Most attorneys recall law school as a blur of long hours spent reading cases and what seemed like even longer classes spent waiting for professors to ask questions about the reading, all accompanied by a vague sense of dread and panic. Generations of lawyers have endured the rigors of the Socratic method, held as the best way to teach critical thinking and reasoning, application of the law to factual circumstances and how to think on one’s feet.
In recent years experiential education has challenged the supremacy of the Socratic method as law schools have embraced more simulated practice as instruction. A growing prevalence of externships, co-ops, moot court, mock trial and clinics means less time sitting in class, sweating the answers and more time learning by doing.
In August, the American Bar Association House of Delegates will consider whether to adopt expanded requirements for experiential education for accredited law schools. The Standards Review Committee of the American Bar Association’s Section of Legal Education has approved Proposed Alternative Standard 303(a)(3), which includes a demand that law students complete six hours’ worth of experiential education in order to graduate.
Historically, all law schools have utilized some form of experiential education. Students can participate in moot court, mock trials and externships at almost any law school. The popularity of experiential methods has grown in part as a result of new lawyers’ complaints that law school failed to teach them the skills involved in the practice of law. And economic changes in the profession mean that the workplace offers fewer opportunities for rookie attorneys to cut their teeth.
A changing understanding
Among the experiential method’s supporters is Elon University School of Law’s new dean, Luke Bierman, a national leader in the field. Bierman says that the number of law professors who have some form of the words “experiential education” in their title has jumped from 12 to 75 in recent years. What is meant by that designation varies widely.
“I think the idea is that learning from doing might be connected to a classroom experience, self-directed or from other practitioners,” he said. “It could range from cooperative legal education, where the students literally leave the school and are essentially employees of a firm or government, to in-class simulations. It also includes externships. The key is it is not just an exchange of information from the teacher to the student.”
Bierman said that experiential education dates to when lawyers became lawyers by doing. But in the 1970s, its popularity soared through the development of clinics and externships.
Another proponent, William “Bill” Henderson, a professor at Indiana University School of Law, said our understanding of experiential education has changed over time. In the 1920s the Socratic method was considered highly experiential compared to a Blackstone lecture, but the Socratic method would not be considered experiential today.
He was the principal investigator of an in depth-study of experiential education at Northeastern University School of Law. Henderson’s research into the benefits of the experiential method found that insight students gain into a field of law by participating in a co-op help them determine whether to continue on the career path they have chosen. This research involved 6,400 alumni of Northeastern School of Law. The results are based on interviews, focus groups, data from the alumni database and surveys.
Henderson’s preliminary results found that a law student who participates in one co-op, which entails leaving the classroom and gaining on-the-job experience, during law school is likely to change his or her mind about his or her career path 43 percent of the time due to the co-op experience. The percentage jumps to 92 percent when a student takes four co-ops. Henderson’s preliminary findings also show students involved in a form of experiential education have greater career satisfaction and accelerated professional maturation. He also found that students in experiential classes — especially second and third years — are more prepared for class and participate more often.
“You cannot do an oral argument, deposition, etc. without experience,” Henderson said. “Exposure to some form of experiential education accelerates knowledge absorption as well.”
Time and money
Jim Klein, distinguished visiting professor of law and director of externships at Charleston School of Law, views experiential education as the ideal complement to a student’s legal education.
“Experiential learning is teaching students through the actual experience of working on real life cases and legal matters as opposed to simulations.” Klein said, “It also involves reflecting on the student’s work activities … it’s exciting, because it brings back the self-esteem they lost their first year of law school. Students rediscover how good they actually are in experiential programs.”
Jim Exum, former North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice and an Elon Law School faculty member, agrees that in-class simulations are an important part of legal education. But, he says, experiential education is not without its disadvantages.
Exum said that one challenge schools face with experiential programs is time. Experiential programs take up a lot of time, and students often do not have the time necessary to complete other law school requirements and an intensive experiential program.
Both Exum and Klein said that experiential programs are costly. Klein said one reason these programs are costly is due to the low student-to-professor ratio needed to ensure each student is properly supervised.
Another disadvantage of experiential programs, according to Klein, is the “severe consequences if a student is not successful.” A student can commit malpractice when working on legal problems for real clients, so proper supervision is essential, he said.
Finding the right formula
Dr. Richard Clark, emeritus professor of educational psychology and director the Center for Cognitive Technology at University of Southern California, is not a fan. He points to the theory of experiential education called the discovery approach, where students are given problems in teams or study groups and charged with solving them. Clark said the flawed assumption is that if the group solves this particular problem, they will have then learned how to solve similar problems.
“It takes experts years to discover how to solve complex problems. How can you expect students do this in teams or groups?” he said. He believes that that some experiential approaches result in the students knowing less than when they started.
Most of the educators and leaders believe there needs to be a mixture between experiential education and the more traditional form. Alan Duncan, immediate past-president of the North Carolina Bar Association, is among them.
“I understand and appreciate the need for greater practical experiences in law school, but at the same time recognize law schools cannot lose sight of the fact that young lawyers in training have to maintain a solid foundation and understanding of the law.”
Bierman agrees with Duncan.
“My view is experiential education and classroom learning go hand-in-hand,” he said. “They should be fully integrated so it is seamless to students—students just learn how to be a lawyer. The teacher should offer different ways to learn that prepares students to become excellent, ethical lawyers.”
Henderson said, “Lots of knowledge needs to be conveyed in law school, so there’s plenty of room for traditional education, but to get the judgment and skills you require to be a really good lawyer, you need experiential.”
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