Legal Education's Perfect Storm: Law Students' Poor Writing and Legal Analysis Skills Collide with Dismal Employment Prospects, Creating the Urgent Need to Reconfigure the First-Year Curriculum

Abstract

This article addresses concerns about the quality of legal education, specifically law schools’ perceived failure in teaching legal writing and critical thinking skills. The solution suggested is, instead of teaching rhetoric or legal reasoning as a separate course (or integrated with a school’s legal research and writing course), for law schools to adopt the Iowa model of integrating the teaching of these skills into first-year casebook courses.

Keywords: legal education, legal writing, legal rhetoric, critical thinking