Professor Claire Robinson May organized and participated in the following session at the 2019 AALS Annual Meeting in New Orleans on January 5th:
Building Bridges Between Theory and Practice: Incorporating Lawyering Skills into Doctrinal Courses
Description:
The ABA and the legal profession increasingly call for law school graduates to be practice ready. Despite the Carnegie Report’s recommendation for legal education to more fully integrate skills, professionalism, and doctrine, years later many law schools continue to offer separate skills courses and traditional “podium courses,” with little intersection of the two. Why do doctrine and skills remain so separate in legal education? What have law schools done to reform their curricula to allow students to learn law in a practical context? This Discussion Group will provide a forum for sharing how some law schools are bridging the gap by incorporating legal writing, simulations, client-based programs, or other experiential learning opportunities into traditional doctrinal courses. Topics include pedagogy, benefits and challenges of integrating skills and doctrine, and whether the legal academy’s longstanding divide between podium and practice best serves our students and our profession.
The ABA and the legal profession increasingly call for law school graduates to be practice ready. Despite the Carnegie Report’s recommendation for legal education to more fully integrate skills, professionalism, and doctrine, years later many law schools continue to offer separate skills courses and traditional “podium courses,” with little intersection of the two. Why do doctrine and skills remain so separate in legal education? What have law schools done to reform their curricula to allow students to learn law in a practical context? This Discussion Group will provide a forum for sharing how some law schools are bridging the gap by incorporating legal writing, simulations, client-based programs, or other experiential learning opportunities into traditional doctrinal courses. Topics include pedagogy, benefits and challenges of integrating skills and doctrine, and whether the legal academy’s longstanding divide between podium and practice best serves our students and our profession.
Participants:
Roberto Corrada, University of Denver Sturm College of Law
Renee Knake, University of Houston Law Center
Harold Lloyd, Wake Forest University School of Law
Claire Robinson May (Moderator), Cleveland-Marshall College of Law at Cleveland State University
Andrea McArdle, City University of New York School of Law
Rebecca Rich, Duke University School of Law
Amy Sloan, University of Baltimore School of Law
Craig Smith, University of North Carolina School of Law
Etienne Toussaint, University of the District of Columbia, David A. Clarke School of Law
CSU Law Faculty 