In this article, the author shares his thoughts on being a "scholarly" teacher. He points out that engaging in scholarly activity, which includes publishing as well as other ways to engage with relevant research, like reviewing and editing for journals, can lead to better teaching. This sort of scholarly commitment allows an instructor to maintain…

Many instructors have fallen into the syllabus habit of the first day, and students have come to expect nothing more. While reviewing the syllabus is important, it is not all that engaging for either the instructor or the students. In this article, the author establishes the pedagogical importance of the first day of class experience through the…

Aaron Sorkin has a passion for words--his signature movie and television scripts are fast talking, jargon laced, word pictures that are instantly recognizable. "The Social Network," Sorkin's 2011 Academy Award Winning movie about the founding of Facebook, Inc., offers more than just witty banter; it provides an ideal teaching platform for…

The transition into academia from law school or legal practice is a significant and exciting shift in one's legal career. This transition, however, can also be one that presents numerous challenges. Preparing a syllabus and drafting lecture material can seem like a daunting task. Writing an academic article for the first time involves learning a…

Beginning in the late 1980s and early 1990s, higher education was swept up in the theoretical phenomena of mastery learning, cooperative learning, and small-group learning. Professors, instructors, and teachers at the K-12 level became facilitators, guides, supervisors, counselors, and advocates for all things team and group. The thought of a…

This article suggests ways to incorporate legal issues related to the Olympic Games into a business law or legal environment course. As demonstrated in previous issues of this journal and elsewhere, material related to sports law can serve as an engaging supplement to traditional legal subjects. Topics that can be related to the Olympics include…

The purpose of this article is to persuade legal studies teachers of the benefits of using works from other disciplines to illustrate the rationales for law, the greater context in which the legal order operates, and the relationship between law and society. The tangential benefits of using works from other disciplines are the enhancement of the…

In this article, the author shares his thoughts about teaching. He says in every class teachers enter, during every conversation they have, through everything they do, they should strive to create the environment that allows learning to occur. How they decide what is "worthwhile" is too complex for a simple prescription. Teachers must exercise…

Trade secrets can be a valuable company asset because of their potential to last forever. Unfortunately, along with such a significant benefit, there is also a significant risk--the risk that the trade secret can be lost in an instant if it is not sufficiently protected. Companies must be vigilant in protecting these secrets. However, the law is…

A Harvard Business School-style teaching case can be a powerful pedagogical tool to teach law and ethics to business students because instructors can combine a traditional business case study with Socratic-style dialogue and legal analysis from a managerial perspective. This teaching note includes suggestions for several methods of using the case,…

In Academic Year 2010-11, the author's 25th year in the undergraduate classroom at Loyola University Maryland, a confluence of circumstances renewed her interest in motivation, "the level of enthusiasm and the degree to which students invest attention and effort in learning." She became interested in motivation because, that year, she experienced…

A great deal of research by legal studies scholars pertains to employment law, international law, and corporate governance, as well as other fields including ethics and international law. The fields typically addressed are very important and rightfully receive considerable attention in the scholarship and textbooks. However, bankruptcy as a…

The College of Management at the Georgia Institute of Technology has placed more emphasis on the topic of business ethics in the past few years. Business ethics has always been a required component of the legal environment of business course whether taught at the undergraduate or graduate levels. More recently, the college has introduced an…

Storytelling has been used in diverse educational settings. It is employed at all educational levels, from elementary schools to graduate schools. Approximately twenty years ago, law school professors began writing about the application of storytelling to various law school subjects as an alternative to the traditional case method. Legal scholars…

In the online environment, students and instructors are virtually, but not physically, present in the same environment. In the online environment, technology mediates learning: it mediates communications and information transfer between the student and the instructor, between the student and the content, and among the students. Critics fear that…