Tag Archives: Student Assessment and Grading

Stone Soup:  Student Papers From Gely’s Negotiation, Simcox’s Trust & Estates, and Dauber’s Evidence Courses

  Faculty using Stone Soup assignments have required students to write papers summarizing interviews or observations of actual cases.  Like the assignments themselves, these papers vary quite a bit, as illustrated below. This post provides sample papers to give faculty ideas about what you might assign your classes in the future and provide papers you … Continue reading Stone Soup:  Student Papers From Gely’s Negotiation, Simcox’s Trust & Estates, and Dauber’s Evidence Courses →

Stone Soup, Reflective Practice, Action Research, and Social Justice

Some questions for law professors:  Why did you go to law school?  Why did you decide to go into academia?  What do you want to accomplish in your work?  What do you hope for your students? In this post, I give my answers to these questions, which I think will resonate for many readers of … Continue reading Stone Soup, Reflective Practice, Action Research, and Social Justice →

Stone Soup Assessment: Carrie Kaas’s Externship Course

  It would be hard to be more enthusiastic about Stone Soup than Carolyn Wilkes (Carrie) Kaas, the Co-Director of Quinnipiac’s Center on Dispute Resolution, Director of Experiential Education, as well as Director of Concentration Programs in Family Law and Civil Advocacy and Dispute Resolution.  These days, she also teaches Quinnipiac’s Externship Program. Like a … Continue reading Stone Soup Assessment: Carrie Kaas’s Externship Course →

Stone Soup Assessment: A Tale of Four Mediation Courses, by Charlie Irvine, Jim Levin, Martha Simmons, and Doug Yarn

  This post describes how Stone Soup pioneers used four different approaches in their mediation courses.  Once again, it demonstrates colleagues’ creativity and the great potential for Stone Soup. Charlie Irvine had 20 LLM / MSc students and he assigned them to interview a mediator about a recent case.  Students were required to write papers … Continue reading Stone Soup Assessment: A Tale of Four Mediation Courses, by Charlie Irvine, Jim Levin, Martha Simmons, and Doug Yarn →

Stone Soup Assessment:  Rafael Gely’s Negotiation Course

  I am extremely fortunate that Rafael Gely, the director of Missouri’s Center for the Study of Dispute Resolution, has been my partner in developing the Stone Soup Project. A year ago, when I first emailed him about it, the subject line was “a crazy idea?”  Rafael’s immediate response was, “I love this idea!  (Of … Continue reading Stone Soup Assessment:  Rafael Gely’s Negotiation Course →

Stone Soup Assessment: Bob Dauber’s Evidence Course

  Much legal education in the US is like telling someone how to ride a bike or having them read an instruction manual.  It’s important, but most people wouldn’t get very far if that’s all you did.  You could simply give them a bike and tell them to go, but that could lead to some … Continue reading Stone Soup Assessment: Bob Dauber’s Evidence Course →

Stone Soup:  A Thousand Great Chefs

  In June, Rafael Gely and I, the co-directors of the Stone Soup Project, decided to shift our approach from our original plan of a centralized database to a decentralized set of experimental efforts to produce knowledge about actual practice – aka letting a thousand chefs cook. I recently talked with many of the faculty who … Continue reading Stone Soup:  A Thousand Great Chefs →

Stone Soup:  Learning How People Actually Prepare for Negotiation and Mediation

We all say that preparation is important – it’s more popular than mom and apple pie – but we have only vague ideas about how people actually consider possible alternatives.  This includes the negotiators themselves.  We sometimes list general factors or approaches, but usually that’s as far as we get. I will go out on … Continue reading Stone Soup:  Learning How People Actually Prepare for Negotiation and Mediation →

Stone Soup Assignment: Stacey-Rae Simcox’s Trusts and Estates Course

  Stacey-Rae Simcox (Stetson) is using a Stone Soup assignment in her trusts and estates course.  The extra-credit assignment is for students to interview someone who has been involved in a significant estate settlement.  It adapts the Stone Soup model assignment by suggesting a very useful list of questions about things one might ask about … Continue reading Stone Soup Assignment: Stacey-Rae Simcox’s Trusts and Estates Course →

Message for Students Interested in ADR

After I attended the orientation on Friday for the LLM Program at my school, I sent an email to the students suggesting some resources that they might be interested in. It occurred to me that other faculty may want to send a similar message to your students.  I adapted the message, below, and you may … Continue reading Message for Students Interested in ADR →