Legal education in a pandemic

At the time, there were 1,215 reported cases in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But judging by news coming from Italy, and later New York, it appeared cases and deaths would accelerate quickly. Increasingly, bringing roughly 15,000 students back to Emory’s campus began to appear untenable.

Five months later when fall classes began at Emory Law on August 17 (for most students, remotely) both Fulton and Gwinnett were in the top 50 counties in the country for confirmed cases (21,993 and 21,534 respectively, according to Johns Hopkins University of Medicine). DeKalb County reported 14,926 cases. The combined number of deaths in those three counties alone (1,027 at the time) was higher than the number of deaths in entire countries. Across the United States, 170,434 citizens were dead.

COVID-19’s spread broke plans made by state and local governments. No one knew how long shutdowns would last, which affected how Emory would finish spring term and plan for fall. On March 11, students were on spring break, which the university extended by a week.

That gave Emory Law not quite two weeks to train 93 fulltime and adjunct faculty members to teach 140 classes online to roughly 950 students. The law school had adopted Zoom early on, which had influenced the University’s decision to purchase an enterprise license, said Corky Gallo, Emory Law’s director of operations, Information Technology. So, on the technology side, the structure was in place for remote classes. Next up was teaching people to use it.

“While we weren’t as concerned about the students’ ability to adapt, we recognized it was going to require some intensive training to get many of our faculty up to speed, both technically and pedagogically,” he said. While Gallo’s team managed tech solutions, Professor Rebecca Purdom addressed pedagogy. “I hope people realize and remember how fortunate we are to have had Professor Purdom on hand to make this rapid shift,” Gallo said. Purdom is executive director for graduate and online programs. In addition to her background in environmental law, her other area of expertise is using technology for curriculum design and delivery.

“It never felt impossible,” Gallo said. “We have a good working knowledge of our faculty’s technology skills. We knew who was going to easily fly on their own, and who was going to need extra attention, and we deployed ourselves proactively with that knowledge. In times of pandemic, this comes in handy.”

“Some faculty took to it right away, and others were completely doubtful they could carry it off,” Gallo said. “It was a bit like moving from foxhole to foxhole to encourage them,” he said.

MARCH 23: REMOTE TEACHING BEGINS

Sue Payne, executive director of the Center for Transactional Law and Practice, praised her adjunct professors for stepping up to learn Zoom. In spring, there were 15 “Doing Deals” classes offered. Three such courses are required to earn a transactional law certificate and are designed to be an intensive, hands-on transition to real practice. There were 20Ls who needed their final capstone courses to complete the program. At graduation, 54 juris doctor students earned their certificates.

“The biggest challenge for experiential simulation courses like ours is that the students spend so much class time engaged in collaborative activities,” Payne said. “In a regular classroom, we divide the students up into groups and send them to the corners of the room or out into the hall to complete various exercises.” In remote learning, this translated to breakout rooms. “Once you get used to the idea that you are simply sending the students into other Zoom rooms and you can pop in and out of those rooms with the touch of a button and the students can summon you if they have a question, the breakout rooms seem like Zoom’s best feature,” Payne said.

Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law Polly J. Price 86C 86G had taught a massive open online course (MOOC) previously, but that experience was very different, she said. Lectures were pre-recorded and most elements of the course were complete before it launched.

“I monitored and interacted with discussion boards, but otherwise, the lecture component, evaluations, and exercises were built out in advance, over the course of several months,” she said. Lecturing on Zoom in spring was very different, and she had 42 students in her Citizenship and Immigration Law class.

“I monitored the chat box on the side for questions, because numbers were too large to catch the ‘raised hand’ function without continually scrolling through a long list,” Price said. “A teaching assistant to monitor chat and these other functions would have helped tremendously but I didn’t have one. I understand large classes will be provided a TA to help with this monitoring going forward.”

Price found unreliable wi-fi the most difficult part of remote teaching but quickly resolved that. What she said she could never fix was a distinct purple cast to her hair, despite tweaking lighting and camera angles. “Several students thought it was a good look for me,” she said.

Price taught synchronously, minus a few recorded short lectures designed to help students on assigned problems. She also conducted office hours online.

STUDENT IMPACT

For the Class of 2020, the uncertainty was both nerve-racking and bittersweet, as it became clear there would be no live commencement ceremonies. (They did, however, get a star-power speaker — human rights attorney Bryan Stevenson, who delivered a remote address and took questions live.) For some students, the pandemic put in limbo new jobs, healthcare benefits, and determining how and when they would take the bar exam.

Like many other schools, Emory Law adopted a pass-fail policy for spring semester and recalibrated honors requirements for 2020 graduates due to the quick shift to online teaching. Pass-fail policies rippled across the country, evidenced by the national Order of the Coif’s announcement that the normal 75% graded course requirement was suspended for the academic year.

Tate Kommer 20L was a nontraditional JD student who had spent a decade as a United States Army lieutenant and captain with service in Afghanistan, Latin America, and the Caribbean. A reservist since 2017, Kommer had balanced family, law school, and annual reserve duty. While at Emory Law, he interned with the FBI, first in Washington, DC, then in Atlanta.

In spring, his class load included Advanced Legal Research — Foreign and Comparative Law, Criminal Procedure, Conflict of Laws, the Judicial Behavior Seminar, and the International Humanitarian Law Clinic. He was also a research assistant for Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law Mary L. Dudziak.

With the changes that digital learning produced, suddenly, there was no more ducking into a quiet corner of Hugh F. MacMillan Law Library. He was studying in a household that included his wife, Katie, a 4-year-old, a toddler, and two dogs.

“I found it a little amusing that, when school was operating normally, I would avoid working from home at all costs. It was just too difficult to be productive,” he said. “During the web-based portion of the semester, I don’t think that I was a particularly effective student, at least not compared to when I was a resident student,” Kommer said. However, “I was both impressed and appreciative of the school’s ability to remain continually adaptive and responsive to what seemed like ever-changing circumstances,” he said. He felt fortunate he was able to continue his studies, he said, and fortunate that faculty encouraged students to contact them. But there were disappointments: as a military officer, he had been looking forward to the International Humanitarian Law Clinic trip to the National War College, which was canceled. This was not the last spring on campus he had imagined.

“The law school is a great environment to be immersed in,” he said. “When you take away the face-to-face interaction and the physical Emory space, you naturally lose significant components of the student experience.” He didn’t have to relocate when classes went remote, but in August the family moved to Arlington, Virginia, where he’ll join Booz Allen Hamilton as a consultant to the federal government’s intelligence community. In addition to starting a second career, he took the Virginia Bar Exam on September 10.  

FALL TERM BEGINS

Despite initial hopes for a fall return to campus, the University announced in mid-July that the number of students allowed to take on-campus courses would be drastically reduced. The majority of law school students would attend online with the exception of first-year students and new accelerated JD students, as well as juris master and master of laws students taking 1L classes. Numerous trainings had been conducted throughout the summer months and into the fall to allow faculty and staff to prepare to teach and work in the safest, most-effective manner possible, given the circumstances.

There are 266 first-year students enrolled this year, the same size class that started in 2019. On the heels of a well-received online Visiting Day, the Office of Admission also held a Welcome Week that included first-years meeting Dean Mary Anne Bobinski in a socially distanced, masked environment, and an evening Zoom meeting with new Emory President Gregory Fenves during the first Thursday night recess.

In-person 1L sections were limited to 35 students. Masks and COVID-19 tests were part of the required onboarding process for all students, staff, and faculty to be on campus. Physical distancing was in effect, and for the first time in decades, the use of mass transit was discouraged. MacMillan Library reopened for the first day of classes, but a reservation system was instituted to allow a maximum of 50 students in the building at any time. A virtual reference desk allowed students access to MacMillan’s six research librarians, five days a week. The fall schedule was compressed by an early start and eliminating the Labor Day holiday, so classes would end on November 13. Exams for 1Ls would be complete by November 24.

Fall instruction will feel different than the emergency response of the past semester, Gallo said.

“Obviously, we’ve been through the process this past spring, and that gives confidence to the overall process. But we realized right off this was going to be a somewhat different experience. In spring, student-professor relationships had already been established, and we only had to make it through a few more weeks,” he said. “There was a certain level of forgiveness across the board, as everyone struggled to adapt for the short term. For fall semester, there’s a recognition that this is going to last a bit longer than we’d initially considered. With that in mind, we understood we would need to up our game in delivering in an online environment.”

Payne agreed, and outlined her approach to teaching Contract Drafting this fall.

“I’m working hard to combat the effects of Zoom fatigue,” she said. “Because it’s physically difficult to sit in class for 95 minutes — especially when you are alone in front of a computer screen and missing social contact with your classmates and professors — I’m breaking things into smaller chunks,” she said.

“My sense is that the illusion of movement is very important on Zoom, and I’ve also read that actual physical movement is important, too,” she said. Some professors are incorporating “brain breaks” by asking students to stand up and do calisthenics, she added. “I don’t know if I’ll go that far, but I do believe that it’s important to be enthusiastic and expressive because the professor sets the tone for the entire class and I like a lively class.”

She gave an example format: She’ll start with a 10-minute PowerPoint, followed by a three-question poll for students to apply what they just learned. After reviewing the answers, she may repeat this sequence a few times.

“Then I’ll send students to the breakout rooms to collaborate on an exercise that gives them a chance to practice more,” she said. “They’ll watch a short video containing an object and then they’ll create a deal associated with that object and practice drafting parts of the contract memorializing that deal. When I bring them back to the main Zoom classroom, each group will share their work with the entire class.”  

POSSIBLE PRACTICE APPLICATIONS

As fall term began, the chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court had just extended (for the fifth time) an emergency order prohibiting jury proceedings statewide because COVID-19 continued to spread.

Randall Kessler 88L, a partner at Kessler & Solomiany, taught Civil Trial Practice: Family Law in spring. He later wrote about the final exam, held online. He saw aspects of remote proceedings that could remain helpful when the pandemic ended.

“On Friday, April 17, perhaps the first trial by Zoom was held in Georgia,” Kessler wrote for the Daily Report. “It was the final exam for the Emory Law School Jury Trial class.” (It was a divorce.) “We all learned that not only could trial by Zoom work, but there were quite a few unanticipated benefits,” he said.

It was easy to sequester witnesses in a waiting room and objections were more civil due to the use of “objection paddles.” Exhibits were uploaded and shared on participants’ screens. And in metro Atlanta, the elimination of traffic, parking, security screening, and having to navigate the courthouse are not inconsequential, he pointed out. Finally, in a truly heated trial, perhaps it’s better for opponents not to be in the same room, he wrote. Of course, some situations would still require, or be better served by an in-person hearing, he said, but we’d be wrong not to consider the benefits.

“We may have been forced to evolve,” Kessler said. “But trial by Zoom looks like it is here to stay, so let’s make the best of it.”

And students and professors around the country already have. Purdom says, “In March, 100% of law schools went online, and as of this writing, over two thirds are teaching in purely online or hybrid formats. This represents the single largest change in legal education since … the early 1900s.”