Academic Success Program

Academic Success Program Services: A Message to First Year Students from Alice Silkey, the Director of Academic Success

In the Academic Success Program, we have focused our greatest efforts on the skill development of first year students. We believe that helping you to develop critical skills in legal analysis during your first year of law school will improve the level of your academic achievement during law school and will ultimately help you to be successful on the bar exam.

The Academic Success Program welcomes all students. We serve students at all levels of ability. We have targeted students at all ability levels by our programming. The most important message that I want to convey to you is that this is a program that can provide assistance to you at your level of need.

We have succeeded in attracting students at many levels of need and with diverse concerns. The students we have served range from students on academic probation to students engaged in scholarly writing. We have served students with serious deficiencies in basic case reading and study skills, who need assistance in order to improve their academic performance and succeed in law school. We have also served students seeking guidance with advanced composition and analysis skills, who need assistance with scholarly endeavors. Our goal is to help students at all levels of need to improve their skills.

We offer three primary services for first year students: individual tutoring, structured study groups, and workshops. I will briefly describe each of these services in the following sections.

Individual Tutoring

We have a strong focus on individual tutorial work in the Academic Success Program. I believe that individual instruction is the most critical component in helping students to improve their skills, and I think of the individual tutoring sessions as the cornerstone of the Academic Success Program.

You may contact me or any of the tutors to arrange for weekly tutoring appointments. Individual tutoring affords you an opportunity to create a program in consultation with your tutor based on the areas in which you most want (or need) assistance. You may also arrange to see a tutor on a periodic basis when you need help instead of setting up a weekly appointment.

We are fortunate to have a wonderful team of tutors, including both professional tutors and several outstanding Hamline graduates who are practicing attorneys and who devote their evenings and weekends to our Program. Students have appreciated the range of mentoring experiences provided by having both professional tutors and practicing attorneys on our Academic Success Team. Last year approximately 160 first year students received tutoring services.

Structured Study Groups

The structured study groups afford us a great opportunity to provide significant support to you during your first year of law school. The structured study groups provide an excellent venue for learning skills and for engaging in active learning.

We provide structured study groups for all of the sections of Contracts, Civil Procedure, Criminal Law, and Constitutional Law. The structured study groups meet for one hour per week, and they focus on the development of skills within the context of your Contracts, Civil Procedure, Criminal Law, and Constitutional Law classes. The groups are led by upperclass students who have excelled in law school.

Students have found the structured study groups very helpful in learning study skills and exam taking skills and in providing perspective on the "big picture" of an area of the law. The structured study groups may also serve as a catalyst for you in forming your own study groups.

The goal of the structured study groups is to help all students develop the skills they need to succeed in law school, on the bar exam, and in the practice of law. The structured study groups will help you to better understand the material you are studying in your classes by facilitating discussion of the material and by giving you the skills you need to learn how to master the material.

The structured study groups focus on the mastery of skills within the framework of a doctrinal course. The structured study groups focus on analytical skills, study skills, notetaking skills, outlining skills, and exam taking skills. The structured study groups will afford you an opportunity to work in small groups and to engage in active learning. They will help you to understand an area of the law by providing context. Participation in the study groups is voluntary, but I encourage you to avail yourself of this opportunity.

The structured study group leaders will serve as mentors for you during this critical first year of law school. You will receive additional information about structured study groups in your Contracts, Civil Procedure, Criminal Law, and Constitutional Law classes.

Workshops

We will have three workshops this spring. The workshops will be presented by members of the faculty. The workshops will focus on improving exam performance, persuasion in briefing and oral argument, and logic. Each workshop will be presented on both a weekday and on the weekend. Please see the Schedule of Workshops on the Spring 2013 Workshops page of the Academic Success Program website for further details about the workshops.

Additional Information

Please contact me at any time if I can be of assistance. We hope you will have a successful and rewarding journey through law school. We hope that your journey will be filled with adventure, great challenges, and extraordinary academic, personal, and professional growth.