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Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Law - "Reality's knocking" The recession is forcing law schools to bow to reality"

This story, dated Sept. 7th, reported by Karen Sloan of The National Law Journal, begins:

Washington and Lee University School of Law has thrown out its traditional third-year curriculum and replaced it with a series of legal simulations meant to prepare students to practice law in the real world.

First-year students at Duke Law School and the new University of California, Irvine School of Law will take a yearlong course examining different legal careers and the ethical and professional issues associated with those career tracks.

A new LL.M. program at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law is designed to give recent law school graduates the skills their predecessors would have developed as starting law firm associates.

The movement to incorporate practical skills into legal education isn't new, but legal educators and researchers report that the floundering economy is increasing incentives for law schools to revamp their curricula to prepare students for the realities of the legal profession.

"A lot of the changes are in response to the marketplace," said David Van Zandt, dean of Northwestern University School of Law. "Students are concerned about getting jobs, and everybody wants to be relevant."

See also this just-posted entry in the WSJ Law Blog, headed "The Boldest Move (To Date) in Legal Curriculum Reform?."

Posted by Marcia Oddi on September 9, 2009 01:28 PM
Posted to General Law Related