Bierman, Luke

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Touro College: Digital Commons @ Touro Law Center

Journal of Experiential Learning Volume 1 Issue 1 Article 11 April 2015 The Next Move in Legal Education is Ours…. Luke Bierman Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.tourolaw.edu/jel  Part of the Legal Education Commons Recommended Citation Bierman, Luke (2015) "The Next Move in Legal Education is Ours….," Journal of Experiential Learning: Vol. 1 : Iss. 1 , Article 11. Available at: https://digitalcommons.tourolaw.edu/jel/vol1/iss1/11 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ Touro Law Center. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Experiential Learning by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ Touro Law Center. For more information, please contact lross@tourolaw.edu. The Next Move in Legal Education is Ours…. Cover Page Footnote 1-1 This article is available in Journal of Experiential Learning: https://digitalcommons.tourolaw.edu/jel/vol1/iss1/11 \\jciprod01\productn\T\TEL\1-1\TEL105.txt unknown Seq: 1 24-DEC-14 10:55THE NEXT MOVE IN LEGAL EDUCATIONIS OURS. . . . . .LUKE BIERMAN*When 150 legal educators, lawyers, judges and law students metin June 2014 at Elon University School of Law to continue their workas members of the Alliance for Experiential Learning in Law, it repre-sented more than the culmination of three years of work intended topromote transformative approaches and programs for legal educationthat ensures that law graduates are ready to practice with a full com-plement of skills and ethical and social values necessary to serve cli-ents and the public interest, now and in the future.  This Symposiumprovided recognition that there are serious efforts afoot to realignlegal education to comport with trends that are more contemporarythan those attendant to Christopher Columbus Langdell’s view of theworld in the 1870s.  Indeed, attendees of the Symposium benefitedfrom the lessons of those in other professions such as architecture andmedicine that have had to deal with very similar transformationaldynamics as those affecting law and legal education.The Alliance’s efforts are not idle work.  There is increasing andample evidence that the traditional model of preparing students forthe practice of law as developed by Dean Langdell and employed inessentially every law school in some fashion lacks relevance to theways in which modern social interaction and commerce are devel-oping.  The speed by which social convention changes in the post-modern information age is stunning, challenging even the most facileparticipants.  As our views of privacy, ownership, security, liberty, anda multitude of other governing principles are evolving to reflect more22nd century than 19th century thought and practice, it should not besurprising that the legal profession including the legal academy, riskaverse by social construct and professional design as the guardians ofordered change, might be slow adapters.  Indeed, as de Tocquevillerecognized almost 200 years ago when the Frenchman visited theyoung republic to learn how it was faring, lawyers provide a naturallimit to the “unreflective passions of democracy,” the very forces thatcan upend the order and rigor that individuals seek for freedom andliberty, that society demands for structure and security and that enter-prises crave for economic vibrancy.* Luke Bierman is the Dean and Professor of Law at Elon University School of Law.1801Bierman: The Next Move in Legal Education is Ours....Published by Digital Commons @ Touro Law Center, 2015\\jciprod01\productn\T\TEL\1-1\TEL105.txt unknown Seq: 2 24-DEC-14 10:55Winter 2014] THE NEXT MOVE IN LEGAL EDUCATION IS OURS. . . . . . 181Of course, the confluence of these competing forces, popularlycharacterized as status quo and dramatic change, is where the chal-lenge lies.  But we all know that with challenge comes opportunity.One opportunity that arises is the potential to imagine how wemight educate lawyers who are capable for this new age.  During thelast great transformation a century ago people moved from the farmsto the factories, a migration that saw the development of vast infra-structures and concentrations of wealth, mobility, opportunity andsubjugation with a concomitant rise of services like large law firms tosupport that movement.  The Langdellian model of legal educationwas perfectly attuned to that growth, with its emphasis on large classesand university integration.  As the legal profession grew, the lawschools were well positioned to supply increasing numbers of lawyersto meet the demand.As society now evolves in ways vastly different from that exper-ienced in the last century, we have the capacity to reconsider the ped-agogies and subjects that will animate our current students as theyconsider their practices into the 2060s and 2070s.  Without the luxuryof being futurists, we need to make careful calculations and assess-ments about what these students will be doing with their time whenthey are practicing.  Some of that time will be spent in the traditionaland essential roles as legal analysts who provide wise and savvycounsel about the intersections of people, policies and laws whilehelping to resolve disputes regarding the contours of those intersec-tions, as lawyers always have done.  But some time also will be spentas project managers, delivering efficient and economical legal services,and as compliance officers, ensuring enterprises comport their con-duct with prevailing regulatory standards.  Much time inevitably willbe spent as lifelong learners so that their professional lives can accom-modate the rapid evolution and change in society of a kind we nowonly have begun to experience.I have written and spoken elsewhere about how these activitiesmight be characterized and how we might inculcate them to our stu-dents.  No matter; what is important is that we engage in serious con-sideration about how this might be done for if there is anything that iscertain, it is that some if not much of what and how we learned andpracticed and comported our professional lives will be different in thenot too distant future, which may very well mean now.  That goal, ofcourse, is the purpose of the convening of the Alliance – to provide aforum for precisely that kind of thought and discussion, to offeropportunity to develop new approaches and indeed new paradigmsthat will enable us as teachers and leaders to move from where wehave been to where we want to go, keeping in mind the paramount2Journal of Experiential Learning, Vol. 1 [2015], Iss. 1, Art. 11https://digitalcommons.tourolaw.edu/jel/vol1/iss1/11\\jciprod01\productn\T\TEL\1-1\TEL105.txt unknown Seq: 3 24-DEC-14 10:55182 JOURNAL OF EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING [Vol. 1:180need of our students to be prepared as they move into a post-Carnegieworld, largely uncharted and highly evolutionary.Another kind of opportunity exists in how we go about creatingthis new vision for legal education.  It is common knowledge that thelegal academy is highly stratified with very different incentives,rewards and statuses for different participants.  Teachers and scholarsfocusing on doctrine, clinics, writing, externships and other activitiesare aligned in very hierarchical ways that have led to deep chasmsthroughout the academy.  This not only inhibits us in promoting theideals associated with collegiality and academic freedom but also failsto reflect how the practice of our profession actually works.  Rarelydoes a client with a problem walk into an office with a sign pro-claiming how to characterize the nature of the problem or the proce-dures that should be employed in helping the client solve it.  That isnot the way the world works despite the academy’s best efforts toorganize itself in that highly linear and hierarchical way.  Problems aresolved by taking the best that many pedagogies and other aspects ofpractice offer and applying a comprehensive understanding of allaspects of law and procedure.  That is how we fulfill our ethical andfiduciary duties.The developing paradigms thus provide us with the opportunityto push aside the historical chasms and rethink our alignments andincentives.  This moment in the evolution of practice and pedagogyprovides us with a unique opportunity to examine closely the relation-ships that currently exist and imagine how they might be organizedmore holistically, more effectively, more efficiently and more econom-ically.  We have that unique moment that rarely comes, where wemight consider how we would prefer to organize and teach and learn,and then actually organize, teach and learn in those ways.  We canlook carefully at the structures, the pedagogies and the methodologieswe use to teach our students and, drawing on modern learning tech-niques and contemporary thought about workplace dynamics,organize ourselves accordingly.  We could essentially, and literally, putour money where our mouths are.  That would be spectacular.I am humbled and excited to work at a law school that is doingprecisely that.  At Elon Law, founded as the law school with a differ-ence, the faculty recently has concluded a six month conversationabout the curriculum that followed a two year strategic planning pro-cess.  Identifying competencies and then reverse engineering, thefaculty has devised a new curriculum with seven trimesters offeringmore intense and focused instruction, full time practice requirementswith faculty oversight (read residency), and communication instruc-tion in every term, all accomplished in two and a half years with a3Bierman: The Next Move in Legal Education is Ours....Published by Digital Commons @ Touro Law Center, 2015\\jciprod01\productn\T\TEL\1-1\TEL105.txt unknown Seq: 4 24-DEC-14 10:55Winter 2014] THE NEXT MOVE IN LEGAL EDUCATION IS OURS. . . . . . 183substantial savings in tuition.  This different approach to the curric-ulum is possible only because the law school faculty and universityadministration all came together in a spirit of good will and hard workto devise preparation for lawyers that is true to historical values whileproviding innovations that make sense pedagogically, doctrinally, andexperientially.This new approach will necessarily require additional collegialdiscussions about the roles of different participants in the law school,from doctrinal and clinical teachers to staff, alumni and students.  Thecontributions of all our community members will be subject to exami-nation and assessment as we continue to think about the role of thelaw school in the 21st century.  Indeed, we are beginning to identifyourselves as more than teachers and scholars and students but as fullyintegrated members of our local legal and civic community who pro-vide leadership and assistance beyond the traditional service andclinical models.  We are thinking about facilities and partners in waysthat we would not have considered even a few years ago.  Our expec-tation is that this creative approach will provide us with a much moreengaged law school; faculty, staff, students and alumni alike.  With thisengagement, we expect more and richer opportunities for our faculty,staff, students and alumni to teach and learn experientially, to conductscholarship and to provide service in partnership with others.  Thiswould indeed be a different approach to how we imagine ourselves asa law school, from faculty to staff to students to alumni.It also will allow us to reconsider how we think of ourselves asmembers of a community.  The ways that we might value our respec-tive contributions might change dramatically.  Integrating doctrinewith practice, writing with attention to other means of communica-tion, and fulltime placements in practice reinforced with classroominstruction will offer new and effective ways to promote teaching,learning and practice preparation.  From this approach, some of thechasms that have limited our ability to maximize teaching, scholarshipand service may dissipate.  We may identify new ways to help eachother teach more effectively and efficiently, with better results for ourstudents as they move on to undertake professional responsibilities.We may find new found relevance with courts and other public, pri-vate and nonprofit community members for our scholarship and advo-cacy.  This approach may offer some freshness where needed themost, in our fundamental approaches to prepare lawyers in a trans-formational age.4Journal of Experiential Learning, Vol. 1 [2015], Iss. 1, Art. 11https://digitalcommons.tourolaw.edu/jel/vol1/iss1/11\\jciprod01\productn\T\TEL\1-1\TEL105.txt unknown Seq: 5 24-DEC-14 10:55184 JOURNAL OF EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING [Vol. 1:1805Bierman: The Next Move in Legal Education is Ours....Published by Digital Commons @ Touro Law Center, 2015

The Next Move in Legal Education is Ours….

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The Next Move in Legal Education is Ours….

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