LawSchooled: Putting the Student Back in Legal Education Innovation

Anyone who has stopped by our site knows that we’re building a robust set of resources for law professors and law schools committed to—or even just curious about—innovating legal education. From teaching strategies to course portfolios, we’re targeting the very people who can make an immediate difference in legal education by changing the way they teach law students.

But that doesn’t mean we’ve forgotten about the group of people who are most immediately impacted by the state of legal education: law students.  As “tomorrow’s lawyers,” students are at the heart of our work.

So we were inspired by the launch of LawSchooled, which is billed as a “Student Forum on Law School Reform.” This new blog brings the law student perspective—a perspective that’s been lacking in many legal education conversations—into focus in a refreshing way.

It brings with it an opportunity to issue a call to action to students to promote change. As Scott Fruehwald over at Legal Skills Prof Blog said, “it is time to ask what law students can do to help reform legal education.” He then provides a great list of suggestions, including reading in on the existing work (including ours) that is taking place, looking for law schools that “stress the connection between theory and practice,” taking skills courses and clinics, being an engaged and active learner, and pushing the conversation forward in their own schools (see Fruehwald’s full list here).

And it seems the students at LawSchooled are more than willing to push the conversation forward. In a podcast posted this week, three students had a conversation about a previous LawSchooled post: “What’s the point of law school when you don’t learn to practice law?” It’s worth listening to.

Welcome, LawSchooled.