Reshaping First Year Legal Education: The Experience in the Law Schools

Abstract

In a follow-up to his article (with Albumbaugh), "Functionalizing First Year Legal Education: 25 U.C. Davis L.Rev. 21 (1991)", the author examines various attempts by American law schools to organize part or all of their curricula along functional lines. The author's basic idea is to develop courses and specializations which emphasize how lawyers really think about problems: generally they use cross-cutting concepts such as reliance and bargain instead of traditional common law pigeon-holes such as contract and tort. Two worthy outcomes of such restructuring might be the elimination of redundancy in legal education (the same idea appearing by a different name in different common law categories) and the de-mystification of legal doctrine.