Alternative Justifications for Academic Support II: How 'Academic Support Across the Curriculum' Helps Meet the Goals of the Carnegie Report and Best Practices

• Author: Louis N. Schulze, Jr.
• Position: Associate Professor of Law and Director of Academic Support, New England Law, Boston
• Pages: 1-69

ALTERNATIVE JUSTIFICATIONS FOR ACADEMIC SUPPORT

II: HOW “ACADEMIC SUPPORT ACROSS THE CURRICULUM”

HELPS MEET THE GOALS OF THE CARNEGIE REPORT AND

BEST PRACTICES

LOUIS N. SCHULZE JR.*

In the wake of two momentous critiques of legal education, popularly

known as the “Carnegie Report” and “Best Practices,” law schools are

reconsidering certain basic assumptions about how to educate future

lawyers. Even the most forward-thinking reformers, however, struggle

with the details of how to implement many of the recommendations of

these reports. Providing more formative assessment, for instance, is a

laudable objective but one that has serious ramifications in terms of

resource expenditures. This article seeks to provide a remedy for many of

these struggles: “Academic Support Across the Curriculum.” This article

argues that the reconceptualization of an under-leveraged asset in many

law schools, Academic Support Programs (ASPs), can help provide crucial

improvements in legal education. By examining the reforms urged by the

Carnegie Report and Best Practices, and by detailing the methods of

certain exemplary ASPs throughout the country, this article analyzes how

ASPs just might be the answer to many tough questions.

I. INTRODUCTION

Legal education is indeed at a crossroads. For over a century, the legal

academy has prepared students for the practice of law basically using a

static methodology.1 Traditionally, law schools’ sole endeavor was to

Copyright © 2012, Louis N. Schulze Jr.

* Associate Professor of Law and Director of Academic Support, New England Law |

Boston. My thanks to each of the ASP profession als who contributed to this piece. I am

particularly indebted to Professor Rebecca Flanagan of the University of Connecticut

School of Law for her wise thoughts; to New England Law | Boston Professors Elizabeth

Bloom, Lawrence Friedman, and Jordan Singer for th eir insightful comments on earlier

drafts; and to my excellent research assistant M elaney Hodge. I am also grateful to New

England Law | Boston for its financial support for this work.

1 Edward Rubin, What’s Wrong with Langdell's Method and What to Do About It, 60

VAND. L. REV. 609, 648 (2007) (“To rely on a model of education that was designed in the

1870s . . . as the traditional approach to legal education does, denies us the benefit of the

entire range of modern thought about the educational process and of the entire field of

(continued)

2 CAPITAL UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [40:1

teach students generally how to “think like a lawyer.”2 Training on how to

be a lawyer, by contrast, often remained the tacit duty of a student’s first

employer.3 Moreover, teaching the law itself, and its application to real

cases, has traditionally been anything but explicit. The application of the

classic “Socratic Method” often left students with more questions than

answers, which was considered desirable in that the cream of the law

student crop was thus compelled to find answers on its own.4

Despite the supposed desirability of the traditional approach, certain

forces have arisen that make these traditions impossible to maintain. The

explosion of law school tuition in recent years5 has resulted in the

“consumerization” of law students; the customers, it seems, now demand

more than just inculcation on “thinking like a lawyer.”6 Meanwhile, legal

employers bemoan the fact that law graduates pass the bar ill-prepared to

modern psychology that informs this area.”), quoted in Roy Stucke y, “Best Practices" or

Not, It Is Time to Re-Think Legal Education, 16 CLINICAL L. REV. 307, 308 n.6 (2009).

2 WILLIAM M. SULLIVAN ET AL., EDUCATING LAW YERS: PREPARATION FOR THE

PROFESSION OF LAW 47 (2007) [hereinafter CARNEGIE REPORT]. See also Seth Freeman,

Bridging the Gaps: How Cross-Disciplinary Training with MBAs Can Improve

Transactional Education, Prepare Students for Private Practice, and Enhance University

Life, 13 FORDHAM J. CORP. & FIN. L. 89, 92 (2008); Jess M. Krannich et al., Beyond

“Thinking Like A Lawyer” and the Traditional Legal Paradigm: Toward a Comprehensive

View of Legal Education, 86 DENV. U. L. REV. 381, 388 (2009).

3 See CARNEGIE REPOR T, supra note 2, at 88 ; Jennifer S. Bard, What We in Law Can

Learn From Our Colleagues in Medicine About Teaching Students How to Practice Their

Chosen Profession, 36 J.L. MED. & ETHICS 841, 843 (Supp. 2008); Neil J. Dilloff, The

Changing Cultures and Economics of Large Law Firm Practice and Their Impact on Legal

Education, 70 MD. L. REV. 341, 361–62 (2011) (arguing that mandatory third year

employment would be beneficial to potential lawyers and their first employers).

4 CARNEGIE REPORT, supra note 2, at 2 (describing the case-dialogue method as a game

of “hide the ball”). See also Benjamin V. Madison, III, The Elephant in Law School

Classrooms: Overuse of The Socratic Method as an Obstacle to Teaching Modern Law

Students, 85 U. DET. MERCY L. REV. 293, 299–300 (2008).

5 See AM. BAR. ASS’N, LIFTING THE BURDEN: LAW STU DENT DEBT AS A BARRIER TO

PUBLIC SERVICE 10 (2003), available at http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/

migrated/legalservices/downloads/lrap/lrapfinalreport.authcheckdam.pdf.

6 See Daniel Thies, Rethinking Legal Education in Hard Times: The Recession,

Practical Legal Education, and the New Job Market, 59 J. LEGAL EDUC. 598, 598–99

(2010).

2012] JUSTIFICATIONS FOR ACADEMIC SUPPORT 3

handle lawyerly tasks wholly independent.7 The bottom line is students

and the practicing bar now demand that law schools do more to render

students “practice ready.”8

In response to these and other forces, two influential reports

contemporaneously studied the continued viability of the legal education

status quo: Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Practice of Law (the

Carnegie Report), issued by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement

of Teaching,9 and Best Practices for Legal Education (Best Practices),

published by the Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA).10 The

Carnegie Report, based on site visits and interviews with law students and

faculty, concluded that although mainstream legal education has many

strengths, a great deal of reform is necessary.11 The Carnegie Report’s

authors categorize what they see as imperative pedagogical goals into three

“apprenticeships”: the “intellectual or cognitive apprenticeship”; the

“practical apprenticeship”; and “the apprenticeship of identity and

purpose.”12 The authors contend that mainstream legal education focuses

heavily on the first apprenticeship, focuses too little on the last two, and

calls for the improvement of the holistic preparation of law students by the

integration of all of the apprenticeships in law school curricula.13

Even while recognizing the emphasis on the cognitive apprenticeship

in law schools, the Carnegie Report nevertheless criticizes the means by

which most law schools attend to the intellectual training of lawyers.14

Similarly, Best Practices recognizes the gap in practical and ethical

training in the modern legal academy but also details the fractured means

by which law schools attempt to teach substance.15 Specifically, Best

Practices critiques the legal academy for failing to “study and practice

7 See Clark D. Cunningham, Should American Law Schools Continue to Graduate

Lawyers Whom Clients Consider Worthless?, 70 MD. L. REV. 499, 499–500 (2011); Dilloff,

supra note 3, at 342 (suggesting changes to the law school curriculum to better prepare

students for the current realities of practice).

8 See Dilloff, supra note 3, at 359.

9 CARNEGIE REPORT, supra not e 2.

10 ROY STUCKEY ET AL., BEST PRACTICES FOR LEGAL EDUCATION (2007) [herei nafter

BEST PRACTICES].

11 CARNEGIE REPORT, supra note 2, at 16–17.

12 Id. at 28.

13 Id. at 191.

14 Id. at 24.

15 BEST PRACTICES, supra note 10, at 283.