PHOTO: DAVID LEIFER

Summer 2007 | Dean's Message

Ahead of Our Time

IN MAY, THE CARNEGIE FOUNDATION issued its latest report on higher education, Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law. The key message? Teaching legal doctrine is not enough: teaching skills and values to burgeoning lawyers is critical to training great practitioners — and central to the future health of the profession and the legal system.

Those of you familiar with Northeastern, know that these ideas have been at the very heart of our law school program since its inception.

Characterizing law as a “social practice” and as “judgment in action,” the Carnegie report focuses on the possibilities for “reconnecting the dimensions of craft and meaning with formal knowledge.” It notes the complementarity of theoretical and practical legal knowledge, but also focuses on the need to build “a stronger commitment to the public mission and purpose of the vocation.” The report calls for “a better balance among the cognitive, practical and ethical-social apprenticeships” that comprise the components of law school education.

The Carnegie report is part of a tidal wave of concern about the continuing focus on knowledge and theory — and the related lack of focus on skills and values — in most law schools.

The Clinical Legal Education Association’s Best Practices for Legal Education, also released in May, echoes the sentiments of the Carnegie report while setting out more specific suggestions for changes in law school curricula. Similarly, the 2004 After the J.D. report, part of an ongoing study by the NALP Foundation for Law Career Research and Education and the American Bar Foundation, provides a glimpse into a longitudinal study of young lawyers. It notes that new lawyers are most positive about the aspects of their legal education that prepare them to practice. When asked which experience in law school they found most helpful, respondents to this survey pointed to real legal employment, particularly summer employment. In-school courses all trailed these real-world experiences.

A managing partner of a major Boston law firm recently told me that the days of ever-escalating associate salaries are over. Clients are demanding more sophistication and more efficiency from large law firms, and firms are therefore increasingly interested in law graduates with problem-solving as well as more specific lawyering skills. Needless to say, small firms, public advocacy groups, civil and criminal legal services offices have always worked with limited resources and have these same needs.

All of this supports both the programs and philosophy of this law school. At Northeastern, we have focused on teaching skills and values — as well as doctrine — since the school reopened in 1968. The fact that every student must fulfill a graduation requirement of four 11-week, full-time real-world experiences under a supervising attorney forces all of us to integrate our thinking about theory and practice. Our commitment to teaching every student about the role of law in society — and about the ways in which law can promote the public good — creates an environment that fosters discussions of issues and ethics. In our classrooms and clinics we teach students to work both individually and in teams, solving real and hypothetical problems.

This law school’s mission, values and program were innovative in 1968 and, as is increasingly clear, we continue to stand on the cutting edge of educating lawyers. We’re delighted that more and more of our colleagues and others interested in the profession are also focusing on the fact that educating lawyers is far more complex than teaching doctrine. As the dialogue about skills and values deepens and widens, we hope to be part of a movement that reframes the concept of legal education. Stay tuned.