Welcome back to Ahead of the Curve. I'm Karen Sloan, legal education editor at Law.com, and I'll be your host for this weekly look at innovation and notable developments in legal education.

This week, I'm chatting with Cleveland-Marshall College of Law professor Jonathan Witmer-Rich about the new class he's creating around the current season of the popular Serial podcast, the program developed by This American Life which explores the inner workings of the criminal justice system. Next up is a look at the slow demise of Arizona Summit Law School, which administrators say is poised to close for good. Lastly, I'm using the occasion of the retirement of the University of Virginia School of Law's longtime copy services director to hail all the staffers who work behind the scenes at law school to keep them running. 

Please share your thoughts and feedback with me at [email protected] or on Twitter: @KarenSloanNLJ

From Podcast to the Classroom

When it comes to developing new law classes, we've seen professors pull on current events. (Example: This course on the extent and limits of presidential power, inspired by a certain occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue). We've seen them draw from television, too. (Did you enjoy The Wire? There's a class for you.) And now it looks like podcasts may be the next source material for legal educators.

Professor Jonathan Witmer-Rich of the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law next semester will teach Understanding and Reforming the Criminal Justice Process—a course based on the current season of the popular podcast Serial. It's not much of a stretch, given that this season chronicles a year at a Cleveland courthouse and the criminal justice stories that unfold within and beyond its walls. The purpose is to highlight how the system actually works in practice, and the roles of the various players, be it judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, defendants and police. The podcast spotlights where the system isn't working as it should and focuses on the disadvantages that poor defendants face. Each episode looks at one or two cases as they work their way through the system.

“It touches on the role of the prosecutor and the power prosecutors have,” Witmer-Rich said. “It looks at plea bargaining and how ubiquitous it is and whether it seems coercive. It looks at issues like bail, pretrial release, race in the criminal justice system, police use of force and accountability for abuses by the police. It touches on all the big topics people talk about talk about in criminal justice reform.”

Though the podcast is still midway through its season, Witmer-Rich immediately recognized its potential as a teaching tool to get students thinking beyond the black-letter law and doctrine they learn in his criminal law core class, to better understand how those law play out in real life and to contemplate reforms. “A big piece of the new course is pushing the students to try to think creatively about ways to change the law, change the way institutions are structured, and try to change the incentives in order to fix some of these problems,” he said.

Witmer-Rich plans to have students listen to one episode each week, supplemented with other materials such as the U.S. Department of Justice's2014 report on its investigation of the Cleveland Police Department's use of excessive force. He aims to bring in guest speakers each week, some of whom have appeared in the podcast. (Witmer-Rich said the city's legal community feels like a small club, and that he knows many of the players who appear in the podcast.)

Serial is generating a lot of buzz in Cleveland, Witmer-Rich added, and law students are paying attention. He thinks the class will be a popular option for students. “It a great opportunity for Cleveland to talk about what going on with criminal justice in our city, and try to assess whether there are ways we can improve what we're doing.”

The podcast is relevant outside the city, too, he noted. Serial's producers selected Cleveland in part because of its relatively unremarkable nature and that fact that its criminal justice issues are the same as those in most any other American city.

My thoughts: I like the idea of harnessing something from pop culture, like Serial, to teach law. Obviously there are limits to this approach. (I'm not completely sold on this course on the rule of law and Harry Potter being offered by a law school in India.) But basing a course on a nonfiction podcast—or even a fictionalized but realistic TV show like The Wire—makes sense as a way to energize and engage students. They're more likely to want to take the class and participate fully if they already have an interest in the source material. Witmer-Rich was right when he told me you can't throw out the core law school curriculum in favor of the legal issue of the day or whatever podcast or TV show is popular at the moment. But his upcoming class demonstrates that there are opportunities to bring those core doctrines to life through pop culture.

Arizona Summit, We Hardly Knew Ye

Last week brought official word that Arizona Summit Law School is going out of business.

This news won't surprise anyone who has followed the slow-motion implosion of the for-profit law school in Phoenix, especially given that it didn't hold classes this semester. School officials had previously hinted that the game was over and that their effort to retain Arizona Summit's American Bar Association accreditation was winding down, but President Peter Goplerud confirmed that to state regulators on Thursday, according to this report in the Arizona Republic. Here's the plan:

➤➤Arizona Summit has submitted a second teach-out plan to the ABA—it's first one was rejected, in part because it called on nearby Arizona State University Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law to take its remaining students when ASU had not agreed to the plan.

➤➤If the ABA approves the plan, which involves the school helping its remaining 22 students complete their degrees elsewhere, it will stay accredited until late 2019 or May 2020. That timing will enable remaining students to finish their degrees—again at other law schools—while technically graduating from Arizona Summit and being eligible to sit for the bar exam.

➤➤After the remaining students graduate, the school will officially shut down. Goplerud said the school will end its ABA appeal—which it filed after the ABA revoked its accreditation—once the teach-out plan is approved.

The Takeaway: My previous newsletter explored the dire situation of the Valparaiso University School of Law, which has stopped admitting new students and whose proposed relocation to Middle Tennessee State University was recently rejected by state regulators. Lest I be accused of being one of those naysayers who applauds the demise of law campuses, let me be clear. I'm a supporter of legal education and I want law schools to succeed. But more importantly I want law students to succeed. That means graduating—preferably without a crushing amount of debt—passing the bar, and getting good jobs. Both these schools, and Arizona Summit in particular, have been falling short of producing graduates who succeed in these areas for years. Arizona Summit's closure is overdue in my book.

“Makin' Copies”

Anybody remember this atrocious SNL skit featuring an obnoxious Rob Schneider offering commentary about use of the office copier? (It features Mike Meyers, Phil Hartman and Sting, no less.)

Pardon the digression, but that's what popped into my head when I came across this delightful story on the University of Virginia's website about the retirement of Betty Snow, who has worked in copy services for the past 46 years. The last 25 years she spent running the law school's copy services department. I urge you to read the story for all the details on how copy technology has advanced during her tenure at UVA. But what this really got me thinking about are all the unsung heroes who work behind the scenes at law schools to keep them running. I talk to a lot of deans and professors, many of whom are accustomed to seeing their names in the media, but there are armies of support staff whose efforts are so key to the operation but who are rarely recognized. So I applaud Snow on her retirement and for UVA for recognizing her work publicly.

Extra Credit Reading

George Mason law professor Ilya Somin discusses the online run-in he had with accused mail bomber Cesar Sayoc Jr. last year, who threatened to kill him.

Here's a look at how Sandra Day O'Connor has influenced three particular law schools: Stanford; Arizona State; and William and Mary.

Talk about the law school admissions interview from hell…for the interviewer. A former student at the University of Texas School of Law pleaded guilty to cyberstalking a Georgetown Law alum who interviewed him for admissions after his application was denied.

Failed the bar exam? Academic support deans from CUNY and Texas Techdiscuss how to recover from the blow and be successful on the second try.

Georgetown University Law Center is trying to reform policing by teaching cops about use of excessive force; mental illness, and implicit bias, among other things.

Thanks for reading Ahead of the Curve. I'll be back next week with more news and updates on the future of legal education. Until then, keep in touch at [email protected]