Resources for CALI Representatives

Updated: July 25, 2008

One of our best CALI advocates, Andrew Pulau Evans of Washburn School of Law, drops a letter in faculty mailboxes at his school to inform them about CALI. The text below is based on, and in some cases borrowed from, his letter.

Hand out a letter or send an email like this once or twice a year to remind your professors about CALI.

Copy and paste the text below. Edit as you wish and don't forget to add authorization codes where applicable!

Dear Professor,

Our school is a member of the non-profit Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI). Please see the law library for the latest CALI DVD-ROM or access CALI on the web at www.cali.org.

If you have not reviewed CALI materials in awhile (or ever), you should take a look. CALI has over 700 computer-based tutorials for students, covering 33 different legal subject areas.

In the last several years, CALI has formed fellowships consisting of your fellow law professors. These fellowships have produced a number of high-quality lessons in Crim. Law, Property, Remedies, Trademark, Copyright, Bus. Associations, Torts, and Family Law. Further, all CALI lessons are reviewed by the CALI Editorial Board, again, consisting of your peers.

Today's law students find the interactive nature of CALI lessons to be extremely helpful as a supplement to class readings. Assigning or suggesting CALI lessons that you find helpful is a fantastic way for students to learn concepts outside of class.

And students especially appreciate CALI lessons as some of the only free, high-quality educational materials available to them as law students.

Here are a few more thoughts straight from students around the country regarding CALI:

• I find the lessons to be extremely helpful in clarifying the rules of law. It is definitely a great way to help build confidence in your understanding of the legal concepts! --1L
• I have found the CALI lessons to be a great tool for review. The explanations and questions reinforce the concepts and theories corresponding to my law class. I'm very grateful to have this website. It has made real impact on my understanding of the law.
  --1L
• The CALI lessons are a great place to solidify the concepts learned in class. After I read the material and did my outline, I went to the CALI lesson and everything just gelled. Essential tool. --1L

You should consider incorporating CALI lessons in your curriculum or, at least, letting students know that these lessons are available.

To create a new online account at cali.org, our school’s authorization code for faculty is YOUR FACULTY CODE HERE. This code should not be given to students. After submitting your faculty code, you will personalize your username and password for cali.org; thus, you only need the authorization code once.

The authorization code for students is YOUR STUDENT CODE HERE. Please share this code with students. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Thank you,

Updated 7/28/2008

We recommend sending out a simple email, letter, or announcement to all students about CALI lessons within the first week or two of the beginning of each semester.

Feel free to use, add, or edit the text below. Don't forget to add your school's authorization code at the bottom!

(Copy and paste the text below):

As you are starting your new classes, we’d like to remind you about a study tool that is available to you at no cost: CALI lessons.

If you are unfamiliar, CALI lessons are interactive, computer-based tutorials provided by the non-profit Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (www.cali.org). Lessons are provided to you as a law student because our school is a CALI member school.

If you're having trouble with certain concept or just feel you need to reinforce what you've learned in class, there is probably a CALI lesson for you on the topic. There are over 700 lessons available to help you study 33 different legal subject areas at www.cali.org. So the lessons are great for mastering material throughout the semester.

When registering a new account at cali.org, you must use our school’s authorization code to create the account. The authorization code is: (PUT AUTHORIZATION CODE HERE UNLESS POSTED ON PUBLIC WEBSITE...IF ON PUBLIC WEBSITE JUST LINK TO www.cali.org/contacts).

You only need to use this authorization code once. After that, you may use the email/password you used to sign up in order to login at cali.org.

Good luck with the rest of the semester!

Updated 7/28/08

We recommend sending out a simple email, letter, or announcement to all students about CALI lessons a few weeks before finals. This will remind students that CALI Lessons are freely available as they prepare for finals.

Feel free to use the text below any way you like. Don't forget to add your school's authorization code at the bottom!

(Copy and paste the text below):

With finals approaching, don't forget that CALI lessons provide a free way to help you prepare for exams!

If you're unfamiliar, CALI lessons are interactive, computer-based tutorials distributed by the non-profit Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI, www.cali.org).

CALI publishes over 700 CALI lessons in 33 different legal subject areas, listed at cali.org/lessons. All law students at CALI member schools, including ours, have free, unlimited access to CALI lessons. Law students around the country ran CALI lessons over 900,000 times last school year.

If you are registering a free account at cali.org for the first time, note that you must use our school's authorization code to create a new account on www.cali.org. Our schools authorization code is (PUT AUTHORIZATION CODE HERE UNLESS POSTING TO PUBLIC WEBSITE, THEN JUST LINK TO www.cali.org/contacts).

Good luck with finals!

Updated 7/29/2008

Use this every once in awhile to remind faculty that CALI lesson are available to them as a teaching tool and that we are always adding new lessons.

Feel free to use this any way you would like. Remember to add the authorization code!

Text (Copy and paste):

If you have not looked at CALI lessons in awhile you should visit www.cali.org and take a look. CALI, a nonprofit consortium of law schools to which we belong, hosts 600+ faculty-authored lessons in 32 legal subject areas at www.cali.org.

CALI continually adds new lessons to the library with fellowships in different legal areas, most recently Criminal Procedure.

Student usage and faculty adoption of lessons continue to steadily rise each year because this generation of students respond well to the interactive/computer element of the lessons.

Law professors are discovering that the interactive lessons on narrow areas of law can be powerful teaching tools. Many law professors suggest or assign CALI lessons they think will be particularly helpful to their students.

Feel free to visit www.cali.org and work through some of the lessons. If registering a CALI username and password for the first time, you will need the school's faculty authorization code: (AUTHORIZATION CODE HERE).

If you don't see a lesson in the area you are looking for, CALI is always looking for quality lesson authors. If you have questions about authoring your own lesson, contact Deb Quentel (dquentel@cali.org) for more details.