Legal practioners have a vast comparative advantage over law schools in teaching practical lawyering skills. Example, I had a semester of trial advocacy and a semester of legal writing in law school, yet I learned more about brief writing in the first three weeks of my clerkship than I did in all of law school. It is simply very very difficult to explain in a classroom what makes for a good brief and what does not.The powers that be at my law school, George Mason, have felt that clinical education, if not a boondoggle, is at least not the best use of our limited resources, (contrary to popular impression, George Mason has relatively meager resources, especially for an ambitious school in a major urban center), and we have therefore had very sparse clinical offerings. Our students who desire apprenticeship training can find no shortage of real life part-time work in the D.C. area. The ABA (which accredits us, and is the source of all sorts of malevolent mischief attendant to that power) however, is constantly on our back to expend more resources on clinics.On the other hand, law schools have a huge comparative advantage over practice in teaching theory. The problem is that most law schools teach it in a really ad hoc and disorganized way. However, I think that lawyers who understand that various sorts of frameworks that can lie beneath doctrinal structures are likely to be better lawyers.
In short, I think that most clinical education is a boondogle. Students would be better served getting theory while they can, and then be prepared for a steap learning curve and some kind of de facto apprenticeship after graduation.
On the theory front, we have required all incoming students to take a basic economics course so that they can all have a common framework for discussion in their other classes.
On the other hand, we have disagreed in practice with Nate’s perspective on the value of legal writing programs. My own one-semester program at Yale was a bad joke (question to TA: how do I draft this document? A: You’re a smart Yale student. Look it up in the library, there are lots of books about legal draftingt there), and I suspect that many programs around the country are just as bad (actually probably not quite as bad), ungraded wastes of time. By contrast, Mason has a rigorous four-semester (seven graded credits) legal research and writing program, trying to impart skills that law firms don’t have the time or inclination to work on. Unfortunately, many law students start law school with atrocious writing skills, and many graduate the same way. The Mason approach doesn’t work miracles, but I know our students are a lot better prepared to do legal research and writing than graduates of some of our cross-river rivals, and I know it because senior attorneys at law firms and government agencies tell me so.
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