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The Ambivalent Role of Experiential Learning in American Legal Education and the Problem of Legal Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

David M. Siegel

Extract

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Recent criticism of American legal education has focused on its being theory-driven rather than practice driven, which either produces or reinforces a divide or gap between theory and practice. Yet two features of American legal education expressly draw upon experiential learning, one directly by sending students into experiential learning situations (legal clinics) and the other indirectly by bringing instructors who are engaged full-time in active practice into the classroom (i.e. adjunct faculty). If skills development is a feature of American legal education, to what degree can, or should, this be transplanted to other systems of legal education? Are American experiential techniques of legal education meaningful elsewhere?

Type
Section 2: ‘Geared Toward Practice?’ Assessing the Current Law School Race to Legal Skills-Building
Information
German Law Journal , Volume 10 , Issue 6-7: Following the Call of the Wild: The Promises and Perils of Transnationalizing Legal Education , July 2009 , pp. 815 - 822
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 by German Law Journal GbR 

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