Interesting article in this month’s ABA Journal: Re-engineering the J.D.: Schools Across the Country Are Teaching Less About the Law and More About Lawyering, by Jill Schachner Chanen
Back in the good old days, legal education meant little more than a predetermined set of courses taught by academics using the Socratic method. Nearly every 1L could count on a uniform schedule of torts, contracts, civil procedure and more of the usual suspects. And the upper years allowed for a wider choice of subjects still based on the same pedagogy. It was only when newly minted J.D.s were let out into the real world that they learned how to practice law. No more.
During the past 20 years, members of the legal community started to recognize that this traditional model was not serving the needs of the modern-day legal profession, and they were slowly trying to respond. But globalization, market pressures and, yes, even the influence of the much-reviled U.S. News and World Report rankings have made innovation a high priority. Curriculum changes range from tweaks to transformations, but what is clear in every case is that today’s law school is not your father’s law school anymore.
