Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Phoenix School of Law (PhoenixLaw) seeks applications for an experienced Academic Success Counselor.
The school is a member of The InfiLaw System, a consortium of independent law schools committed to making legal education more responsive to the realities of new career dynamics. Its mission is to establish student-centered, American Bar Association (ABA) accredited law schools in underserved markets that graduate students with practice-ready skills, and achieve true diversity programs aimed at student academic and career success.
The Academic Counselor will be part of an energetic team of professionals who develop and implement a comprehensive academic support program designed to assist, teach and mentor a diverse student body through the law school experience. The Academic Success Counselor engages in activities designed to maximize student learning, minimize the number of students who are dismissed due to low academic performance, and foster high bar exam pass rates through coordinating with professors, teaching workshops, and conducting individual academic counseling sessions.
Primary Duties & Responsibilities:
1. Demonstrates capacity to work with individuals from diverse cultures and backgrounds;
2. Provides individualized counseling to students;
3. Assists in teaching, evaluating and revising lessons and workshops for students;
4. Develops individualized learning plans for students;
5. Analyzes and provides feedback regarding legal writing samples submitted by students;
6. Analyzes and provides feedback regarding essay exam writing samples submitted by students;
7. Analyzes and provides feedback regarding multiple choice practice questions submitted by students;
8. Reviews academic records and maintains records regarding progress of students receiving assistance;
9. Assists with New Student Orientation;
10. Establishes and maintains professional attitude and good rapport with students, employees, community members and vendors;
11. Maintains confidentiality of information at all times;
12. Supports and participates in the Phoenix School of Law mission, vision and values; and
13. Other job related duties as assigned.
1. Experience in teaching, mentoring or counseling.
2. Experience working within multicultural settings.
3. Understanding of, or experience with, academic support programs.
4. Knowledge of adult learning theory.
- Ability to listen and respond to student concerns; ability to teach in a small group and/or classroom settings; ability to analyze and suggest improvement to legal writing submitted by students; ability to communicate feedback in a positive and encouraging manner.
- Intermediate to advanced level of experience with Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook, Publisher and PowerPoint.
- Ability to apply mathematical concepts such as percentages, ratios and fractions to practical situations. Ability to add, subtract, multiply and divide in all units of measure using whole numbers, common fractions and decimals.
- Ability to collect information, establish facts, draw valid conclusions to resolve complex situations with little to no assistance.
- Must be very detail oriented and accurate.
- Must display tact, discretion and judgment.
Such alternatives to the above qualifications the hiring supervisor and Human Resources may find appropriate and acceptable.
- Juris Doctor degree required.
- License to practice law in any state.
Salary is commensurate with experience. PhoenixLaw offers a full benefits package. For more information about Phoenix School of Law, please visit www.Phoenixlaw.edu.
If helping others and working in a dynamic workplace is what you feel passionate about and you are looking for a new challenge and a chance to put your experience to work in an innovative environment – Phoenix School of Law may be the place for you.
Please send a resume, the names of three references (including addresses and phone numbers) to hr@Phoenixlaw.edu or via mail to:
Phoenix School of Law
4041 N. Central Avenue, Suite 100
Phoenix, AZ 85012
Phoenix School of Law is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer in compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Civil Rights Act Title VII of 1972, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990. Phoenix School of Law does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability or age in employment or in any of its educational programs or in the provisions of benefits and services to students.
The information contained in this job description is for compliance with the American’s with Disabilities Act (ADA) and is not an exhaustive list of the duties performed by this position. Additional duties are performed by the individuals currently holding this position and additional duties may be assigned.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Our Guest Column for today is a posting by Barbara McFarland, Director for the Office of Student Success Initiatives at Chase College of Law, Northern Kentucky University. Barbara has suggested an excellent tip for first-year law students and included an exercise to help them apply it. Thank you for sharing your insight and expertise with all of us, Barbara! (Amy Jarmon)
One More Tip: Remedy Writing Problems
Dr. Amy Jarmon’s May 19th blog post provided ten excellent pieces of advice for incoming students. She is kindly allowing me to add an eleventh: Remedy writing problems before you begin law school.
Even students who have always been good writers struggle to master the intricacies of legal writing. Students who are not good writers do not have time during first semester to learn the basic rules of writing good English prose, punctuating properly, and editing for clarity and concision. While we can say that our students should have mastered the mechanics during undergrad, or even earlier, the sad truth is that many of them have not. They have studiously avoided any class that required them to write anything more than a name on a scantron. Or, if they have done any writing, it was assessed by teachers and professors more interested in commenting on the substance than the form.
When my law school offered a voluntary writing course in the week before classes began last August, almost half of the incoming full-time class attended. The improvements achieved during that one-week class, as measured by pre- and post-tests, were impressive. A second post-test given at the end of the first year of law study indicates that some, but not all, of the gains made during that week were retained nine months later. More number crunching is needed to confirm this initial impression, but the good news is that it’s not too late for our incoming students to learn the rules needed to improve their writing.
How they go about that task is up to them, of course. They could take a business or technical writing class at a local college or university this summer, beg help from the high school English teacher who tried to teach them those rules back in the ninth grade, or just buy a book. Grammar and writing books abound; any used bookstore will have inexpensive texts that will serve the purpose. Online grammar guides are also plentiful.
For a simple technique that students may find helpful, suggest this exercise.
Often, mechanical errors are much easier to find in our own writing after the passage of time. Pull up a document you wrote some time ago, read it critically, and use it to diagnose areas of weakness in your writing.
First, double space after each period and review each sentence in isolation:
- Is each group of words between the capitalized first letter and the end punctuation a complete sentence?
- Do the subject and verb match in number and make sense together?
- Does every verb that requires an object have one?
- Are modifiers close to the words they modify?
- Does every pronoun have an antecedent, and do they match in number?
- Are the sentences typically very long, containing two or three thoughts that could be separated?
- Are the sentences typically very short, dividing ideas that could more effectively be communicated in compound or complex sentences?
- Does the sentence structure vary sufficiently?
- Does every word of each sentence convey the precise meaning intended?
- If you read the sentence aloud with great inflection and pregnant pauses, does the punctuation seem appropriate, necessary, and correct?
If the answer to any of these questions is “no,” chart the errors to identify patterns and problem areas. Once you have identified your errors, learn how to fix them by reading in a grammar book or online service. Rewrite each sentence to fix the sentence-level problems.
Then reunite all the sentences for a particular paragraph and review each paragraph in turn:
- Is the first sentence a topic sentence that accurately portrays the remainder of the paragraph?
- Is every sentence in the paragraph related to the stated topic?
- Do the remaining sentences present ideas or information in a logical order for the purpose of the paragraph?
- Are relationships between sentences clearly made by references and other transitional devices?
- Do the remaining sentences develop the stated topic as completely as needed?
If not, identify, chart, and remedy errors. Rewrite each paragraph into a coherent and correct whole.
When you finish reviewing all of the paragraphs in a particular section of the document, look at the entire section:
- Do transitional devices between the paragraphs develop the overall topic or theme of the section?
- Are the paragraphs in a logical order, facilitating the development and exposition of that topic or theme?
- Are the paragraphs typically overly long, too short, or a good mix of lengths?
- Are one- or two-sentence paragraphs used only sparingly and for emphasis?
Again, identify, chart, and remedy errors. Follow the same procedure with as many written documents as possible until you can identify and eliminate errors accurately and efficiently. If you can write and punctuate good sentences and paragraphs, you are more likely to successfully adapt to the forms and structures of legal writing.
Enjoy the rest of your summer, and I will look forward to meeting you in August. ___________________________________________________________________
Although this exercise was created specifically for students who have not yet started law school, it can be easily modified for use with current law students. Unfortunately, many law students are taken by surprise when we expect them to write perfect English prose. Even those with good mechanics are astonished that their writing style, honed by years of trying to write enough to meet the minimum page requirements of undergraduate papers, must be simplified, clarified, and slashed to meet the expectations of their legal writing professor.
We do our students a service by preparing them for legal writing, in addition to warning them about other rigors and oddities of law study. Recommending that they take time now to remedy writing problems is another step toward the goal of informing and educating our incoming students even before they reach our classrooms.