Transactional Skills Education: Mandated by the ABA Standards

Abstract

This article is based on a presentation I made at the 2018 Emory Conference. At that time and in this article, I explain why current ABA Standards require law schools to provide every student a foundation to practice transactional law. In addition, I urge individual schools to add at least one credit to the 1L Contracts course. Why? Because any graduate might join the estimated 50% of lawyers who spend all or part of their time doing transactional work. With respect to adding at least one credit to the 1L Contracts course, I was not, and am not, advocating that professors use the additional time to teach negotiation or drafting. Instead, I propose that we allocate that time to teaching foundational knowledge that builds the infrastructure for additional transactional education. We need to give students a transactional perspective.

Keywords: contracts, credit, standards, ABA, ABA Standards, parity, litigation, deal, transactional, skills, four-credit, pedagogy, equal, education, tasks, mandate, require, law, drafting, agreement