The Carnegie Report The Carnegie Foundation has undertaken extensive studies
on the education of the professions. Such a study of legal education
has not taken place for decades, and was well overdue. The Foundation's
two-year study of legal education involved a comprehensive look at
teaching and learning in American and Canadian law schools today.
Intensive field work was conducted at a cross-section of 16 law schools
during the 1999-2000 academic year. The study provides an opportunity
to rethink "thinking like a lawyer"—the paramount educational construct
currently employed, which affords students powerful intellectual tools
while also shaping education and professional practice in subsequent
years in significant, yet often unrecognized, ways. The Report focused on how law schools prepare students for
the practice of law, in particular on the daily practices of teaching
and learning, and compared these practices with other professions
(medicine, teaching, nursing, engineering, etc.). It also examined the
daily practices of teaching and learning with contemporary learning
theory. In Canada and the U.S., law schools have developed as
academic institutions. Practical experience has been largely deferred
until entry into the profession. The traditional focus has been on
legal knowledge and reasoning. However, skills at practicing law and
the relations of legal activity to morality and public responsibility
are not given much attention in law school curriculum. The Report
offers an alternative view point that focuses attention on engaged
practice – law is seen as a tradition of social practice that includes
particular habits of mind, as well as distinctive ethical engagement
with the world. Students need opportunities to learn about, reflect on,
and practice the all-encompassing responsibilities of legal
professionals. The other professions employ well-elaborated case
studies of professional work while law schools, which pioneered the use
of case teaching, only occasionally do so. Lack of attention to
practice and the weakness of concern with professional responsibility
are the unintended consequences on a single, heavily academic pedagogy
to provide the crucial initiation into legal education. The authors of the Carnegie Report found that there are “three apprenticeships” for law students: They endorse an integrative strategy of the three apprenticeships, rather than an additive strategy. The core insight behind the integrative strategy is that
effective educational efforts must be understood in holistic terms.
There is a view that by teaching the practical and ethical
apprenticeships, you take away from the cognitive apprenticeship.
However, the report contends that all three apprenticeships would be
strengthened through their integration with another. To view a summary of the reports finding's, click here. To order a full copy of the report, click here.
In 2007 the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching released a report called Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law. This book has galvanized a debate in the United States that has been growing for some time.
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