Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2015

Keywords

legal education, law teaching, active learning, Langdell, legal formalism, mimesis, teaching methods, hierarchy

Abstract

So why do law schools place skills instruction below the dissemination of legal knowledge even though it is the practice of law that lawyers are engaged in doing and not just the mere knowing of it? Both should be equally significant. Although law teaching methodologies have shifted somewhat to accommodate the changing cognitive adaptations of the human mind in this age of digital technology, law instruction in classrooms still possess a deeply-rooted basis in legal formalist considerations of the law from the 19th century that displaces skills instruction for the advancement of the legal knowledge. Consequently, in order to further the image of the “Learned Profession” of lawyering, law schools have perpetuated a difficult dichotomy between knowledge and practice. As we move to identify the New Normal in legal education during this current crisis, that dichotomy plays a part in how we need to recalibrate law teaching in order to instill competency rather than propagating a formalist concept of legal education that isolates and depoliticizes law from practice.

This Article, Function, Form, and Strawberries: Subverting Langdell, attempts to bring both the teaching of practice and knowledge on equal footing with each other to avoid student misconceptions of hierarchy that harbor larger professionalism issues. It offers a method for law teachers to incorporate skills teaching actively in the classroom in a way that legitimizes legal reasoning skills on par with the instruction of legal knowledge. In this way, the Article proposes a new normative in the “New Normal” of legal education: that there should be a continuous engagement with active learning that integrates skills into the doctrinal classroom in a seamless way. The law is a discipline that is brought to life by us and our students very much in part through its practice. We cannot ignore that aspect of this field, nor afford to do so.

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