Title: The Law School Matrix: Reforming Legal Education in a Culture of Competition and Conformity
Abstract: INTRODUCTION Law school reform is in the air. Many reformers agree that the prevailing law school model developed in the nineteenth century does not adequately prepare students to become effective twenty-first century lawyers.1 Langdell's case method, designed around private domestic law, appellate cases, and the Socratic method, increasingly fails to teach students to like a lawyer 2 in the world students will occupy. The curriculum over-emphasizes adjudication and discounts many of the important global, transactional, and facultative dimensions of practice. Law school has too little to do with what lawyers actually do and develops too little of the institutional, interpersonal, and investigative capacities that good lawyering requires. The Socratic method in the large classroom, though valuable as a way to teach sharp analytic skills, is ill-suited to fostering legal imagination,3 which is what lawyers need most to become effective advocates, institutional designers, transaction engineers, and leaders. It also contributes to law student disengagement, particularly for women and people of color.4 Forward-looking deans and faculty members have responded with a host of reforms focused on updating how law schools prepare students to think like a lawyer. Law schools are experimenting with curriculum, course materials, writing programs, clinical education, faculty governance, class size, and even architecture. There is palpable energy for change among various constituencies concerned about education's future. Many of the key reformers are participating in this Symposium. Scholars and policy analysts like Ed Rubin at Vanderbilt, Martha Minow at Harvard, Beth Mertz at Wisconsin, and Carrie Menkel-Meadow at Georgetown occupy strategic positions across different institutional affiliations, enabling them to act as organizational catalysts for change, both within their own institutions and across a set of law schools.5 Professional associations such as the AALS and the New Legal Realism Project have put law school reform on their agendas and offered their communication and networking resources.6 Outside constituencies, including alumni and leading lights of the profession, have also begun to exert pressure on law schools. This convergence of internal and external constituencies and circumstances creating pressure for change is unusual for a tradition-bound institution. Law schools, whose culture has been passed down through generations of lawyers, generally do not ask fundamental questions about long-established practices and their relationship to institutional mission. But we see the seeds of a constitutional moment for law schools-a time for systemic reflection and for reconstituting the framework and relationships shaping law schools. Much of the recent energy focuses on curricular reform initiatives that seek to expand students' understanding of what law is, to move beyond adjudication and the courtroom, to introduce broader forms of knowledge, and to develop a wider range of skills. Many initiatives add new courses focusing on public law, transactional work, international law, and interdisciplinary understandings of law and problems.7 Some schools have even decided to experiment by introducing students to these ideas in the sacred first year.8 Most recently, Harvard has decided to add new courses on policy (Legislation and Regulation), international law (Public Law, International Economic Law, or Comparative Law), and problem-solving strategies (Problems and Theories) to the century-old first-year curriculum.9 To expose students to more of what lawyering involves, other schools offer expanded clinical courses and externships and develop transactional, theory-practice opportunities.10 We are ourselves experimenting with courses like this.11 Law schools are also making efforts to improve the quality of the classroom experience by reducing class size and encouraging faculty to experiment with more interactive, problem-oriented pedagogy. …
Publication Year: 2007
Publication Date: 2007-03-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 49
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