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The Recurrent Current Crisis in Legal Education
- Author(s):
- Justin Simard
- Date:
- 2020
- Group(s):
- MSU Law Faculty Repository
- Item Type:
- Article
- Permanent URL:
- https://doi.org/10.17613/9k1y-dz65
- Abstract:
- Karl Llewellyn, the famous legal realist, commercial legal scholar, and chief drafter of the Uniform Commercial Code, published The Current Crisis in Legal Education seventy-three years ago.1 In that article he argued that the casebook method's dominance of the law school curriculum hindered legal education.2 Llewellyn acknowledged the method's benefits but noted that excessive devotion to its approach prevented law students from developing the full set of skills they needed in practice. 3 Teaching centered on appellate cases, he argued, encouraged students to focus too heavily on developing subject-matter expertise at the expense of understanding how cases found their way into appellate courts in the first place.4 Appellate cases, focused as they are on a judge's reasoning, hid much of the work of the lawyer as advocate and counselor that took place behind the scenes.5 The casebook method therefore hindered attempts to "focus attention on the techniques of solution, rather than on the answers," and to teach students the skills of "legal crafts which have to be studied both in theory and in practice in order to develop an adequate craftsman." 6
- Metadata:
- xml
- Published as:
- Journal article
- Status:
- Published
- Last Updated:
- 9 months ago
- License:
- Attribution
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