Marty Peters, professor of legal education, gave a presentation on the factors that cause stress among law school students during the Humanizing Legal Education Conference. Held Oct. 19-21 in Topeka, Kan., the conference was hosted by Washburn University School of Law.
Peters’ presentation was titled “A Model for Stress Intervention: Toward Humanizing Legal Education.” She compared a previous study she did on law student stressors with a recent study another conference presenter had completed at two different law schools. Peters says the comparison was “both confirming and disturbing, because the stressors perceived by law students (do) not appear to have changed.”
Peters focused her remarks on identifying sources of stress and providing intervention points that could help students and faculty manage law school stress more effectively. She used the perception of control as a psychological intervention to illustrate concrete ways to help students build effective stress management strategies.
Conference participants came from 45 law schools and 31 states and foreign countries, including Canada and Australia.