The mandate for more experiential education raises a fundamental question for law teachers: how do we design and provide these learning opportunities for our students? This book offers answers to that question. Organized into four sections, it discusses specific techniques for incorporating various forms of experiential education into the law school curriculum, ranging from discrete modules of experiential instruction to complete curriculum reform. Section I provides the foundation for making curricular changes, with chapters providing guidance on building both institutional and student support for experiential education. Section II explores the spectrum of experiential education, starting with chapters that explain experiential modules and classroom exercises that can be included in first-year and upper-level courses before moving to chapters that describe and explain immersive learning experiences such as course-long simulations and semester-in-practice programs, culminating in chapters focusing on complete curriculum reform. Section III describes programs that offer experiential learning opportunities outside of the regular curriculum. Section IV concludes the book, offering online resources for experiential education and guidance on how to provide experiential education in an online format.

Christopher C. Langdell (1826-1906) is one of the most influential figures in the history of American professional education. As dean of Harvard Law School from 1870 to 1895, he conceived, designed, and built the educational model that leading professional schools in virtually all fields subsequently emulated. In this first full-length biography of the educator and jurist, Bruce Kimball explores Langdell's controversial role in modern professional education and in jurisprudence. Langdell founded his model on the idea of academic meritocracy. According to this principle, scholastic achievement should determine one's merit in professional life. Despite fierce opposition from students, faculty, alumni, and legal professionals, he designed and instituted a formal system of innovative policies based on meritocracy. This system's components included the admission requirement of a bachelor's degree, the sequenced curriculum and its extension to three years, the hurdle of annual examinations for continuation and graduation, the independent career track for professional faculty, the transformation of the professional library into a scholarly resource, the inductive pedagogy of teaching from cases, the organization of alumni to support the school, and a new, highly successful financial strategy. Langdell's model was subsequently adopted by leading law schools, medical schools, business schools, and the schools of other professions. By the time of his retirement as dean at Harvard, Langdell's reforms had shaped the future model for professional education throughout the United States.

"Legal education has created silos where certain professors teach "skills" courses and others teach "doctrine." This book challenges that division by building on learning theories that establish students cannot truly learn doctrine without explicit instruction in skills. Moreover, it provides suggestions to demonstrate how law professors can seamlessly weave skills-based assessments into a course to spotlight for students what they have learned and for professors what students haven't learned (as required by ABA Standard 314)"--

"This book discusses every aspect of assessment from the broad topics of creating a culture of assessment and the institutional assessment process to the more specific topics of assessing student learning at the course and program levels and assessing teaching effectiveness. The book models assessment at the institutional level, the course level, and throughout the law school (experiential learning programs, legal writing courses, centers and concentrations, extracurricular activities, non-academic offices). In addition to explaining the assessment process generally and in a variety of specific contexts, this book provides example assessment documents and tools that law schools can adapt as necessary. Moreover, the book offers suggestions for law schools on peer, student, and self-assessment of teaching effectiveness, both formative (ongoing teaching development) and summative (personnel decisions). Administrators, new professors, and seasoned professors will find guidance and advice on all aspects of assessing teaching and student learning"--

Offers one hundred rules that every first year law student should live by “Dear Law Student: Here’s the truth. You belong here.” Law professor Andrew Ferguson and former student Jonathan Yusef Newton open with this statement of reassurance in The Law of Law School. As all former law students and current lawyers can attest, law school is disorienting, overwhelming, and difficult. Unlike other educational institutions, law school is not set up simply to teach a subject. Instead, the first year of law school is set up to teach a skill set and way of thinking, which you then apply to do the work of lawyering. What most first-year students don’t realize is that law school has a code, an unwritten rulebook of decisions and traditions that must be understood in order to succeed. The Law of Law School endeavors to distill this common wisdom into one hundred easily digestible rules. From self-care tips such as “Remove the Drama,” to studying tricks like “Prepare for Class like an Appellate Argument,” topics on exams, classroom expectations, outlining, case briefing, professors, and mental health are all broken down into the rules that form the hidden law of law school. If you don’t have a network of lawyers in your family and are unsure of what to expect, Ferguson and Newton offer a forthright guide to navigating the expectations, challenges, and secrets to first-year success. Jonathan Newton was himself such a non-traditional student and now shares his story as a pathway to a meaningful and positive law school experience. This book is perfect for the soon-to-be law school student or the current 1L and speaks to the growing number of first-generation law students in America.

Originally published: New York: Columbia University Press,1966.