Comment on Moliterno, Legal Education, Experiential Education, and Professional Responsibility
Comment on Moliterno, Legal Education, Experiential Education, and Professional Responsibility
Lance Liebman 0
0 Lance Liebman, Comment on Moliterno, Legal Education, Experiential Education, and Professional Responsibility, 38 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 137 (1996), https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmlr/vol38/ iss1/8
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Article 8
In attempting to predict and prescribe the future, my vision of
the recent history of legal education differs from Professor
Moliterno's in certain relevant ways.
I graduated from Law School in 1967. I learned largely
through doctrinal courses that delivered steady training in
thinking like a lawyer and information about areas of law. These
courses exposed me and my classmates to legal lingo and to the
standard types of legal arguments. We learned, largely by
hearing the teacher and our fellow students, to make verbal moves
and to see the strengths and limitations of others' argumentation
skills and techniques. We also learned a great deal about how to
argue by dissecting the opinions of appellate judges.
In the three decades since I graduated, legal education has
changed-improved, in my opinion-in two different ways. First,
law professors have broadened and deepened the theoretical
stances from which legal dialogue and legal writing are
evaluated and criticized.' Many of us do not see an independent science
of law.2 We instead consider legal questions as economists,
philosophers, theologians, political activists, sociologists, and
political scientists.3 Such professorial viewpoints expose students to
* Professor of Law, Columbia Law School.
1. For a discussion of the importance and influence of an interdisciplinary
approach to understanding and teaching the law, see Randy F. Kandel, Whither the
Legal Whale: Interdisciplinarityand the Socialization of ProfessionalIdentity, 27 LOY.
L-A. L. REV. 9 (1993); George L. Priest, The Growth of InterdisciplinaryResearch
and the Industrial Structure-Of the Production of Legal Ideas: A Reply to Judge
Edwards, 91 MIcH. L. REv. 1929 (1993).
2. See, e.g., George L. Priest, Social Science Theory and Legal Education: The
Law School As University, 33 J. LEG. EDUC. 437, 437 (1983) ("[Olne must reject the
notion that the legal system is somehow self-contained or self-sufficient . . ").
3. See, e.g., Kandel, supra note 1, at 10 (listing various professors' symposium
many ways of thinking about questions that arise in class.
Although their training is often superficial, they do see, and some
even become proficient in, various ways to think and argue
about legal questions.
Second, curricula have incorporated practice opportunities for
students. Columbia Law School employs ten percent of its
faculty as clinical professors whose full-time job is to supervise eight
students each per semester.4 Various clinical courses guide the
students into the profession by taking steps that resemble
medical students' first practice experiences. Also at Columbia, recent
years have seen a substantial increase in simulation-based
instruction. Columbia's curriculum has expanded to include such
things as: the week-long intensive ethics experience for
thirdyear students;5 many trial practice sections;6 and four sections
of a simulation-based course in negotiation.7 Additional efforts
are currently on the drawing board.
Perhaps because I am twelve years older than Jim Moliterno,
I see more change and more improvement in legal education
than Jim observes. Tension exists precisely because law schools
now better serve as centers for the academic study of law and
are better at professional training. Of course, funding problems
may constrain the growth of clinical teaching or even lead to its
retrenchment at some schools. What is important, however, is
that law schools will continue to look for teachers who do
highquality economic, political, philosophical, and feminist analysis
of law; law schools will also feel obligated to give students their
first professional experience in a context that permits reflection
and supervision.
I see three directions in which reform of legal education
should, and can, progress.
essays addressing such topics as: law and bioethics, law and anthropology, law and
philosophy, law and sociology, law and economics, law and religion, law and history,
law and feminism, law and language, and law and literature).
4. See COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW BULLETIN
1996-97 at 3-4 (indicating that there were seven clinical professors out of 64
fulltime, non-emeritus professors).
5. Id. at 24.
6. See id. at 27.
7. See id.
First, new technology has tremendous potential to improve
and streamline the process of teaching lawyering' The goal is
to provide the greatest practical amount of experience for a
student by requiring the student to take action and make
decisions in a context that explores options and criticizes and weighs
choices. The computer effectively and efficiently presents
situations and supplies individualized (...truncated)