Track 2: Erasing Boundaries Across the Curriculum

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Session Type: AALS Programs

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With an increased push to create “practice-ready”
lawyers, the “new normal” in law schools has encouraged law professors to focus
on ways to better integrate practice, law and theory.  In this workshop, we plan to offer several
examples that blur the lines between practice, doctrine, and theory with the
aim of improving student learning from the first to last year of law
school.  We will present three different
approaches across the curriculum: a first-year clinic-pro bono collaboration,
an upper level doctrinal hybrid, and a direct representation clinic altering
focus to address systemic change.  Each
approach falls on an experiential learning continuum that deepens students’
lawyering competencies.  In addition to
presenting our examples, we will invite the audience to participate in a
conversation about this continuum and how to blur the traditional divide of
doctrine, theory and practice in an intentional way throughout the three years
of law school.  Small groups will explore
the pedagogical and symbolic benefits of these kinds of changes, but also will
wrestle with the challenges and dangers that come with a change of norms. Our
hope will be to encourage participants to freshly examine the assumptions we
make about what we should be teaching or what is typical or “normal,” more
thoroughly integrate practice, law, and theory across the law school
curriculum, while tackling some of the challenges of this new approach as well.