Michael Hunter Schwartz
Dean Schwartz is the 10th Dean of the University of Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law. He started July 1, 2017.
Dean Schwartz is the author of seven books (three of which come with lengthy teacher’s manuals), seven law review papers, three book chapters, and eight shorter works addressing a wide variety of teaching, learning and curriculum design topics. Schwartz's books include What the Best Law Teachers Do (Harvard University Press 2013) and a contracts textbook, Contracts: A Context and Practice Casebook (3d ed. 2020), which was the first book in a textbook series he designed to modernize law school casebooks (which he now edits).
Dean Schwartz has delivered more than 225 professional presentations about teaching and learning in law school. He is the chair of the Section on Socio-Economics of the American Association of Law Schools (AALS) and a member of the AALS Membership Review Committee (which reviews law school applications for membership in the Association and approves sabbatical site evaluation reports on member law schools). He is a former chair of the AALS Sections on Deans, Teaching Methods, and Balance in Legal Education. Dean Schwartz is a Consultant to the Institute for Law Teaching and Learning, and he is a member of the board of advisors for a national legal publisher and two peer-reviewed law reviews. In January 2017, National Jurist Magazine named Dean Schwartz the 9th Most Influential Person in Legal Education, the third year in a row he was ranked among the top 15 in the nation. Dean Schwartz’s Contracts course was selected by the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System as “an innovative course that reflects exemplary innovative teaching,” and Dean Schwartz was recently named one of 30 Honorees for a Council for Legal Education Opportunity (CLEO) Edge Award in the Education category.
Dean Schwartz invites you to follow his blog on innovation in legal education, What Great Law Schools Do.
Representative Scholarship and Activities
Representative Books
What the Best Law Teachers Do (Harvard University Press 2013).
Expert Learning for Law Students (3d ed 2018).
Contracts: A Context and Practice Casebook Teacher's Manual (3d ed. forthcoming spring 2020) (first book in a casebook series I created and edit).
Teaching Law by Design for Adjuncts II (Carolina Academic Press, 2017).
Teaching Law by Design II (2016).
Representative Law Review Articles
Towards a Modality-Less Model for Excellence in Law School Teaching, 70 Syracuse L. Rev. __ (forthcoming Spring 2020).
Fifty Ways to Promote Teaching and Learning, 67 J Legal Ed. 696 (2018).
Teaching Law Students to be Self-Regulated Learners, 2003 Mich. State Det. C.L. L. Rev. 447 (Summer 2003).
Teaching Law by Design: How Learning Theory and Instructional Design Can Inform and Reform Law Teaching, 38 San Diego L. Rev. 347 (2001) reprinted in The Doctrine-Skills Divide: Legal Education's Self-Inflicted Wound (Carolina Academic Press 2017).
Representative Book Contributions
Learning Theory and Teaching Theory in Building on Best Practices (Lexis-Nexis Publishing 2015).
Engaging First-Year Law Students by Treating Them Like Colleagues in Brockmann/Pilniok (eds.), Studieneingangsphase In Der Rechtswissenschaft (Nomos Publishing House, 2014).
Representative Professional Activities
Chair of AALS Sections on Socio-Economics (2019), Deans (2018), Teaching Methods (2013), and Balance in Legal Education (2009).
Member, AALS Membership Review Committee (2019-present)
Council on Legal Education Opportunity (CLEO) Academic Curriculum Consultant (2011-2012)
Advisory Board, Carolina Academic Press
More than 200 professional presentations, including more than 75 invited talks at U.S. law schools and for non-U.S. law faculty from Chile, Georgia, Germany, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Taiwan.
