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Copyright Information
FACILITATING BETTER LAW TEACHING-NOW
Martin J. Katz*
INTRODUCTION
This Essay is about solutions-real solutions that law schools can deploy
right now to improve the education we provide. And it is about how to
overcome obstacles to implementing those solutions right now. This is how
change happens.
We have all heard a great deal about the problems facing legal education
(and the legal profession more generally). Pundits have gone on for years about
how law graduates are ill prepared for practice.1 More recently, there has been
a seemingly endless barrage of commentary about the difficulty recent law
graduates face in finding jobs.
* Dean and Professor of Law, University of Denver Sturm College of Law. The author is a founder and
serves on the executive board of the Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers project. Thank you to Bill Sullivan,
Rebecca Love Kourlis, Fred Cheever, Alan Chen, Roberto Corrada, Laura Rovner, Catherine Smith, David
Thomson, and Kenneth Margolis for their ideas regarding this Essay. And thank you to Diane Burkhardt and
Jessica Neumann for their research assistance. Any errors are solely mine.
1 See, e.g., Margaret Martin Barry, PracticeReady: Are We There Yet?, 32 B.C. J.L. & Soc. JUST. 247
(2012); Harry T. Edwards, The Growing Disjunction Between Legal Education and the Legal Profession, 91
MICH. L. REV. 34 (1992); Robert M. Lloyd, Essay, Hard Law Firms and Soft Law Schools, 83 N.C. L. REV.
667 (2005); see also Lincoln Caplan, Editorial, An Existential Crisisfor Law Schools, N.Y. TIMEs, July 15,
2012, at SR10 ("[Law schools'] missions have become muddled, with a widening gap between their lofty
claims about the profession's civic responsibility and their failure to train lawyers for public service or provide
them with sufficient preparation for practical work."); Ashby Jones & Joseph Palazzolo, What's a First-Year
Lawyer Worth?, WALL ST. J., Oct. 17, 2011, at B1 ("[T]here is still a gulf between a newly minted lawyer and
one who can provide value to a client."); David Segal, What They Don't Teach Law Students: Lawyering, N.Y.
TIMES, Nov. 20, 2011, at Al ("The fundamental issue is that law schools are producing people who are not
capable of being counselors." (internal quotation marks omitted)).
2 See, e.g., BRIAN Z. TAMANAHA, FAILING LAW SCHOOLS 114-18 (2012); Amir Efrati, Hard Case: Job
Market Wanes for U.S. Lawyers, WALL ST. J., Sept. 24, 2007, at Al; Ashley Post 2011 Law School Grads
Face Worst Job Market in 18 Years, INSIDE COUNS. (June 11, 2012), http://www.insidecounsel.com/2012/06/
11/2011-law-school-grads-face-worst-job-market-in-18 ("[T]he employment rate for 2011 law school
graduates is 85.6 percent, the lowest rate since 1994, when it was 84.7 percent. Additionally, less than half of
these grads have attained jobs in private practice."); see also A Less Gilded Future; Law Firms,ECONOMIST,
May 7, 2011, at 74, 74 ("After a dozen years of growth, employment in America's law industry, the world's
biggest, has declined for the past three years . . . ."); Jack Crittenden & Karen Dybis, Who Is Hiring Now,
NAT'L JURIST, Sept. 2010, at 26, 26 ("Full-time hiring for the class of 2009 was also down-88.3 percent of
graduates had found employment within nine months of graduation.... And many expect the numbers for the
class of 2010 to be even worse."); James G. Leipold, The Changing Legal Employment Marketfor New Law
School Graduates,B. EXAMINER, Nov. 2010, at 6, 6 ("[M]embers of the law school graduating classes of 2009
824 EMORY LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 62:823
and 2010 have faced the worst entry-level legal employment market in 50 years, and perhaps ever, and the
market for classes of 2011 and those that will follow is likely forever changed.").
3 See, e.g., CLIFFORD WINSTON ET AL., FIRST THING WE DO, LET'S DEREGULATE ALL THE LAWYERS
(2011); Clifford Winston & Robert W. Crandall, Time to Deregulatethe PracticeofLaw, WALL. ST. J., Aug.
22, 2011, at Al 3 (arguing that entry into the practice of law should be deregulated); Paul Campos, And the
New York Times Said Law Is Dead, INSIDE L. SCH. SCAM (June 1, 2012, 8:17 AM),
http://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2012/06/and-new-york-times-said-law-is-dead.html (arguing that
a large number of law schools should close).
4 See Brent E. Newton, The Ninety-Five Theses: Systemic Reforms of American Legal Education and
Licensure, 64 S.C. L. REV. 55, 91-100 (2012) (proposing mandatory changes to law school curriculum, and
suggesting that academic freedom should not extend to pedagogy); id. at 125--33 (criticizing scholarship done
by law professors and urging the ABA to remove scholarship requirements for law faculties); id. at 73 (arguing
that the faculty governance model at law schools "will need to change to one analogous to the 'corporate'
model-a powerful executive who, while not omnipotent, does not require the consensus of, or even the
concurrence of a majority of, faculty members with respect to significant administrative matters such as hiring
decisions, curriculum reform, and the like"). Mr. Newton noted that "altering the model of faculty governance
at law schools is far easier said than done." Id. at 73; see also Brent E. Newton, Preaching What They Don't
Practice: Why Law Faculties' Preoccupation with Impractical Scholarship and Devaluation of Practical
Competencies Obstruct Reform in the Legal Academy, 62 S.C. L. REV. 105, 113 (2010) (noting that law
schools primarily hire "impractical professors whose chief mission is to produce theoretical legal
scholarship").
5 For example, many of the critics assume that all law schools are the same and that none have embraced
experiential learning. See supra note 1. This is demonstrably false. See, e.g., Karen Sloan, ABA: Law Schools
Getting the Message on PracticalSkills, NAT'L L.J. (July 5, 2012), http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.
jsp?id=1202561943191 &slretum=20120801205023.
Many of the critics of law graduates' job prospects claim that the only jobs that would justify going to
law school are jobs that (1) require a J.D., (2) are full-time, and (3) are permanent (in the sense of having an
expectation that the job will last more than a year). See Joe Palazzolo, Law GradsFace Brutal Job Market,
WALL ST. J., June 25, 2012, at Al. This seems like an unduly narrow definition of good jobs. Few of our
highest earning graduates from Denver Law are in jobs that would count under that definition. And when one
compares the supposedly terrible unemployment rate among law graduates to general unemployment rates, it
seems clear that J.D.s help graduates get jobs, whether they fit within this narrow definition or not. Compare
Karen Sloan, A Dismal Job Marketfor Law Grads Got Even Worse for Class of 2011, NAT'L L.J. (June 7,
2012), http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticlePrinterFriendlyNLJ.jsp?id=1202558291685 (noting that
employment rate for recent law graduates is 85.6% nine months after graduation), with Lauren Weber &
Melissa Korn, College Graduates,Expect a Lengthy Job Hunt, WALL ST. J. (May 13, 2012), http://online.wsj.
com/article/SB10001424052702304451104577389910993770838.html ("Only 49% of college graduates from
the classes of 2009 to 2011 had found a full-time job within a year offinishing school.. . .").
2013]1 FACILITATING BETTER LAW TEACHING 825
6 WILLIAM M. SULLIVAN ET AL., CARNEGIE FOUND. FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF TEACHING, EDUCATING
LAWYERS: PREPARATION FOR THE PROFESSION OF LAw (2007) [hereinafter CARNEGIE REPORT].
There are several other excellent works on experiential legal education that arrive at similar
conclusions to those in the Carnegie Report. See, e.g., ROY STUCKEY ET AL., BEST PRACTICES FOR LEGAL
EDUCATION (2007) (incorporating elements of the 2005 draft of the Camegie Report); ABA SECTION OF
LEGAL EDUC. & ADMISSIONS TO THE BAR, LEGAL EDUCATION AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT-AN
EDUCATIONAL CONTINUUM (1992) (identifying a number of reforms that would prepare law school graduates
to practice law in what was known as the McCrate Report). In this Essay, I will tend to refer to the Camegie
Report, largely because of its recent vintage, its breadth, and its positive reception in the legal academy and
legal practice. Indicia on the widespread acceptance of these works, particularly the Camegie Report, are
discussed infra in note 19, but all of these works are excellent reading.
7 See supra note 1.
8 See, e.g., Barry,supra note 1, at 249-51.
9 See, e.g., id. at 250-51.
10 See supra note 2. The debate about law school placement has been compounded by questions about the
accuracy and transparency of schools' reporting of placement data. See Robert Morse, U.S. News Challenges
826 EMORY LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 62:823
recent recession and may ease as the economy recovers. Other parts of this
problem may be the result of a "new normal," in which there are competitive
forces impacting law practice that will not change even after the economy
recovers. 1 However, for purposes of this Essay, I will assume that at least part
of the problem lies in the realm of legal education. Specifically, law schools
could do a better job of preparing their graduates to compete for high-quality
legal jobs if we did a better job of preparing practice-ready lawyers. 12
ABA on Law School Employment Data Standards, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REP. (Jan. 13, 2011),
http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/college-rankings-blog/2011/01/13/us-news-challenges-aba-on-law-
school-employment-data-standards. We have taken steps at Denver Law to address these issues. See Rachel M.
Zahorsky, U of Denver's Law School Takes an Extra Step Toward Transparencyfor Its Graduate Employment
Data, A.B.A. J. (July 1, 2012, 2:00 AM), http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/u of denvers law
school takes an extra steptowardtransparency foritsgra/. But the broader question, which I will address
in this Essay, goes to the substance of schools' reports. Whatever the exact dimensions of the reporting
problem, it is clear that recent law graduates are having a harder time finding jobs than they have in the past
and, more important for my purposes, that law schools can do a better job of preparing our graduates to
compete for jobs.
A third major criticism of law schools has been their cost. This Essay does not address the cost issue
directly. However, in discussing the ways of addressing ways to make graduates more practice-ready and able
to compete for jobs, this Essay will discuss the cost of various initiatives with an eye toward avoiding
significant increases in the cost of attending law school.
1 See, e.g., RICHARD SUSSKIND, THE END OF LAWYERS? RETHINKING THE NATURE OF LEGAL SERVICES
27 (2008) ("[A] pair of related forces will fundamentally transform legal service in the coming decade and
beyond. The first ... will be a market demand for increasing commoditization of legal services, while the
second will be widespread uptake of information technology (IT)."); Alex M. Johnson, Jr., Think like a
Lawyer, Work like a Machine: The Dissonance Between Law School and Law Practice,64 S. CAL. L. REV.
1231, 1232 (1991) (noting that law practice has increasingly moved "toward commercialization" with an
emphasis on "money and profit rather than on service and justice"); Patrick J. Schiltz, On Being a Happy,
Healthy, and Ethical Member of an Unhappy, Unhealthy, and Unethical Profession, 52 VAND. L. REV. 871,
899-900 (1999) ("The market for lawyers' services has become intensely competitive.... Clients insist on
getting good work at low hourly rates. They also insist that lawyers minimize the amount of time that they
devote to each file to hold down costs." (footnotes omitted)); Daniel Thies, Rethinking Legal Education in
HardTimes: The Recession, PracticalLegal Education, and the New Job Market, 59 J.LEGAL EDuc. 598, 603
(2010) (explaining that the "natural tensions" of the traditional law firm model "were becoming unsustainable
even before the economic troubles hit"); David Segal, Is Law School a Losing Game?, N.Y. TIMES, Jan. 9,
2011, at BU1 ("[W]ith corporations scrutinizing their legal expenses as never before, more entry-level legal
work is now outsourced to contract temporary employees, both in the United States and in countries like India.
It's common to hear lawyers fret about the sort of tectonic shift that crushed the domestic steel industry
decades ago."). The phrase the "new normal" seems to have been coined in ROGER MCNAMEE WITH DAVID
DIAMOND, THE NEW NORMAL: GREAT OPPORTUNITIES IN ATIME OF GREAT RISK (2004); it has been applied to
the legal services industry by Paul Lippe. See Paul Lippe, Is Your Firm or Legal Department 'Old Normal'or
'New Normal'? See Our Checklist, AM B. ASS'N L. REBELS (Apr. 24, 2012, 8:30 AM),
http://www.abajournal.com/
legalrebels/article/is_yourfirmorlegaldepartmentoldnormalornewnormalseeourchecklist/.
12 A significant part of the problem relates to firms' role in training lawyers. Traditionally, law schools
did not need to worry that much about training lawyers for practice since legal employers-particularly law
firms-tended to do this type of training. Of course, the cost of any activity at law firms gets passed on to
clients. But at the time, when lawyer mobility and client mobility were minor factors, it made sense for firms,
2013]1 FACILITATING BETTER LAW TEACHING 827
What might surprise many outside of the legal academy is that there is a
potential set of solutions to these problems that is close-at-hand: the
recommendations of the Carnegie Report.13 The authors of that report
compared legal education to other forms of professional education, to the
elements of the practice of law, and to adult learning theory, and reached two
basic conclusions.14 First, the report concluded that American law schools do a
relatively good job of teaching students about legal doctrine and how to
determine that doctrine and its limits.' 5 But, the Carnegie Report concluded,
law schools have traditionally not done a very good job of teaching the skills
for deploying that doctrine in the service of real clients or the professional
identity required to understand the role of a lawyer.16 Accordingly, the
Carnegie Report recommended a fairly straightforward prescription: Law
schools should offer more experiential learning opportunities that integrate
three key "apprenticeships": doctrine, practical skills, and professional identity
formation.1
These recommendations seem tailor-made to the problems critics have
noted in modem law schools. If we provide more experiential learning
opportunities to law students, and these experiences include all three
apprenticeships (doctrine, skills training, and professional identity formation),
clients, and attorneys to jointly take on the burden of training new attorneys for practice. See Erwin
Chemerinsky, Essay, The Ideal Law Schoolfor the 21st Century, 1 U.C. IRvINE L. REv. 1, 1-13 (2011) ("But
as many reports have noted, law schools are far less successful in preparing students for the practice of law.
There are many reasons for this. I believe that elite law schools have long eschewed this as a primary
objective. Long ago, they adopted the mantra that they teach students to think like lawyers and leave practical
training for after graduation." (footnote omitted)). However, these mobility factors are no longer minor, and as
a result, it no longer makes much sense for clients to subsidize attorney training at firms. This creates a
significant opportunity for law schools that are willing to provide more practical training. See Tierney Plumb,
A Law School-Run Law Firm, NAT'L JURIST, Feb. 2012, at 22, 23 ("Many law firms are no longer willing to
finance the training of entry-level attorneys, so more students are depending on their own law schools to give
them the practical skills the market needs.").
13 CARNEGIE REPORT, supra note 6, at 22.
14 ld
15 Id. at 2 ("[B]y the end of their first year, most [law students] have developed a clear ability to reason
and argue in ways distinctive to the American legal profession.").
16 Id. at 22 ("In legal education,. . . the primary emphasis on learning to think like a lawyer is so heavy
that schoolwide concern for learning to perform like one is not the norm."); see also STUCKEY ET AL., supra
note 6, at 1 ("Since the 1970's, numerous groups of leaders of the legal profession and groups of distinguished
lawyers, judges, and academics ... have universally concluded that most law school graduates lack the
minimum competencies required to provide effective and responsible legal services.").
17 CARNEGIE REPORT, supra note 6, at 26 ("Research suggests that learning happens best when an expert
is able to model performance in such a way that the learner can imitate the performance while the expert
provides feedback to guide the learner in making the activity his or her own."). See id. at 27-29 for a detailed
explanation of the three apprenticeships.
828 EMORY LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 62:823
then law students will spend more time standing in the shoes of lawyers while
they are in school. And if law schools provide high-quality supervision from
skilled teachers and mentors, law students will learn from these experiences
how to be good lawyers. Such students will be far more likely to emerge from
law school ready to practice law and ready to compete for good legal jobs. 8
It might also surprise those outside the legal academy how well accepted
the Carnegie Report is within the legal academy. It has been cited with
approval by hundreds of legal academics. 19 That is not to say that the report is
universally accepted. But fortunately, that is not a requirement for solutions.
And notably, very few academics have criticized the report's research or
conclusions. 2 0 In short, the Carnegie Report enjoys a large degree of support
18 In this Essay, I do not try to make any empirical claims about the efficacy of this type of experiential
education. Within education literature, "several well-controlled studies have now shown that students
demonstrate more learning, better conceptual understanding, superior class attendance, greater persistence, and
increased engagement when collaborative or interactive teaching methods are used compared to when
traditional lecturing is employed." See George M. Slavich & Philip G. Zimbardo, Transformational Teaching:
Theoretical Underpinnings, Basic Principles, and Core Methods, 24 EDuc. PSYCHOL. REV. 569, 570 (2012);
see also SUSAN A. AMBOSE ET AL., How LEARNING WORKS: 7 RESEARCH-BASED PRINCIPLES FOR SMART
TEACHING 5 (2010) ("Students must develop not only the component skills and knowledge necessary to
perform complex tasks, they must also practice combining and integrating them to develop greater fluency and
automaticity. Finally, students must learn when and how to apply the skills and knowledge they learn.").
Within legal education, we have good evidence on student satisfaction and engagement. See, e.g., Bill
Henderson, Washington & Lee Is Biggest Legal Education Story of 2013, LEGAL WHITEBOARD (Jan. 29,
2013), http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legalwhiteboard/2013/01/biggest-legal-education-story-of-2013.html.
And we have anecdotal evidence that this type of education is effective at creating good lawyers. See infra
note 103. However, a great deal of work remains to be done on assessment.
19 A search in Westlaw yielded over 400 law review articles citing the Carnegie Report, almost all
favorably. See, e.g., Lauren Carasik, Renaissance or Retrenchment: Legal Education at a Crossroads, 44 IND.
L. REV. 735, 736 (2011); James R. Faulconbridge & Daniel Muzio, Legal Education, Globalization, and
Cultures of Professional Practice, 22 GEO. J. LEGAL ETHICS 1335, 1336 (2009); Peter Toll Hoffman, Law
Schools and the Changing Face ofPractice, 56 N.Y.L. SCH. L. REV. 203, 215 (2011-2012); Peter A. Joy, The
Cost of Clinical Legal Education, 32 B.C. J.L. & Soc. JUST. 309, 323-25 (2012); Mary A. Lynch, An
Evaluation of Ten Concerns About Using Outcomes in Legal Education, 38 WM. MITCHELL L. REV. 976, 977
(2012); Sara K. Rankin, Tired of Talking: A Callfor Clear Strategiesfor Legal Education Reform: Moving
Beyond the Discussion of Good Ideas to the Real Transformation of Law Schools, 10 SEATTLE J. FOR Soc.
JUST. 11, 13-14 (2011); Kelly S. Terry, Externships: A Signature Pedagogy for the Apprenticeship of
Professional Identity and Purpose, 59 J.LEG. EDuC. 240, 241-43 (2009).
20 There have been some critics of the Carnegie Report, but very few who question its core prescription
for more integrated experiential education. See, e.g., Michelle J.Anderson, Legal EducationReform, Diversity,
and Access to Justice, 61 RUTGERS L. REV. 1011, 1022 (2009) ("Despite its engagement with values and
professional ethics, the Carnegie Report did not analyze the values or professional ethics of the profession
itself"); Leonard J. Long, Resisting Anti-Intellectualism and Promoting Legal Literacy, 34 S. ILL. U. L.J. 1, 13
(2009) (observing that the report "damns formal knowledge with faint praise"); Lisa T. McElroy et al., The
Carnegie Report and Legal Writing: Does the Report Go Far Enough?, 17 LEGAL WRITING: J. LEGAL
WRITING INST. 279, 282-87 (2011) (describing and citing several criticisms, including the report's failure to
embrace a "pluralistic approach to legal education that would recognize other pedagogies," its support for the
2013]1 FACILITATING BETTER LAW TEACHING 829
Socratic method, its failure to consider the lack of diversity in the legal profession, its lack of suggestions for
enhancing the report's effectiveness, and its failure to question the hierarchies within law school faculties).
The main critiques of the Carnegie Report have focused on either (1) the potential cost to provide the
amount of hands-on, experiential learning and simulation necessary to effect genuinely integrated education,
and (2) the predicted hesitancy of law faculty to teach in this way. This Essay addresses those two critiques. A
less widespread critique is that, if more faculty members focus on experiential learning, there will be less focus
on faculty scholarship. This is a false dichotomy, at least at Denver Law, where approximately 90% of our best
teachers are also our best scholars. See infra note 70.
21 See ABA SECTION OF LEGAL EDUC. & ADMISSIONS TO THE BAR, A SURVEY OF LAW SCHOOL
CURRICULA: 2002-2010, at 15 (Catherine L. Carpenter ed., 2012).
22 See id.
23 See id.
24 Washington & Lee requires an entirely experiential third year. Third-Year Externship Program,
WASH. & LEE U. SCH. L., http://law.wlu.edu/clinics/page.asp?pageid=1382 (last visited Feb. 28, 2013). The
University of Denver Sturm College ofLaw's strategic plan calls for students to have the option of spending at
least one-third of their law school careers doing integrated experiential learning by 2015. See The Future of
Legal Education for the Future of Legal Practice: Strategic Plan 2010-2015, DENVER L. STRATEGIC PLAN 6,
http://denverlawplan.com/3dissuestrategicplan/index.html (last visited Mar. 20, 2013) [hereinafter Denver
Strategic Plan]. At the time of publication of this Essay, we are ahead of schedule with our strategic plan and
currently all students who matriculate at Denver Law in the fall of 2013 or later will have the option of
spending a full year of their law school career in real or simulated experiential learning opportunities.
830 EMORY LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 62:823
cost. 33 Clinics also often involve significant litigation costs. This is particularly
true of more complex clinics, such as those that litigate in federal courts.
Litigation costs in such cases can easily exceed $100,000. And while some
clinics stick to simpler, state court cases, such cases may not teach students
about the types of complex cases they may encounter in practice. Moreover, if
clinics are taught by tenure-track faculty (which is increasingly the case), 34the
school must often pay non-faculty lawyers to provide case coverage during the
summers so that the clinicians can satisfy their writing obligations (since real
cases, of course, do not adhere to an academic calendar).35 The costs of such
"summer coverage" can be substantial.36
33 See Joy, supra note 19, at 309 n.1. The 8-1 ratio also limits the number of opportunities for students to
participate in clinics. If it were not for the expense of adding new clinical faculty, as well as the other expenses
involved in running clinics, this problem might be solved by expanding the number of faculty who teach in
clinics. But as I discuss below, see infra note 49, the expense of doing so makes it difficult to provide more
clinical opportunities in this way.
34 Historically, clinicians did not have tenure. Increasingly, they do. See BRYAN L. ADAMSON ET AL.,
Ass'N OF AM. LAW SCH., REPORT AND RECOMMENDATIONS ON THE STATUS OF CLINICAL FACULTY IN THE
LEGAL ACADEMY 16-17 (2010) [hereinafter CLINICAL REPORT] (noting that 27% of clinical faculty members
at American law schools are on the tenure track).
3s There are arguments for and against tenure for clinicians. Those who favor tenure for clinicians have
often argued that having clinics taught by non-tenure-track faculty sends the message to students that clinics
are staffed by "second class" faculty, and thus are somehow less valuable than more traditional curriculum that
is staffed by the school's elite faculty. See, e.g., Bryan L. Adamson et al., The Status ofClinical Faculty in the
Legal Academy: Report of the Task Force on the Status of Clinicians and the Legal Academy, 36 J. LEGAL
PROF. 353 (2012) (identifying four core principles to guide decisions about clinical faculty appointments and
recommending that full-time clinical faculty be appointed to a "unitary tenure track"); see also CLINICAL
REPORT, supra note 34, at 25--27. Those who favor non-tenure-track clinicians have argued that clinicians'
jobs are more practice oriented than those of classroom professors, and may be less likely to benefit from the
type of scholarly activity that is generally required of tenure-track faculty. See, e.g., Adamson et al., supra, at
398. The merit of having clinicians on a tenure track is not relevant to this Essay. My point is only that
(1) clinicians are increasingly on a tenure track; (2) tenure-track clinicians, whose jobs require writing,
generally require time away from their dockets to write successfully; and (3) providing such docket relief is
costly.
It is worth noting that a similar situation is playing out on legal writing faculties, another mainstay of
experiential learning. See Susan P. Liemer & Hollee S. Temple, Did Your Legal Writing Professor Go to
Harvard?: The Credentials of Legal Writing Faculty at Hiring Time, 46 U. LOUISVILLE L. REV. 383, 385
(2008) ("[I]t is no secret that most law school faculties in the United States have well-defined hierarchies and
that legal writing professors often are relegated to low positions within those hierarchies." (footnote omitted));
Kent D. Syverud, The Caste System and Best Practices in Legal Education, 1 J. ASS'N LEGAL WRITING
DIRECTORS 12, 14-16 (2002).
36 Summer coverage tends to be provided either by lawyers outside of the school, who work on the cases
at hourly rates, or by "fellows," full-time law school employees who are clinicians-in-training during the
academic year and provide case coverage during the summers. See Adamson et al., supra note 35, at 407
(noting that law schools hire attorneys or law student interns during the summer).
832 EMORY LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 62:823
with all of these costs, externships, if they are done well, provide an effective
and efficient way to provide Carnegie-style, experiential legal education.
Course simulations provide a third valuable way to provide experiential
legal education. As the label suggests, course simulations involve simulated
problems that students, playing the role of lawyers, work through and solve
under the supervision of experienced professors and practitioners. Such
simulations have significant advantages. They can be tailored to student
learning in ways that real cases in a clinic cannot. Teachers can omit the
months of wait time between significant events in a case. And they can create
facts that might not exist in a real case, allowing students to explore legal and
ethical issues that might not arise in a particular case. A good analogy is the
flight simulator. In a simulator, if you are teaching landings, you can go
straight to the landing-without the hours it might take to get to the landing
phase of a flight. And if you want to teach about how to deal with an engine
fire on takeoff, you can do so in a simulator without risking lives.
There are some potential pitfalls in doing simulations. Most notably, not
every professor has the type of training that prepares them to do good
simulations (and there is a vast difference between good simulations and bad
ones). The deficiency can come from a lack of practice experience42 or a lack
of training in how to do classroom simulations. However, these problems can
easily be overcome, a topic I will discuss at more length below.
An additional pitfall in simulations involves the messages that law schools
sometimes inadvertently send their students about them. At many schools,
simulations tend to live at the periphery, outside of the primary curriculum and
taught by non-regular faculty. For example, many schools provide course
simulations only in their trial advocacy programs, which are often taught by
adjuncts or non-regular faculty (or, as some have put it, "outsourced"). While
these may be excellent programs, students often believe that these
opportunities are less valuable than more traditional classroom activities.
A related problem with this type of simulation course involves integration.
While trial advocacy programs do in fact involve doctrine (they involve cases
that have a substantive legal component), they are often focused more on
skills. Sometimes, but not always, they involve small issues of professional
42 See Susan B. Apel, No More Casebooks: Using Simulation-Based Learning to Educate Future Family
Law Practitioners, 49 FAM. CT. REV. 700, 705 (2011) (noting among the limitations of simulation-based
learning that law schools must be willing to hire professors with extensive practice experience).
834 EMORY LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 62:823
identity. In this sense, they are not full integrations of doctrine, skills, and
professional identity. Moreover, to the extent that these simulations are done
outside of the "main curriculum," the curriculum itself cannot be seen as
integrated. In such a curriculum, students learn doctrine in the main curriculum
and skills (and possibly professional identity) in a separate curriculum. 43
43 An additional challenge for those teaching simulations is to create the type of uncertainty and
unpredictability that inheres in live client situations. For this reason, professors often try to create "ill-
structured" simulations that provide this type of realism. Whether simulations can recreate the pressure of
having a real client depending on the lawyer is also a potential issue.
44 See Denver StrategicPlan, supra note 24, at 2.
45 Id. at 5. A second key part of the plan is to adopt specialization tracks that allow our students to gain
and demonstrate substantive expertise in five areas (1) in which the school has or can easily build strength, and
(2) that we believe will yield good employment opportunities for our students in the coming years (our
Specialization Initiative). See id. We also made a commitment to diversity and inclusiveness, which has
yielded significant progress. See Catherine E. Smith, Seven Principles: Increasing Access to Law School
Among Students of Color, 96 IowA L. REv. 1677 (2011).
2013]1 FACILITATING BETTER LAW TEACHING 835
chose, they could spend at least one full academic year doing such experiential
learning.
But in 2009, we did not have the capacity to offer that magnitude of
experiential learning opportunities. The question, therefore, became: How
could we substantially increase the number of integrated, experiential learning
opportunities we provided to our students?
in the clinic. However, because our goal is to provide every student with a full year's worth of experiential
education, we also need to increase the number of hours available to each student. The fact that a clinic
provides six, rather than three, credit hours helps to accomplish this goal-creating 160 three-hour
opportunities.
So See supra Part ITI.
51 See, e.g., UNiv. OF DENVER STURM COLL. OF LAw, LEGAL EXTERNSHIP PROGRAM HANDBOOK 6,
available at www.law.du.edu/documents/legal-extemship-program/ExtemshipHandbook.pdf; Externship
Program,EMORY L., http://www.law.emory.edu/academics/academic-programs/externship-program.html (last
visited Mar. 20, 2013).
52 See Experiential Learning, STURM C. L., http://www.law.du.edu/index.php/academics/experiential-
learning (last visited Mar. 20, 2013).
2013]1 FACILITATING BETTER LAW TEACHING 837
It also allows for placements that might be geographically distant from our
school, such as in another city or even another country. 53
Finally, an incidental benefit of the Semester-in-Practice Program was to
increase our experiential learning capacity. We plan to regularly offer forty
Semester-in-Practice positions per year. Because each of these positions is
equivalent in credits to four regular externships, they effectively increase the
number of externship hours for each of those positions by 300% (the
equivalent of adding 120 new placements). 54
Having increased our clinical and externship capacities as much as feasible,
we next turned our attention to course simulations. We already offered a
handful of simulation courses, even beyond trial advocacy. Some of these
courses involved small-scale simulations that were included in more traditional
courses. For example, in my employment discrimination class, I do a two-week
simulation of litigation strategy and discovery in a sexual harassment case
(based on the fact scenario in the movie Disclosure),5 with the students
playing the roles of the legal teams for the plaintiff and defendant.
But some of our courses involved full-course simulations. For example,
Professor Roberto Corrada teaches a labor law class in which the students can
unionize and then engage in collective bargaining with him over the terms of
the class-including the format and curve of the exam. 5 6 (This is not for faint-
hearted teachers.) Instead of teaching labor law using casebooks, lectures, or
Socratic dialogue, the students are immersed into a large-scale, unstructured
problem, which they explore and solve in ways lawyers do. Similarly,
Professor David Thomson teaches a discovery course in which the entire
course revolves around a case that has been filed. 57 Again, there is no
5 Although Denver Law is fortunate enough to be only ten minutes from downtown Denver, location
away from major legal markets is often a significant limiting factor for law school extemship programs.
54 This assumes that we expended forty existing externships to SIPs. For each of the forty converted
extemships, we will have provided the equivalent of three new standard extemships.
5s DiscLosuRE (Warner Brothers Pictures 1994). The movie is based on the book by Michael Crichton.
MICHAEL CRICHTON, DISCLOSURE (1993).
56 See Roberto L. Corrada, Development, A Simulation of Union Organizingin a Labor Law Class, 46 J.
LEGAL EDuc. 445 (1996). For commentaries about Professor Corrada's class, see Mark Clayton, Students in
'Oppressive' Law Class Learn to Aegotiate-Fast, CHRISTIAN SCI. MONITOR, Dec. 4, 2001, at 15; U. of
Denver Students Form Union in Course on Labor Law, CHRON. HIGHER EDUC. (D.C.), Feb. 9, 2001, at 10
(describing Corrada model for labor law); see also MARY TAYLOR HUBER & PAT HUTCHINGS, CARNEGIE
FOUND. FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF TEACHING, THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING: BUILDING THE TEACHING
COMMoNs 21, 62-63 (2005).
57 See DAVID 1.C. THOMSON, LAW SCHOOL 2.0: LEGAL EDUCATION FOR A DIGITAL AGE 100-01 (2009).
For commentary on Professor Thomson's class, see Beth A. Tomerlin, The Practicality of Practicums:
838 EMORY LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 62:823
Thinking and Acting like a Lawyer, One Class at a Time, DOCKET (Feb. 2012), http://denbar.org/docket/doc
articles.cfmn?ArticlelD-7445.
58 Recently, some publishers have started putting out textbooks that are designed to assist in the teaching
of simulation courses. See, e.g., DAviD I. C. THOMSON, SKILLS & VALUES: DIscoVERY PRACTICE (2010).
However, in such courses the textbook is both nontraditional and not used in traditional ways.
59 See THOMSON, supra note 57, at 100-01.
2013]1 FACILITATING BETTER LAW TEACHING 839
60 See, e.g., Apel, supra note 42 (noting the difficulties of encouraging professors to implement
simulation-based learning).
61 See id. (describing the work that planning a simulation entails).
62 Another concern that faculty members had about venturing into experiential learning has to do with
student evaluations. If, as a result of experimentation, a professor's student evaluations get worse, this can
have serious negative consequences, both in terms of merit reviews and in terms of tenure and promotion. So
the stakes are high. At Denver Law, I have tried to address this by making adjustments on merit reviews for
faculty members who take on new experiential learning activities in their classes. And our Promotion and
Tenure Committee also takes into account classroom innovations that might lead to temporary dips in student
approval ratings.
840 EMORY LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 62:823
even learning theory. 6 3 But it is also important to have faculty members who
have done this type of teaching make themselves available for mentoring and
consulting for those who are wading into these waters for the first time.
In fact, we had an excellent first-hand demonstration of just how valuable
such support and mentoring could be in expanding course simulation
opportunities for our students. Professor Corrada sdent many years developing
his experiential labor law class discussed above. Yet another Denver Law
professor, Rachel Arnow-Richman, was able to take Professor Corrada's
materials-and a healthy dose of advice from him, based on his experience
teaching the class-and offer a very similar class herself. The students in
Professor Arnow-Richman's class gave it uniformly positive reviews, often a
challenge in first-time complex course simulations. In other words, wheels do
not need to be reinvented. Knowledge about experiential learning is extremely
transferrable, which permits significant leverage where faculty members are
willing to share their work and their wisdom in this area.
63 For example, we heard from some instructors from the National Institute for Trial Advocacy (NITA),
who specialize in developing legal problem simulations. See Law Schools, NAT'L INST. FOR TRIAL ADVOC.,
http://www.nita.org/LawSchools (last visited Mar. 20,2013).
64 See supra note 56 and accompanying text.
65 Professor Corrada is the inaugural chair. See Roberto Corrada Faculty Profile, STURM C.
L.,
http://www.law.du.edu/index.php/profile/roberto-corrada (last visited Feb. 28, 2013). The chair was recently
endowed and named the Mulligan Burleson Chair of Modem Learning. See Press Release, Univ. of Denver,
Gifts Lift Denver Law's Commitment to Developing Client-Ready Graduates (Dec. 10, 2012), available at
http://www.law.du.edu/documents/news/lawgiftfinal.pdf The endowment provides a substantial budget that
the chair can use to advance experiential learning initiatives. However, the initiatives described in the text
required little in the way of budgetary support.
66 For example, Northeastern has an Associate Dean for Experiential Education (Professor Luke
Bierman). See Luke Bierman, NORTHEASTERN U. SCH. L., http://www.northeastern.edu/law/academics/faculty/
directory/bierman.html (last visited May 10, 2013). Other law schools that currently appear to have either
deans or directors of experiential learning are: Case Western Reserve School of Law; Charlotte School of Law;
Drexel (Earle Mack School of Law); Loyola University Chicago School of Law; Loyola University New
Orleans College of Law; Loyola Law School Los Angeles; Hofstra Law; Notre Dame School of Law; Suffolk
University Law School; UC Hastings College of Law; University of Colorado Law School; Vermont Law
School; New York Law School; American University, Washington College of Law; Syracuse University
College of Law; Southern Illinois University School of Law; and Hamline University Law School. See
Kenneth R. Margolis, CASE W. RES. U. SCH. L., http://law.case.edu/OurSchool/FacultyStafflMeetOurFaculty/
FacultyDetail.aspx?id=134 (last visited May 10, 2013); Cindy Adcock, CHARLOTTE ScH. L., http://www.
2013]1 FACILITATING BETTER LAW TEACHING 841
the concept is the same. The appointment of a leader in this area sends a strong
signal to the faculty on the importance of this type of teaching. And the person
in this position can coordinate many of the activities discussed above. For
example, such a leader can request proposals for experiential course
development, and also help select proposals for awards of stipends and course
relief. He or she can help arrange forums for presenting and discussing faculty
members' work in this area. He or she can either provide or coordinate
mentoring and support from other faculty members (or even outside of the
faculty).
At Denver Law, our Modem Learning Chair has engaged in three
additional activities that have proven extremely valuable.67
First, he has convened the Modem Learning Committee. This committee
includes the directors of each area of the law school that does experiential
learning, including our Clinic Director, Extemship Director, Lawyering
Process Director, and Advocacy Director, a handful of adjuncts that use course
simulations, as well as those professors that received stipends for course
development in the last year. This committee hears reports and provides
feedback on experiential learning in each of these departments, allowing for
the transmission of valuable knowledge across traditional department lines.
charlottelaw.edu/about/cindy-adcock (last visited May 10, 2013); Susan L. Brooks, DREXEL U. EARLE MACK
SCH. L., http://earlemacklaw.drexel.edulfaculty/FacultyProfiles/Susan/ 20Brooks/ (last visited May 10, 2013);
Josie Gough, Loy. U. CHI. SCH. L., http://www.luc.edu/law/faculty/gough.html (last visited May 10, 2013);
Christine Cerniglia Brown, Loy. U. NEW ORLEANS SCH. L., http://law.loyno.edu/bio/christine-elise-cerniglia-
brown (last visited May 10, 2013); Faculty & Administration, Loy. L.A. L. SCH., http://www.1ls.edu/aboutus/
facultyadministration/ (last visited May 10, 2013); Jennfer A. Gundlach, MAURICE A. DEANE SCH. L.,
http://law.hofstra.edu/directory/faculty/fulltime/gundlach/index.html (last visited May 10, 2013); Robert
Jones, NOTRE DAME L. SCH., https://law.nd.edu/directory/robert-jones/ (last visited May 10, 2013); Faculty
Profile, SUFFOLK U. L. SCH., http://www.law.suffolk.edu/faculty/directories/faculty.cfm?lnstructorliD45 (last
visited May 10, 2013); Aancy Stuart, Clinical Professor of Law, and Associate Dean of Experimental
Programs, HASTINGS C. L., http://www.uchastings.edu/academics/faculty/facultybios/stuart/index.php (last
visited May 10, 2013); Marianne Wesson, COLO. L., http://lawweb.colorado.edu/profiles/profilejsp?id=63
(last visited May 10, 2013); Margaret Martin Barry, VT. L. SCH., http://www.vermontlaw.edu/OurFaculty/
FacultyDirectory/Margaret Martin Barry.htm (last visited May 10, 2013); Stephen J. Ellmann, N.Y. L. SCH.,
http://www.nyls.edu/faculty/faculty_profiles/stephen j_ellmann (last visited May 10, 2013); Avis Sanders,
AM. U. WASH. C. L., http://www.wcl.american.edu/faculty/sanders/ (last visited May 10, 2013); Deborah S.
Kenn, SYRACUSE U. C. L., http://www.law.syr.edu/deans-faculty-staff/profile.aspx?fac=73 (last visited May
10, 2013); John Erbes, S. ILL. U. SCH. L., http://www.law.siu.edu/FacultystafflErbes/index.php (last visited
May 10, 2013); Cathryn Deal, HAMLINE U. SCH. L., http://law.hamline.edu/cathryn-deal.html (last visited May
10,2013).
67 See ExperientialLearning, supranote 52.
842 EMORY LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 62:823
Second, along with the Modem Learning Committee, the chair arranges
educational programming for the faculty. Such programming has included
presentations and brown bag discussions. The programming now also includes
a distinguished lecturer on experiential learning each year.
Finally, the Modem Leaming Chair has reached out to the local legal
community to explore opportunities to partner on experiential leaming. These
partnerships have included recruiting adjuncts who teach course simulations,
supporting other adjuncts who are interested in trying this type of teaching, and
pairing practitioners with full-time professors-a particularly successful model
for teaching course simulations.
68 Our inaugural distinguished lecturer was Bill Sullivan, the lead author of the Carnegie Report. See
CARNEGIE REPORT, supra note 6. The same year, we also hosted a parallel distinguished lecturer in our
scholarship development program, who also happens to be a national leader in experiential learning: Jane
Aiken, from Georgetown Law Center. See Jane H. Aiken, GEORGETOWN L., http://www.law.georgetown.edu/
faculty/aiken-jane-h.cfm# (last visited Feb. 28, 2013).
69 The vote was 39-3, virtually unanimous by academic standards.
2013]1 FACILITATING BETTER LAW TEACHING 843
B. FacilitatingInnovation on a NationalLevel
In 2010, a group of professors and legal reformers at the Institute for the
Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS)n started to ask the next
question: How can law schools facilitate this type of innovation not just at one
or two particular schools, but at law schools across the country? In response,
we started the Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers initiative (ETL). The director is
Bill Sullivan, the lead author of the Carnegie Report.72
ETL is designed to work at two levels: facilitating innovation among
individual law professors and facilitating innovation among law schools.7 3
1. SupportingLaw ProfessorsNationwide
Our working hypothesis was that, just as we saw at Denver Law, there were
likely a large number of faculty members at schools across the country who
might be on the fence-faculty who, given the right conditions, might start
using experiential learning techniques in their classrooms. There seemed to be
great potential to facilitate change at this level. Professors have a great deal of
70 To give just a few examples, Professors Sam Kamin and Justin Marceau, who teach our constitutional
rights and remedies capstone, and Professor Rachel Amow-Richman, who adopted Professor Corrada's labor
law simulation, are some of our faculty's most prolific and nationally respected scholars. Many of our best
scholars are now teaching using experiential simulation and finding it both enjoyable and complementary of
their scholarship.
71 TAALS is a national, independent, nonpartisan research center dedicated to continuous improvement of
the process and culture of the civil justice system. What We Do, INST. FOR ADVANCEMENT AM. LEGAL SYS.,
http://iaals.du.edu/about-the-institute/what-we-do/ (last visited Feb. 28, 2013). It leverages "empirical and
legal research, innovative solutions, broad-based collaboration, communications and ongoing measurement in
strategically selected, high-impact areas" to advance a more accessible, efficient, and accountable civil justice
system. Id. TAALS is located at the University of Denver. Id It partners with the Sturm College of Law on
various projects, but it is fully independent from the law school. See id.
72 See About ETL, EDUCATING TOMORROW'S LAWYERS, http://educatingtomorrowslawyers.du.edu/about-
etl/ (last visited Feb. 28, 2012).
7 See id.
844 EMORY LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 62:823
courses or future courses they might design. Fellows are also expected to make
themselves available to discuss their courses and provide support for
professors who are considering, designing, or implementing innovations of
their own.
ETL will soon launch a Visiting Fellows program and an annual Fellows
Workshop. Schools that are interested can host an ETL Fellow from another
school to speak to their faculties, or to visit classes and help facilitate
experiential learning on site. Alternatively, professors who are interested in
learning more about this type of teaching can attend the annual Fellows
Workshop. These fora will provide excellent opportunities for the transmission
of know-how and experience in this type of teaching.
The ETL web site also provides a resource center, a one-stop source of
information and resources on experiential learning, as well as events, all with
web links. The resources are categorized for easy retrieval. For example, there
are categories for designing simulations, using technology, learning theory and
applications, grading rubrics, and assessment. 79 The resources will soon be
searchable as well (as will the course portfolios). Professors who are
contemplating or implementing experiential learning in their classroom find
these resources, along with the course modules, to be invaluable.
The web site also encourages discussion and debate about experiential
learning, with regular blogs from leaders in legal education and practice,so a
news section, and a set of video interviews with practitioners, legal
employers, and clients ("Voices from the Field") discussing the need for
innovation in legal education and the benefits of Carnegie-style experiential
education.82
In addition to facilitating information flow on Carnegie-style innovation
through its web site, ETL facilitates information flow through a series of
annual expert conferences designed to address cutting-edge topics in
83
experiential learning. For example, the first conference, in the fall of 2012,
addressed the issue of how to teach professional identity (generally thought to
be the most challenging of the three apprenticeships) and how to assess the
teaching of professional identity.84 Participants worked through a set of
exercises designed to collaboratively develop new techniques for this type of
teaching-techniques that, once disseminated, can be used by faculty across
the country in their classrooms. ETL recently released a report on the
conference designed to disseminate the ideas discussed at the first conference
and start the discussion of ideas for the second conference.85
Although ETL is still in its early stages, we are beginning to see evidence
that this strategy is working. For example, ETL Fellow Jay Finkelstein, who
created a module detailing an experiential course in International Transactions
that he teaches with Daniel Bradlow, reports that this course is now in use at
eight schools.
News & World Report ranking tiers. 95 This demonstrates that Carnegie-style
innovation in legal education is not-and need not be-limited to any
particular type of school. It is something that can work for virtually any type of
school. For this reason, we anticipate that the consortium will continue to grow
as more schools become committed to and engaged in Carnegie-style
experiential legal education. 96
In addition to the consortium, ETL facilitates innovation at the law school
level by providing information on what law schools across the country are
doing to implement the Carnegie Report. To that end, ETL has conducted a
survey of 195 U.S. and Canadian law schools to measure the level of Carnegie-
style innovations at those schools-and changes in those levels. As of October
2011, 118 (60.5%) law schools had responded, representing a broad cross
section of schools.97 Two of the survey authors, Stephen Daniels and Bill
95 See id.
96 The exclusionary aspect of the ETL consortium model has given rise to some concern by those with
more egalitarian or inclusive views. Schools cannot join the consortium at will. Rather, membership is limited
to schools that have demonstrated a significant institutional commitment to experiential learning along the
lines suggested in the Carnegie Report. Accordingly, the consortium does not work for all schools. Many
schools are not interested in making a significant commitment to Camegie-style experiential learning, others
may have pockets of interest but no institutional commitment to doing so, and others may have more
widespread interest but have not yet taken significant steps down that path. Our hope is that more and more
schools will qualify for the consortium. But at this point, not all schools qualify.
The stakes are relatively low. Participation in ETL does not require consortium membership. Any
professor at any school-consortium member or not-can submit courses for inclusion on the ETL web site.
Anyone can use the web site, including making full use of the course modules, or even submitting blog posts.
The only activity that is limited to consortium members is participation in the annual conference-and even
here, participation is open to ETL Fellows from non-consortium schools. So professors who are committed to
Camegie-style teaching who happen to be at schools that are less committed are not excluded in any way.
The goal is not to be exclusionary for its own sake. The point of exclusion is twofold. First, limiting
membership creates a leadership model that recognizes schools that have taken important and meaningful steps
to implement innovation consistent with the Carnegie Report. If membership were open to schools that had not
taken such steps, it would not be meaningful. Second, limiting membership creates opportunities for the type
of high-level expert discussion that we see at ETL conferences. We can skip the discussion about whether
experiential education is a good idea, or about the basics of doing experiential education, and thereby move the
conversation further along. See supranote 88.
That is not to say that there is not an important role for a more open conversation. Fortunately,
Northeastern University School of Law has started an excellent working group, called the Alliance for
Experiential Learning in Law (Alliance), which meets that need-and which also hosts an excellent annual
conference. See Alliance for Experimental Learning in Law, NORTHEASTERN U. SCH. L., http://www.
northeastem.edu/law/academics/institutes/alliance-exp-leaning.html (last visited Sept. 20, 2012). Notably,
many of the ETL consortium schools are part of the Alliance, and many Alliance schools (including
Northeastern) are also members of the ETL consortium. Compare id., with About Our Consortium,supra note
87.
97 See Stephen Daniels et al., Analyzing Carnegie's Reach: The Contingent Mature of Innovation, 62 J.
LEGAL EDuc. (forthcoming 2013) (manuscript at 5) (on file with author).
2013]1 FACILITATING BETTER LAW TEACHING 849
Sullivan, make regular blog posts discussing the survey findings. 9 8 The
findings are encouraging, suggesting that more and more schools are
embracing Carnegie-style innovations. 9 9
Finally, ETL seeks to expand the discussion about innovation in legal
education beyond law professors and law schools. After all, many of the
primary stakeholders in legal education do not reside in law schools. To this
end, ETL has put together a broad-based advisory board, which includes
members of the academy, members of the bench and bar, commentators, those
who regularly hire lawyers, and those who regularly train lawyers. 100 ETL will
likely add law student members from the ABA Law Student Division.101 The
advisory committee meets twice annually to discuss the ETL initiatives, as
well as the more general question of how best to train new lawyers to the
highest standards of competence and professionalism. The discussion and the
ideas that come from that discussion are invaluable.
CONCLUSION
There are many ideas for how legal education should be reformed and
many calls for change. The good news is that we already have the benefit of a
series of well-researched, well-supported, and broadly accepted prescriptions
for reform in the Carnegie Report. 102 These prescriptions are already being
implemented in law schools across the country and yielding tangible results.
If law professors and law schools can expand the integrated experiential
learning opportunities they provide their students, they will likely produce
better law graduates and better lawyers.
Our professors and our schools face some constraints on this type of
teaching, including cost and learning curves. But with the right forms of
support, individual professors and individual law schools can implement these
prescriptions. This Essay has attempted to provide a roadmap for how we can
provide support for these important innovations. If it works (and it seems to be
working), we can improve legal education in significant ways. Now.