Can They Work Well on a Team? Assessing Students\u27 Collaborative Skills

Abstract

[Excerpt] Among the many critiques of legal education are criticisms that law students do not graduate with effective emotional intelligence skills-in particular, they have not learned to work well with others. Working with others is an important legal skill; and as law practice increasingly relies on collaboration among lawyers, legal staff, clients, and other individuals, so have legal employers raised the demand for effective collaborative skills among law students and recent graduates. This essay will focus on ways to engage students in collaborating and assessing that collaboration effectively. Students\u27 interpersonal collaborative skills can be effectively taught and assessed in large doctrinal classes by including effective collaboration as a course learning objective, enlisting students to establish assessment criteria, providing students with multiple opportunities to collaborate, enabling students to get feedback on their skills in working with others, and using students\u27 experiences to gather data about their classmates\u27 skills