Legal News

The Boldest Move (To Date) in Legal Curriculum Reform?

By Ashby Jones

Throughout the years, there’s been so much talk about whether and to what degree the third year was a waste of time at law schools. It was largely a repeat of the second-year (more upper level courses arranged around subject-matter, like Corporations and Antitrust), and, the criticism went, largely failed to prepare students for real-life practice.

But change is afoot in the halls of our nation’s law schools. We’ve blogged throughout the months on moves made at a handful of schools, like at Northwestern and UC Irvine, but the National Law Journal has a nice article out this week that wraps up just about everything that’s going on — chronicles this moment of time — possibly, dare we ask, akin to taking a taking a photo of a powder keg just before it explodes? Time will tell on that one.

We’ll let you read the NLJ story to get up to speed on most of the goings on. For now, let us focus our attention on a new third-year curriculum at Washington & Lee.

According to the NLJ:

Instead of traditional classroom courses, 3Ls at Washington and Lee go through four lengthy simulations intended to approximate real-world legal problems. Students are assigned a fictitious client and a case file and work through the legal issues during a period of weeks while keeping billable hours, arguing motions and submitting briefs. At least one of those cases must involve working with a real client.

“I think we are at a moment of historical change across the landscape of legal education,” said Washington & Lee Dean Rodney A. Smolla (pictured). “When we look back at this period in five to 10 years, we will mark it as the time when the whole mission of law schools made a fundamental turn.”

The NLJ reports that Washington & Lee’s curriculum overhaul is also a bid to make graduates more attractive to employers. “When lawyers and judges describe the competencies they wish young attorneys had more of, they never say, ‘I wish they knew more legal doctrine,’” says Smolla. “They always say, ‘I wish they had more business judgment. I wish they could write better.’ ”

The new curriculum is optional for current 3Ls, and the school initially estimated that fewer than half the existing class would opt in. In fact, two-thirds of the class signed on.

Several legal educators view Washing­ton & Lee’s approach as the boldest move in legal curriculum reform in recent years. The progress and outcomes of the new program are being closely watched within the law school community, they said.

“I suspect that a lot of students found this program particularly attractive when they saw the job climate right now,” Smolla said.

LBers, any thoughts? Ours are this: It’s undeniably a good thing. Legal practice isn’t fun and law school is fun (we found), so it threatens to make the 3L year a bit less enjoyable. That said, more directly preparing students for what many of them are actually going to be doing a year or two down the road? Makes a ton of sense to us.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on September 09, 2009 (boomark / email).