This session examines more inclusive and conscientious practices actively managing classroom voices and professional identity formation. Embedding voice and video learning tools in legal education pedagogy can better prepare students for the dynamic, client-centered, and community-centered practice of law. New learning products, such as VoiceThread and Flipgrid, allow students to engage in voice and video class assignment submissions. These tools offer dynamic pedagogical enhancements preparing students for the practice of law within the existing infrastructure of prepared problems and content. These tools uniquely allow every student voice to address a practice problem or client hypothetical. In so doing, students learn to layer both substantive legal rules and other critical lawyering and communication skills, such as tone, empathy, clarity, and cultural competencies. These tech tools offer an efficient and sustainable pedagogy reform that modernizes existing simulations and practice problems in law school classrooms. These tools also respond to the worrisome wellness malaise of law students and the marginalizing of certain student communities within existing pedagogies. These tools are both symbolic and substantive improvements.
Jamie R. Abrams is a Professor of Law at the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law. She teaches Family Law, Torts, Women & the Law, and Legislation. Her research focuses on gendered violence, reproductive decision-making, immigrant justice, and legal education pedagogy. Her most recent works have appeared in the Harvard Law & Policy Review, Richmond Law Review, and the Florida State Law Review. She received her LL.M. from Columbia University and her J.D. from the American University Washington College of Law, receiving the highest academic honors from each. She was awarded the law school’s Teacher of the Year Award and the Presidential Exemplary Multicultural Law Teaching Award at the University of Louisville.
