[Note: I have been on three appointments committees, so many professors have far more experience with this topic than I have.]

* Be authentic. Don’t try to be whoever you think the committee wants to hire. Be yourself.

* If you are doing the interview via Zoom, remember that the camera subtracts some of your energy. Don’t act, but be as energetic as you can be. Also, present a positive Zoom image (good sound, good lighting, cleaned-up backgrounds). Free yourself of any external distractions, but I personally never mind when there’s a pet sighting.

* Most interviews will ask about scholarship, teaching, and service. You will want to have some concrete examples about each topic that showcase the attributes you want to highlight.

* My view is that you should answer any question “I don’t know” if you don’t actually know the answer, and then explain your thought process about how you would think through or research possible answers. Committees know you are an entry-level candidate and won’t know everything about being a successful law professor, but they will credit logical and thoughtful approaches to problems.

A specific example: you might get asked what casebook you would use to teach a specific class. If you haven’t gone through the casebook selection process for that course, you can answer this question by explaining how you would research the casebook options and what attributes you would emphasize or avoid. In other words, you turn this into a question about your pedagogical priorities and how a casebook might help or hinder that, rather than a mechanical question about which specific casebook you prefer.

* Be prepared with questions for the committee. The questions you ask signal your priorities, so use them to that effect. For example, despite the AALS guidance on the page I linked to above, I would recommend not asking a question about the interview process before the whole committee. That’s a missed opportunity to signal some other priority of yours. Ideally, you will have done enough homework about the interviewing school that you can ask questions specific to the school, not just a stock or standard question.

* Sometimes you will encounter jerk interviewers who punch down on interviewees. I’m sorry if you run into those. It’s their insecurities speaking, so try not to let them rattle you. You will find that most interviewers are nice and genuinely want you to be your best self.

* The screening interviews are two-way sales pitches. Every school wants you to come out of their interviews being enthusiastic about them. Don’t be surprised if the committee spends some scarce interview time touting how great their school is.

* Do some mock interviews, if you haven’t done them already. Practice but don’t rehearse.

Faculty hiring is a super-complicated and incredibly idiosyncratic process. There are many complex interpersonal dynamics on appointments committees (as the old joke goes, ask 5 law professors their opinions and you will get 6 answers), and committee members often bargain with each other over their preferred or verboten candidates while trying to optimize against weird and constantly changing institutional constraints. So much of the hiring process does not turn only on your strengths and weaknesses as a candidate. Go along for the ride, but don’t take anything personally if it doesn’t work out, because that may have nothing to do with you personally.

Also, you are in an incredibly talented pool of candidates. There are hundreds of other candidates who also have elite credentials and who will (or could have) become successful academics. You should feel good that you already have stood out to the committee sufficient to get a screening interview. You probably already have at least one champion on the committee. But the amazing talent in the pool means committees make impossibly fine distinctions between candidates, some of which will appear nonsensical or inexplicable to non-committee members. Sometimes those distinctions work to your benefit, sometimes not. You might be the committee’s top candidate on paper; or you might already have some skeptics who will downrank you no matter how your interview goes so that they can advance their preferred candidates. Believe in yourself and your strengths, and don’t let anyone take that away from you.

Finally, you have been preparing for these interviews all of your life. Screening interviews have their own rituals, but in the end the screening interview is just another process for getting to know each other and exploring matches. It’s nothing you can’t handle. You’ve got this!

* * *

UPDATE: I got the following comment:

As someone who just spent some time on the lateral market, I would suggest adding:

– Candidates should research the institution and its institutional mission. Is there a research focus? A teaching focus? Access schools have different operational needs (and budgets) than larger schools with a bigger research footprint. Some focus on first gen lawyers, others on big law. Your background and talk should be tailored to the school’s mission first and foremost.

– Ditto for the people on the search committee. If there is overlap in research agendas or teaching areas it can make relating to the search committee easier during the screener. If not, find something in their bio that you do relate to. A candidate in the IP space needs to find some way to relate to the criminal procedure experts.

– This also extends to the institutions culture/political leanings (they all have one, expecially given the current political environment). The same for parochial schools that may have a religious mission that candidates should be aware of. Some religious schools have a very passive religious mission, and others have full on embraced Christian Nationalism. Other culture things to think about include: does the institution still value and embrace DEI? Or is it in a state with legal restrictions on academic freedom like Florida? What sort of community outreach does the school do? Is there a robust alumni network or is it more of a commuter school? What is the regional/national reputation of the school? (not talking about U.S. News).

– Try to be human. I never thought reading directly from a CV was a useful exercise, search committees want to know what you are going to be like outside of the classroom too. Be open to sharing about hobbies, especially if you have a screener with something in the background of their Zoom call you can relate to.

The post Tips for Your First Law Professor Screening Interview appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

Former Dean Don Polden and his successor, former dean Lisa Kloppenberg

I’m saddened by the death of my colleague, friend, and former supervisor, Prof. Donald (Don) Polden. Don was the dean that hired me as a tenure-track faculty at Santa Clara Law in 2006. I had been an adjunct instructor at SCU from 1997-2002, and returning to the law school was a dream of mine. Getting the offer from him was a highlight of my professional career.

At SCU, I was hired into a dual role as both a tenure-line faculty and Academic Director of the High Tech Law Institute. Normally, pre-tenure faculty are advised not to take mixed positions like this because of the risks to getting tenure:

• The administrative duties were likely to slow down my scholarly production, a key component of my tenure candidacy.
• Administrative decisions can be politically risky and can alienate colleagues. I hoped to be a mild version of myself during the tenure evaluation period, but I have a knack for finding trouble.
• I was coming into a new community with no built-up goodwill to smooth out any tenure considerations, unlike my situation at Marquette Law, where I felt confident of getting tenure the next year in part due to the goodwill I had built over my four years there.

To navigate this potentially perilous situation, I needed a dean who could help me succeed on every front–as a tenure candidate, a faculty member, an administrator, and also as a husband and father. Don did all of that and more. Foundationally, Don put together a teaching package that gave me enough time to invest in my HTLI responsibilities, perform my duties as a teacher and scholar, and still be a husband and father. As a result, I successfully navigated the tenure and full professor approvals during his deanship.

As my nominal boss, Don unequivocally backed the administrative choices I made. I always tried to be reasonable in my asks (of course, that’s a self-assessment…), but Don’s answer was always yes. His support led to a string of administrative successes that the school still benefits from, including a series of memorable conferences, the restructuring of Intellectual Property curriculum and High Tech Law Certificate (2009), and the launch of the Entrepreneurs’ Law Clinic (2013) (see this blog post for more background about Don’s role in the ELC’s founding).

One year, the HTLI unexpectedly dropped out of the top 10 of the US News specialty ranking of IP programs. I figured this development would make some alumni and students unhappy, so I asked Don if he would like me to tender my resignation from the HTLI director role so that he could use me as a scapegoat. Don’s facial reaction was a mix of bemusement and disbelief that I can only describe as a non-verbal statement “why would I as dean want to do that?” It was immediately clear to me that my resignation was the last thing on his mind. He saw the development as a short-term thing, not worth reacting to. His confidence in my administrative work was rewarded when the rankings drop was indeed only a one-year blip (I believe the program has ranked in the top 10 every year since).

* * *

In addition to our successful professional relationship, Don was a personal friend. For example, Don had season tickets to SCU basketball and the Oakland A’s and occasionally shared extra tickets with me. I used those tickets to bring my kids to the games and create some great family memories. Don also connected us with his daughter Emma for childcare help, which was a godsend because my kids loved her. So, in addition to helping me structure my professional time so that I could be a husband and dad, Don played additional important background roles in my kids’ childhood, and I always will be grateful for that.

* * *

I owe a lot of my professional and personal success to Don. He was an inspiration, a catalyst, a champion, and a mensch. I offer my condolences to the Polden family on their loss.  ז״ל‎

More links:

• San Jose Mercury-News Obituary
• University announcement of his death
• 2006 interview with Don as the “new” Santa Clara Law dean

The post A Tribute to Prof. Don Polden (1948-2024) appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

Dan was a brilliant and impactful scholar and academic. Dan also had a huge personal influence on my life and career–a sentiment that is shared by dozens or (more likely) hundreds of professors. He served as one of my role models in several ways, but perhaps most significantly in his tireless support for and encouragement of new community members.

In this post, I’ll explain how I got to know Dan and then talk about Dan’s talents as a scholar, a mentor, and a maven.

* * *

MEETING DAN

I first met Dan (virtually) through an email list called “Cyberia-L,” probably in 1994. As Prof. Winn (University of Washington) wrote in 1998, “the Cyberia-L listserv for discussion of cyberspace legal issues was established in 1992 by Trotter Hardy, a professor at William and Mary College of Law, creating a public space in which the application of traditional legal principles to Internet activities was hotly debated.” Listmembers were an eclectic mix of professors, lawyers, technologists, and others, and many members had cyber-libertarian inclinations. Over 20 years ago, I described it as a “very noisy list often filled with personal attacks and irrelevant rants, but still a key resource for seeing what others are thinking about.” Prof. Volokh (now of the Hoover Institute) provides additional context about Cyberia-L in this 1996 paper.

(Cyberia-L is long gone and nearly forgotten, as is its cyber-libertarian ethos. Many of the academic participants eventually migrated the conversation to the Cyberprof email list, run by Prof. Mark Lemley (now of Stanford Law), which is still going strong).

Dan and I were both active members of Cyberia-L, and it’s how we initially got to know and respect each other. It was one of millions of examples of how the early Internet brought people together and fostered community. In our case, it connected a brand-new West Coast lawyer like me with a rising East Coast academic star like Dan, something that would have been hard or impossible to do without the Internet.

* * *

SCHOLAR

Dan is perhaps most celebrated for his patent scholarship, but it’s too narrow to characterize Dan as a “patent” scholar. I always viewed Dan as a “law and technology” scholar or, perhaps even more precisely, a “law and science” scholar. His work frequently considered the implications of new technological and scientific developments for the law. It was consistent with those scholarly interests that Dan was at the vanguard of Internet Law scholarship, where he made several impactful contributions.

I want to say a few extra words about Dan’s 1995 article, “Trademarks Along the Infobahn: A First Look at the Emerging Law of Cybermarks.”

[Nomenclature notes: To be honest, I’m not sad that the term “cybermark” didn’t catch on, despite Dan’s second attempt in 2010 to make cybermarks happen. Dan didn’t create the “infobahn” analogy, but fortunately it too has faded].

Dan wasn’t a regular contributor to the trademark scholarship, but he had much to teach other trademark experts when he directed his energies that way. In the Trademarks Along the Infobahn article, Dan ran through a series of analogies to consider the application of trademark law to domain names. The paper says that “cyberspace is not unique in harboring designators that function as both names and addresses,” and it then identified some ways the domain name system was like other addressing systems and other ways in which the domain name system was in fact unique.

In retrospect, this paper deploys the now-standard methodology of Internet Law scholarship. It describes the Internet in technological terms, makes analogies to other media, and tries to isolate what’s unique, special, or different about the new technology. However, when Dan wrote this paper in 1995, that template didn’t exist. He helped set it.

It’s also noteworthy that Dan published this paper in the inaugural edition of the Richmond Journal of Law and Technology, which claims to be the first exclusively online law review. Today, many law reviews have online-only companions or publish only online; but in 1995, the world was skeptical of online content. Many academics did not view an online-only publication as a “legitimate” or “credible” publication and thus would have refused to publish there. Dan saw the future of journal publishing more clearly than many of his contemporaries. His willingness to publish in the Richmond JOLT helped validate the journal’s–and the genre’s–legitimacy.

* * *

MENTOR

Unlike some other academic disciplines, the IP academic community generally welcomes new members. Dan embodied that attitude. Over the course of decades, he generously and personally welcomed dozens/hundreds of junior scholars and actively integrated them into the community. Dan wasn’t the only senior IP scholar to do this, but Dan’s leadership strongly reinforced the norm.

With respect to Dan’s mentorship of me, I could easily rattle off a dozen ways Dan boosted my career, but none are more important than how he helped me join the community. In an email to Dan last month, I told him:

As you may recall, you and Mark [Lemley] were my two primary advisors in Fall 2001 as I navigated the law professor hiring market. I was pretty clueless about the process and I didn’t do any of the traditional steps to prepare for the search. Nevertheless, you were patient with my newbie questions, you were generous with your time, and you were incredibly helpful–as I know you have been with dozens of other candidates over the years. I could not have succeeded with that search without your interventions, so I owe my academic career to you (and Mark). Thank you for giving me that gift. It made a material difference in my life and the lives of my family members.

I recently wrote about Pam Samuelson’s key role in my initial academic job search. I owe so much to all three.

* * *

MAVEN

Dan knew everyone, and everyone knew and respected him. That meant he was one of our community’s top connectors. As a maven, he played an outsized role in personnel movements. Schools looking to hire would contact Dan for referrals. Indeed, I reached out to Dan last summer soliciting his recommendations for SCU’s search this year.

In the old days, there were very few ways for a potential lateral candidate to jump-start a move. AALS did little to support lateral movements (that’s improved only slightly), and it was considered bad form to publicly express one’s interest in lateraling.

Instead, candidates interested in a lateral move could privately “register” with Dan, which is what I did when I was ready to relocate from Wisconsin back to California. Telling Dan about my ambitions gave me a tiny bit of agency in an opaque and seemingly random lateral search process. (Other mavens I contacted: Mark Lemley, Graeme Dinwoodie, and Bobbi Kwall). My story was not unique. Everyone told Dan about their goals, and he kept tabs on pretty much everyone. As a result, Dan facilitated dozens or even hundreds of job placements over his career. Without Dan playing that maven role, our community becomes a little less liquid and well-informed. We’re all poorer for that.

* * *

I’ll let Dan have the last words in this post. Last month, Dan told me:

I have no serious regrets.  I’ve had a fantastic marriage for 36 years.  My career has gone far better than anyone would have imagined.  I have had amazing opportunities and experiences I couldn’t have foreseen.  I have used up far more than my share of the planet’s resources.  I have engaged with amazing colleagues and collaborators.  It’s all good.

For more on Dan’s legacy, see this Kudoboard. זיכרונו לברכה

UPDATE: The University of Minnesota School of Law memoriam.‎

UPDATE: The videos from the UC Irvine memorial event. Also, UC Irvine put together a playlist of videos from Dan’s time there.

The post In Memoriam: Prof. Dan Burk appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

Ed and Zahr are exceptional professors and revered colleagues. Together, they greatly enhance Santa Clara Law’s position as a leader in technology law. On a personal note, I have known and respected Ed and Zahr for many years, and I’m excited and honored to be their colleague.

This post expands on those thoughts.

[Note: I served on the appointments committee this year].

About Ed Lee

Ed and I have noteworthy parallels in our career arcs. In Fall 2001, we both worked in the Bay Area. Ed was a fellow at Stanford, and I was General Counsel at Epinions. That means we were both in the same entry-level applicant pool for tenure-line positions starting Fall 2002. From that search, we both landed tenure-track positions at Midwestern schools (Ed at Ohio State, me at Marquette Law). And now, we have both returned to California and joined the Santa Clara Law faculty after our Midwest sojourns, though on very different timelines. I spent only 4 years in the Midwest, while Ed took 22 years to find his way back.

Ed enjoying a snack at the 5th Internet Law WIP at SCU

Ed and I have been professional friends for years. We’ve been to conferences together, we’ve commented on each other’s drafts, and I’ve spoken at events he’s organized.

I want to relay one standout incident. In 2014, SCU hosted WIPIP. For game night, we did IP pub trivia. The questions were hard by design. After the competition was over, we still had some unused questions that we shared with the entire room for anyone to shout out an answer. In a room filled with some of the brightest minds in IP law, posed with tricky questions about obscure corners of IP law, several times Ed was the only person in the room who knew the answer.

Ed’s intellectual interests are a perfect fit for Santa Clara Law. Ed’s recent work has addressed AI, NFTs, and content moderation–all key topics for the Silicon Valley. Furthermore, his global leadership in International IP beautifully crosses over to SCU’s Center for Global Law and Policy.

About Zahr Said

Zahr and Eric at AALS 2015 along with Bill McGeveran and Jeremy Sheff

I first met Zahr at WIPIP 2008 in New Orleans. We clicked immediately. After that, I became one of her peers and informal mentors. As with Ed, we saw each other at conferences, we commented on each other’s drafts, and I spoke at her events.

In 2014, I submitted a letter in support of Zahr’s tenure application at UW. Reviewing one of her advertising law articles, I wrote:

the article establishes Prof. Said as one of the world’s foremost experts on sponsored literature; and it cements Prof. Said’s leadership role in the nascent community of advertising law scholars

I also wrote:

Prof. Said has quickly integrated into the national community of IP academics, as evidenced by her rapid rise in AALS section leadership. Her social connections give her a great foundation for future recognition of her work and contributions to the discourse.

As an applicant for the Santa Clara Law position, Zahr exceeded all of our criteria, but what really stood out about her candidacy was the cultural fit. For example, during her screening interview, her answers to our questions repeatedly anticipated the next question we planned to ask her. It’s like she innately had the same intuitions as the committee.

Conclusion

Hiring two IP colleagues probably will be a once-in-a-career bonanza for me personally. In my 20+ years as a full-time professor, I’ve actually only had 3 IP colleagues join me as a faculty member: Irene Calboli at Marquette and Colleen and Brian at SCU. (I wasn’t on the appointments committee for any of those hires). I’ve never been in the circumstance where my institution hired two IP faculty in the same year or hired an IP lateral. It’s unlikely I’ll have this remarkable experience again.

Santa Clara Law is a long-time leader in high tech and IP law, and adding two superstars to our community boosts our ongoing efforts. Congratulations to Ed and Zahr on their move forward to the next stage of their careers, and I’m delighted and honored that I’ll get to share that experience with them. Their banana costumes have been ordered.

The post IP/Tech Experts Ed Lee and Zahr Said Are Becoming My Santa Clara Law Colleagues! appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

The university’s citation reads:

Eric Goldman and Laura Norris’s co-creation and implementation of the Tech Edge JD Program and the Santa Clara Privacy Law Certificate have significantly impacted the pedagogy and curricular development at the Santa Clara University School of Law. The Tech Edge J.D. offers a significant innovation in the study and teaching of law. Described as nothing short of revolutionary, the program seamlessly integrates legal, business, and technology studies. The Privacy Law Certificate embodies the growing significance of privacy issues in the global, national, and California economies. Addressing this demand, the Privacy Law Certificate serves as an invaluable resource for students aiming to specialize in privacy law, and for the companies who need them.

* * *

Receiving this award has special meaning for me because it rewards the decisions the law school and I made during a challenging time in my life.

In January 2014, my wife was diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer. Her diagnosis sent our family into a tailspin. I immediately assumed greater roles as caregiver and childcare provider, which stretched me thin throughout 2014 and into Spring 2015. I was already due for a sabbatical in 2015-16, and I scheduled a year-long sabbatical (at reduced pay). Then, just as I finished teaching my Spring 2015 courses, my mom died. Her death compounded my difficulties. On top of my existing obligations, I immediately assumed responsibility for her publishing business and 15 real estate properties–a project that ultimately took 18 months. By Fall 2015, it was clear I couldn’t resume my normal duties in Fall 2016.

Then-Dean Lisa Kloppenberg intervened. She helped me develop a package of deliverables for AY 2016-17 (at reduced compensation) that included the development of a novel curricular program–what became TEJD. This arrangement provided me the time I needed to pursue something important and innovative while also getting my personal situation under control. I did the TEJD market research and program design in 2016 and into 2017. The faculty approved TEJD in 2017, and it launched in 2018.

I routinely describe 2014-2017 as a dark period in my professional career. I retrenched everything. I produced fewer papers, and they were less ambitious. I didn’t teach for two years (this reflects my sabbatical and my ongoing part-time status/reduced pay). Other quantitative metrics, indicated by the red arrows, show the downturn numerically:

(The 2021 spike reflects the pandemic shutdown and the post-Trump Section 230 crisis. Conference organizers around the country added me to their events by video).

As you can see, all of these metrics rebounded after the dark period, as Dean Kloppenberg hoped they would.

I will always remain grateful for the law school’s support when I needed it. This award implicitly validates Dean Kloppenberg’s choices during the dark period. The award also implicitly signals that the university values the contributions I made to the law school at a time when I was working under high stress and my other professional contributions didn’t match my aspirations.

I’m honored to share the award with my co-awardee Dean Laura Norris. She took a good idea and figured out how to operationalize and scale it. In Dean Norris’ capable hands, TEJD has boosted the school’s incoming academic predictors, racial diversity, and employment outcomes.

The post Some Personal Good News: I Received a University-Wide Award for Curriculum Innovation appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

Please tell us about yourself and your University

I am a law professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, located in California in the heart of the Silicon Valley. The law school is well-known for its technology law program. For the past several years, the law school has been ranked the #4 intellectual property program in the United States.

My area of expertise is Internet Law. I started practicing Internet Law in 1994 and teaching an Internet Law course in 1996. Since 2005, I have blogged on the topic at the Technology & Marketing Law Blog (http://blog.ericgoldman.org). Although I pay attention to many subtopics of Internet Law, my top passion always has been the laws regulating user-generated content. A more recent interest of mine has been the law of emojis.

At the law school, in addition to my normal professor duties, I hold several administrative roles, including Associate Dean for Research, co-director of the High Tech Law Institute, supervisor of the Privacy Law Certificate, and assistant director of the Tech Edge JD program.

What are your thoughts on legal technology?

Legal technology is crucial to the practice of law! Many lawyers are required by their ethics rules to maintain technological competence, and lawyers can significantly disadvantage their clients when the technology fails or they don’t use it properly. In contrast, some lawyers use their legal tech expertise as a competitive differentiator, delivering superior results or lower costs for clients relative to their peers.

Does your University offer courses on law and technology?

Overall, our law school focuses more on the law of technology than on the technology of law. With respect to the law of technology, the law school offers dozens of courses, including standard courses in intellectual property, Internet law, and technology licensing, and more unusual offerings like a course on how businesspeople, engineers, and lawyers can better communicate with each other when they work together in technology environments. In addition, the law school has student organizations focused on intellectual property, Internet law, privacy law, artificial intelligence, videogames, blockchain/cryptocurrencies, and more. Also, many students get externships and internships with local technology companies, ranging from startups still in stealth mode to giants such as Google, Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Intel, eBay, PayPal, and many others.

In light of technological advancements, do you think law schools are preparing students and young lawyers for emerging opportunities in the profession? If yes, how are law schools making such preparations?

Law schools can always do more on this front, but law school can only do so much. Legal tech is evolving so rapidly that it’s hard to teach students—who may be 2-3 years away from their first jobs as lawyers—the technological solutions they will need over the course of their long careers. Also, legal tech needs can vary widely by practice area, and students don’t always know what practice area they are heading towards (or may change their minds). Furthermore, anything the law school does teach students about legal tech will soon become out-of-date. As a result, it’s not realistic to expect law schools to be the best, or even the primary, place for students to learn about legal tech.

I do want to mention a program Santa Clara Law rolled out a few years ago to better prepare students for a technology law career. It’s called the “Tech Edge JD” program, and it requires students to complete a series of milestones that reflect the kinds of experiences that junior technology lawyers are expected to have. To help students complete these milestones, the law school assigns each student a faculty/staff advisor and two practitioner mentors. It also has a special orientation just for program students. The program has been very successful at recruiting students dedicated to a technology law career, helping them build the skills and experiences they need for their long-term professional success, and getting the students hired into their preferred jobs.

What do you think law schools can do to improve awareness on emerging opportunities in the profession?

Law schools often don’t showcase careers in legal tech. First, students are often not exposed to alumni or practitioners in the field. Second, law schools often emphasize jobs that require a law degree and downplay “JD-advantage” jobs. Programs like the “Tech Edge JD” are a step towards opening students up to JD-advantage jobs, including jobs in legal tech, but definitely more can be done.

What are your thoughts on e-learning for lawyers?

As I mentioned, U.S. lawyers are likely to have a duty of technological competence, so I’m in all favor of it! With the ability to attend sessions from their desktops via videoconference, it’s never been easier to access an incredible diversity of online trainings and events.

The post Interview About Law Schools and LegalTech appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

With respect to the Privacy Law Certificate, Bloomberg Law wrote:

For background material on the Privacy Law Certificate, see:

• Certificate Page.
• The school’s press release on Bloomberg Law’s recognition.
• 2018 article on “Employment Outcomes for Privacy Law Certificate Earners at Santa Clara Law“
• Alumni magazine coverage of the privacy program.
• Introduction to the certificate.
• Initial IAPP coverage of certificate launch.
• IAPP coverage of program expansion.

For background material on the Tech Edge JD Program, see:

• Program page.
• Detailed analysis of TEJD’s outcomes over the first four years.
• Initial announcement. Law.com coverage.
• Press release about 1L summer employment for the initial cohort.
• Laura Norris and Mark Michels’ writeup of TEJD. Listen to the related podcast.

The post Santa Clara Law’s Programs Earn Honors from Bloomberg Law appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

As the law school has informed you, I have chosen to teach Internet Law this semester as an online-only course. This was not my preference, and it’s probably not your preference either. I wanted to explain to you why I made this decision, and its implications for our time together this semester.

My wife has been diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer. This means she is immunocompromised and especially vulnerable to respiratory ailments. Even though she (and everyone in our family) is vaccinated, my wife has a nontrivial risk of dying if she contracts the virus. For that reason, we go to extra lengths to reduce her potential exposure.

We had a scare this summer when my son attended a summer camp where everyone was vaccinated. Nevertheless, the camp had at least 7 breakthrough infections. When we brought my son home from camp, we had to quarantine him for several days to ensure that my wife would not be exposed. Fortunately, my son didn’t get the virus, but his quarantine disrupted our household a lot.

If I teach in person and any student in the class gets the virus during the semester, I would almost certainly feel compelled to quarantine from my wife until I was sure I was safe. That would be hugely disruptive to my family and my schedule. Teaching online sidesteps this risk.

There’s also the practical concern that conducting lectures and class discussions where I and all of the students are masked will create significant barriers to my pedagogical goals.

Teaching online will require 2x-3x more work for me than if we were meeting in person. Yet, switching to online-only was an easy call in my situation.

I know that some of you will choose to drop the course in favor of alternative courses that are meeting in person. I understand and respect that choice. If you make that choice, I’m very sorry for any inconvenience you’ll experience and for my missed opportunity to explore Internet Law with you.

If you choose to remain in the course, note that the online version of Internet Law this semester may be more demanding on you than an in-person offering. Specifically, you will have point-earning commitments every week, and if you fall behind with the material, the course’s rapid pace will make it difficult to catch up. If investing some time in Internet Law every week sounds like a potential problem, this course may not be the right one for you.

I became a law professor principally because I am dedicated to helping students achieve their professional development goals. Regardless of teaching modality, I will give you my best efforts to achieve that goal. I welcome your ideas of what I can do to help you the most.

Because of the last-minute modality switch, I am behind in preparing my syllabus and Camino page. I will let you know as soon as they are available. I will provide you with a free PDF of the casebook via Camino when the page is ready. If you will want a hard copy, you can get it from https://amzn.to/3jmEmF5

I welcome your comments and questions. If you choose to stay enrolled, I look forward to a great semester with you.

The post Why I’m Teaching Internet Law Online This Fall appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

NOTE: In summer, I took an ACUE course on online teaching, with additional training from CALI and our university’s instructional development team. (For more on SCU’s pivot during the pandemic, see this ACUE story). In contrast, some professors have been teaching online for many years, and entire academic disciplines focus on online pedagogy. They are the real experts you should trust.

Course Structure

I flipped the course. I pre-recorded all lecture material–about 90 minutes of lecture material per week in segments that ran about 10 minutes each on average. (ACUE recommends 5-6 minute videos because students’ attention wanes, but I couldn’t slice the material that finely).

Then, I held two 80-minute synchronous sessions per week, though I soon dropped to only one per week. Each synchronous session generally followed this script: (1) explain the session’s agenda, (2) remind students about upcoming deadlines, (3) open the floor for student questions, (4) provide general comments on prior student assignments, and (5) do two group exercises. I explained a discussion prompt, sent students into breakout rooms of 4-5 students each for roughly 6-8 minutes (it depended on the prompt), brought the students back, and asked designated reporters to report on their room’s discussion with my interspersed commentary.

Before the synchronous sessions, I asked students to:

• Read about 30 pages per week in the casebook. I expected that to take about 1 hour/week.
• Watch the prerecorded lectures (about 90 minutes/week).
• Explore optional topical exercises, such as online artifacts and databases. I expected each task would take a few minutes.

Each week, I provided open discussion threads where students could ask questions and comment on the exercises. Because participation was optional, they saw relatively little usage.

After the synchronous sessions, students completed an easy 5-question multiple choice quiz each week.

Students completed 9 papers over the semester (plus the final exam):

• a self-introduction on the discussion board.
• six reflection/journaling papers graded P/NP.
• a midterm, after which they evaluated one of their peer’s answers using a rubric I provided. This was P/NP. The midterm gave students a chance to practice what they learned, encouraged them to synthesize the material mid-semester, and helped me flag students in trouble.

At the semester’s end, students took a comprehensive multiple-choice test (also P/NP) and then the graded final exam.

Some Lessons

I worked hard. Teaching the course online felt like a new course prep. I did the following tasks that I would not have done for a physical-space class offering:

• Set up the Canvas course modules
• Create the online exercises
• Create 13 weekly wrapup quizzes (a total of 65 new multiple-choice questions)
• Build a comprehensive course calendar with deadlines
• Build the online discussion forums and the assignment pages in Canvas
• Set the agenda for the synchronous sessions
• Record the lectures

I should recoup some (but not all) of these investments in future online editions of the course, and some of these will remain even if I teach again in physical space.

I learned how to record the lecture videos. I’ve given thousands of class lectures and talks, so I’m generally comfortable presenting material. However, I had minimal experience self-recording without an audience, and I found that difficult. My in-person presentation style benefits from audience feedback–eye contact, body language, laughter (I hope). Without those audience cues, I felt stilted and self-conscious. Furthermore, I could erase the videos and try again–a trap for perfectionists. The welcome-to-the-class video took a dozen tries, and the final version still sucked. Over the semester, I became comfortable with a pre-recorded video persona, but it’s different from my live presentation persona.

My lectures overcompensated for the lack of interactivity. My recorded lectures typically ran longer than the time I would have spent covering the material in physical space. I felt I needed to anticipate and preemptively address students’ possible questions. In physical space, I can speed up/slow down my lectures based on student non-verbal feedback, plus students can interject questions on the spot. Without that interactivity, I (over)compensated.

I need to better explain my pedagogical decisions upfront. Some students never understood my pedagogical goals. For example, breakout rooms sought to elicit diverse student thinking and have students teach each other. Yet, some students thought that watching the recording of a synchronous session could substitute for attending the session, or they said they preferred to hear from me, not their peers. In the future, I will be more explicit about pedagogical design in the introductory materials.

Students benefit from well-structured modules. Per ACUE’s recommendations to make things predictable, I followed a template for each week’s module: reading assignment, videos, exercises, board to discuss the exercises, a link to post questions, quiz, and slides. I also adopted a consistent schedule every week: I posted the upcoming week’s module and videos each Wednesday; each week’s quiz was due Friday at 10. I also integrated all course obligations into Canvas–there weren’t other requirements referenced only in the syllabus or elsewhere.

Balancing video-watching and synchronous time. Initially, I used all of my scheduled synchronous time, but that didn’t go well. The students felt time-stressed, and an hour or two of mandatory videos on top of other course requirements overwhelmed them. That’s why I dropped one of the two weekly synchronous sessions.

Most students liked the recorded lectures. Many students liked pre-recorded lectures because they can watch them on their own time and at their own pace. (Students also like to rewatch lectures). However, a couple students told me they prefer real-time lectures.

Students who fell behind had trouble catching up. I set a relentless pace for the course. Every week: new readings, videos, exercises, and quizzes. A student who fell behind struggled to catch up. Plus, our academic calendar cancelled our typical Fall break. I might deliberately include a mid-semester catch-up week in the future.

Breakout room participation was dubious. My synchronous session discussions focused on exploring gray areas from the lectures or readings. Students who hadn’t prepared that week couldn’t fully participate in the breakout rooms–often 1-2 of the 4 students in the breakout room.

I also inadvertently encountered an unwanted gender dynamic. Initially, I randomly assigned students to rooms and asked them to self-designate a room reporter. Apparently, some male students claimed reporter status and then inhibited participation by women. I redressed this by designating a reporter for each breakout room.

Many students experienced out-of-class crises. Fall 2020 was brutal for students: the pandemic shutdown; devastating fires that left some students or their families homeless; COVID anxiety (and students/their families got sick); money stress; job search stress; and daily political crises. Collectively, a toxic environment for student learning. Normally, I am unforgiving about deadlines, but this semester I made some exceptions.

Few students took advantage of my availability. Normally, I get to know students through casual interactions–immediately before or after class, in the hallways, and unscheduled office visits. Without those, I scheduled lots of office hours and stuck around the Zoom room after class. Unfortunately, only a few students took advantage of these options.

A TA made my life better. My TA, Jess Miers, helped with:

• Troubleshooting Canvas (see below)
• Beta-testing my quizzes
• Reviewing my midterm, midterm sample answer, and final exam sample answer (to preserve confidentiality, she didn’t see the final exam beforehand)
• Watching the recorded lectures and providing feedback
• Attending the synchronous sessions, where she responded to chats/DMs, visited the students’ breakout rooms, and troubleshot technical issues
• Holding office hours for students (which got more attendance than my office hours)
• Fielding individual student questions. Before the final exam period, she got more student questions than I did
• When the grades came out, unhappy students vented their angst at her rather than me!

Having a TA was super-helpful, especially because Jess was so talented and committed.

Canvas is powerful but poorly designed. Canvas has powerful features, but its design sucks. Sometimes, I couldn’t figure out how to accomplish my goals, so I delegated the problem to Jess. I could do more with Canvas to benefit the students, but only if I can figure out how it works!

For student perspectives on the semester, see Jess Miers’ perspectives as the course TA and this video from a Swiss exchange student.

The post Observations from My First Time Teaching Online appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

What subject(s) do you teach?

I teach Internet Law, Intellectual Property, and Advertising Law.

What is one myth you’d bust about law school?

The most pernicious myth among law students is that law school grades define their professional identity and dictate their professional success. Too many law students think that grades are the main thing they are selling and the primary thing that employers are buying. The reality is that most employers care more about other attributes than grades, and law students who figure that out and invest time to develop their other professional skills often can achieve better professional outcomes than the students who solely sell their grades.

For example, it’s conventional wisdom that students seeking in-house legal jobs need to work at a big law firm first, and that strong law school grades are required to get BigLaw jobs. Yet, over half of the SCU Privacy Law Certificate alumni have started their post-JD career as in-house counsel doing privacy law, without ever working for a law firm.  And here’s the kicker: a number of those students got their dream jobs despite having grades in the bottom half of their class. How did these students outperform students with fancier grades? By acquiring and demonstrating the skills and expertise that employers valued the most. In many cases, employers hired those students without ever asking about their law school grades.

What is one practical skill every law student should master by the time they graduate? 

First, students should learn how to recruit mentors. Young lawyers need mentors to consult, look out for them, and make introductions. Law students need mentors too, so it’s never too early to start building a mentor network.

Second, students need to master the information resources that are core to their targeted practice area. This includes subscribing to the publications or news sources that lawyers in the practice area regularly read, knowing who has the answers to tough questions and building relationships with them so that they will answer your questions when you ask, and becoming skilled at using specialized information databases catering to the practice area.

What is the best piece of advice you would give to a law student about how to maximize their law school experience?

Your law school peers are your long-term professional colleagues, not your competitors. Build personal and professional relationships with them, and those relationships will be a critical professional asset for the rest of your career. For example, Santa Clara Law alumni routinely refer work to each other; and our students routinely share job opportunities and help their peers get hired. The student peer network starts working for savvy students on day 1!

What advice would you give to a law student about building genuine relationships with their professors? 

There’s no magic to building relationships with law professors compared to building a relationship with anyone else. The key is to find and explore areas of common interest. Students who tend to stand out to me are intellectually curious about the areas I teach and write in. We start talking about one of those topics and the conversation naturally extends from there.

I also encourage students to keep in touch with professors after graduation. We love to hear how our graduates are doing and continue the conversations we started in school.

The post My Interview About Law Students and Mentoring appeared first on Goldman's Observations.