Amorality In The Lawyering Skills Classroom

Ezra Ross (UC-Irvine), Amorality in the Lawyering Skills Classroom, 73 J. Legal Educ. __ (2024):

What we don’t teach can have as much impact as what we do. This Article explores one facet of the “hidden curriculum” in 1L Lawyering Skills courses.

Commentators have long criticized the law school classroom as cultivating an attitude of detached paternalism toward clients and their problems. The Lawyering Skills course, according to some critics, contributes to that unwelcome mindset through its heavy use of canned, “decontextualized” writing assignments.

Partially in response to these concerns, many Lawyering Skills instructors have turned to teaching students an approach known as client-centered lawyering. According to the client-centered viewpoint, “whatever the client wants is the overall or ultimate goal.” By privileging the interests and concerns of the client, client-centered lawyering counters the paternalistic perspective that can cast clients as simply items of work to be completed.

However, as this Article explores, imposing a client-centered lens in the 1L classroom can thwart, rather than promote, the goal of student reflectiveness about lawyering approaches. Instead, however well-intentioned and seemingly uncontroversial, adoption of the client-centered frame can unwittingly advance a shriveled view of attorney morality and professional identity. And it can do so largely through what Lawyering Skills teachers don’t say when they talk about client-centeredness.