Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, law schools had to pivot to virtual legal education
quickly. In the wake of the pandemic, scholars have eagerly written about the dos
and don’ts of the virtual law classroom. Although some articles have represented
the law students’ perspective and some have represented the law professor’s
perspective, none have done both in an attempt to create empathy and bridge the
gap between what students’ desire, and what law professors are currently
providing, and what good virtual legal education requires. As such, based on several
interviews with law professors and students, this Article begins by describing one
online Contracts class first from the professor’s point of view and then from the
student’s point of view. The professor and students’ different perceptions of the
same class are then analogized to John Godfrey Saxe’s poem The Blind Men and
the Elephant. Then, using the Kübler-Ross Grief Cycle as a vehicle to build
empathy and understanding, this article attempts to demonstrate the similarities
that exists between students and professors’ feelings about online virtual
education, namely that both professors and students alike are avidly grieving a
common loss: in-person, Socratic law school days of old. As such, they are both
experiencing denial and anger about their situations. In keeping with one of the key
strategies recommended by the Mayo Clinic for overcoming denial in grief, this
article “journals” their realities and provides both the student and professor perspective in the hopes that, by doing so, it will rid the misconceptions and bridge
the way for a new type of virtual legal education to be created—one that meets
(and/or exceeds) both professors’ and students’ expectations.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa:de:qucosa:74488 |
| Date | 21 April 2021 |
| Creators | Perez, Tiffany A. |
| Publisher | Universität Leipzig, University of Miami |
| Source Sets | Hochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion, doc-type:article, info:eu-repo/semantics/article, doc-type:Text |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | urn:nbn:de:bsz:15-qucosa2-744771, qucosa:74477 |
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