September 11, 2009
The economic crisis and the resulting fallout has brought numerous changes to law-as-profession and law-as-business, and now law schools are bringing change to the table as well. According to an article in The National Law Journal:
Washington and Lee University School of Law has thrown out its traditional third-year curriculum and replaced it with a series of legal simulations meant to prepare students to practice law in the real world.
First-year students at Duke Law School and the new University of California, Irvine School of Law will take a yearlong course examining different legal careers and the ethical and professional issues associated with those career tracks.
A new LL.M. program at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law is designed to give recent law school graduates the skills their predecessors would have developed as starting law firm associates.
The movement to incorporate practical skills into legal education isn’t new, but legal educators and researchers report that the floundering economy is increasing incentives for law schools to revamp their curricula to prepare students for the realities of the legal profession.
Read the rest of the article here.
I wish programs like this had been available when I went to law school. I’ll never forget the gut-clenching fear that hit when I realized that although I could recite the standard for granting summary judgment in my sleep, I had no idea how exactly to transform the stack of evidence into a brief that would satisfy the standard.
Even more, though, I’d wish for a class on the business of law. How do law firms operate? How does a lawyer get new clients? What should I know about business to better understand the pressures my clients might face, not to mention those that the firm might experience? And what exactly does “good client service” mean beyond doing the substantive legal work well? Although I had wonderful mentors, learning the answers to those (and many other questions) was more difficult and more delayed than necessary. Perhaps some of today’s students will fare better.
I’m curious, readers: if you could go back to law school and add in one class, what would it be?
Welcome back!
This sounds great. I’ve always felt that hands-on classes that teach practical, real-world skills are far more useful than purely academic classes.
I wish more universities would do this–and across disciplines. Question for you Julie: Do you think these changes are temporary or are they here to stay?