by Scott Fruehwald
Law schools have never systematically taught critical thinking. I do not mean that law schools do not help develop critical thinking. However, this is not done on a systematic basis. There is no method or approach for teaching critical thinking in law schools.
For example, taking a class in negotiation will help students develop critical thinking, but not systematically. This is like learning grammar just by speaking a language. While this gets the student some of the way, to be systematically trained in a language, a student must explicitly study grammar. Similarly, the Socratic method does help develop some critical thinking processes, but it mainly teaches students how to extract and understand doctrine.
I have just completed a book that shows law professors how to understand and teach critical thinking: How to Teach Lawyers, Judges, and Law Students Critical Thinking: Millions Saw the Apple Fall, but Newton asked Why.
Critical thinking is “[t]he intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.” (here) “It is . . . automatically questioning if the information presented is factual, reliable, evidence‑based, and unbiased.” (here) Critical thinking is a set of processes, including metacognition, conceptualizing, synthesizing (constructing), asking questions, organizing, developing and evaluating alternatives, considering unintended results, planning, self-monitoring, reflection, spotting assumptions, evaluating inferences, exercising epistemic vigilance, supporting arguments with evidence, evaluation, skepticism, and self-direction.
Here are several things that critical thinking can do:
1. Critical thinking helps overcome superficial thinking. It helps you see when you are relying on unsupported assumptions or opinions.
2. Critical thinking helps overcome thinking based solely on intuition.
3. Critical thinking produces rigorous and disciplined thinking.
4. Critical thinking helps individuals create questions.
5. Critical thinking helps individuals know when they need more information.
6. Critical thinking helps avoid unintended consequences.
7. Critical thinking supports problem-solving. It helps make sure you don’t skip a step in the problem-solving process.
8. Critical thinking helps overcome biased thinking.
9. Critical thinking helps avoid mistakes by providing a method to evaluate (double-check) one’s work.
10. Critical thinking helps an individual critique the work of others.
11. Critical thinking promotes deep thinking.
12. Critical thinking helps an individual see all sides of an argument.
13. Critical thinking helps individuals solve difficult problems.
14. Critical thinking helps individuals support their arguments.
15. Critical thinking helps individuals recognize how a problem is framed and overcome the framing effect.
16. Critical thinking helps thinkers recognize when selfish motives lie behind an argument. It helps thinkers recognize manipulation.
17. Critical thinking teaches students how to construct the law.
My book introduces critical thinking, shows how to teach it to lawyers, judges, and law students, and demonstrates how to use critical thinking to improve the Socratic method. It also shows law professors how to improve their teaching through critical thinking. Finally, it includes chapters on teaching legal writing and judges. Since critical thinking development requires practice, it includes many examples and exercises.
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Best Practices for Legal Education 
I look forward to seeing this book. Given the trends in practice, teaching higher-order skills has become even more important. Critical thinking is one. Systematic decision-making is another. This is taught is many well-designed negotiation classes, but negotiation is a course and skill that is not offered enough in most law schools.
(please see my article on Negotiation as a Foundational
Skill: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3091415)
Schools increasingly obsess over how much of AI and coding should be taught. But most schools barely (if at all) teach their students how to intelligently understand statistical information, despite the fact that this is knowledge vital to many areas of legal practice, as well as in public policy evaluation.
Law schools do lots of things well, but we can do better by rethinking what knowledge and skills our students will need in the future.
I received Mr. Fruhwald’s book yesterday. I read the chapter on understanding critical thinking today, and it is an eye opener. He is right. Law schools do not teach critical thinking, at least not critical thinking as it is defined by critical thinking experts. Teaching critical thinking in law schools would significantly improve our law students.
Great post! Teaching critical thinking to law students would definetely be a good idea, but I think that it is a skill that people from all professions and from all walks of life should learn. Not a lot of people have this capacity to think critically. We are all born with the capacity to think, but not everyone is capable of critical thinking. Moreover, we have a tendency to operate within our own echo chamber, where the only information that goes through our brain is information that validates our prior knowledge, vindicates our prior decision, sustains our existing beliefs. We should get into the habit from time to time of walking down the road less traveled, the one taken by critical thinkers. I wrote a blog article on this subject – https://authorjoannereed.net/what-is-critical-thinking/. Feel free to check it out!