Legal education in 2010.

• Author: Harbaugh, Joseph D.

The law graduates of the Class of '13--2013 that is--will have experienced an education that is remarkably similar to and yet far different from the legal training most of us encountered. While we would recognize the titles of the classes in the core curriculum, the members of the Class of '13 are likely to have been taught sophisticated lawyering skills we did not confront until practice, through methods we never dreamed would be used in law school. To get a closer look at legal education in the early part of the next century, let's draw upon Disney-like technology to propel us into the future, permitting us to follow two students--call them Keisha and Sam--from the time they enter law school in the fall of 2010 to their graduation as members of the Class of '13.

Fresh Look at Old Subjects Plus Some New Things

At first glance, the class schedules Keisha and Sam received at orientation are almost identical to those in our first year of law school: contracts, torts, criminal law, property, and civil procedure, courses that have formed the substantive educational foundation of law students since 1870 when Harvard's dean, Christopher Columbus Langdell, invented the case method and thereby created the modern law school. Many topics Keisha and Sam will study in these core courses are those we struggled with--offer and acceptance, proximate cause, mens rea and actus reus--although, as would be expected, there are new legal twists and turns as courts manipulate the underlying principles and concepts to meet evolving circumstances and conditions.

A visit to one of Keisha and Sam's classes suggests that some things have changed dramatically. The first thing you notice is the absence of those enormous red and blue casebooks and the accompanying ubiquitous yellow legal pads that crowded students' desks. In their place, you observe every student working away at a laptop computer, free-standing state-of-the-art equipment not connected to either a power source or a data port. The second thing to strike you is the large projection screen that dominates the front of the classroom where a chalkboard may be expected. The professor, also armed with a powerful compact computer, has split the screen, on one side paging through the assigned electronic casebook and on the other walking through a hypothetical torts problem that includes audio and video clips of an accident, as well as a graphics and text explanation of the situation.

The professor tells the class to quickly search relevant legal data bases for cases involving similar situations and to compare them with the decision set forth in the principal case which is the focus of the group's analysis. The class settles into a concentrated hum of quiet conversation as students click-clack through variously stated search requests, hunting for appropriate precedent. A few minutes later, Keisha triumphantly announces isolation of three cases that appear to be on point. With a few swift keystrokes, Keisha follows the professor's instruction to display the citations to the three decisions on one side of the screen and to project her brief of the principal case on the other side. The professor then walks the class through a breakdown of the problem into component parts, hypertexting the group backward and forward, linking concepts studied earlier in the term with new theories soon to be encountered.

After class you trail behind Keisha and Sam as they join others outside the building on the student patio. The conversation inevitably turns to the torts hypothetical they worried through in class the preceding hour. A heated debate ensues in which Sam and some others are aligned against Keisha and other colleagues on an interpretation of the rule discussed in class. Ultimately, the group agrees that only the professor can provide the definitive answer. Sam whips out his laptop, dials in to the law school's local area network, e-mails a query to the professor, and copies it to the torts "listserv" so others in the class may be aware of the debate.

While connected, Sam advises the group that the professor has posted a "pop quiz" that needs to be completed and submitted electronically by the next day and has announced team projects due in two weeks. The group groans and one asks how these new projects fit with their assignments in other classes. Sam quickly pulls up the syllabi of all their teachers and, using the school-wide daily calendar, reviews the tasks set by all of their professors. The group grudgingly concludes their teachers must have coordinated the assignments because there is just barely enough time available in the near term to complete everything.

Sam jumps back to the listserv to learn that five other class members have entered into the discussion of the rule interpretation, one of whom suggests a position that differs from the perspectives advanced by Sam and Keisha's contingents. Just as they finish typing a rejoinder to this third view, the professor interrupts with a response to the original inquiry. As the students dissect the answer, they learn the professor did not resolve the question. Indeed, to the contrary, the response raises new and more complex permutations of the initial problem that take the group off in a new and more fascinating direction. Shortly thereafter, the new dilemma is reduced to writing and posted on the torts listserv, prompting even more students to participate in the ongoing dialog.

Keisha and...