As law classes start, eager for thoughts on “The Evolution of Experiential Legal Education”

Today I start another year of teaching at The Ohio State University MorItz College of Law, and I am very much looking forward to meeting a new cohort of 1Ls in my Criminal Law class this afternoon.  Much has changed (and not changed) in my many years of law teaching, but the excitement of “the first day of school” is a wonderful constant.  Another constant has been robust debate over so-called “experiential” education in law school.  I taught in one great OSU clinic for a few years, taught legal writing for many years, and have regularly incorporated “experiential” elements into my traditional classes.  I am a fan of providing robust “experiential” opportunities to law students, but I am also disinclined to place too many mandates on upper-level law students.

I provide this personal background in part to explain why I am posting here a new article on legal education, titled “The Evolution of Experiential Legal Education.”  As the article’s abstract explains, the American Bar Association is considering a proposal to double (from six to twelve) the required “experiential” credits for law students:

To help bridge the gap between legal education and legal practice, in 2014 the American Bar Association adopted a requirement that law students take at least six credits of “experiential” courses.  Despite limited research on the effects of this reform, the ABA is currently considering a new reform that would require law students to take twice as many experiential credits to graduate.  We provide new evidence for this debate by studying the evolution of experiential legal education and the impacts of the 2014 reform.  We compile data reported by law schools to the ABA to document a dramatic rise in the number of experiential opportunities available to students even before the reform, and we find no evidence that the reform improved bar passage rates or employment outcomes. However, we also find no evidence that the reform increased tuition.  We then use transcript data from one law school to study how the 2014 reform impacted students’ course selections.  We find evidence suggesting that the reform expanded access to clinics primarily to students least inclined to benefit from them but without displacing students most inclined to benefit from them.

As I gear up to kick off another semester of traditional 1L Criminal Law instruction, I am quite interested in hearing any thoughts from lawyers, law stucdents or anyone else about “experiential” education (especially, but not exclusively, in law school).  And, of course, I am especially eager to hear about “experiential” experiences (or recomendations) that involve criminal justice and sentencing elements.