Open Access in Law Teaching: A New Approach to Legal Education

Abstract:     
The "open access" movement seeks to change our approach to the distribution of scholarship in the fields of science, medicine, the social sciences, and law. This Essay argues for the application of these principles to legal education itself. Open access would mean greater flexibility, interaction, and innovation in the creation of course materials. It would lead to new teaching methods and new forms of feedback between student and professor. Open access centers on particular legal subject areas could facilitate national and international collaboration. Ultimately, the open access law school would ameliorate the growing standardization and commodification of legal education by drawing on global pools of information while at the same time providing more localized feedback to individual students.

Keywords: Open access, open source, casebooks, legal education

Accepted Paper Series