Cutting-edge program promises more study time, electives and professional focus
The
members of the fall 2007 entering class arrived at Southwestern following in the footsteps of others, but at the same time blazing a
new trail: They began their legal studies with a new innovative
first-year curriculum tailored to the academic and professional needs
of Southwestern students.
For the first time in 15 years,
Southwestern faculty and administrators extensively reworked the
course requirements for first-year students in the traditional full and
part-time programs.* Guided by faculty recommendations, student and
alumni input, academic research, and a comprehensive study of
nationwide law school curricula directed by Professor Catherine
Carpenter for the American Bar Association (ABA), the new curriculum
was created with several goals in mind:
- to provide students more time to master their courses;
- to
place a greater emphasis on the realities of legal practice, the
construction of legal careers, and the ethical and social
responsibilities of lawyers;
- to expand the instruction of
legal research and writing to include more development of basic
lawyering skills as well as earlier exposure to litigation,
interviewing and counseling skills;
- to facilitate students' ability to study specialized areas in the first year; and
- to provide increased academic support that helps students improve their learning skills.
Southwestern's
new curriculum incorporates - and goes beyond - best practices at law
schools around the country. "The new curriculum is a terrific mix of
what we can do well as a law school and what the students can use to
build the skills and professional identities appropriate for effective
transitions into the legal profession," explains Dean Bryant Garth, who
charged the faculty Curriculum Committee with re-examining the first-year
course requirements. "As a new dean, I was amazed by the faculty's
willingness to rethink all aspects of the first-year curriculum."
Fewer classes, more study time
Students take fewer courses during the first two semesters than in past
years. Under the new curriculum, the number of doctrinal courses per
semester have been reduced from five to four in the law school's
traditional day program, and from three to two in the evening and PLEAS
(Part-Time Legal Education Alternative) programs. Torts and Property are now each one-semester, four-unit courses.
According to
Associate Dean Christopher Cameron, chair of the Curriculum Committee,
"We wanted to take away some of the pressure that first-year students
already impose upon themselves, and that we impose upon them with our
rigorous academic program, and give them an opportunity to absorb the
material at their own pace."
Professor Carpenter, a member of the Curriculum Committee and principal drafter of the ABA's recent Survey of Law School Curricula,
says the new curriculum enables students to more fully integrate and
digest the material. "Having five different substantive classes made it
more difficult," she points out. "Students were jumping from one
subject to another. This way, students have more time to immerse
themselves in fewer subjects."
Bridging the gap from theory to practice
Most
everyone agrees that the legal profession is bursting with complexities
and constantly evolving demands. But two recent studies on legal
education - the ABA's Survey of Law School Curricula and the
Carnegie Foundation's forthcoming book entitled Educating Lawyers -
suggest that law schools respond by adopting a more practice-oriented
approach. The latter study argues that the first-year curriculum is a
particularly opportune time to begin guiding students' transition from
theory to practice.
With this in mind, Southwestern created a newly expanded version of its first-year legal research and
writing program. Dubbed LAWS (Legal Analysis, Writing and Skills), the
new program aims to provide students with a wider variety of practical
skills.
Students receive more detailed instruction in
such areas as legal methods and legal reasoning, client and witness
interviewing, and appellate advocacy.
In addition, consistent
with another basic tenet of the Carnegie Foundation study, LAWS addresses various issues pertaining to professionalism and the practice
of law, culled from empirical studies of lawyer careers such as the
groundbreaking After the J.D. project (Dean Garth serves on the
project's Executive Coordinating Committee) located at the American Bar
Foundation. Topics include how lawyers make their
careers and the role of professional values in career success and
personal satisfaction.
"Business schools
have done well with case studies of how businesses succeed or fail. We use lawyer careers as a springboard to examine just what makes
professional success," says Dean Garth, who teaches a
component of the course.
LAWS fulfills six units (three in
fall, three in spring), which is twice as many as Southwestern's
previous legal research and writing program.
First-year electives
Recognizing
that many students attend Southwestern to pursue specialized areas of
study, a number of electives are now offered during the first year.
Day students have the option of taking a three-unit elective
course during the spring semester in one of the following: Constitutional Criminal Procedure, Copyright,
Legal Profession, Public International Law, or an academic
support course such as Defenses in the Law. In future years, other
courses may be rotated into the elective slot. The electives are available to second-year evening and PLEAS students during the
spring semester.
By offering electives earlier, "we allow
students with clear career goals to move more quickly into upper level
classes that will build expertise consistent with those goals," says
Dean Garth.
Enhanced Academic Support
The new
curriculum also incorporates methods and instruction to provide the
greatest possible academic support to struggling first-year students. Ensuring the
success of all students has always been the top priority among
Southwestern faculty and staff. The law school offers a series of
activities that provide assistance and guidance to those who find
themselves grappling to stay afloat as they seek to master a new way of
thinking. These include a general academic support program; faculty
one-on-one tutoring for upper-division students on academic probation
from the first year; exam writing workshops; and the Student Success Program, which is open to students during the summer following their
first year.
Now, Southwestern has created a new program to be
offered for students whose Fall exam scores indicate they might benefit
from additional academic support. A three-unit, full semester Academic
Support course is open by invitation to first-year day students,
as well as second-year evening and PLEAS students. Taught by full-time
faculty, the course instructs students in critical thinking,
writing, listening, case-briefing, client-interviewing and test-taking
skills in the context of new doctrinal material. This year's course
is titled "Defenses in the Law."
The idea, Professor
Carpenter explains, is that integrating new material with new skills is
the best way to ensure long-term improvement, since the skills will be
translatable to future academic experiences. "We are confident that
students will see an improvement in their performance in all of their
courses," she says. "Even while they're in the middle of this course,
we expect they will see growth fairly quickly."
As a whole, Dean
Garth says that the new curriculum provides Southwestern's
first-year students with a truly unparalleled learning experience. "I
am confident that we enacted a first-year curriculum that truly takes
advantage of the experience of other schools, the best scholarship
about legal education, the talents of our faculty, and the careers that
our graduates ultimately will pursue."
*The SCALE program operates under a different curricular structure.
