What it means to “think like a lawyer.”

Nordic Journal on Law and Society

The article addresses the role of legal theory in legal education. Today, a multitude of perspectives is present within legal theory and, as a subject, it is not as distinct as it is sometimes claimed to be. It is evident when considering syllabuses in the Nordic countries that nearly all LLM programmes have ambitions to teach legal theory as embracing a multitude of theoretical and methodological perspectives. This multitude of perspectives promises adaptable content for the subject of legal theory in various legal contexts, and could facilitate a reflection on how knowledge is acquired and why. The challenge addressed in the article is the presence of explicit or implicit ideas from the subject of legal theory as comprising a coherent “legal method” and a specific list of accepted theories. The persistence of such ideas is scrutinised in this article with help of the concepts of “professional knowledge” and “scholarly knowledge”. In order to navigate the complex field of legal the...

Legal Scholarship and the Political. In Search of a New Paradigm, 2020

Does anyone still care about the theory of law? While the humanities have seen appeals to demystify the certainty of theoretical knowledge, or to perceive theory as a dangerous invention best left alone, we take the entirely opposite view that theory should be nurtured and its relationship to the everyday should be sought out. Yet this cannot be theory understood in an absolutist manner.

Yale Rev. L. & Soc. Action, 1970

European Journal of Legal Education, 2006

The Law Teacher, 2018

s Inn, 25 th May 2018). An edited version was published in 52 The law Teacher (2018) pp. 241-59. LORD UPJOHN LECTURE, 2017 Rethinking Legal Education 1 William Twining* "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." (Mark Twain)'Look at Me ___ I had no legal education' (Lord D......

Australian Journal of Law and Society, 1988

This paper was presented to the Macquarie Law School Seminar on Legal Education, held in August 1979. It discusses the origins and development of university law schools throughout the Anglosphere. It explores signs of resistance to judicial and professional hegemony over legal education and advocates greater autonomy for law teachers. The paper was published some years later in the AJLS as an historical document in an issue devoted to legal education.

2012

The article dzallenges the empirical claim that suggests that the legal skills needed to succes-?folfy practice law are not-and cannot be-learned at law schools, and contrasts it with the conceptual claim that indicates that the legal t.asb needed }or practicing law presuppose a legal theory-or at least requires a link between theory and practice. Hence, the dual claim-empirical and conceptual-is that legal philosop~y is an important part of a legal curriculum and necessary to bridge, rather tlzan to deepen, the existing gap between theory and practice.

University of Pittsburgh Legal Studies, 2018

This Essay consists of an invitation to participate in conversations about the future of legal education in ways that integrate rather than distinguish several threads of concern and revision that have emerged over the last decade. Conversations about the future of legal education necessarily include conversations about the future of law practice, legal services, and law itself. Some of those start with the somewhat stale questions: What are US law professors doing, what should they be doing, and why? Those questions are still relevant and important, but they are no longer the only relevant questions, and they are not the only places to start. What about other legal educators, meaning those who teach and train in legal services worlds but who don’t teach the professional practice of law or the delivery of traditional legal services? What about those who are involved deeply in the production and distribution of law, legal services, and legal information but who are not, themselves, lawyers? Why start with current teachers; why not start with current or future students, or current or future clients, or current or future institutions, or current or future sets of values? Expand the communities of interest and identities of potential participants not only beyond elite US law schools, and not only beyond the private law firms that constitute BigLaw, but also beyond the US and beyond North America. The invitation goes out, in short, to a much broader audience than US law professors, and it is framed in broad but pragmatic terms.

2014

The time is rife to encourage law teachers to evaluate their individual subjective views of the law before embarking on another study of best-suited methodologies for modular teaching. This article does not aim to entertain the various methodologies of legal education in order to determine a best-fit or fit-for-purpose standard of legal teaching. It rather examines the epistemological importance of the law teacher's intrinsic view of law, and its translation in legal education, thereby recognising the continuous transformation of exploratory educational discourse. The article purports that the personal views of law held by a law teacher are expressed in the way law is interpreted and articulated to students. In illustration of the above premise, we refer to three general types of law teacher. The first type honours the positive law, thereby preserving the recognition of contextualised doctrinal institutions of the law. The second, and most sought after in the contemporary contex...