Lessons from the Carnegie and Best Practices Reports: A Look at St. John's University School of Law's Street Law Program as a Model for Teaching Professional Skills

(Excerpt) The attitude toward professional skills in legal education has improved significantly in recent years. Law schools now recognize that there is a need for greater attention to professional skills instruction. Many law schools are experimenting with teaching methods other than the traditional case style of teaching. In fact, one of the leading academic institutions in the United States, Harvard Law School, has already changed its curriculum to offer more skills-based courses to their students. Other law schools have also followed this trend. In 2007, two very influential institutes published reports that favored this new approach to legal education. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching published its report, "Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law", and the Clinical Legal Education Association published its study, "Best Practices for Legal Education" (collectively, the "Reports"). The Reports focus, in part, on the academy's role in preparing students for practice. They conclude that law schools must devote more attention and resources to helping students develop the professional skills they will need in practice. The consensus was that the traditional case method of teaching, alone, is insufficient in training students. The Reports recommend for law schools to broaden the ways in which they teach their students to become lawyers by, for example, incorporating "settings and pedagogies different from those used in the teaching of legal analysis." They suggest that law schools can unite formal knowledge and the experience of practice by offering non-traditional curricular offerings, such as clinics, externships, simulations, and other similar opportunities. St. John's University School of Law currently offers a unique externship opportunity that effectively integrates doctrine and practice in the way the Reports advance. The Street Law program allows law students to teach a practical law course to high school students in the local community of Queens, New York. The course, including its name, was inspired by and modeled after the Street Law High School Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center, which was the first law school to offer a program of this nature. Using St. John's Street Law program as an illustration, this article demonstrates how non-traditional course offerings can provide powerful professional development opportunities for students. St. John's Street Law program uniquely incorporates many of the recommendations of the Reports. The students' in-depth approach to the law and contact with the community positively shapes their ability to become responsible and skilled legal professionals. Thus, the program serves as an excellent model for how law schools can integrate the teaching of knowledge, skills, and values into their curricula. First, this article describes the history of Street Law in the United States and the current offering at St. John's. Next, it discusses the relevant parts of the Reports and their recommendations for rethinking legal education. Finally, it explains how the Street Law program meets many of the Reports' objectives. While other clinical, externship, or experiential courses might also advance the Reports' objectives, the Street Law Program is unique in that students learn legal doctrine and practice important lawyering skills mainly through their teaching of the law to non-lawyers.

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