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Abstract:
For nearly 150 years, American legal education was dominated by one model - large classes taught by the Socratic method. That model worked well financially for American law schools but was never demonstrated to effectively prepare students for their legal careers.

The Langdell model resisted reform effort after reform effort - starting with the legal realism movement and ending with the critical legal studies movement. However, beginning in the 1970's in the United States, the clinical movement and reform efforts in the organized bar began to remake the face of American legal education.

The Carnegie Foundation recently published an indictment of American legal education that may further the reform efforts undertaken by clinical teachers and their supporters in the legal profession. The Carnegie Foundation Report, Educating Lawyers, identified three apprenticeships that legal education should serve - a doctrinal apprenticeship, a practical apprenticeship, and a formative apprenticeship. Only the first of these three apprenticeships, the Carnegie Foundation found, was being furthered by the case-dialogue or Socratic method.

This paper considers the challenge presented by the Carnegie Foundation Report and proposes a model of combining theory and practice that addresses the concerns expressed in the Report. It proposes a model of teaching professional responsibility that combines each of the three apprenticeships. It also addresses the criticisms expressed by the Carnegie Foundation regarding assessment in legal education by proposing a model that provides extensive feedback and assessment in each of the three apprenticeship areas.

professional responsibility, legal ethics, Carnegie Foundation, experiential learning.

Abstract:
The history of legal education in the United States over the past 80 years has largely been one of hostility to part-time evening programs. As clinical legal education has grown over the past 40 years, it has treated part-time students with similar attitudes ranging from outright hostility to benign indifference. Even those clinical programs that have attempted to accommodate part-time students have largely adopted a "one-size fits all" approach in offering non-litigation models to part-time students who work full-time during the day.

In this article, Professor Chavkin identifies an evening clinic model for part-time students that breaks free from these limits. He begins by describing the impact of the current accreditation standards on the decision to offer clinic opportunities for evening students. He then reviews the results of a survey conducted of part-time students at American University. Finally, Professor Chavkin describes the efforts to implement these results at American University and the potential lessons learned for clinics that wish to serve this unique underserved student population.

clinic, clinical education, part-time, evening