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Wednesday, March 29, 2023
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EXHIBIT HALL
12:00 p.m. - 12:30 p.m. ET
(30 minutes)
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Exhibit Hall
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GENERAL SESSION & Welcome Announcements
12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. ET
(60 minutes)
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Making Connections With and Among Students in a Virtual Program
Speakers: Tracy A. Nothnagel & Halye Sugarman
Now that the dust of forced remote learning has settled, have you found yourself teaching in a permanent 100% virtual paralegal/legal studies program? Are you struggling to find ways to make connections with your students? Are you struggling to find ways to connect your students to each other? Come join us for a fun and interactive session where we will share some of the things that have worked (and maybe some that have not) in our programs.
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1:30 p.m. – 1:45 p.m. ET
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Stretch Break
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GENERAL SESSION
1:45 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. ET
(45 minutes)
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Effective Group Work to Support Non-Traditional Students
Speaker: Page Beetem
Group work. The ABA requires it; we assign it; students complain about it; but why is group work so important? What purpose does group work serve? Are we creating assignments that effectively meet the full potential of group work? Effective group work can create a community of inclusivity that bridges gaps among gender, nontraditional students and those who identify as students. This presentation will present the issue and provide examples of effective group work to immediately start addressing the problem. A significant portion of paralegal students identify as being part of the “other.” They may be different because of their age; they may have had a gap in education and have not identified as students in many years; and/or they may be one of a few male students in a class of primarily women. The challenge of reaching this population of “other” students can be addressed by effective group work. Interpersonal communication research gives insight as to how effective group work creates a long-term community with stronger communication, leading to increased retention and involvement by all students. This presentation is based on a paper accepted for publication in The Educator. As part of my sabbatical, I researched the challenges specific to non-traditional students based on gender identity. I administered a national survey to paralegal students at AAfPE schools asking our students about their experience based on age and gender. I then wrote a scholarly journal article based on interpersonal communication research investigating how age and gender affect performance as a student. Understanding and addressing the confluence of age, gender, and student-identity creates an opportunity for paralegal educators to increase the success of their students.
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GENERAL SESSION
2:30 p.m. – 3:15 p.m. ET
(45 minutes)
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Boob Tube or a Plethora of Wealth and Knowledge? Tuning Your Entertainment to Bring Law to Life - Usage of Multimedia in the Classroom.
Speaker: Sharon Yamen
Our personal entertainment consumption can make for really engaging learning tools, bringing the law to life. The Fall of 2022 was the first semester that I was tasked with teaching Legal Ethics. For my ten plus years of teaching, Legal Ethics was always an anecdotal mention, never as the focus of a lesson, let alone the subject of an entire semester's course. It made me think about my 1L law school ethics class some 20 years ago, although the content was interesting, the class was lifeless and too abstract; neither would work for undergraduates. Students learn in a multitude of ways, and it is our job as educators to utilize a variety of methods to break down complex legal issues into easily digestible formats. From television, film, and podcasts, I have accumulated tidbits and clips of legal factoids that I present to my students in various ways. I found that when I have coordinated my lesson plans with visual and audio components, my students fared better on those sections than other sections. Students were more engaged and stayed focused and paid attention longer. Multimedia is easy to use and can provide unique in-depth content on almost every topic under the sun. Students can make connections between the multimedia and the concept being studied in class. Everywhere you look there is a legal lesson to be made, especially an ethics one. Multimedia brings lessons to life, and it makes teaching Legal Ethics a lot more engaging and exciting. This session will provide methods on how best to utilize multimedia in the classroom with a focus on legal ethics, specifically from television, film, and podcasts. The session will also include a discussion of research on the usage of multimedia as a high-impact practice, its value, and continued importance in higher education. Session participants will increase their understanding on how best to utilize multimedia as a successful learning platform and on creating high-impact lessons, while interactively ascertaining how to produce effective content to increase student engagement, learning, and academic performance.
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3:15 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. ET
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Stretch Break
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GENERAL SESSION
3:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. ET
(60 minutes)
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Legal Writing and Ethics in a World of ChatGPT
Speaker: Kristine Condon
Faculty often feel as though we struggle to keep pace with technology that our students may use for academically dishonest (or at least borderline questionable) purposes. The latest of these is an artificial intelligence (AI) app called ChatGPT, which can generate sentences, paragraphs, and even quasi-complex analyses by feeding a simple query into the software. In this interactive session, we’ll look at how AI is generally used in academia; how ChatGPT could be used to generate legal writing while leaving no audit trail; and how the untested ethical and legal considerations of using this technology can actually offer your students a forum to hone critical thinking skills while offering an ethics lesson in the process.
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4:30 p.m. – 4:45 p.m. ET
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Stretch Break
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GENERAL SESSION
4:45 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. ET
(45 minutes)
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Cybersecurity, Data Privacy, and Technology Ethics ─ Opportunities for Student Engagement Through Research, Writing, and Experiential Learning
Speaker: Marissa Moran
The proliferation of data and its increased use in our professional and social lives, as well as for entertainment purposes, has also revealed the risks and vulnerabilities in terms of access to our data. Victims of cyber/data breaches through hackers, phishing scams, and/or ransomware attacks include individuals as well as health care providers/hospitals, educational and governmental institutions, industry, and law firms. The New York State Bar Association (NYSBA) recently recognized the significance of the challenges and opportunities for law practitioners in the area of cybersecurity, data privacy, and ethics. To address such concerns, beginning in 2023, and upon the recommendation of the NYSBA Committee on Technology and The Legal Profession, the NYSBA mandated that cybersecurity be a component of attorneys’ Continuing Legal Education (CLE) requirements. Florida and North Carolina have done so as well and it is anticipated that other state bar associations will soon require the same. The impact of cybersecurity on the ethical duties and responsibilities of attorneys in keeping confidential client data provides Paralegal Educators with a variety of opportunities to engage their paralegal/legal assistant studies students through class discussions, research, writing, and experiential learning opportunities and so, better prepare their students for working in the legal environment and assisting attorneys and clients of the law firm and other legal organizations.
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Thursday, March 30, 2023
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VENDOR DEMO & OPENING REMARKS
12:00 p.m. – 12:30 p.m. ET
(60 minutes)
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The National Association of Legal Assistants (NALA) - The Paralegal Association
Speakers: Vanessa Finley and Melody Drew
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GENERAL SESSION
12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. ET
(60 minutes)
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Legal Professionals Apprenticeship Programs: How to Develop a Federally Approved Apprenticeship Program in Your Service Area.
Speaker: Dr. Kenneth Goldsmith
An apprenticeship program for legal professionals requires three participants. This presentation will review how the collaboration among a law firm, the workforce development department, and the paralegal program can produce a federally approved legal professional apprenticeship. Areas covered in the presentation will include internal collaboration among workforce development and the paralegal program and external collaboration among the aforementioned college departments and community-based law firms. Curriculum requirements, federal form processing, and prospective student marketing will be addressed to provide session participants with knowledge (and a checklist) to develop federally approved legal professional apprenticeship programs at their institutions.
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1:30 p.m. – 1:45 p.m. ET
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Stretch Break
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GENERAL SESSION
1:45 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. ET
(45 minutes)
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Creating Great Hypotheticals to Teach Legal Analysis
Speaker: Toni Marsh
Creating great hypotheticals is an art: they have to stretch the boundaries of what the class knows, relate to what you've learned all semester, and be entirely new. Done well, they can add dimension and depth to your students' learning. So what does it take to create a fun, vibrant, relevant, and realistic hypothetical? Join Professor Toni Marsh to explore some proven techniques and create a hypothetical of your own in the session.
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GENERAL SESSION
2:30 p.m. – 3:15 p.m. ET
(45 minutes)
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Interviewing and Writing: An Approach to Students Learning Hard and Soft Job-Related Skills
Speaker: Elizabeth Donovan
Understanding their potential to play an important role in issues that matter to them can serve to motivate students to obtain skills that allow them to express their views, support their views, address contrasting views, and build consensus. In this session, we will explore the benefits of a multi-week assignment that enables students to learn and practice job-related soft and hard skills by exploring a topic of interest to them. The assignment includes conducting an interview, engaging in research, preparing outlines, writing an argumentative essay, providing peer-review, employing self-review, and assignment management.
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3:15 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. ET
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Stretch Break
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GENERAL SESSION
3:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. ET
(60 minutes)
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Leadership in Law: Enhancing Legal Operations Through Personality Profiles, Leadership Styles, and a Culture of Authenticity
Speaker: Thomas Allison
Paralegal education should encompass assignments and pedagogy that allow students with different personalities the chance to succeed at the same level. Of course, all paralegals must understand forms, and all law students understand the rules of evidence; however, truth be told, the success of law firms will depend on paralegals who are horrible with forms but great with people and attorneys who hate court but understand empathy and storytelling. The legal profession is best when there is room for everyone. The law fails many when there are not different styles of leadership at the table. The pathway to making room for everyone is a culture of authenticity. The facilitator of an authentic culture is an authentic leader. This session explores potential ways to model authentic leadership in legal education so we can have authentic leadership in the legal profession. It is time the legal profession truly embraces the diversity of the communities it serves. This includes diversity of background, resources, skills, talents, thought, and neurodiversity.
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4:30 p.m. – 4:45 p.m. ET
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Stretch Break
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GENERAL SESSION
4:45 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. ET
(45 minutes)
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How to Use H5P to Create an Engaging, Online Textbook
Speaker: Susan Jaworowski
In spring 2022, I was granted a sabbatical to write an interactive OER textbook for our introductory Paralegal course. Writing the text was the easy part, but I wanted to make it engaging with interactive activities to promote student learning and make reading the textbook fun. Adobe Flash used to be used to create interactive online activities, but it was discontinued years ago due to security issues. H5P has stepped in to fill the gap. It harnesses the power of HTML5 to create a multiplicity of interactive online activities, including basics such as interactive videos, drag and drops, fill in the blanks, matching games, and flash cards, as well as the fresher and less expected tools such as the 360-degree virtual tour, image hotspots, branching scenarios, and more. In this presentation, I will walk the participants through the basic pedagogy and process I used to plan my interactive textbook, as well as demo a number of different types of H5P interactives. Time permitting, I will show them the backend of selected H5P interactives to show participants how these are created. Providing such a demonstration will enable faculty to assess the ease or difficulty in creating interactives so that they can make an informed opinion as to whether this is a tool they want to explore further. My textbook has received positive comments from students and other faculty members, as well as from members of the public, as I have shared it with our state paralegal association. It is important to show the H5P interactives in the context of paralegal-specific learning. The interactivity is not just a gimmick; it is a genuine tool to allow students to test their knowledge in an easy, low stakes, visually engaging format. If you are not familiar with H5P, their website is at https://h5p.org/ and you can play a matching game right on their front page.
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Friday, March 31, 2023
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EXHIBITOR HALL
12:00 p.m. - 12:30 p.m. ET
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Exhibit Hall
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GENERAL SESSION
12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. ET
(60 minutes)
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2023 Technology Rollouts That are Impacting the Legal Industry
Speaker: Douglas Lusk
The legal industry is slowly but surely catching up to other industries in terms of technology. In the past few years, we have seen a number of new technologies being rolled out that are designed to make the practice of law more efficient and effective. Here are some of the most significant technology rollouts that are impacting the legal industry: Cloud-based document management allows lawyers to store and share documents securely in the cloud, making it easy to access them from anywhere. Legal analytics uses data to help lawyers predict outcomes, identify trends, and make better decisions. Contract management helps lawyers to streamline the contract management process, making it more efficient and less time-consuming. Artificial intelligence (AI) is being used in a number of ways to assist lawyers, including with research, document review, and contract analysis. These are just a few examples of the many new technologies that are impacting the legal industry. As we move into the future, we can expect to see even more changes as lawyers embrace these new tools to improve their practice.
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1:30 p.m. – 1:45 p.m. ET
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Stretch Break
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GENERAL SESSION
1:45 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. ET
(45 minutes)
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Virtual Court Hearings: Here to Stay
Speaker: Brian Craig
Out of necessity, the COVID-19 pandemic created a need for the judiciary to implement more virtual court hearings. Virtual court hearings benefit lawyers, as well as their clients. (Fonnesbeck, 2022). Judges have learned what works and does not work well with virtual and video court hearings. (Kricken, 2021). While virtual court hearings offer many advantages, video and virtual court hearings also create potential constitutional and practical issues. For example, the Missouri Supreme Court held in J.A.T. v. Jackson Cnty. Juv.Off., 637 S.W.3d 1 (Mo. 2022) that requiring a juvenile to attend his adjudication hearing via two-way live video due to COVID-19 violated his due process rights under the United States and Missouri Constitutions. Many have worried that videoconferencing inhibits effective communication between defendants and their counsel, hinders defendants’ understanding of the process, impedes effective confrontation of witnesses, and prejudices the court's perceptions of the defendant and witnesses. (Turner 2022). This presentation explores some of the constitutional issues and practical issues with virtual court hearings. In addition, this presentation describes how legal educators can teach paralegal students how to best assist lawyers, clients, and witnesses with virtual court hearings. Specifically, the presentation provides information on best practices for paralegals with virtual court hearings, such as helping draft motions to appear remotely, scheduling, testing technology, preparing exhibits, and preparing attendees. It is essential for paralegals today to understand how to help attorneys, clients, and witnesses with virtual court hearings.
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GENERAL SESSION
2:30 p.m. – 3:15 p.m. ET
(45 minutes)
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Developing Durable Skills Using Coaching and Leadership Development in the Classroom
Speakers: Kristine Custodio Suero & Kelli Radnothy
There is no magic potion to ensure students apply what they learn; however, we can utilize approaches to improve transfer and retention of knowledge. While some people are natural leaders, anyone can develop leadership skills; however, we must consider which professional capabilities are best enhanced within the classroom setting. Let’s use the classroom as a lab to test hypotheses, collect and analyze data, and strategically approach professional growth. This methodology focuses on introducing concepts in a creative manner to encourage engagement and emphasize the importance of leadership development. Combining intentional course design with embedded personal skill enrichment is a recipe for an enhanced student experience. Building engaged leaders with both competence and confidence will empower the future workforce to do their life work, not just a job. Practical assignments, interactive exercises, and measurable assessments will ensure success within a program and beyond. Employee retention and satisfaction are only two of the many benefits possible through durable skill and leadership development. We don’t want to provide stale education; we must present relevant and modern material in ways that yield both personal and professional growth. Empowering students to develop durable and adaptable skills will set the tone for the duration of their careers and provide the pathway for endless opportunities within the legal industry.
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3:15 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. ET
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Stretch Break
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GENERAL SESSION & Closing Announcements
3:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. ET
(60 minutes)
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The Law is All Around Us: Teaching Civil Litigation Using Current Popular Cases
Speaker: Regina Stuart
This presentation will discuss how to construct a civil litigation class using a series of current popular cases, including the U.S. Women's Soccer team’s lawsuit seeking equal pay, a copyright lawsuit involving the Netflix series "Bridgerton," and a harassment lawsuit filed by Taylor Swift. These cases demonstrate the pre-trial phases of civil litigation (jurisdiction and venue, filing the complaint, responding to the complaint, discovery, and summary judgment). For each phase, students first learn the key Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and then learn how those rules come to life through current popular cases. Students are meant to come away from this class with an understanding of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, an understanding of how these rules work in practice, and practice reading and understanding civil legal documents.
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VENDOR DEMO
4:30 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. ET
(30 minutes)
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National Society for Legal Technology (NSLT)
Speaker: Douglas Lusk, President/CEO, National Society for Legal Technology (NSLT)
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