Preparing Law Students For Real-World Practice

John Lande (Missouri-Columbia; Google Scholar), Preparing Law Students for Real-World Practice:

This article summarizes a program entitled Pracademically Speaking: Incorporating Real-World Legal Practice Into the Curriculum at the annual conference of the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution. It describes problems with legal curricula, pressures to improve because of the NextGen bar exam and some states’ plans to use alternative mechanisms for licensing, and successful techniques for improving the realism in law school courses. It includes links to numerous resources to help faculty make their instruction more realistic.

There are many constraints inhibiting curricular reform. But law schools can develop theories of change to overcome those constraints to improve their instruction. Doing so would benefit their students, their students’ future clients, the legal profession, and society generally.