October 13, 1994: Vol26n6: Law School revising curriculum to accent 'practical lawyering'

By STEVE COX
Reporter Staff

top-to-bottom revision of its academic curriculum is on the horizon
for the UB Law School. That will mean plenty of changes over the next
few years as it seeks to build on its innovative leadership among law
schools nationally, predicts Acting Law School Dean Thomas Headrick.
	There will be more faculty, more course offerings, more
hands-on training, fewer traditional exams and possibly fewer
students. But whether the new curriculum, more than two years in the
making, is fully implemented, is still largely in the hands of state
and university leaders, cautions Headrick.
	A recent Bar Association study, the MacCrate Report, issued a
strong plea for law schools to "get more practical." While that report
may have hastened this process, said Headrick, even before MacCrate,
the law school faculty had sought a curriculum that shifted emphasis
toward teaching students "to work like lawyers, not just think like
them."
	The law school faculty gave final approval to the first-year
portion of the curriculum at a full faculty meeting Sept. 30. It will
be implemented with next fall's entering class. Graduates of the new
curriculum will receive degrees that feature specialization in one
area of law, a full portfolio of work-product produced during law
school that includes written as well as audio/video materials, and
practical experience as a working lawyer through school-sponsored
legal clinics.
	The law school received a one-time infusion of $260,000 from
the state legislature for upgrading computer technology in this year's
budget, and an overall increase, from SUNY Central, of $875,000 to its
baseline budget, which was around $5 million. This increase will be
phased in, half at a time this year and next, according to Associate
Provost Sean Sullivan. It will mean seven or eight additional faculty
members for the law school, Sullivan said, and an additional $200,000
per year for the law library.
	However, Headrick says this is still short of the amount
needed for full implementation of the new curriculum. He pegged the
total cost of the desired restructuring, even with reduced enrollment,
at nearly $1.5 million over the current budget, or about $6.5 million
per year. Efforts are already under way to beef up private development
at the school and resources could be reallocated from other areas of
the university to close this revenue gap, said Headrick.
	Sullivan and Headrick indicated that careful consideration
would be given to raising faculty salary levels, currently somewhat
below salaries at other institutions, to attract the best possible
candidates.
	The class enrolling in the fall of '95 will likely be much
smaller than its predecessors, although no firm number has been agreed
to yet, according to Headrick. The entering class of '93, some 268
strong, was the largest in recent years. Next year's entering class
could be down to 200. "This would allow us to divide the first-year
class into two sections, rather than three," Headrick said, "to free
up more faculty for upper division offerings."
	Headrick hopes that any reduction in the number of newly
admitted first-year students could be partially offset by recruiting
between 30 and 40 second-year transfer students each year. This, he
explained, could still hold overall enrollment in the future to around
680, down from its current 760.
	Some changes have already come to the law school. This fall,
incoming first-year students found a new, comprehensive research and
writing program. Five full-time instructors were hired over the
summer, under newly named program director Lucinda Finley, and the
research and writing component of first-year schedules grew from four
to six credit hours.
	"Each of us teaches two sections on research and writing,"
explained Christine Farley, one of the new instructors, "so the
sections contain no more than 25 students." The smaller class size and
the integration of research, which had been taught separately, into
the legal writing course, better prepares students for the broad range
of writing required in the legal world, she continued.
	Next year, academic and class schedules will be modified. The
class "hour" will increase to a full hour, up from its current 50
minutes, and the school year, which won't begin until after Labor Day,
will be broken down into seven four-week blocks. Traditional
first-year courses will run 12 weeks (three blocks) with a four-week
January "bridge" course in between. 
	New students will start off with a one-to-two-week
"orientation," tentatively called Introduction to Law and Law
Studies.Then students begin traditional studies and pick up a required
course, Perspectives, featuring legal problem-solving techniques and
group discussions. It will be one of the few offered by any law school
in the country to teach client relations, as well as legal ethics and
professional conduct.
	In addition to three years of law school, the actual practice
of law has traditionally required a great deal of on-the-job training.
Headrick explained that employers want new associates to be able to
learn new fields or legal skills independently.The new curriculum will
teach this skill by offering courses traditionally taught to prepare
students for passing the state bar exam, such as corporations,
commercial paper, evidence and criminal procedure as independent
self-study courses.
	Utilizing media such as books, videotapes and computerized
materials, students would receive "a good overview of a subject with
about 50 hours of study," according to the Proposal for a New
Curriculum. This contrasts with a normal three-credit course requiring
42 hours of class time and about 120 hours of outside study.
	Second- and third-year courses will have enrollment caps of
40, according to the proposal, ensuring greater participation by class
members in course activities. Written exams at the end of these
courses may be replaced by more written and/or oral projects.
 	With the law school already nationally known for its clinical
training programs, the new curriculum will expose even more students
to practical lawyering situations through clinical experience,
Headrick said. New upper division concentrations would require a
clinic-type practical experience for third-year students. Headrick
said that self-study and clinical experiences are both being developed
to better prepare graduates to have fundamental skills of successful
lawyering from "day one on the job."
	Because space is at such a premium in O'Brian Hall,
negotiations are under way for the law school regain control of
second-floor classrooms and the Moot Court room on the first floor now
used by undergraduate departments, according to Headrick.