Strategic Plan: Goal 3

OBJECTIVE 3.1: Offer a curriculum that meets the demands of a changing legal profession and ensures that students attain learning outcomes essential for academic success, admission to the bar, and the effective and ethical practice of law.

STRATEGIES

1. Introduce the Learning Outcomes for the J.D. Program during orientation and reinforce them in academic advising, classes, and elsewhere as appropriate, in formal and informal interactions with students.
2. Support students’ development of the core competencies outlined in Learning Outcomes for the J.D. Program through coursework, experiential learning opportunities, and academic and bar success programming.
3. Integrate legal writing, research, and analysis instruction throughout the curriculum and promote the use of multiple diverse sources of formative assessments in courses.
4. Experiment with innovations in the academic calendar and course scheduling to promote academic success and student wellness.

OBJECTIVE 3.2: Support and highlight teaching excellence initiatives.

STRATEGIES

1. Underscore a commitment to teaching excellence in the recruitment of new faculty and ensure that new faculty receive training in teaching techniques, both inside the law school and through outside opportunities.
2. Provide summer grants to faculty for revising courses to incorporate innovative, evidence-based, and student-centered pedagogical approaches that will build students’ academic success, increase bar readiness, and prepare students for meaningful legal careers.
3. Promote faculty learning, reflection, adaptation, and collaboration through new and ongoing UBalt Law and University initiatives, including those in collaboration with the Center for Excellence in Learning, Teaching, and Technology.
4. Ensure that our compensation structures attract highly qualified adjunct faculty, and that we provide support and resources to retain them and support their teaching excellence.
5. Identify and implement ways to highlight teaching excellence as a core value and strength.

OBJECTIVE 3.3: Ensure that both formative and summative assessments focus on legal analysis and increase the frequency with which students receive formative assessment across the curriculum.

STRATEGIES

1. Increase the number and variety of formative assessments used in courses and monitor student performance trends on assessments.
2. Train and support faculty on effective and efficient ways to provide formative assessment of legal analysis, offering a variety of tools that will meet the challenges of different course sizes, structures, and modalities.
3. Reduce class sizes where possible to make multiple formative assessments more feasible.
4. Recognize use of formative assessment in end-of-year performance evaluations for faculty.
5. Include a question about formative assessment on student evaluations of teaching.
6. Continue to embed exercises in written legal analysis through the implementation of the Strategic Vision for Legal Writing and Analysis program approved by the faculty in 2023, and through the new Flex JD program.

OBJECTIVE 3.4: Ensure that faculty possess and employ teaching strategies to tackle emerging issues in legal practice, including the integration of new technologies and developments, ensuring students are well-prepared to address these challenges.

STRATEGIES

1. Monitor pedagogical approaches to AI and other emerging technologies.
2. Develop a policy for AI as the law school implements the Strategic Vision for Legal Writing and Analysis and Flex JD Program.
3. Engage with alumni who can share their perspectives on emerging issues in legal practice, such as how new technologies are changing legal practice.
4. Share faculty innovations in teaching to prepare students for emerging issues in legal practice, including the integration of technology into their learning and into legal practice, as part of an annual teaching event.

UBalt Law’s dynamic academic environment cultivates legal professionals committed to client advocacy, high ethical standards, democracy, and the rule of law.

The curriculum provides innovative instruction in legal analysis, legal theory, and public policy, and offers a range of experiential learning opportunities, including required live-client experiential education. Our commitment to teaching excellence prepares students to succeed on the bar exam and to excel in legal practice.

UBalt Law also seeks to make its teaching and curriculum responsive to the needs of the profession and the public, adapting to the changes now taking place in the legal profession. These changes include the transition to the NextGen bar exam, the increasing use of artificial intelligence in writing and research, and a broadening of areas that benefit from legal training.

The law school has made several changes to its curriculum during the past five years that serve to strengthen students’ legal analytic foundation. The focus in this plan is to introduce students to legal doctrine, writing, research, analysis, and practical skills and provide courses that enable students to practice and achieve mastery of these skills. The curriculum will provide opportunities for course specialization in areas of practice that present opportunities for legal employment.

UBalt Law’s longstanding commitment to teaching excellence is also critical to our overall mission and a core strength. In recent years, UBalt Law has taken important steps through curricular reform and increased faculty resources to ensure that faculty teaching of legal analysis, in particular, meets our highest standards. We will continue to strengthen our culture of teaching excellence through continuous critical reflection, adaptation, innovation, and collaboration to train outstanding and ethical lawyers and leaders.