ANALYSIS: These Seven Schools Are Rethinking How Law Is Taught

The rise of artificial intelligence and the rollout of the NextGen bar exam have made practical skill development critical for law students in today’s legal atmosphere. And law schools are recognizing the need to revamp and restructure their pedagogy to ensure that their graduates are equipped to enter the legal profession.

Bloomberg Law’s second annual Law School Innovation Program sought to identify and acknowledge innovative schools that are prioritizing the practical skill development of their students. This year, we’re highlighting the top-scoring programs and honorable mentions in four categories: changing pedagogy, beyond the law, immersive experience, and career pathing.

The programs featured in the changing pedagogy category are distinctively required by their respective law schools, and veer from traditional legal education by cultivating and prioritizing the development of skills through unique instruction methods.

Case Western University School of Law

Legal Writing, Leadership, Advocacy, and Professionalism (LLEAP)—a program hosted by Case Western University School of Law (CWRU)—takes a holistic and practical approach to legal writing instruction by incorporating traditional class instruction, expert-led experiential components, and professional development opportunities into a mandatory three-semester course.

• LLEAP1: During their first semester of law school, students take LLEAP1, where they learn traditional first-year legal writing concepts (issue spotting, analysis, legal research, and writing) as well as basic contract drafting skills—a unique integration for first-year requirements.
• LLEAP2: In their second semester, students continue to build on the skills acquired in LLEAP1 while also developing their persuasive writing and advocacy skills through brief writing, settlement negotiating, and oral advocacy.
• LLEAP3: The final component of this coursework is taken either semester of the 2L year, and is designed to simulate the experience of a junior attorney in a law firm. Students get to choose the focus (transactional, litigation, or appellate) of their coursework, enabling them to more deeply cultivate skills through practical assignments related to a practice area that interests them.

Law schools “should prepare students for law practice by giving them many opportunities to do what lawyers do,” said Jennifer Cupar, LLEAP program director and professor of lawyering skills. Yet many schools rely on students’ experiences outside of the classroom—like externships or summer positions—to teach more complex lawyering skills, which can result in inconsistent instruction, according to Cupar.

By bringing this skill-focused instruction into the classroom, Case Western’s LLEAP program “addresses these inconsistencies to ensure that all students have the benefit of learning, practicing, and receiving feedback,” Cupar said.

University of Minnesota Law School

The University of Minnesota Law School‘s Law in Practice program combines traditional classroom instruction with simulated, small-group experiences to provide students the opportunity to begin fostering their own, personal lawyering style at the inception of their legal instruction through fundamental skill development.

During the semester, students work through one litigation file that mimics the progression of an actual dispute, and one transactional file that emulates the process of negotiating a transaction from beginning to end.

Students start each week with a “law firm meeting,” where they explore the relevant doctrinal, practical, and professional responsibility considerations for the upcoming simulation with their faculty instructor. Students then break out into “practice groups,” made up of eight students and led by a local practicing attorney, to work through the weekly simulation exercise such as taking or defending a deposition, processing discovery, counseling clients, or negotiating the terms of a transaction.

Unlike many courses, Law in Practice incorporates real attorneys, judges, and even trained clients for students to interact with during the simulations to provide an authentic experience.

Transitioning from the classroom to the courtroom can be a struggle for many students, according to the Director of Law in Practice, Randall Ryder. Practicing law “requires multidimensional skills combined with a thorough understanding of the law,” Ryder said, “and law school specifically has been criticized for not paying enough attention to the development and cultivation of both practical and professional skills for students.”

But Law in Practice addresses this criticism by allowing students to “build their skills in a safe space, under the guidance of thoughtful and supportive instructors,” Ryder said.

University of Oklahoma College of Law

The Digital Initiative at the University of Oklahoma College of Law (OU) is a comprehensive training program that prioritizes digital literacy and technological competence. It does so by familiarizing all students with the skills necessary to effectively use legal technology during law school and beyond.

Experiential in nature, the Digital Initiative gives law students hands-on experience with software and digital tools commonly used in the legal industry—like eDiscovery tools, Microsoft Office suite, and even large language models—through required yearly trainings, workshops, and “lunch and learns.”

Every student at OU receives a complimentary iPad and Apple Pencil as part of the Initiative, to aid in note-taking and to remove access barriers to any supplemental training offered. The topics covered by this program include practical discussions of the legal issues surrounding the use of technology—such as with drone usage—to how technology (like AI) influences the practice of law. Students also get to use law practice management tools—ensuring that they have a nuanced and deep understanding of the technologies presently influencing the legal landscape.

According to Sean Harrington, the director of technology innovation at OU, the Digital Initiative “equips students to thrive in today’s legal landscape,” by “addressing real-world deficiencies in tech skills.”

The program produces graduates who are “fluent with essential tech tools without needing to self-teach or learn on the job,” Harrington said. Results from a recent survey of student participants showed that 97% of the students thought that the Digital Initiative better prepared them for legal jobs, Harrington said.

University of San Diego School of Law

Each 1L at the University of San Diego School of Law (USD) must take the Experiential Advocacy Practicum (EAP), a unique, yearlong course that focuses on litigation skills in the fall, transactional skills in the spring, and career development skills throughout.

EAP gives first-year law students a practical comprehension of the concepts that they’re learning in their doctrinal curriculum—such as torts, contracts, and civil procedure—through a full year of skill-based learning and practitioner-led breakout sessions that simulate the day-to-day of a junior attorney.

During the litigation semester, students are assigned the role of plaintiff or defense counsel in a fictional negligence case where they learn litigation skills like initial client interviews, discovery and depositions, and trial preparation and advocacy. In the spring, students are assigned to the buyer or seller side of a hypothetical business case where they practice key transactional skills such as term sheet drafting, contract negotiation, and client advising.

EAP also focuses on career pathing and development by working with USD’s career center to foster networking abilities, teach resumé and cover letter drafting, and explore different career paths with the students.

Linda L. Lane, professor of practice at USD, explained that the advocacy program stands out from other law schools’ 1L offerings by providing an in-depth teaching of the litigation process and by giving students “meaningful exposure to transactional skills and tasks.” Feedback from students who completed the program shows that EAP helped them to better understand the concepts in their traditional 1L classes and to feel more prepared for their summer positions, Lane said.

Honorable Mentions

In addition to the finalists, the following three programs stood out as particularly innovative for cultivating and developing lawyering skills.

Boston University School of Law

The 1L Transactional Skills Simulation at Boston University School of Law (BU) embeds the teaching of transactional skills into the litigation-focused 1L curriculum. It does so by integrating a six-week transaction-based simulation into their required “Lawyering Skills” course.

In small groups, students work through various legal issues—such as a purchase or an employment negotiation—by learning the processes, tasks, and different research methodologies associated with a transactional-focused practice.

“By ignoring transactional practice, the traditional 1L curriculum has left first-year students without critical transactional skill development or substantive exposure to an essential practice area,” Laura D’Amato, senior lecturer and director of the lawerying program at BU, said. The transaction simulation allows students at BU to gain a solid background in transactional skills and also offers “an opportunity for students to engage in professional identity formation,” D’Amato said.

Roger Williams University School of Law

Roger Williams University School of Law has developed a unique approach to developing foundational legal writing skills through its Writing Center and more specifically, its “Tip of the Week” series. The Writing Center implements a peer-to-peer tutoring and review system for all stages of student writing, which is accompanied by a weekly online series of video and quiz pairings for students to continue improving their skills.

“Not all students arrive with the same level of familiarity with standard edited American English and the conventions of legal writing,’ Justin Kishbaugh, professor of writing and associate director of academic success, said. “Rather than assuming prior knowledge or the ability to access information on one’s own, our Writing Center and my weekly tips provide that information to all students and do so in manageable units that build upon each other and are presented in a variety of mediums for different learning styles,” Kishbaugh said.

University of Houston Law Center

Every first-year law student at the University of Houston Law Center participates in 1L Legal Research Modules, a highly interactive, asynchronous, web-based series of research modules. The modules teach legal research methodologies using four evidenced-based retention strategies to optimize student learning:

• Scaffolding: videos have a single-skill focus; end-of-module exercise is guided to aid in combining skills; in-class exercise removes guided help.
• Retrieval: videos require students to pull knowledge from long-term memory and apply to practical problems.
• Spaced repetition: research instruction is spread across the entire semester and repeated throughout.
• Dual coding: two representations of information (visual and verbal).

“Evidenced-based instruction hasn’t had a strong foothold in legal academia,” Alyson Drake, lecturer and assistant law librarian, said. “Adapting our four-step process to a scaffolded program designed for long-term retention ensures students will hold on to the skills they need to the bar exam and beyond,” Drake said.

Over the next couple of weeks, we will highlight the finalists and note those schools that received an honorable mention for their high-scoring innovations in each of the four categories named above. Look for the next piece in the series on Jan. 30th, when Bloomberg Law Legal Analyst Jessica Blaemire will examine “Beyond the Law.” In previous articles in this series: Susan Swihart’s Jan. 25th article announced the Law School Innovation Program’s top 12 overall innovations.

Related content is available for free on our Law School Innovation Program page.

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