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Legal Education

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2015

Langdell

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Full-Text Articles in Law

A Vast Image Out Of Spiritus Mundi: The Existential Crisis Of Law Schools, Jeremiah A. Ho Jan 2015

A Vast Image Out Of Spiritus Mundi: The Existential Crisis Of Law Schools, Jeremiah A. Ho

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In her recent book, Teaching Law: Justice, Politics, and the Demands of Professionalism, Robin L. West articulates that the crisis is not merely as the The New York Times and other media outlets have described it — not entirely about the faulty business practices of law schools or the lack of practice-oriented teaching in law classrooms. Instead, the crisis lies at the existential core of law schools. The original nineteenth-century set-up of the American law school and that model’s continued existence today have contributed to an identity crisis for law schools, revealing its major incompatibility with how the law is …


Function, Form, And Strawberries: Subverting Langdell, Jeremiah A. Ho Jan 2015

Function, Form, And Strawberries: Subverting Langdell, Jeremiah A. Ho

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So why do law schools place skills instruction below the dissemination of legal knowledge even though it is the practice of law that lawyers are engaged in doing and not just the mere knowing of it? Both should be equally significant. Although law teaching methodologies have shifted somewhat to accommodate the changing cognitive adaptations of the human mind in this age of digital technology, law instruction in classrooms still possess a deeply-rooted basis in legal formalist considerations of the law from the 19th century that displaces skills instruction for the advancement of the legal knowledge. Consequently, in order to further …