Disentangling Correlation from Causation in Addressing the Contemporary Challenges of the Law School Curriculum

The disconnect between the actual curriculum of law schools in the United States meeting the ABA Standards for Accredidation and the multiple calls to reform that curriculum in order to create “practice ready” lawyers and increase bar passage is national in its scope and has led to considerable tension both in and out of the academy.   I wrote this piece , Not Your Parents' Law School, last February to put the balance of classroom and experiential learning in context, but the on-going calls to increase bar passage, lower costs, cut a year out of the curriculum, and increase hands-0n skills instruction continue to create a climate of considerable dissonence.   If that wasn't hard enough, we are trying to address these issues in an environment where everyone involved has not just their own opinion, but their own facts.  Baskin Robbins wouldn't launch a new flavor based on  evidence equal to the paucity of reproducible research that supports either the claims about the scope of legal academe's problems or the proposals for solving them.  

Over the next weeks I will highlight the facts in dispute and address this disconnection and dissonance in a way that questions correlative explanations of low bar passage and decreases in employment opportunities.   By the end of the month, I hope some readers will feel comfortable wondering whether we are putting too much emphasis on simple correlation and will be asking questions about what legal academe, and any other interested party, can do to first accurately describe the problem, then identify causative factors, and finally develop evidence based (and assessable) strategies to mitigate it. (Spoilers, it’s going to involve the help of experts who do math).

Equally, I look forward to sharing sources that can shed light on the question of why the increase in skills instruction hasn’t resulted in an increase in employer satisfaction. Spoilers, the last point will involve reading an excellent piece by Dean Wendy Collins Purdue of the University of Richmond School of Law that discusses this employer dissatisfaction as global.

And I'm still going to write about Zika.