Professor Michael Hunter Schwartz, a nationally known teaching and learning scholar, designed the Context and Practice Series to make it easy for professors to implement the ideas in Best Practices for Legal Education (CLEA 2007) and in the Carnegie Foundation’s Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Practice of Law (2007). Schwartz has authored three books and two law review articles on law school learning, has spoken about teaching and learning at more than two dozen law schools, and is a named contributing editor to Best Practices.
A few principles are core to the series’ vision. Best Practices recommends that law professors set high expectations, “engage the students in active learning,” “give regular and prompt feedback,” “help students improve their self-directed learning skills,” “employ multiple methods of instruction,” and, in particular, “use context-based instruction.” Educating Lawyers argues that law professors need to do a better job helping students build practice skills and develop their professional identities.
Accordingly, the books in this series:
"First-year professors need to provide their students with frequent formative assessment--critical feedback. One way to do this is to have problem-solving exercises at the end of each chapter or unit. Newer casebooks are including such exercises. I especially recommend the Carolina Academic Press Context and Practice Series." - Legal Skills Prof Blog
View the Context and Practice Series Flier (PDF)