The University Library: A Driving Force for Reform in Legal Education?†
Abstract Information skills training offers opportunities for gradually embedding changes in legal education programs and to bring about the integration of legal knowledge, skills and experience. If shared goals are formulated in a spirit of close collaboration, curricular changes and revisions will potentially have a greater effect and be more likely to enhance long-term programs. The university library can serve as an ideal base for the use of information technology such as web portals and content integrated search engines, which in turn will help refocus attention on the use of library facilities. The harmonization and maintenance of this apparatus, however, requires both a new form of cooperation and a re-interpretation of the legal education curriculum. This article compares several library developments which could prove important for legal education from a Dutch perspective, and also examines library education in the law schools of the United States of America.
Information Literacy in Law: Starting Points for Improving Legal Research Competencies
Abstract Improving information literacy in law translates into developing methods for improving legal research competencies among lawyers, law students and the general public. This paper summarizes four approaches for improving legal research skills of prospective lawyers in U.S. law schools and discusses their successes and shortcomings to help assess their potential application in an international environment. These approaches include: (1) offering mandatory law school courses in legal research; (2) adding elective (or optional) credit based courses in legal research; (3) offering non-credit legal research support to law students at their point of need; and (4) testing prospective lawyers on their legal research competencies as a requirement to being licensed to practice law.
Rediscovering the Lawyer School: Curriculum Reform in Wisconsin
From America's inception through the Civil War, legal education was entirely practice-oriented; it was based not on academic study at a university, but consisted almost exclusively of apprenticeship with a practicing lawyer. As the study of law moved from apprenticeships in law firms to university-based law schools, the method of study became more theoretical. After the 1870s, Langdell's case method became the dominant model of studying and teaching the law. Gradually, law schools became more abstract and theoretical, and less grounded in the practice of law. Increasingly, practicing lawyers and judges complained that law schools were not preparing law students who were ready for the practice of law in terms of either the skills or the values necessary for effective practice. This article explores the history of legal education, the calls for greater relevance, and the ways law schools such as the University of Wisconsin can reform their curricula to respond to these concerns.