Legal Research

Law School Curriculum

By jlutz99

Stanford Law School Dean Larry Kramer has a long post in the Blog Law School Innovation on the topic of law school curriculum:

Ask any law school graduate what was the most significant intellectual experience he or she had in law school (that is, what really shaped their thinking, what stuck with them, what mattered most), and almost all will give the same answer: the first year. This seems to be true no matter what law school they attended, no matter what career they chose to pursue, and whether they graduated last year or fifty years ago. I spend probably half my time talking to Stanford graduates, usually beginning a first meeting by talking about their time here, and I get this answer almost 100% of the time. The first year, in other words, is the part of law school that really seems to work. The problem with legal education is in the second and third year and consists mainly of failing to keep students engaged by offering them something of equivalent educational and intellectual value to what they got in the first year. It is, from that perspective, puzzling to see not just Harvard, but most schools that think about curriculum reform focus all their energy on changing the first year.

Read the whole post here.

Posted by Jon Lutz

Full post as published by FSU College of Law Library Blog on November 02, 2006 (boomark / email).