Ann L. Iijima, William Mitchell College of Law Teaching Presentation Proposal: Collaborative Legals Studies Program Law schools need to address the impact of legal education on the emotional functioning of law students. Studies show that lawyers experience abnormally high rates of alcoholism and emotional dysfunction and suggest that the law school experience is an important causal factor. Although entering law students score within normal ranges on psychological tests, within the first semester they show substantial increases in rates of dysfunction. Rates continue to increase throughout their three years in the legal academy. The studies also suggest that there is something unique in the law school environment causing the dysfunction; medical students, for example, do not show the same rates of dysfunction. Additionally, psychological states, both positive and negative, have a profound influence on performance. For example, high levels of hope, optimism, perseverance, and motivation may be stronger predictors of academic achievement than SAT scores or previous grades. Conversely, negative feelings are likely to interfere with academic performance. Expectations of failure are liable to become self-fulfilling prophecies. Because emotional state and academic performance are so closely related, and because law school contributes to emotional dysfunction, students may get caught in a downward spiral of emotional and academic problems. Ann L. Iijima, Lessons Learned: Legal Education and Law Student Dysfunction, 48 J. Legal Educ. 524, 526-27 (1998). At the New Ideas Conference, I would speak for a few minutes on the need for law schools to address the impact of legal education on the emotional functioning of law students. I would spend the major portion of my time discussing the Collaborative Legal Studies Program (CLSP), which I developed with the director of William Mitchell’s Counseling Center. In CLSP, students work together on issues of common concern. I would discuss the following topics at the Conference: CLSP logistics benefits to students (and professors) of participating in CLSP solutions to problems we encountered in the first year of the program discussion of a few CLSP topics (e.g., managing time pressures)