by Jeff Bendix

The CWRU School of Law is making sweeping revisions in the way it teaches, becoming one of the first law schools in the nation to fully integrate the teaching of lawyering skills with legal theory.

Beginning this fall, the school will institute an innovative program stretching across the three years of law school, known as the CaseArc Integrated Lawyering Skills Program. It is designed to coordinate experientially-based instruction in fundamental lawyering skills, such as interviewing, counseling, fact-gathering, legal research, writing, oral advocacy and negotiation, with more traditional classroom methods for teaching legal analysis.

"This program is unique among the nation's law schools in its scope and ambition," said Gerald Korngold, dean and McCurdy Professor of Law. "It will create powerful synergies between our rigorous, classical education in legal theory and our instruction in lawyering, enhancing both areas. When our students graduate, they will be uniquely prepared to become leaders in the practice of law, public and community service and commerce."

Kenneth Margolis, professor and co-director of the school's Milton A. Kramer Law Clinic Center and chair of the task force that developed the CaseArc program said, "We think this program is really blazing new ground. All law schools teach lawyering skills to some degree, but I don't know of anyone doing it throughout law school in a planned sequence with each semester building on the previous one."

Like other schools, lawyering skills previously were taught in separately designed courses focusing on research, analysis and writing, the lawyering process, litigation-based skills and real client representation. The CaseArc program will incorporate all the elements of the previous courses while adding some features.

The program will begin with four courses, to be taken consecutively in each semester of a student's first and second years. In the first semester students will learn skills such as interviewing, fact-gathering, counseling, and objective legal writing and analysis in the context of an existing course such as criminal law. In the spring semester students add persuasive legal writing, negotiation and oral advocacy in the context of, for example, constitutional law.

In the third semester students will learn to apply these skills in the transactional context or in representing entities such as corporations, while they are studying, for example, business associations. In their fourth semester students will focus on problem-solving and strategic thinking by applying everything learned so far in a course they may select in one of the school's concentrations.

In the last part of the program, students will participate in two "capstone" skills experiences. One will be in the area of advanced legal writing, and the other will consist of participation in a real client clinic or an advanced skills course such as trial tactics in a specific subject matter.

Another unique aspect of the program, according to Margolis, is that much of it will be team-taught. Students will receive instruction from experts in legal theory and doctrine, legal analysis and writing, clinical methodology and library and database research. Each member of the team will coordinate their particular parts of the course with all the others, so students will have an integrated learning experience applying the law the way lawyers do.

Margolis said the CaseArc program has been a year in development. "Law school is primarily about teaching what practicing lawyers need for their work. In the traditional classroom, theory, doctrine and legal analysis have been emphasized. We have recognized that there are other skills students need to be exposed to. So we asked ourselves what skills we thought our graduates should have and how we could begin teaching those right from the start in a way that combines the teaching of theory, doctrine and practice skills. This way our students will understand theory and doctrine better because they see how it is applied in practice. And they will understand practice skills better because they are informed by the theory and doctrine they are learning at the same time."

The CaseArc initiative is being partially funded by a grant from the Milton A. Kramer and Charlotte R. Kramer Charitable Foundation, which has supported other key initiatives in the law school's teaching of skills.

Developing the program took coordinated effort from the school's faculty, Margolis said, and when completed it was approved unanimously. "It's been a very positive process. It really gave us an opportunity to blend our expertise. I think it's a real tribute to our faculty that a program like this could come about."

Return to the online edition of the 7-24-03 Campus News.

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