News & Updates

The University of California Hastings College announced that it will reduce enrollment by 20% over the next three years. "The critics of legal education are right," Dean Frank Wu said in a telephone interview on April 30. "There are too many law…

Last week, we announced that we now recognize ETL Fellows for their contributions to legal education. Professor Benjamin Madison of Regent University School of Law is among our first six. This article by his school details his role in advancing legal education.

LawWeek Colorado recently featured a story on Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers, highlighting the twenty law schools around the country that have already joined our efforts. The article included interviews with three Colorado lawyers who spoke about the steep learning curve for graduates and the need to train practice-ready lawyers.

Professor Amy Landers discusses the upside of interactive casebooks. Now available as part of some paper-format textbooks, students can link to the subject matter of the cases, including clips of songs, images, and even play the video games that spawned lawsuits.

Washington & Lee law professor and Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers Fellow Jim Moliterno recently presented at Pepperdine Law Review Symposium on “The Lawyer of the Future.” Moliterno also discussed his school's innovative third year curricula, including tracks for both litigation and transactional immersion.

In their latest podcast, Law Schooled, a student forum blog on law school reform asks the following questions: Should law students have a say in legal education reform? Why should law students have a say in their education when elementary and high…

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…

We recently sat down to talk with John Gleason. As Regulation Counsel for the Colorado Supreme Court, he directs the office of the Court responsible for lawyer admissions, registration, regulation, and client protection. In 2010, Gleason was appointed by the Arizona Supreme Court to investigate and prosecute Andrew Thomas, the former Maricopa County Attorney—a prosecution that last week ended in the disbarment of Thomas and one of his lieutenants, and the suspension of another attorney in Thomas’ office.

The Legal Skills Prof Blog provides seven tips for how law firms and attorneys can make sure that skills-based legal education is a priority--including making a commitment to interview at schools with strong skills programs, like those in our Consortium.

Scott Fruehwald featured Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers for our Family Law with Skills course, co-taught by Andy Schepard and Herbie DiFonzo.

Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers adds two new partners to its Consortium of law schools that demonstrate a commitment to legal education reform and current Carnegie-style curricular offerings. Albany Law School has a long-established focus on student…

We are pleased to announce that professors whose courses are featured on the ETL website will be named Fellows of Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers in order to honor their roles in advancing legal education. 

A recent blog post by Jeff Lipshaw on the inevitability of multi-disciplinarity in law practice made comparisons to a Wall Street Journal article* that called for expansion of the undergraduate business major: “. . .I understand this is about…

John S. Gleason is Regulation Counsel for the Colorado Supreme Court, where he directs the office responsible for lawyer admissions, registration, regulation, and client protection. He recently sat down with Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers to talk about legal education and the needs of the profession. In his Voices from the Field interview, Gleason talks about the ethical pitfalls that many law students and new attorneys need exposure to and practice navigating through, and provides insights into how law professors can help.

In an interview with Paul Lippe on Legal OnRamp, Dean Martin Katz, Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers executive committee member, discusses experiential learning, the Carnegie Report, and Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers.

Professor David Thomson gave a talk on outcomes reform in legal education on March 29, 2012, at a conference sponsored by the Center for Excellence in Law Teaching at Albany Law School. He shared some of his thoughts on the topic and his presentation…

Dean Chemerinsky’s most recent law review article on meaningful law school reform discusses clinical/experiential learning, the need for giving feedback to students, and the realities of budget limitations. “Legal education has changed remarkably little in over a century," he notes. “Change is long overdue.”

Scott Fruehwald revisits the "Langdellian Bargain" and how five Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers consortium schools are pushing the limits of that model. Some of the innovative programs he identifies are the Leadership, Ethics and Democracy (LEAD) Initiative at UM Carey School of Law and a Southwestern Law School program.

One of the most fundamental skills an attorney can learn is how to properly counsel a client. Client counseling begins from the first meeting and flows through every step of the case. Sometimes it even continues after the case is over. In order to effectively counsel your client when emotion is involved, a lawyer has to be able to let her client express emotion but still gather facts and present the client with legal options to guide the case.

In the wake of the recent economic downturn and its aftermath, law schools and legal education are again the focus of intense scrutiny. Unfortunately, there is often more rhetoric than constructive discussion.