Comment on Moliterno, Legal Education, Experiential Education, and Professional Responsibility

William & Mary Law Review, Sep 2017

By Lance Liebman, Published on 10/01/96

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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 Repository Citation - 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)


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Lance Liebman. Comment on Moliterno, Legal Education, Experiential Education, and Professional Responsibility, William & Mary Law Review, 2018, pp. 137, Volume 38, Issue 1,