Best Practices for Legal Education

Having taken part in two recent symposia on learning outcomes (PLOs) in legal education, I was encouraged to see the number of law schools that are taking advantage of the recognized pedagogical benefits of adopting and assessing learning outcomes. As most law professors now know, ABA Standards require the adoption of learning outcomes. These standards also mandate programmatic assessment of whether students are attaining these outcomes. ABA Standard 302 dictates certain PLOs that all schools must adopt (e.g., knowledge of substantive and procedural law, legal analysis, research, and writing skills.) However, I saw evidence at each symposium that schools are going beyond the mandatory PLOs and are shaping their learning outcomes for knowledge, skills, and values beyond the minimum. That phenomenon suggest schools recognize the pedagogical value of outcome-based education and are seeking to provide more than the minimum.

The first symposium was entitled “The Next Steps of a Professional Formation Social Movement,” at St. Thomas School of Law on February 16-18–https://www.stthomas.edu/law/events/ symposium-21717.html.  One of the primary themes of the conference was that between thirty and forty law schools had adopted learning outcome that incorporated professional formation, consistent with the third apprenticeship advocated by the Carnegie Institute’s Educating Lawyers. Because ABA Standard 302 does not require such learning outcomes, the efforts of a growing number of schools to include them show a recognition of the significance of Carnegie’s emphasis on the need to do a better job of helping law student to develop a professional identity as they learn doctrine and lawyering skills. The conference explored professional formation learning outcomes in medical and military education and suggested potential points of comparison to law teaching, the conference further reported new data suggesting that the growing professional formation movement is consistent with the goals of law students. Finally, participants formed working groups to continue with the work necessary to keep the momentum going for the role of professional identity formation in legal education. In short, the symposium demonstrated the steady increase of faculty and schools advocating for integration of professional identity formation into the legal curriculum. See http://beyondtherule.blogspot.com/2017/ 02/cefler-cosponsors-symposium-on.html. The results of the symposium will appear in St. Thomas Law Journal’s upcoming symposium issue.

The University of Detroit-Mercy Law Review also hosted a symposium, on March 2, 2017, which reviewed the impact of learning outcomes and assessment—both institutional assessment of the degree to which students attain the outcomes law schools state as objectives, and more creative assessment in law school classes in the form of both formative and multiple summative assessments — http://www.udetmercylrev.com/symposium/outcome-measure-legal-education-symposium. The symposium highlighted again PLOs being adopted by a wide range of schools that exceed the minimum of ABA Standard 302.   The message of such a response to the advent of learning outcomes in legal education seems to be clear: law schools are willing to use this proven method of ensuring educational quality to improve their programs, not just in the least possible way but in a manner that will help law students achieve the most from their time in school.

These are but some examples of a broader movement in legal education improve pedagogy not only in the classroom (e.g., more formative assessments) but throughout the program (institutional reforms). Despite fears of widespread recalcitrance, a substantial number of law schools appear to be making a genuine effort to improve their programs.

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Teaching Methodology, Uncategorized |