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've got a fascinating discussion with Wake Forest law professor Laura Graham about Gen Z and what law schools need to know about teaching them. Next up is a pilot program in which the University of Pennsylvania Law School is making attorney well-being part of its mandatory professional responsibility course. And lastly, I'm checking in with Vanderbilt's Program on Law and Innovation, which just launched a hands-on certificate program for practitioners. 

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

Here Comes Gen Z

You know all those fresh-faced aspiring lawyers who showed up on campus this fall? Many of them are members of “Gen Z”—the cohort of people born between 1995 and 2010. (Did that sentence make you feel really old? Same here.) We've heard so much over the years about their predecessors the “Millennials” that I was mostly unaware that Gen Z was a thing.

Thankfully Wake Forest legal writing professor Laura Graham has written a thoughtful law journal article about the common characteristics of Gen Z and how law schools will need to innovate to accommodate how they learn, which got me up to speed. I caught up this week with Graham, who took my call from the Detroit airport while she awaited a flight to California for a discussion on … Gen Z.

Graham issued a caveat during our chat, which is that she's not bashing Gen Z or making judgment calls about how they compare with previous generations. (Forget the tired, “Kids these days…” trope.) Rather, she's synthesizing the research and thinking about how to educate them most effectively. With that out of the way, here's what we know about Gen Z, in a nutshell.

➤➤They have grown up with technology at their fingertips, with a strong reliance on phones and social media.

➤➤They have largely been protected from failure by hovering parents.

➤➤They came up in the age of No Child Left Behind—an educational system in which they learned to excel on tests, even though those tests were not terribly rigorous or demanding.

➤➤They experience heightened rates of depression and anxiety as compared with earlier cohorts.

➤➤They are remarkably diverse—just 55 percent today are white—and are interested in diversity and globalization.

So what to do with this information? That's the most interesting aspect of Graham's research. Perhaps her most important conclusion is that law schools will need to begin at a more basic level with new law students, to better prepare them for the rigors that lie ahead. Schools can't assume they will come in with the same level of reading and critical thinking skills as earlier classes. You can thank smartphones for that.

“It's not just that they are addicted to their phones,” Graham told me. “It affects the way they process information and attend to things. It's just the way they work though information. They are used to getting information in little snippets, and just browsing. A lot of the problem I think we're going to see in higher education and law school is that they haven't learned how to critically read and deeply analyze information. Law school is heavily reading focused, and it's not easy reading. They just don't know the strategies for reading materials really closely.”

So Graham envisions a bulked up 1L semester with a greater focus on these fundamental skills. But schools can't just put the responsibility on legal writing instructors, she said. They will need to better incorporate reading and writing skills across the curriculum to address the deficiencies Gen Z brings to campus.

The mental health issue is another biggie. And it's two pronged. The fact that many Gen Zers have never really failed at anything—thanks to parents and other protectors—means that the competitive, rank-obsessed world of law school can be a powder keg. Gen Z students may well be paralyzed by the prospect of major failure for the first time in their lives. And the fact that they are already more prone to mental health issues makes this an even more serious problem. Graham said she doesn't have all the answers, but she suggested that schools find other ways of engaging students in class beyond the Socratic method, ensure that students have avenues to fail gracefully, and that they actively teach mindfulness practices.

The takeaway: There is more good stuff in Graham's article, so I recommend giving it a read. But I think it's smart to consider the ways that society and technology are changing how today's college and law students learn. The law school curriculum needn't be static. It should bend to the ways that students learn best. And Graham isn't saying that Gen Z isn't as smart or talented as those who came before. But they have different strengths and weaknesses, which the academy should take note of.

Teaching Wellness

Since we were just talking about Gen Z being prone to anxiety and depression, it seems a good opportunity to note a new initiative at the University of Pennsylvania Law School that incorporates mental wellness into the required first-year professional responsibility course.

Penn says it's the first elite law school to teach attorney well-being as part of the mandatory professional responsibility class. The well-being module will cover the latest research on career satisfaction and health risks among lawyers, as well as how they can equip themselves for well-being throughout their careers. Here's Jennifer Leonard, associate dean for professional engagement: 

“We take seriously our obligation to prepare our students for the realities of practice and to graduate attorneys into the profession who are equipped to serve the many clients who will depend on them,” Leonard said in an announcement of the program last week. “We are proud to pilot this program to better educate our students about the stressors inherent in our profession and to support their development of evidence-based behaviors to respond to that stress.”

For a little more detail, the classes on well-being will cover data on law student and lawyer health; substance abuse; stress and burnout; and resilience. Students will create their own plans addressing these eight areas for their long-term careers: physical, emotional, spiritual, financial, intellectual, social, environmental and occupational.

Penn said the catalyst for the new initiative was a 2017 report from the American Bar Association focused on improving lawyer and law student wellness.

My thoughts: Kudos to Penn for this move. I think it's important to make well-being part of the required curriculum, rather than covering it in optional brown bag sessions or other voluntary avenues. Frankly, I'm surprised other top schools haven't done this already…

Certifiable Innovation

I've talked before in this newsletter about Vanderbilt Law School's Program in Law and Innovation (PoLi for short), which hosted a daylong summit in April intended to help the legal academy and legal technology folks finds ways to collaborate.

Vanderbilt upped its game last week with the announcement of the PoLi Institute and a new certificate in law and innovation for practicing attorneys and others who want instruction on cutting-edge legal technology and processes. I'm thinking of it as a legal tech CLE on steroids. The school is pitching it to attorneys, legal administrators, legal assistants, paralegals, and others who work in law firms or corporate legal departments.

Here's what caught my eye: It's not an online program, which you see with many other law school programs targeting practitioners. Instead, participants will come to the Nashville campus for two-day, eight-hour, hands-on sessions.(Participants get a certificate after completing six sessions within 36 months.) The first offering is Legal Project Management 2.0, in February.

If there's any sort of catch, I suppose it's the price tag. The two-part sessions aren't cheap at $2,200 a pop, though the school is offering discounts for people who attend three or more classes.

Extra Credit Reading

Sidley Austin is the next Big Law firm to abandon mandatory arbitration for employees, following a backlash from Harvard Law students.

UCLA law professor Richard Sander is known for his “mismatch theory” critique of Affirmative Action, and that hasn't exactly made him Mr. Popular within the legal academy.

You gotta take the good with the bad. Both Valparaiso University School of Law and Roger Williams University School of Law have landed their first-ever Skadden Fellows. Unfortunately for Valparaiso, it's likely to be their last, given the campus is scheduled to close by 2020.

The proposed $2.7 million settlement between the shuttered Charlotte School of Law and disgruntled students seems to have hit a snag, with more than 60 class action plaintiffs filing objections on the grounds that Charlotte owner InfiLaw Corp. may have more cash than its letting on.

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]