Blending Doctrine, Practice, and Purpose in Legal Education: The Case for an Integrated Pedagogy

Traditional legal education is sorely imbalanced. A law student receives rigorous training in legal doctrine and analytical skills—he learns to "think like a lawyer"—but is left with little training in practical skills or his ethical role in society. Moreover, law schools rely almost exclusively on the ineffectual pedagogy of the case-dialogue, or "Socratic," method. Several factors explain this entrenched imbalance, most notably the academy's top-down power structure and its budget constraints. Increasingly, however, the marketplace is demanding practice-ready lawyers who have strong training not only in doctrine but in practical skills and ethics. Law schools, responding to this market pressure, are beginning to implement pedagogies that foster this balanced legal training. Toward this end, I advocate implementing into law school curricula three specific, workable pedagogies: using group learning models, using writing as a learning tool, and using assessment as a formative and ongoing component of the learning process.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Year dc:date.available

2008

Author dc:creator

• Schneider, Debra M

Contributors dc:contributor

• Dr. David Coogan

• legal education
• legal pedagogy
• legal writing
• rhetoric
• Arts and Humanities
• English Language and Literature

Statement dc:rights

• © The Author

Identifier

https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/1106

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarscompass.vcu.edu:etd-2105