Journal of Law and Society · 1998 · 18 citations · 1 references
EducationCurriculumVocational EducationCompetency-based CurriculumCompetency-based EducationEducation LawLegal Education CritiqueLegal Education HistoryProfessional CompetenciesLegal Education ReformProfessionalization Of LawyersVocational CompetenceVocational Training
Legal practice has changed dramatically over the past thirty years, prompting a fundamental response in legal education, yet the clinical movement has contributed to gaps that the Lord Chancellor's Advisory Committee seeks to address by integrating legal skills to prepare lawyers for new economic and social challenges. The study argues that solutions must permeate every stage of legal education, demanding unprecedented cooperation between the profession and academia to integrate legal skills and address existing gaps. Making legal skills compulsory in the vocational stage proved incomplete, addressing only technical competence while leaving significant gaps in professional preparation regarding content and methodology.
In the past thirty years legal practice changed so significantly that afundamental response was demanded of legal education. Making legalskills a compulsory component in the vocational stage was an incompleteresponse. It addressed the technical competence of lawyers but leftsignificant gaps in professional preparation in terms of content andmethodology. By focusing on the educational and pedagogic implicationsof the skills curriculum the clinical movement contributed to these gaps.The Lord Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Legal Education andConduct has facilitated the consideration of a curriculum organizedaround a more imaginative integration of legal skills in order to beginto tackle these failings and prepare lawyers for the new economic andsocial challenges facing them. Solutions, however, must permeate everystage of legal education, requiring unprecedented levels of co‐operationand interaction between the profession and the academy.
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