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What to do with Law Students and how to get them into Education?

By Justin Bathon

The New York Times has an interesting article this morning on changing the law school curriculum toward a more practically oriented perspective.

Here are a couple of highlights.

1. Schools are moving to include a course on interpreting statutes and regulations in the first year. Personally having aided in the design of just such a course at Southern Illinois University Law School, I can't tell you how pleased I am to see this catching on across the country. At least in education law, most of the legal content governing schools are from statutes, yet most of the scholarly productivity is on cases. It is time to change our focus a bit.

2. Law schools are making it easier to take courses in other graduate programs in the university. As a product of a joint-degree program, again, I am pleased to see this trend. Further, working here at IU, there is an increasingly productive relationship between the School of Educationin which I teach and the IU Law School. The relationship is really helping to produce some great individuals in education law who will have a big impact on schools in the future.

3. Law schools are expanding their clinical offerings. In a sort of unofficial study I did of law school offerings, I was surprised how many law schools offered a clinical program in special education law. Special education is an underserved field within the legal community and I am extremely pleased to see law schools picking up some of the slack. I would encourage more law schools to consider a special education clinic as part of their practical education package.

As law schools begin to adapt their curriculum to a changing world, I hope they see the potential in educational law. Programs are offering more and more joint degrees in business, public administration, health and even philosophy, but to this point are still generally neglecting joint education degrees (heck my old law school has one - I know because I set it up while I was there - but fails to advertise it). At education schools with educational policy programs and educational lawyers on staff, efforts should be made to connect with the law school to provide options to young lawyers to enter education.

Full post as published by Edjurist on October 31, 2007 (boomark / email).