and research as peers in previous generations.

“Over the past three decades, there have been significant changes in the generational characteristics and educational training of college students, and those changes have had a major impact on legal education,” said Levine.

Participants will attend various sessions at the conference that will address:

• overviews of generational characteristics and the socio-economic backgrounds of law students
• reports on studies of critical reading and writing skills
• suggested changes to the pre-law-school curriculum and law school admissions process
• numerous concrete suggestions on pedagogical approaches for teaching current law students.

Bloomberg BNA, Thomson Reuters Westlaw and Carolina Academic Press are sponsoring the conference. For more information, call 412.396.1048 or visit the conference website.