{ prima facie } the Temple Law newspaper

By James Barger, Prima Facie Editor-in-Chief

Students told Dean JoAnne Epps about a wide range of concerns at a gathering held Oct. 7, in Barrack Hall. Dean Epps was the featured guest at the “student leadership breakfast” to “talk about issues affecting the Law School,” according to the invitation e-mail Dean Marylouise Esten sent to participants.

Dean Esten's invitation e-mail described the purpose of the event. “A few years ago, we started an initiative to help foster student leadership at the Law School,” Esten wrote in the e-mail. “We periodically gather all of our student leaders for what we call a Student Leadership Breakfast. This is a great opportunity for us to exchange information about what's happening at the Law School, brainstorm about ideas for the future, and talk about issues affecting students, faculty and administrators at the Law School.”

The following is a list of some of the issues and questions students raised at the breakfast:

• Some Intellectual Property (IP) courses overlapped in recent semesters, making course selection difficult for those who wanted multiple courses in the IP program.
• One student suggested that the law school respond to the growing importance of the Web and Internet use by building a comprehensive, integrated Internet Law and IP program.
• Another student said she would like to see more courses to prepare students for public policy and government work, as opposed to other public interest work or law firm jobs.
• A student asked if the law school could provide IP clinical programs. Dean Epps said this is challenging because typically the law school's clinical programs must be with non-profit organizations. However, she added that professors are making an inquiry into ways to update the upper-class curriculum.
• The Integrated Trial Advocacy Program (ITAP) might actually do a disservice to some future litigators, in the opinion of one student at the breakfast. He said he believed the effort required for the trial advocacy part of the ITAP program resulted in non-ITAP students gaining a firmer grasp of Evidence.
• Temple Law's grading policy was another topic of discussion. The law school's relatively low grade point average (GPA) median hurts Temple Law students in the job market, one student said. Dean Epps said the grading policy serves multiple goals, one of them being a “signal” to students that they need to prepare for the bar exam. When average grades were higher, an alarming number of students failed the bar exam. Under the current grading policy, students in danger of failing the bar exam are given a clearer warning, in the form of lower grades than they would have received under the past system.
• Continuing the grading policy discussion, a student pointed out Temple Law's GPA median makes the task of securing jobs in government agencies in Washington, D.C., particularly challenging, because those agencies often have strict GPA requirements or do not take into account lower-than-usual grading curves.
• The law school needs more study rooms, according to one student. Dean Esten suggested that rooms in Barrack Hall might be available when those in Klein Hall are filled.
• Maintenance is lacking in one part of Klein Hall, according to a student who described flickering lights and missing ceiling tiles in the part of Klein Hall that is used for legal clinics.
• Student Bar Association (SBA) meetings and ITAP classes overlap, causing some students to be unable to attend SBA meetings, said one student.
• One student said the air conditioning in the law school buildings is always too cold. Another student said the buildings tend to be too hot. Dean Epps said the extensive repairs to the air conditioning system, which are still underway, will not change the situation. She said there are technical difficulties in trying to achieve a perfect temperature in all rooms at all times.
• There was some discussion about students and faculty smoking on the steps of Klein Hall, on the wrong side of the “no smoking” sign posted on the steps. Students said one problem is the amount of cigarette butts thrown on the steps. Dean Epps said students “have to ask the [law school] community to fight back” to stop the problem.
• A student reported that numerous flyers were disappearing off bulletin boards in Klein Hall, although there appeared to be no pattern to which ones were being taken down.
• Some students talked about the difficulty in keeping up with the information about events at the law school, noting occasionally inaccurate information on the Web-based and e-mailed calendar. One student said there are too many e-mails. In response, an SBA representative said the SBA is working on improving their system, to create an “opt-in/opt-out” ability.
• The law school website is too difficult to navigate, making even information hard to find, said one student. Dean Epps said, at the outset of the breakfast, that the law school is in the process of building a new website, through the hired services of a web development company.
• Legal Research & Writing courses should be worth more credits, said one student, because of the disproportionate amount of effort currently required by the classes.
• The ALWD citation system should not be used at Temple Law, according to a student who asked why the law school uses ALWD in Legal Research & Writing courses, rather than the much more widely used Bluebook system. Dean Epps explained that ALWD was created by the former director of Temple Law's Legal Research & Writing program. She said she has been told that ALWD is close enough to Bluebook that use of ALWD is not harming students.

A second leadership breakfast was held in November, even though the law school typically holds no more than one each semester. The second breakfast was assembled to discuss the law school grading policy. (See related article elsewhere on this website. Search for "leadership breakfast".)