Un-Apologizing for Context and Experience in Legal Education

Abstract

INTRODUCTION|This Essay accompanies the Fifth Annual Symposium at Creighton University School of Law addressing the rapidly changing legal profession and our not-so-rapidly changing legal education and law school pedagogy. The Symposium's focus on the changing practice of law provides an opportunity to reconsider the woefully incomplete effort by law schools to respond to the challenge of the Carnegie Report and its many preceding critics. Rather than merely pile on, however, this Essay suggests that Jesuit law schools in particular might have something to offer their colleagues-an experiential teaching style grounded in centuries old pedagogy inspired by the founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius Loyola. The core criticism of legal education states that law students are not prepared for the ethical and competent practice of law upon graduation; therefore, law schools are being judged on how rapidly they expand clinics, externship opportunities, and otherwise allow practicum based models to intrude upon doctrinal and case method courses. These modifications in the legal instructional model remain deficient in addressing the true challenge facing law schools-the inability to train lawyers who know the law (or how to find it), who understand...