In recent years many member schools have experimented with including in their third year programs “capstone courses” - courses that typically are (1) focused on a specific segment of legal practice, such as environmental law, civil litigation, or securities transactions, (2) assume as prerequisites that students have already taken one or more courses in that segment; (3) often include practitioner or clinical teaching instructors along with doctrinal instructors; and (4) endeavor to present students a more complex, and often more experiential, educational experience than ordinary “advanced” classes do. In this program, we will hear reports from several laws school as to their experiments, with an eye to finding out what works pedagogically, what schools have to do organizationally to make the programs work, how students have responded, how far such programs can change the culture of “the third year” - and what problems persist.
Session Materials