Law Schools Innovate With Hands-On Learning
These five pioneers are among the law schools overhauling programs to build in extensive hands-on practice.
Law school continues to be more of a buyer's market than in years past, as many programs invent new ways to reel in applicants who've been wary of the poor job outlook and steep tuitions. The legal education community is still trying to regain its footing after the Great Recession forced firms to radically tighten their belts, shutting out many new grads and sending applications into a spiral.
Among the more unconventional curricular experiments law schools will keep an eye on are several new programs. The Mitchell Hamline School of Law – a merger of Minnesota's William Mitchell College of Law and Hamline University School of Law – will offer a first-of-its-kind hybrid curriculum, for example. Students will take online courses for 12 or 13 weeks a semester and visit the campus 10 times during the four-year program to participate in skills workshops.
Meanwhile, more established schools continue to recast their programs by condensing coursework, addressing tuition and adding intensive on-the-job training, perhaps the biggest trend of all. Here's a look at what's happening at a few of the pioneers.
[Learn how a drop in applications is spurring changes at law schools.]
Elon University School of Law
Last year, Elon unveiled a completely overhauled curriculum emphasizing practice. The new program focuses heavily on individualized mentorship by working attorneys and faculty members and extensive experiential coursework, and it has been condensed into two and a half years. Meanwhile, the school reduced tuition by 12 percent to a flat $100,000 for the whole package.
In the first year, "lab" components of foundational courses connect theory to practice. In a criminal law lab, for instance, students at the Greensboro, North Carolina, school might observe a plea agreement negotiation in court before doing their own simulated plea deal.
Second-year students spend one trimester in a full-time "residency" in a legal setting – such as the North Carolina Business Court conveniently located on campus – while taking a related class. These experiences culminate in a third-year "bridge-to-practice" course tailored to a student's intended career path. Family law students, for example, might participate in an extended simulation of a divorce case.
Throughout it all, each student depends for guidance on his or her personal "student success team," which includes a faculty adviser, an attorney mentor, an executive coach from the school's leadership program and a professional development adviser.
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At Case Western, which also has overhauled its curriculum to make experiential learning central to all three years of coursework, new students right off the bat find themselves working with real clients of the Cleveland Legal Aid Society. While they can't offer advice, the students do the initial interviews, present the problem to volunteer attorneys, and sit in on problem-solving sessions.
Other first-year experiences include a residency program that puts selected 1Ls to work assisting 3L interns in the school's in-house legal clinics, which aid clients who can't afford counsel in criminal cases, civil litigation, health issues and other areas of law. They research and draft memos and pleadings and participate in team strategy sessions.
Meanwhile, many 2Ls and all 3Ls work full time for a semester (or half time for both semesters) in an externship. For most, that means working in the clinics. Others go abroad to work in the International Criminal Court or find spots in law firms or nonprofits to get experience in areas not practiced in the clinics, such as environmental or labor law.
University of Denver Sturm College of Law
In the Sturm College of Law's new curriculum, one-third of the load consists of hands-on practice-based opportunities. In the first-year Lawyering Process course, a legal research, writing and analysis class, students might partner with a nonprofit to help it decide whether to pursue public interest litigation, for example.
Similarly, potentially dry classes such as Contracts and Corporations have been recast as simulations. Professor Roberto Corrada uses the novel "Jurassic Park" to inspire students in his administrative law class, for instance; they work in teams to draft and present legislation to Congress establishing regulations for a dinosaur theme park, which may include guidance on handling dinosaur DNA and fence electrification. And five in-house clinics offer hands-on practice.
[Consider practicum opportunities when choosing a law school.]
University of Kansas School of Law
The University of Kansas School of Law gets students ready for the courtroom through an intense, immersive skills workshop on using expert witnesses, one of a series that forms the core of the school's experiential offerings.
The skills workshops are modeled on those that some of the largest law firms still use to train new associates. The school partners with local firms to teach the skills, using a combination of lectures and simulations over the course of four 10-hour days. Each workshop focuses only on one skill, such as taking depositions, qualifying expert witnesses at trial, and selecting a jury through voir dire.
While legal doctrines take time to absorb, such practice-related skills are mastered most effectively "in these short bursts," says KU law professor Lumen Mulligan.
Pepperdine University School of Law
Students in Pepperdine Law School's accelerated J.D. program get their experiential learning at a somewhat reduced cost by packing three years of law school into two. But most students who choose accelerated programs like Pepperdine's have already been out in the professional world and are willing to double down to get back to it sooner.
Tuition typically runs the same as for the traditional track, but saving a year of living expenses and lost income is a big selling point. The streamlined approach has been lauded as a way to cut down on student debt by President Barack Obama.
The Malibu, California, school's accelerated students start with a 12-credit summer semester, then join traditional 1Ls in the fall and spring semesters. They get a good dose of experiential learning about dispute resolution, in particular, through simulations in courses on mediation and negotiation offered by the school's Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution (and, as a bonus, they graduate with a certificate in the field).
They also do an externship while taking six classroom credits the next summer, and then wrap up the program by taking the traditional 2L coursework.
This story is excerpted from the U.S. News "Best Graduate Schools 2017" guidebook, which features in-depth articles, rankings and data.
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