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Preparing The New Law Graduate To Practice Law: A View From The Trenches, Rodney J. Uphoff, James J. Clark, Edward C. Monahan

Faculty Publications

Most legal educators reject the premise that the primary mission of the law school is to train law students to practice law. Rather, most law professors claim that their primary function is to teach students to think like lawyers. To many commentators, however, the academic community's antipractice attitude has spawned an unhealthy dichotomy between theory and practice, a division within the academic community, and a chasm between law schools and the practicing bar. Moreover, this dissonance or gap between law school and practice significantly contributes to the fact that most law graduates are substantially unprepared to function as lawyers when …