News Archive

Professor Allison Martin’s work on the role of hope in legal education was recently featured in The National Law Journal, ABA Journal, The American Lawyer and the Huffington Post. The original article, entitled “The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades: Law School Through the Lens of Hope” was based on research conducted in 2007 by Martin and Dr. Kevin L. Rand, Assistant Professor of Psychology at IUPUI. Martin was lead author on the article which first appeared in the Duquesne Law Review. Duquesne University School of Law also built a conference around the topic in 2009, and in December 2011 a second social science article appeared based on the same study (with Rand as the lead author and a graduate student assistant as a third author).

The study receiving national attention examines the personality traits of law students as predictors of success. Martin and Rand then suggest that legal educators can engender hope in their students by helping law students formulate appropriate goals, increasing law students' autonomy, modeling the learning process, helping law students understand grading as feedback rather than as pure evaluation, and modeling and encouraging agentic thinking.

Professor Martin says students from the Duquesne Law Review who attended the original presentation in 2009 told her afterwards they could relate their own personal experiences in law school to “hope theory” and to the principles of engendering hope in law students outlined in the article. Martin says, “Kevin and I thought their reactions were very interesting and affirming.”

Allison Martin is Clinical Professor of Law at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, in the nationally ranked Legal Analysis, Research and Communication (LARC) department. She has taught extensively in the area of legal writing and moot court advocacy. She is the faculty advisor for the law school’s national and international moot court teams. She is also a contributing co-author of the Indiana Pleading and Practice Treatise.

“Hope — but not blind optimism — helps boost law school performance” by Karen Sloan, January 3, 2012, The National Law Journal
http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202537219136&Hope__but_not_blind_optimism__helps_boost_law_school_performance&slreturn=1

“The Will and Ways of Hope” by Scott Barry Kaufman, Ph.D., January 3, 2012, The Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-barry-kaufman/hope-success_b_1174856.html

“Hopeful Law Students Got Better Grades, Study Finds” by Debra Cassens Weiss, January 5, 2012, ABA Journal
http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/hopeful_law_students_got_better_grades._study_finds/?utm_source=maestro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily_email

"The Careerist: Secrets to Good Grades and a Happy Career" by Vivia Chen, January 10, 2012, The American Lawyer
http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/amlawdaily/2012/01/the-careerist-secrets-to-good-grades-and-a-happy-career.html