Strategic Plan Progress Report - April 2021

Commitment Two: Preparing our students for a lifetime of learning, service, and ethical leadership

Strategies:
The College worked to maintain its commitment to providing foundational legal education, even in the midst of a global pandemic.

• Ensure that every Nebraska Law graduate acquires the foundational knowledge and understanding necessary to work successfully with clients from diverse backgrounds and cultures, and to collaborate successfully with other professions and professionals;

  • Maintain and strengthen our core curriculum as a crucial foundation;

  • Emphasize ethics, integrity, and leadership throughout our educational program;

  • Prioritized in-person 1L courses when the pandemic reduced our classroom capacity by 75% and many courses were forced online

  • Added significant learning modules related to racial justice and systemic racism to numerous classes across the curriculum

  • Changed focus and emphasis of legal writing to include specific work on legal analysis and legal research; expanded the role of librarians in teaching extensive legal research skills to 1Ls; reoriented LAWR course to enhance consistency and rigor across sections

  • Assigned the teaching of core litigation courses (trial advocacy, pretrial litigation) to in-house, full-time clinical faculty to provide greater consistency to the courses

  • Obtained $6 million in funding to renovate the Schmid Law Library to enhance the teaching of digital legal research

  • Develop and implement a program on Inclusive Leadership that includes 1L opportunities, mandatory curriculum for upper-class students, co-curricular leadership opportunities, and faculty and staff learning opportunities

  • As positions open, hire new faculty with outstanding records and diverse perspectives

  • Actively search for professors to teach Race and the Law and courses focusing on systemic racism

  • Develop ways to infuse ethics and integrity in classes beyond Professional Responsibility

  • Complete report on developing a new Honor Code for the College of Law

  • Complete report on how to measure and track College’s success in satisfying Learning Outcome #1 related to our core educational outcomes (Learning Outcome #1: A Nebraska Law graduate will acquire a broad-based knowledge and understanding of substantive and procedural law along with the legal, analytical reasoning, and complex problem solving skills necessary to apply this knowledge in professional work)

  • Complete report on how to measure and track College’s success in satisfying Learning Outcome #6 related to cultural competency (Learning Outcome #6: A Nebraska Law graduate will acquire the foundational knowledge and understanding necessary to work successfully with clients from diverse backgrounds and cultures, and to collaborate successfully with other professions and professionals)

• Encourage and empower students to co-create their educational program through heightened connections and communication between and amongst students, advisors, faculty, alumni, practitioners, and other professionals;
  

  • Expanded alumni mentoring program to include over 130 alumni-student mentoring teams

  • Launched 2L Inclusive Leadership Pilot Program – a program designed to connect 2L students with curricular and co-curricular opportunities that will help them achieve their professional goals.

  • Expand, coordinate, and maximize active, including experiential, learning opportunities to make them central to a Nebraska Law education;

  • Changed faculty rule to double the amount of externship credits students could take before graduation

  • Joined the Police Practices Initiative in Fall 2020 to provide opportunities to students interested in policy development with law enforcement

  • Received approximately $500,000 in grants to fund the Children’s Justice Clinic for another three years

  • Co-founded the Tenant Assistance Project to give students hands-on experience researching cases and representing tenants in eviction cases, as well as researching proposed changes to landlord-tenant laws and testifying about those changes before the state legislature

  • Developed an Estate Planning Clinic to be taught regularly during the summer

• Develop a coordinated program focused on encouraging and supporting students who desire to work in public service or for a public interest organization; 

  • Expanded opportunities and support for those interested in post-graduate fellowships with a public interest organization

  • Develop a Center or Program focused on Public Interest and Public Service work – become the best place in America for students interested in public interest work

• Expand opportunities for students, faculty, administrators, and staff to engage in community service and pro bono representation;

  • Co-founded the Tenant Assistance Project to give students hands-on experience researching cases and representing tenants in eviction cases, as well as researching proposed changes to landlord-tenant laws and testifying about those changes before the state legislature

  • Emphasized involvement in the ABA Free Legal Answers Program, resulting in national recognition by the ABA as a Pro Bono Leader for 2018, 2019, and 2020

  • Expanded the Schmid Research Fellows program to provide pro bono legal research for nonprofit organizations

  • Continue to offer to all law students, regardless of their class year, an opportunity to be involved in the Immigration Clinic’s annual naturalization clinic, which assists those who are interested in becoming U.S. citizens

• Explore requiring substantial small-group training for all students in professional skills including client counseling, negotiation, effective communication, leadership, wellness, and technology.

  • Developed 2L Inclusive Leadership Pilot program related to leadership and professional development, enrolled 20 2Ls in each of the last two academic years

  • Embrace the Clifton Strengths program to become a Strengths-based Institution