Back to the Future of Clinical Legal Education

Abstract: The premier strength of legal education resides in its dual identity as an academic department of a university and a professional school training future practitioners. This dual identity, which gives law school its unique blend of the intellectual and the practical, can support law graduates as the legal profession undergoes a profound restructuring. Traditional classroom education, when focused not on revealing legal doctrine but on cultivating foundational skills of analysis, interpretation, synthesis, and reasoning, will benefit law graduates even in an altered legal practice environment. Clinical education-which engages students in the multidimensional enterprise of representing clients to inculcate a wide range of generalizable skills and public service values-will need to assume a larger role in tomorrow's legal curriculum. Because clinical learning emerges from yet transcends specific, holistic, lawyering contexts, it can enable law graduates to adapt to transformation in the legal profession of the future.IntroductionA Zen Buddhist story depicts a rider on a horse that is galloping at a tremendous pace, as if rushing to an important destination. A bystander shouts out, "Where are you going?" The rider replies, "I don't know. Ask the horse."1In some respects, legal educators are riding that runaway horse. The legal profession is undergoing a seismic shiftand it is difficult to determine exactly where it is headed. There is increasing commentary on the sources and contents of this shift, suggesting that it is animated by changes in social, economic, and cultural forces such as the internationalization of markets, the incursion of technology, and a series of economic and global cataclysms occurring since the turn of the millennium. 2 Even if changes in legal practice were in the offing anyway, these forces have intensified the quantity and the quality of change.If law schools do not want to ride into these changes without a deliberate sense of purpose, if they do not want to go the way of Borders Books-a company closing many of its doors because it was not nimble enough to respond to the technological era3-then it is imperative that they join those who have begun considering what the likely changes in society and the legal profession will mean for the future of legal education. 4 One of the few things that seem certain is that law schools will not weather societal changes comfortably by remaining the same.5 The traditional law school model now appears economically and education- ally unsustainable.6 The emerging concern is that law schools cost too much and deliver too little of what our brave new world requires,7 a scenario that calls on legal educators to rethink the academic enterprise.As with other kinds of challenges, attitude and approach matter. As vexing as it is to reconceive legal education, it is a viable endeavor, especially as law schools already have significant strengths to draw upon in facing the future, even if they need repackaging and reconceptualizing. 8 In the reconstructive process ahead, reformers should ask the following questions: How can legal education survive these profound changes? How can it thrive in the world of the future? And how can it strive to contribute to the ability of the world to thrive in the decades to come? In addressing these questions, there is a strong argument that contextual educational methods-most notably clinical education-will play a leading role in helping law schools of the future to survive, to thrive, and to strive to contribute to meeting society's needs.To avoid the irony of examining the role of contextual legal education out of its context, Part I of this Article examines contextual legal education in general, and clinical legal education in particular, within the overall educational mission of the law school. Part I highlights the role that law school's dual identity, as both a professional school and an academic institution, can play in enabling legal education to navigate the uncharted waters in which we are already immersed. …