Conferences and Presentations

In March 2008, Washington and Lee announced plans to completely reform the third year of its law school curriculum, news that propelled W&L to the forefront of the national discussion surrounding the future of legal education.

Ever since, representatives of the School of Law have been in high demand at American Bar Association meetings and law school conferences across the country to present the W&L plan and discuss implementation progress and challenges.

August 9, 2008
ABA Annual Meeting (New York)
Curricular Reform: Re-imagining Law School Pedagogy and Programs
Law school deans Rodney Smolla, Edward Rubin, Lisa Kloppenberg, and Raymond Pierce discussed how their schools are implementing some of the recommendations of the Carnegie Report and other studies of legal education.

September 5-7, 2008
Legal Education at the Crossroads (Seattle, Washington)
Second- and Third-Year Reforms
Dean Rod Smolla, Showcase Presentation
http://files.law.washington.edu/open/Crossroads_Conference/

October 16-18, 2008
ABA Section on Legal Education Bar Passage Conference (Chicago)
Dean Smolla and other law deans will discuss curriculum changes and how those changes affect bar passage rates.
http://www.abanet.org/legaled/baradmissions/Bar%20Exam%20Passage%20Conference/home.html

January 28, 2009
Unites States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit (Pasadena, CA)
9th Circuit Judicial Conference. Dean Smolla and the deans from the law schools at Duke, Stanford, the University of California at Irvine will discuss how different schools are approaching changes to legal education.

March 6, 2009
Maryland Clinical Program's 35th Anniversary Conference (Baltimore, MD)
The conference will continue the discussions that have taken place across the country in light of the recently published Best Practices for Legal Education and the Carnegie Foundation Report, Educating Lawyers, to highlight innovative programs in legal education that were either implemented in response to these books or otherwise fulfill their spirit, and to discuss perceived gaps in these books and, more generally, legal education. 
http://www.law.umaryland.edu/faculty/conferences/detail.html?conf=74

April 2, 2009
NALP Annual Education Conference (Washington, D.C.)
Tell Me, Show Me, Involve Me: A Bold Direction in Legal Education
Dean Rodney A. Smolla, John W. Vardaman, Judith Welch Wegner, and Christine Kidwell '09L will discuss the third-year program and the benefits of integrative learning, of balancing intellectual rigor with ethical values and the expression of considered judgment, and of student-centered learning methodologies. 

April 24, 2009
NCBE Bar Admissions Conference 2009 (Baltimore, MD)
Dean Smolla will participate on a panel with several other deans and speaking about new innovations in law school curriculums.

June 8-10, 2009
AALS Mid-Year Conference on Business Associations (Long Beach, CA)
In a session titled "Taking Stock of the Field," Professor Lyman Johnson will discuss his business planning course, which serves as a model for other third-year practicum courses at Washington and Lee.

June 11, 2009
Northeast Association of Pre-Law Advisers Conference (Yale Law School)
Dean Smolla and Angie Littlejohn '09L participated in a panel discussion titled, “Alternative Approaches: Tell Me, Show Me, Involve Me – Bold Approaches in Legal Education.”

August 2-8, 2009
Southeastern Association of Law Schools Annual Meeting (Palm Beach, FL)
Professor David Millon organized a panel on curriculum reform that included Dean Smolla and the dean of Northwestern Law School, David Van Zandt.