The Harvard Law Record published an essay I wrote calling on how: (i) law students cannot adequately learn to “think like a lawyer” if the 1L curriculum provides no experiences with the reality of the legal system; and (ii) how a visiting professor’s student prison trip program blazes a trail for an alternative, experiential curriculum:
It is often said that the purpose of Harvard Law School’s 1L curriculum is to prepare each student to “think like a lawyer.” It would be much more accurate to say that the present curriculum aims to prepare each student to think like an attorney. The distinction is rarely articulated to students: an attorney is a legal representative to a specific client, while a lawyeris a member and caretaker of the legal profession, tasked with serving the justice system and advancing its public interest mission. Solely understanding important cases involving the major areas of law (Contracts, Torts, etc.) may be sufficient to “think like an attorney,” but if Harvard Law is interested in also helping each student to “think like a lawyer,” we must expand our 1L curriculum beyond solely case studies to include direct experience with the realities of the justice system.
Similarly, in the present arrangement, Harvard Law cannot ensure that its degree-holders have ever visited a prison, met an asylum-seeker, or saw what a public defender’s office looks like relative to that of a white collar defense firm. Voluntary elements of the Harvard Law experience are often sorted by what we were already predisposed to be interested in, resulting in the most important learning experiences — the future prison reformer hearing from a victims advocacy group, the future prosecutor learning from a formerly incarcerated person, the future corporate interest lawyer experiencing a union meeting or a visit with victims of corporate malfeasance, and the future government regulator meeting a startup entrepreneur — never happening. If we believe those experiences are necessary to “think like a lawyer” in 21st century America and if a Harvard Law degree is supposed to signify that its holders have been through the experiences necessary to “think like a lawyer,” then the curriculum of Harvard Law should incorporate those experiences. In short, we should put our mandatory 1L curriculum where our mouth is.
Read the full essay — Follow Professor King’s Lead: Without Experience with Legal Realities, 1Ls Left Unprepared to “Think Like A Lawyer” — here at The Harvard Law Record.