The Proliferation of Case Method Teaching in American Law Schools: Mr. Langdell's Emblematic “Abomination,” 1890-1915

2006 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce A. Kimball
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Professional Education ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Law School ◽  
Case Method ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
American Higher Education ◽  
American Law ◽  
Law Professors

Case method teaching was first introduced into American higher education in 1870 by Christopher C. Langdell (1826-1906) of Harvard Law School (HLS), where it became closely associated with—and emblematic of—a set of academic meritocratic reforms. Though regnant today, “the ultimate triumph of [Langdell's] system was not apparent” for many years. The vast majority of students, alumni, and law professors initially derided it as an “abomination,” and for two decades case method and the associated reforms were largely confined to Harvard. During the subsequent twenty-five years between 1890 and 1915, a national controversy ensued as to whether case method teaching—and the concomitant meritocratic reforms—would predominate in legal education and, ultimately, professional education in the United States.

scholarly journals WIĘCEJ TEORII I WIĘCEJ PRAKTYKI? KSZTAŁCENIE INTERDYSCYPLINARNE I NIEDOGMATYCZNE W PROGRAMACH STUDIÓW PRAWNICZYCH AMERYKAŃSKICH UCZELNI

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 53
Author(s):  
Tymoteusz Zych
Keyword(s):  
Legal Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
American Law ◽  
Bar Association ◽  
Polish Law ◽  
Interdisciplinary Courses ◽  
School Curricula

More Theory, more Practice? Interdisciplinary and NonDogmatic Education in American Law School CurriculaSummaryWhile American legal education is very often invoked as a modelfor Polish law faculties, the actual role of interdisciplinary and non--dogmatic courses in the curricula of American law schools has not beencoherently analysed yet. The American example shows that the conceptof legal education has a significant impact on the development of thelegal system. Interdisciplinary courses have been present in the curricula of university law schools since the beginning of American history.Currently the American Bar Association requires law schools to includenon-dogmatic contents in their curricula to obtain accreditation. Thewidest range of non-dogmatic courses is offered by the most prestigiouslaw schools. Leading American legal thinkers of all currents emphasisethe importance of interdisciplinary and non-dogmatic subjects in theeducational process. The paper concludes with a comparative analysisof the role of interdisciplinary subjects in law school curricula in Polandand in the United States.

AALS Panel – Global Legal Education – Can American Law Schools Respond to the Opportunities?

2004 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry Bakken
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Foreign Law ◽  
American Law ◽  
Foreign Governments ◽  
Simultaneous Movement

During the past decade many American law schools have identified and responded to the opportunity and necessity of training law students and lawyers for the challenges created by globalization. Opportunities are certainly available to schools with strong business, international trade and human rights programs. Opportunities are, however, also available to schools with interests and strengths in the newer disciplines such as conflict resolution, intellectual property and environment protection. Law schools which have ventured into global oriented training have recognized that the market is not simply a one-way-street for domestic students but also includes training of foreign law students and lawyers. Private foundations in the United States and abroad, foreign governments and our national government have helped finance foreign lawyer visits and training events throughout America. When international lawyers visit the United States, domestic law schools are involved as hosts, training sites, and sources of professional expertise. There has also been a simultaneous movement of domestic lawyers and law students through foreign law school programs and other study abroad opportunities. When all these international experiences are taken together one realizes the need for law schools to become more involved in the development and implementation of training and development of globally oriented legal education.

“Warn Students That I Entertain Heretical Opinions, Which They Are Not to Take as Law”: The Inception of Case Method Teaching in the Classrooms of the Early C. C. Langdell, 1870–1883

1999 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce A. Kimball
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Professional Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Law School ◽  
Faculty Members ◽  
Academic Standards ◽  
Case Method ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Christopher Columbus ◽  
History Of

Christopher Columbus Langdell (1826–1906) was perhaps the most influential figure in the history of legal education in the United States. He shaped the modern law school by introducing a number of significant reforms during his tenure as dean of Harvard Law School (HLS) from 1870 to 1895. Indeed, Langdell may well be the most influential figure in the history of American professional education because he established at HLS, with the help of President Charles W. Eliot, the model for twentieth-century professional schools. His innovations—such as minimum academic standards for admission to degree candidacy, a graded and sequential curriculum, minimum academic standards for continuation in a degree program, a professorial career track for faculty members, and the transformation of the library from a textbook repository into a scholarly resource—became the norm to which leading law schools, medical schools, and, finally, schools of other professions in the twentieth century aspired. Among these changes, none is more closely associated with Langdell than the introduction of case method teaching.

scholarly journals Affirmative Inaction: A Quantitative Analysis of Progress Toward “Critical Mass” in U.S. Legal Education

2021 ◽  
pp. 987
Author(s):  
Loren Lee
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
United States ◽  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Affirmative Action ◽  
Critical Mass ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
The Supreme Court

Since 1978, the Supreme Court has recognized diversity as a compelling government interest to uphold the use of affirmative action in higher education. Yet the constitutionality of the practice has been challenged many times. In Grutter v. Bollinger, for example, the Court denied its use in perpetuity and suggested a twenty-five-year time limit for its application in law school admissions. Almost two decades have passed, so where do we stand? This Note’s quantitative analysis of the matriculation of and degrees awarded to Black and Latinx students at twenty-nine accredited law schools across the United States illuminates a stark lack of progress toward critical mass since Grutter and reveals the continued need for affirmative action in law school admissions.

Langdell on Contracts and Legal Reasoning: Correcting the Holmesian Caricature

2007 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 345-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce A. Kimball
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Legal Reasoning ◽  
Great Influence ◽  
The United States ◽  
Law School ◽  
Case Method ◽  
American Law ◽  
Anglo American

During the first decade of his tenure as dean of Harvard Law School (HLS) from 1870 to 1895, Christopher C. Langdell (1826–1906) produced closely related works on contracts and sales that exercised great influence pedagogically and jurisprudentially. Pedagogically, the casebooks on contracts and sales introduced case method teaching into American legal education. In jurisprudential terms, these works placed Langdell with Frederick Pollock and William R. Anson in England and Oliver W. Holmes, Jr., in the United States, as the leading theorists of contract during its “golden age” of “overwhelming predominance” in Anglo-American law.

scholarly journals How Should We Assess Interviewing and Counseling Skills?

2014 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence Grosberg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Law School ◽  
First Century ◽  
Counseling Skills ◽  
Gold Standard Method ◽  
American Law ◽  
Student’S Performance ◽  
Method Of Assessment ◽  
Law Professors

<p>The need to teach interviewing and counseling skills has long been established among clinical legal educators. Even among our non-clinical colleagues, these skills are recognized as integral to competent lawyering. While there remains considerable difference of opinion within the United States as to whether teaching such skills should be in a required course or simply be available as an elective, there is no doubt that a twenty-first century American law school must include the teaching of these skills in its curricular array.</p><p>This paper first briefly describes the structure of legal education in the United States (insofar as clinical and skills teaching is concerned) and the almost total absence of any bar admission training or apprenticeship requirements. If the law schools are not required to fully train all future lawyers and the bar admission authorities likewise disavow responsibility for doing so, should clinical law professors assume the burden? I then go on to discuss the primary clinical evaluation technique of directly observing the student's performance, sometimes referred to as the gold standard method of assessment. Against the backdrop of the assertion that it is beneficial to use multiple methods of assessment, I then describe the several methods I have used to address the question of how best to assess interviewing and counseling skills. As an aside, it becomes clear that much more empirical analysis is in order.</p>

scholarly journals Law School Learning Outcomes: Legal English Course Contribution

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-146
Author(s):  
Elena Vyushkina
Keyword(s):  
Learning Outcomes ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Oral Communication ◽  
Professional Associations ◽  
Field Studies ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Legal Writing ◽  
American Law ◽  
Russian Law

Abstract Standards of professional legal education are developed by different organizations: in some countries these are governmental bodies, in others these are professional associations. Apart from a country these standards include Learning Outcomes which shape law schools’ curricula. Both American and European standards mention, to different extent, written and oral communication in the legal context, but a number and contents of subjects directed at developing and mastering professional communicative competency differ a lot. There are disciplines totally devoted to the competency named (e.g. legal writing) as well as courses in which communicative skills are an integral constituent for their successful completion (e.g. basis of negotiations/mediation/client consultation). The article goal is to find a place and role of a Legal English (LE) course in achieving learning outcomes connected with professional communicative competence. The methodology incorporated desk and field studies. The literature review is aimed at identifying current state of affairs in American law schools, as they provide first-class legal education recognized all over the world, and in Russian law schools, as the author works in this system and is interested in its development. A questionnaire was designed to explore Russian law school graduates’ assessment of practicality of subjects they had studied for their professional activities. The analysis of literature and Internet sources allowed to specify the ways of teaching written and oral communication in American law schools and to highlight the situation in Russian legal education. It shows that the Russian system is characterized by predominance of teaching theory of substantive and procedural rules of law and lack of curriculum disciplines aimed at cultivating skills and competencies. A survey of Russian law schools’ recent graduates indicates that most of communicative, in a broad sense, skills, which they use in their everyday work, were obtained within their LE classes. So, complementing a LE course with modules devoted to different aspects of legal writing and specific patterns of lawyer-client, lawyer-lawyer, lawyer-judge communication will definitely contribute to achieving learning outcomes which are put forward by legal education standards.

The Disastrous First Fund-Raising Campaign in Legal Education: The Harvard Law School Centennial, 1914–1920

2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 535-578
Author(s):  
Bruce A. Kimball
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fund Raising ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Students ◽  
New Venture ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
The Law ◽  
The University

Between 1915 and 1925, Harvard University conducted the first national public fund-raising campaign in higher education in the United States. At the same time, Harvard Law School attempted the first such effort in legal education. The law school organized its effort independently, in conjunction with its centennial in 1917. The university campaign succeeded magnificently by all accounts; the law school failed miserably. Though perfectly positioned for this new venture, Harvard Law School raised scarcely a quarter of its goal from merely 2 percent of its alumni. This essay presents the first account of this campaign and argues that its failure was rooted in longstanding cultural and professional objections that many of the school's alumni shared: law students and law schools neither need nor deserve benefactions, and such gifts worsen the overcrowding of the bar. Due to these objections, lethargy, apathy, and pessimism suffused the campaign. These factors weakened the leadership of the alumni association, the dean, and the president, leading to inept management, wasted time, and an unlikely strategy that was pursued ineffectively. All this doomed the campaign, particularly given the tragic interruptions of the dean's suicide and World War I, along with competition from the well-run campaigns for the University and for disaster relief due to the war.

Law Professors: A Profile of the Teaching Branch of the Legal Profession

1980 ◽  
Vol 5 (03) ◽  
pp. 501-554 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donna Fossum
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Small Group ◽  
Legal Profession ◽  
The United States ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Law School ◽  
Overwhelming Majority ◽  
Academic Careers ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Law Professors

In the United States, law schools provide the principal route of entry into the legal profession. Indeed, education in a law school is the only experience that virtually all members of the modern legal profession have in common. The gatekeeping function of law schools places the nation's law teachers in a most influential position. Although law professors play a vital role in selecting and molding the members of the profession, little research has been done on them. This article presents the results of the American Bar Foundation's first major study of law teachers. The author finds them to be a most highly credentialed group of lawyers, the overwhelming majority of whom are graduates of a small group of elite law schools. She also finds that possession of a degree from one of these schools appears to be not only highly determinative of who become law teachers but also of the nature of teachers' academic careers.

scholarly journals Bringing Purposefulness to the American Law School’s Support of Professional Identity Formation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis D. Bilionis
Keyword(s):  
Professional Identity ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Educational Process ◽  
Law School ◽  
Professional Identity Formation ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
American Law ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Staff Experiences

Ten years after the publication of Educating Lawyers, a growing number of American law schools are taking initiative to better support their students in the formation of professional identity. There is widespread recognition that success in these efforts requires an element of “purposefulness” on the part of law faculty and staff. Experiences, environments, and pedagogies that actually work for professional identity formation must be crafted and promoted with intentionality. Bringing the requisite purposefulness to the effort, however, will take a mindset about the education of a lawyer that will be new to many in legal education. This article explores that mindset and the habits of the mind that will best serve law schools as they move forward in this area. Schools need not abandon prevailing approaches to the cognitive and skills dimensions of a law student’s education that Educating Lawyers called the first and second apprenticeships, respectively. But when it comes to the third apprenticeship of professional identity and sense of purpose, a reorientation in thinking about law students, their law school, and the educational process is necessary. That change in the way of thinking can be invigorating and empowering, revealing opportunities with time, talent, space, and experiences that have been underexplored by American legal education.

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