Non case-study method law school Forum

[Veyron]

Anyone ever tried to start one of these? With all of the TTTs opening daily, you would think that it has at least been tried.

[Black-Blue]

The current system has actually relaxed quite a bit from traditional exclusive case study. Some classes that focus on statutory rules no longer emphasize case studies.

[Veyron]

The current system has actually relaxed quite a bit from traditional exclusive case study. Some classes that focus on statutory rules no longer emphasize case studies.

Yes, truly a travesty but has anyone tried to educate lawyers based on pre-Langdell methods?

[nealric]

I've talked to students at 4th tier schools who literally get credit for bar prep courses (mostly doing MBE drills). I doubt much serious case studying is going on in schools like that. Also, many upper-division classes in more technical subjects get away from the case method. For example, my tax LLM classes aren't really case method based. Most of the assigned reading is focused on the tax code and its supporting regulations. They will throw in a few cases where the regs and case law conflict or where there is genuine uncertainty, but we aren't usually learning the law from the cases.

My take on the case study method is that it has some value, but shouldn't be used exclusively. Being able to figure out the state of the law based on cases is an essential skill for lawyers, but it's also a relatively inefficient method for learning well-established law.