Kim Hawkins, New York Law School: “What Law Professors Need to Know About Visual Arts”
Kim Hawkins is an Associate Professor of Law at New York Law School. Her talk, “What Law Professors Need to Know About Visual Arts,” was a part of the Craft of Law Teaching Pod at the 2014 Igniting Law Teaching conference. In her presentation, Professor Hawkins explains that those in the legal profession are increasingly asked to employ visual tools in their teaching. To be more effective as teachers, law professors essentially need to develop a designer’s eye. Too often, they create PowerPoint presentations that lack any real visual impact. Her talk focuses on how law professors can become more sophisticated consumers of visual presentation software to make effective presentations, focusing on color, font, symmetry, visual focus, and space proportion.
At New York Law School, Professor Hawkins teaches a year-long required first year course called Legal Practice in addition to an upper level seminar course on Juvenile Delinquency. While she has twelve years of practice as a public interest lawyer, she is also a portrait painter, having trained at the New York Academy of Art. She spent several years working as a commissioned artist.
LegalED aims to harness the power of the internet for legal educations. It facilitates blended or flipped learning – by migrating lectures to the web, LegalED frees up classtime for active learning that challenges students to learn the essential lawyering competencies while they are in law school. Professors may assign the videos in any combination for students to view outside of the classroom for active learning that challenges students to learn the essential lawyering competencies while they are in law school. LegalED seeks to develop and maintain a vibrant online community of teachers and students of the law, creating a central hub for the community. Through the video collection, teachers can be inspired to borrow, adapt, and bring great teaching moments into their own courses. With an internet platform, LegalED opens up formerly isolated classrooms by sharing showcasing, celebrating and inspiring innovative teaching. Simply put, the vision of LegalED is to inspire innovation in legal education. Join the movement!
The LegalED 2015 Igniting Law Teaching conference will take place on Friday, March 20th, from 9am to 6pm. Register to attend in person or live stream the event.