I have been following this stream, also, as well as the discussion in Cleveland, and before. Roy’s point about curriculum is essential. I would add, however, that status has a natural impact on the impact that we can have on curriculum. If those of us law teachers who, using experiential methods whose validity has been attested to by the scientific community, focus on our students future role and skills as lawyers, their professionalism, and the critical force that they, as lawyers, can exert in our communities and society, don’t have relatively equal status, it seems to me unlikely that we will be able to exert significant impact on curriculum.

I would like to offer another thought to the discussion. At page 94 of the Carnegie Report, the point is made that clinical education has not articulated an adequate “pedagogogical theory of legal practice.” While I am not convinced that I fully understand, or to the extent that I understand, agree with that indictment, I do think that we should build our demand for equality on a base of a definition or theory of legal education. If, under an acceptable theory of legal education what we do is as important as what teachers of theory and doctrine do, then our expectation of equal role and equal treatment – in curricular influence and in security – should follow. As a start, Carnegie, and pretty much every US law school of which I am aware, claims that they – using the Landell/Socaratic model – teach their students to “think like lawyers.”
All of us who have actually invested a significant amount of our lives being lawyers for real, human clients,, and reflecting upon what that means and requires, know that the thinking of lawyers is far more complex than what passes for teaching students to think like lawyers in the modern version of the Langdell/Socratic model. For one thing, good lawyers can and do consider their client’s context, as well as the emotional forces, including deeply held values, at work within themselves, their clients, their adversaries, the tribunals before whom they plead their clients’ matters (Yes, you, too, Justice Scalia!), and the practical skills that are necessary to make theory approach reality.

Chapters 1 & 2 of Best Practices for Legal Education contain a thorough discussion of the need to articulate goals (How would we expect one of our students to plan a case or help a client without clarifying and articulating goals and priorities?), and what they should encompass. Yet, I think that we need something on the order of a short statement, not more than a couple of sentences that captures our meaning, and that we can share with, perhaps, the ABA, the AALS, etc.

Here is a note that I scribbled down at the lunch table in Cleveland during the discussion (edited with some thoughts from my dear colleague Lou Rulli, though I take full responisbility). If anyone thinks that my suggestion that we develop a short “theory of the case” or “theme” is worth pursuing, perhaps it can help to advance the ball. If not, not.

“Legal education is the preparation of our students to become, to the best of their ability, critical thinking, ethical, professionally skilled, and socially and emotionally aware lawyers for their clients, who understand their role, and obligation to serve, are capable of understanding their clients and the context from which they and their legal problems emerge, and who contribute positively as members of their communities, and of the legal profession.”

-Alan
[posted with consent of author]