Publication Date

5-30-2014

Document Type

Article

Organizational Units

Sturm College of Law

Keywords

Experiential learning, Legal education, Law school, Law students

Abstract

Experiential learning is all the rage in legal education today. And yet, educators throughout history have known that involving students in their learning and exposing them to practical applications of what they are learning increases student engagement and retention. But legal education is coming to this way of thinking somewhat late. This article, based on a presentation that the authors gave at the AALS conference in New York in January of 2014, suggests that technology opens up new possibilities for law schools by allowing students from different schools to participate in complex inter-school simulations that can, if carefully prepared, teach important lessons about lawyering skills, behavior, and provide rich opportunities for the development of professional identity. It can, in short, deepen and enrich the experiential learning opportunities that law schools offer. The article does not propose that law school faculty should teach or grade students from another school, but that the faculty can collaborate on problems that are more elaborate and complex than could realistically be produced within one school, and that students from different schools can work together as co-counsel, or in opposition to each other, in a variety of projects, with students from other schools serving as judges or arbitrators, witnesses, and clients.

Publication Statement

Copyright held by the authors. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Originally published as David I. C. Thomson, Ian Gallacher, Robin Boyle, & Amy Stein, Erasing Boundaries, Inter-School Collaboration and Its Pedagogical Opportunities, Newsletter of the LWRR Section of the AALS, Summer issue (2014).

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