Comments on: National Law Journal Covers Student Learning Outcomes Discussion

By: albuquerque law firm

albuquerque law firm — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 06:41:37 +0000

Inspiring post! Really i love the statement by New York Law School Dean Richard Matasar, that “A large group of deans will take the position that adopting their own learning outcomes is less offensive than having those outcomes determined by an outside source,”I think they should create meaningful educational changes which is really essential.” I got an excellent opportunity to learn something,thanks a lot for sharing.

By: Roy Stuckey

Roy Stuckey — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 18:19:04 +0000

The ABA’s student learning outcomes profject has two related, but separate, goals. Both are very important.

One goal is to define in some meaningful way what “legal education” means. That is, the ABA is trying to describe the core edcuational objectives that every law school should achieve for every student. This is not an easy task, and there is room for legitimate disagreement about how to do this.

The second goal is to require each law school to articulate the educational objectives of its curriculum and each course in it. The fact that very few law schools can do that today would come as a shock to most members of the public.

I hope the ABA is able to achieve both goals. I cannot think of any harm that might come from forcing law teachers to think carefully about their collective and personal roles in preparing students for the legal profession. It is long overdue.

By: glesnerb

glesnerb — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 04:22:06 +0000

The article quotes AALS President Hansen’s comment that “It’s a common concern that the standards revisions may push the curriculum toward practical skills training at the expense of the analytical training that law schools also provide.” The tradeoff, however, is not between practical skills training and analytical training. Anyone who has worked with students to prepare for a trial or appeal, to interview a client, or to prepare a deal for that client, knows that the these skills settings demand a high degree of analytical skill integrated tightly with the communciations and human perception skills required in these settings. The trade off rather is in breadth of doctrinal coverage. We can continue to teach the majority of our subjects with a drive to cover the ever-growing, ever-changing field of doctrine. Or we can recognize that three years after our students leave the classroom, they no longer remember the additional chapter we rushed to cover and, even if they did, it no longer represents the law. Yes, there are core understandings and themes that students need to comprehend. However, if the drive to learning outcomes requires us to carefully sharpen our focus on those enduring understandings and give us some “coverage” in order to make room for integrating skills of self-teaching, analysis, communication and connection with people, that is not a bad tradeoff. It may well result in our having successfully moved beyond the current educational method which, for most students, continues to repeat first year methods with additional doctrine without any greater analytical sophistication or practical context.