Read on Twitter
THREAD re legal education
@Honickman’s tweet and the many responses to it got me thinking about how to design an optimal legal education. Below, I list what I think are the five most important things for lawyers to know and what I think are the best ways to teach each one. 1/15
@Honickman’s tweet and the many responses to it got me thinking about how to design an optimal legal education. Below, I list what I think are the five most important things for lawyers to know and what I think are the best ways to teach each one. 1/15
(1) All lawyers must know black letter law in: (a) subjects foundational to public law (administrative, constitutional, and criminal); (b) subjects foundational to private law (contracts and torts); and (c) subjects relevant to the type(s) of law they want to practice. 2/15
Law schools (plus articling for (c)) are best placed to teach this. They should therefore be solely responsible for substantive law. In particular, substantive law should be removed from the bar exam - no one learns it because they did a tabbed scavenger hunt. 3/15
(2) All lawyers must have at least a vague familiarity with the procedure of the courts in which they appear. In particular, they should know all of the steps in a proceeding in their field of practice, which steps have deadlines, and roughly how each step works. 4/15
I think that the bar exam - which can only teach up to the level of vague familiarity - is best placed to teach this. I learned more about procedure by reading my bar exam materials than I did in all of law school. And now the materials are a great quick reference guide. 5/15
By contrast, law schools are bad at teaching procedure - a fundamentally practical issue - because they try to teach it from a theoretical perspective. The only big exception is evidence law, which probably has to be taught in law schools. 6/15
Please don’t @ me saying that there’s theory in procedure. I know: I just published an article about the theory of stare decisis and am now writing an article on the theory of costs. Still, in most cases, all lawyers need to know about procedure is how to use it in practice. 7/15
(3) All lawyers must know the rules of professional conduct (read: how to avoid getting a call from LawPro). As with procedure, I think that the bar exam can teach this - we don’t also need “Legal Ethics” classes in law school*. 8/15
(4) *However, lawyers should be aware of the ethics of law. Who it persecutes. How it is used to exclude groups from power. Why it continues to construct inequality. Because it is only by understanding those relationships that lawyers can begin working to fix them. 9/15
Additionally, understanding the broader context of law can be really helpful when representing clients affected by that broader context because (a) it can help you understand your client; (b) it can be relevant to doctrine; (c) it can be used to frame issues for the court. 10/15
For more on why “____ and law” classes make you a more effective lawyer, see the tweets and threads responding to @Honickman by @JoshuaSealy, @FraserHarland, @vanessa_macd, @SainiLaw, @lex_is, @Mitchell_CBrown, and so many others. 11/15
Law schools are in a good position to teach these types of issues because professors have enough critical distance from practice. Alternatively, we could mandate that every student do clinic or pro bono work with disadvantaged communities while they are in law school. 12/15
(5) All lawyers must have basic communication, technology, and lawyering skills: how to write a memo or factum, how to present oral arguments, how to use styles and cross-references to speed up writing, how to conceive of life in 6 minute increments, etc. 13/15
The #PREP bar admission course - which replaced bar exams in AB, MB, NS, and SK - appears to be the best way to teach these skills. If that’s insufficient, journals, moots, and articling can full in the gaps. We don’t need “Legal Writing” classes in addition to those. 14/15
In sum, law school should only teach black letter law and “____ and law”, bar exams should only teach procedure and professionalism, bar prep courses should only teach practical skills, and articling can fill in the gaps. Thoughts, #LawTwitter? 15/15
