For today’s special guest post (170), I’ve asked Austen Parrish, the Dean of my home institution, Indiana University Maurer School of Law, to share the details of our fall 1L program.
If we combine two obvious truths—that legal education is slow to change and Covid-19 changes everything—the optimal response is far from obvious. Yet, I have to give my colleagues extremely high marks for a solution that reflects a remarkably tight overlap between educational quality, the needs of individual students and faculty, university-imposed mandates, and the urgent need to lock in certainty for anxious 1Ls needing to plan. What was the lead time? Roughly three weeks from the end of exams. Indeed, the plan was so well-packaged and well-explained by Austen and his team that it was unanimously approved by our faculty at our June 5th faculty meeting.
What Austen presents in Post 170 is the fall 2020 plan for incoming 1Ls. Yet, the same able crew of administrators is now working on innovative approaches for the spring semester as well as solutions directed at 2Ls, 3Ls, LLMs, and foreign-exchange students.
Over the last couple of months, my colleagues have been faced with the twin forces of extreme risk and extreme necessity. And in every instance, they’ve responded with remarkable poise and creativity. Perhaps it’s true that it takes a crisis to fully appreciate the lawyer mindset. Regardless, I ‘m very grateful for the solutions being put forward at Indiana Law.