Introverts in an Extroverts' WorldKnow your personality Most major personality tests- including Myers-briggs and the newcastle Personality assessor- measure introversion or a similar personality trait. it's worthwhile to learn your own preferences related to decision-making, focusing mental energy, gathering information and dealing with others, notes tax lawyer and psychologist Joshua rosenberg, who studies the role of human behavior and psychology in law at the University of san Francisco school of law. "the more you know about yourself, the better off you are. you then can decide how you're going to act, as opposed to acting out of habit or unconsciously."
Leading Students to Distinguish Between Career and Vocation: Reflections From a Lutheran Law SchoolM OST law students and many legal educators confuse the terms "vocation" and "career." Law schools have traditionally asked its students, "What kind of lawyer do you want to be 9 ' instead of encouraging students to ask, "Who do I want to be upon graduation?" Asking a student what type of lawyer the student wishes to be is a question about career. Asking a student who the student wishes to be goes to the heart of a student's vocational reflection. Students who determine what they want to be before they determine who they want to be risk selecting a career or job setting within the legal profession that is a mismatch for their talents and passions.
Maybe That's Why I Do That: Psychological Type Theory, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and Learning Legal InterviewingLegal interviews are complex social interactions composed of many separate behaviors that can be difficult to master. Simultaneously building and maintaining rapport while obtaining complete and accurate information, the two primary objectives proposed by contemporary interviewing theory,' requires substantial skill. Published studies of actual client interviews suggest that lawyers often fail to meet these challenges effectively. These studies describe legal interviews as dominated by lawyers
and routines. Rapport is ignored as clients are typically given little chance to respond to anything other than standard, often pointed questions.
Lawyers control the topics discussed and the depth with which they are covered. Interruptions are frequent.
Using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to Assess Learning Style: Type or Sterotype?Imagine: You are a first-year law student. First semester. Only three classes tomorrow; only thirty pages of reading. So why does it take you six hours? You read it three times and it still makes no sense. Everyone else seems to get it. Why don't you? All the words seem like Greek. You look them up, but the
definitions are worse than the original words. You read a sentence and cannot find the subject, much less the verb. You read
a paragraph and don't know the point. You read the opinion over and over, you take notes, you mark it, you color it. But you
still cannot answer the professor's questions in class. At orientation, they suggested using a hornbook. Another three hours. Or
a tape. Another hour. Or a study group. Another two hours. You end up more confused than when you began.
Using Insights About Perception and Judgment from the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Instrument as an Aid to MediationThe influential work Getting to Yes argues that "you need to separate the people from the problem" to resolve disputes. But what if the people are part of the problem to be solved? This article argues that mediators can be more effective if they understand how people differ in how they perceive information and judge what to do about it. These differences are illuminated by examining the responses of samples of mediators and others involved in dispute resolution to questions posed by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator instrument (MBTI or "Indicator"), a widely used psychological questionnaire designed to help individuals learn more about their cognitive preferences.
Forever Jung: Psychological Type Theory, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and Learning NegotiationIn four rooms, groups of six law students are engaged in teams of two, negotiating a dispute involving three parties. In one room, all six student lawyers are talking at once. Each is arguing a specific point of law or a factual detail that pertains to the dispute. They are talking quickly and loudly. In another room, a student makes an offer slowly, using a normal voice tone.After nearly a minute of no verbal activity, another remarks "the silence is deafening." Then there is more silence. In a third room, the student lawyers
are arguing general principles of legal responsibility and broad factual themes. Occasionally, they ignore or make mistakes about the facts, and two or more students frequently speak at the same time. Interruptions are numerous. There are frequent breaks in the fourth room as partners confer and plan their remarks carefully before presenting them. The conversation here
has fewer interruptions and primarily emphasizes broad, future perspectives.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator as a Tool for Clinical Legal Education"What's the matter with this person?" you ask yourself. "Is she too thick-skulled to understand or just lazy? I've explained this three times already. Why can't she get it right?" We have all had this experience with other people. Perhaps the other person really is unable to understand or perhaps the two of you just communicate in different ways. Such differences occur in the context of clinical legal education and can be a barrier to learning. This Essay suggests a way to recognize differences in human behavior and to use these differences as a basis for learning through experience.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, First Year Law Students and PerformanceIn 1966, I graduated from a segregated high school after having attended a two room elementary school. I graduated third in my class. I performed well enough on the SAT's to receive a national merit commendation for minority students. Nevertheless, my scores fell below the admissions standards for many of the schools to which I applied.
A Response to Professor Vernellia R.Randall's The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, First Year Law Students and PerformanceProfessor Vernellia Randall's study of the relationship between personality type and law school performance addresses a very current and hotly debated question: Are law schools doing the best possible job of educating their students? She answers with a clearly articulated "no."' However, a complete answer to this question necessarily engages broader scholarly discussions over the role of law schools, and law practice, in society.
It All Begins With You: Improving Law School Learning Through Professional Self-Awareness and Critical ReflectionHow many of us have prepared a course, delivered it (we thought) successfully, and eagerly sat down at the end of a term with our student evaluations only to be flabbergasted by the content of our, students' comments? Instead of observations about the content of what we taught or constructive
comments about teaching methods, the evaluations are full of comments on our demeanor, our tone and style; all the things that we didn't consider in planning our class. At worst, the remarks are ad hominem attacks, at best, they laud our
warmth, our openness or friendliness-traits so innate to our personality or style that we would hardly have thought them worth mentioning.
Starting Off Right in Law SchoolSeldom is poor first-semester performance a problem for undergraduate students. Since they usually don't look for professional jobs until the end of their senior year, there is plenty of time to compensate for poor first-semester grades and have hopes for honors
by graduation. Therefore, undergraduate students often are not concerned that it may take them much of the first semester, or
even the first year, to adjust to the demands of school.
The Quirky Lawyer: Understanding the Genius of Personality Type, Part 1This article is the first of four installments designed to provide insight into how understanding the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® enables attorneys to become more effective in managing their careers, relating to clients, and overseeing their offices.
The Quirky Lawyer: Understanding the Genius of Personality Type, Part 2This article is the second of four installments designed to provide insight into how understanding the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® enables attorneys to become more effective in managing their career, relating to clients, and overseeing their offices.
The Quirky Lawyer: Understanding the Genius of Personality Type, Part 3This article is the third of four installments designed to provide insight into how understanding the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® enables attorneys to become more effective in managing their career, relating to clients, and overseeing their offices.
The Quirky Lawyer: Understanding the Genius of Personality Type, Part 4This article is the last of four installments designed to provide insight into how understanding the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® enables attorneys to become more effective in managing their career, relating to clients, and overseeing their office.
Learning Styles: What Difference Do the Differences Make?As the legal academy contemplates education reform, many scholars are looking to education theory and best practices to guide curriculum and course design. This has resulted in the publication of several law journal articles discussing different aspects of learning theory, including learning styles. Broadly speaking, “learning styles” have been defined as “those cognitive, affective, and psychological behaviors that indicate how learners interact with and respond to the learning environment and how they perceive, process, store, and recall what they are attempting to learn.”
Most of law journal articles on learning styles presume the validity of the concept. The concept of learning styles is, and always has been, controversial, however. Many education psychologists and others involved in researching educational theories are highly critical of the notion that students possess fixed learning styles, which teachers must address so that the students can learn. In the last few years, two comprehensive literature reviews have been conducted to assess the theoretical and research bases underlying the spectrum of learning style theories. These two are just the most recent. And yet, many in legal education think of the existence of learning styles as being settled fact. They also think of them rather narrowly – primarily as a question of whether one has a visual, auditory, or kinesthetic style – although many different learning style theories exist.
In “Learning Styles: What Difference do the Differences Make?” I introduce the controversy surrounding the issue of learning styles and present the critical bases for the controversy. I explain that most disinterested researchers are particularly skeptical of the “matching hypothesis”; that is, that one must teach to specific styles. As the first article to address these issues in the context of legal education, this article presents a unique perspective for those who seek to enhance teaching and learning in law schools.
Using Insights About Perception and Judgment from the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Instrument as an Aid to MediationThis article contains an analysis of how samples of the general public, lawyers, judges, and mediators compare in how they prefer to gain information and make decisions about it, and how mediator understanding of those different cognitive preferences can be an aid to the mediation of disputes. More specifically, this article argues that mediators can be more effective if they understand how people differ in how they perceive information and judge what to do about it. These differences are illuminated by examining the responses of samples of mediators and others involved in dispute resolution to questions posed by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator instrument (MBTI® or “Indicator”), a widely used psychological questionnaire designed to help individuals learn more about their cognitive preferences. Mediators can benefit from typological insights in a variety of ways. First, if they can understand themselves better, they can perhaps understand others better as well. Second, with typological insight they can look for clues as to how and whether differences in cognitive styles are affecting the disputes. If so, the mediator may use such an awareness to improve their exchanges of information in a way that tends to depersonalize disagreements. Perhaps they can even use typological insights to help each disputant see the issue through the eyes of the other, so that parties may shift from seeing each other as wrong or combative to recognizing that each is working out of a valid personal perspective that needs to be heard and respected in the process of resolving conflict. Disputants whose preferences differ from each other can also be a resource for the mediator if the mediator is able to shape the discussion of some issues to appeal to those differing preferences. The essence of Jungian typological awareness, which the MBTI instrument helps illustrate, is that variations in behavior are often influenced by the differences in the ways people prefer to perceive information and make decisions. Human nature is a vast ocean upon which to sail, and the MBTI instrument is but one chart available to help mediators navigate to solve the “people problem” in disputes which can be influenced by many factors. With an awareness of the Indicator’s limitations, even with appropriate skepticism about it, its cognitive insights may still help mediators, who may in turn help disputants and their counsel reach better resolutions than they might otherwise have achieved.
'I' Before 'E', Except in Mediation: Training Introverts to Use Extroverted Techniques to Become Stronger MediatorsLittle research has been conducted on the personality types of law professors and others who train law students and lawyers to work as mediators, but if the assessments of attorneys and students are any indication, it is likely that professors and other instructors probably tend to fall into the "introvert" category. As a result, several questions arise. How important is a feelings-centered approach in order to be an effective mediator? Can introverts teach other introverts to behave as extroverts? Which traits of introverts and extroverts are most valuable for mediators to possess? And, can a mediator be sensitive to the parties' feelings on either side and remain neutral?
This article discusses traits of introverts and extroverts, provides examples of mediation training techniques that strengthen the extroverted traits most beneficial for effective mediators, and concludes by suggesting methods for law schools and other mediation training programs to consider in developing students into mediators with balanced introverted and extroverted skills.
Book Review - Juris Types: Learning Law Through Self-UnderstandingThis article reviews the new book by Martha Peters and Don Peters, Juris Types: Learning Law Through Self-Understanding (2007). The book proposes that legal pedagogy and student learning strategies be guided in part by Carl Jung's Psychological Type Theory and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator ("MBTI"). The MBTI is one of the most widely used personality tests in the world today, although the test has never been accepted in the academic community. This paper reviews the history of the development of the MBTI, and the empirical research on its validity and reliability, to explain why the test and its associated theory has been discredited. Law schools (and other organizations) would be wise not to adopt Jungian theory or the MBTI - pseudoscientific variants of the newspaper horoscope - to improve teaching, learning, interpersonal communication skills, or self-understanding, but for reasons well understood by psychologists, their appeal is difficult to resist.
