Legal educators debate among themselves their objectives regarding students, including training future lawyers, training students to analyze and develop the law, and training students to think. This Program invites lawyers and judges to the table with legal educators to speak about what it means to provide a legal education in today’s world. The panelists will discuss what they perceive to be the strengths of the newly-minted lawyers they encounter and the weaknesses, what they value in new lawyers, and how law schools might adapt curricula and teaching methods so that they best serve all interested parties.
As law schools focus more on outcomes assessment and skills training, some professors have engaged in this type of discussion with judges and lawyers in one-on-one conversations. This program will put the idea of uniting the bench and the bar with the academy at the forefront, perhaps even encouraging more law professors to engage in similar conversations after the AALS meeting. This program’s topic builds on work presented in the MacCrate Report, the Carnegie Foundation Report, Best Practices for Legal Education, and the ongoing ABA Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar’s work on ABA accreditation standards.