Law Students' Corner
| Publication year | 2010 |
| Pages | 15 |
On Matters Pedagogic - Creating a "Practical" Law School Curriculum
By Steven Craig Paschang, Washburn University School of Law, Topeka, craigpaschang@gmail.com
“They'll scare you to death, work you to death, then bore you to death." That's what we were told our three years of law school would be like, and as the fall semester gets into full swing, I have caught myself telling the same thing to the new 1L students.
As a third-year student, the maxim seems to fall somewhere between sage wisdom and sanguine indifference. Although it may contain some pearl of advice along the lines of, "this too shall pass," I take issue with the sense of complacency that the statement connotes - and I refuse to believe that the third year of law school serves no other purpose but to bore us to death.
Last year I worked as a legal intern in the chambers of Magistrate Judge K. Gary Sebelius and Senior Judge Sam A. Crow as part of Washburn's Federal Judicial Clerkship externship program. Writing a memo to one of Judge Sebelius' clerks, I applied the holding in Iqbal just weeks after reading the case in Civil Procedure II. Sitting through suppression hearings put the Federal Rules of Evidence into context, and my classmates can attest to the fact that Professor Michael Kaye would often call on me for my practical perspective.
During the spring, when helping Judge Crow draft an opinion in a case arising under the Administrative Procedure Act, I experienced a synergy between what I was learning in chambers and what I was learning in John Wine's Administrative Law course. As we talked about cases like Matthews v. Eldridge and Chevron in class, I couldn't wait to figure out how they would apply to the case I was working on. And as I sifted through recondite circuit opinions, looking for those perfect cases to help with novel points of law, I garnered a deeper appreciation for the delicate balance that courts often strike between applying the law as written and affording parties actual justice.
The experience I gained in chambers complemented what I learned in school and rounded out my legal education. That experience has also convinced me that the law school curriculum should be reformed to be more like medical school, with a traditional first year curriculum followed by second year internships and third year clinic rotations in different practice areas. Certainly...
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