Michael Hunter Schwartz
Professor of Law, Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Development

Photograph: Michael Schwartz.
B.A., Mass Communications, University of California, Berkeley, 1984
J.D., University of California, Hastings College of the Law, 1987
Contact Information:
michael.schwartz [at] washburn.edu
(785) 670-1666
Office 309
Support Staff:
Shirley Jacobson
shirley.jacobson [at] washburn.edu
(785) 670-1106
Office 302
Library Faculty Liaison:
Barbara Ginzburg
Teaching Responsibilities:
Contracts
Remedies
Torts
Fall 2011 Course Materials (requires Adobe Acrobat Reader):
"I cannot imagine a better job than training new lawyers at Washburn. Having visited dozens of law schools as a consultant and speaker, I know things are different here. At Washburn, we have forged a unique community in which the deans, the faculty and the students collaborate on the educational ethic I most value — producing insightful, careful, practice-ready lawyers dedicated to their clients and to serving their communities. This ethic plays out every day in our classrooms, where we manifest our shared goal of being as effective as humanly possible, in our offices, in and out of which our students comfortably and frequently pass, and in our faculty discussions, where student needs consistently guide our decision-making."

Professor Schwartz is a nationally-respected teaching and learning expert. He is the Co-Director of the Institute for Law Teaching and Learning and the Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Development at Washburn Law. Professor Schwartz is the author of five books (most recently, Techniques for Teaching Law II (Carolina Academic Press 2011)), three law review articles, a book chapter, and five shorter works addressing a wide variety of teaching, learning and curriculum design topics and was a named contributing author to Best Practices for Legal Education (CLEA, 2007). Professor Schwartz is under contract to publish two additional teaching and learning books: What the Best Law Teachers Do (forthcoming 2012, Harvard University Press) and Assessment: A Comprehensive Guidebook for Law Schools (forthcoming 2013, Carolina Academic Press).

Professor Schwartz is also the designer and editor of a series of casebooks (for which he already has published a contracts text and will be publishing a remedies text) designed to implement instructional design principles and the recommendations of the recent Carnegie and Best Practices studies of legal education. Professor Schwartz has spoken about a wide variety of law teaching, learning, and curriculum design topics on more than 100 occasions as a conference presenter (including an AALS Presidential Program) and as an invited speaker at approximately 50 law schools. He is the former chair of the AALS Section on Balance in Legal Education and the Chair-Elect of the Teaching Methods Section. His contracts course recently was selected as a model course by the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System's Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers Project; the project designates selected courses as reflecting "exemplary innovative teaching."