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 discussing a new empirical study by two Mizzou professors about mindfulness in law school and what benefits it can provide to students during the always stressful first semester on campus. Next up is a look at how Georgetown University Law Center and the University of Notre Dame each handled recent visits by controversial government speakers.

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

Measuring Mindfulness

Oct. 10 was World Mental Health Day, and I spent it reading the first-ever empirical study of mindfulness training among law students, and whether meditation helps them lower their stress levels. Here's the really short version: Law students in their first semester of the 1L year—considered the most anxiety-ridden time of law school—who went through an eight-week mindfulness course reported having lower stress levels, experiencing better focus, and being happier at the end of their training. The gains they reported in those areas surpassed those of students who didn't complete the mindfulness course.

Here's the longer version: University of Missouri law professor Richard Reuben teamed up with Mizzou psychology professor Kennon Sheldon in 2013 to conduct a two-year study of mindfulness in the law school context. (The study, titled, "Can Mindfulness Help Law Students With Stress, Focus, and Well-Being? An Empirical Study of 1Ls at a Midwestern Law School," appears in the latest edition of the Southwestern Law Review.) Mindfulness has been studied in other contexts, but never among lawyers or law students. Mindfulness is a non-religious form of meditation that emphasizes breathing and encourages practitioners to focus on the present. They recruited 43 first-year students in 2013 and 2014 to complete the eight-week course during the run-up to their first finals season, spending an hour each week learning about mindfulness (plus yoga and some other stress-busters) plus additional time on their own practicing mindfulness.

At the outset, the students who opted into the study on the whole reported higher stress levels, less focus, and more unhappiness than a control group who didn't participate. But by the end of the eight weeks, they reported improvements in each of those three areas. By contrast, students in the control group reported that their well-being decreased over that same time period, as final exams approached. Here's Reuben:

"The most surprising thing for me was how helpful it was for students who did participate in the study. To me, the most significant thing was that students in the middle of their first semester were in worse shape, in terms of stress, wellbeing and concentration, than they were at the end of the study. In other words, the mindfulness training put them in better shape at the end of the semester—going into first-year fall semester exams—than they were in the middle. To me, that was mind blowing."

Reuben also was surprised that there was virtually no attrition from the mindfulness training among the students who agreed to participate—which signals that the found it useful right away. First-year law students are very protective of their time, Reuben told me, and wouldn't stick around if they didn't think the training had value.

The takeaway: The study shows the promise of mindfulness as a tool to combat legal education's mental health problem. I asked Reuben if he thinks the findings are enough to prompt law schools everywhere to offer formal mindfulness training. (He estimates 30 to 40 have some sort of mindfulness offering at this point.) He said it's a single study at a single law school, but that the findings should start a bigger conversation about mindfulness in legal education.

So here a few more things that I noted as I read the study: First, the authors didn't have enough data to draw any conclusions about whether or not mindfulness training helps improve a student's grades in law school. I'm sure conclusive findings on that front would prompt some reluctant law students to get onboard the mindfulness train, should the data show any boost to grades.

Second, Mizzou's law faculty on the whole was not supportive of the mindfulness effort. While the researchers recruited 34 students in the first year, only 13 students participated in the second year. Among the possible factors in that drop off, the article notes, is that some other faculty members counseled students in 2014 that the study was not worth their time. I asked Reuben if he thought that might be different in 2019 as opposed to five years ago, when the school had a different dean and the mental wellness challenges law students face were not the subject of so many headlines. He agreed that the climate both on campus and in legal education in general has shifted somewhat to be more open to mental health initiatives.

A Tale of Two Speakers

Two high-ranking officials from the Trump administration backing controversial policies each visited law school campuses in the past week to deliver remarks—with two very different outcomes.

On Oct. 7, acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan showed up at Georgetown University Law Center for the 16th Annual Immigration Law and Policy Conference, where he was slated to give the keynote address. It's unclear what he planned to say, however. Right after he was introduced, protesters—including law students and immigration advocates—unfurled banners and began chanting, according to this account from Georgetown's campus newspaper. Moderators asked the protestors to leave, but after multiple unsuccessful attempts to begin his speech, McAleenan left the stage. Contrast that with Attorney General William Barr's Oct. 11 visit to the University of Notre Dame Law School, where he delivered remarks on religious freedom. About 100 protesters gathered outside the building (some blew whistles for dramatic flair), but Barr was able to deliver his remarks. "We must be vigilant to resist efforts by forces of secularization to drive religious viewpoints from the public square and to impinge upon our exercise of our faith," Barr told the audience, according to local press reports.

Notre Dame law dean G. Marcus Cole clearly anticipated a disruption of Barr's speech and issued a statement clarifying that the school's policy protects the right of students to protest as long as they do not impinge of the ability of the speaker in question to also air their views. "An institution of higher education must be a place where controversial ideas and points of view are expressed, heard, and discussed," Cole wrote.

My take: This is a pretty easy call: Notre Dame handled the situation the right way, and Georgetown could have done better. I'm sure that many in the audience at Notre Dame don't agree with Barr's ongoing defense of Trump on any number of fronts, but there is no doubt a benefit to hearing the government's top lawyer discuss his approach to religious freedom. Just like there is value in hearing the head of Homeland Security's position of current immigration hot topics, even if you vehemently disagree.

To be fair, though, Notre Dame had an easier task in controlling the Barr visit than did Georgetown for a few reasons. First Notre Dame is a smaller law school in a much smaller Midwest city, as opposed to being a large school in the nation's capital where political passions have been running extremely high. Second, Barr clearly picked Notre Dame for this speech for a reason: It's a Catholic institution—Barr is also Catholic—that would likely be receptive to his pro-Christianity stance. Free speech controversies aren't going away on law campuses. In fact, I'm noticing many more today than, say, five years ago. It's worth thinking through how to best balance everyone's views before a lightning rod like Barr (or McAleenan) shows up.

Extra Credit Reading

A Tallahassee jury found Sigfredo Garcia guilty of first-degree murder in the 2014 death of Florida State University law professor Dan Markel but could not reach a verdict regarding alleged co-conspirator Katherine Magbanua, who received a mistrial.

Big changes could be on the way for the Law School Admission Test's so-called logic games section as the result of a settlement with two blind test takers.

Law students staged three protests outside of DLA Piper offices to oppose the firm's use of mandatory arbitration.

Thanks for reading Ahead of the Curve. Sign up for the newsletter and check out past issues here.

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]