Balance in Legal Education

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AALS Section Events

8:30 — 10:15 am

Section on Balance in Legal Education
Marina Salon G, South Tower/Level 3, San Diego Marriott Hotel & Marina

Educating Lawyers and Best Practices for Legal Education: A Mandate to Humanize the Law School Experience.

During the past twenty-five years, lawyers and educators have increasingly questioned the value and effectiveness of legal education. Educating Lawyers and Best Practices for Legal Education, the latest works in this field, encourage more and more effective integration of lawyering skills, knowledge and professionalism and better assessment and evaluation of students. At the same time, empirical studies demonstrate that legal education has a negative effect on student well-being and values -- an effect that seems to continue into practice given lawyers' high rates of unhappiness, psychopathology, and poor physical health. The movement to humanize legal education has responded to these studies by advocating for more attention to the ways in which we conduct legal education and the impact those choices have on law students' overall health, well-being, and, ultimately, career satisfaction. In this program, speakers will discuss Educating Lawyers and Best Practices and explore whether those texts reinforce or conflict with the goals of the humanizing movement. Subtopics will include law school grading systems and their effects on law students, helping students to take ownership of their education through course and program selection, and research about law students' levels of hope and optimism.

Business Meeting at Program Conclusion.