An interesting announcement was published on several Teaching and Learning listservs recently. It is from a new group that has formed to work on reform in legal education. It is called the Legal Education Analysis and Reform Network (LEARN). You will find a copy of the announcement here.
There are several things I find interesting about this announcement. First, it includes some very influential folks who have signed up to the effort, including representatives from Stanford, Harvard, Yale, and NYU. It also includes several folks not from those schools, but who have already established themselves in the field of legal education reform, such as Elizabeth Mertz (at Wisconsin) and Ed Rubin (at Vanderbilt). Overall, it is a very impressive group.
Second, it contains a well written and concise precis on the current state of legal education and its criticisms (pp. 7-10). Third, it announces a number of "proposed projects" that it states are underway in the LEARN network, including an effort to prepare a comprehensive report on efforts to implement curricular reform in law schools, a summer institute on law teaching, and a network for institutional leaders in the area.
It also addresses squarely - more so than the Carnegie report did - the importance of assessment and assessment tools, by dedicating several projects to this subject. So, for example, they have a proposed project to "assess the use of interactive classroom technology." This part seems to be focused just on clickers for assessment, and (in my view) has a somewhat limited view of how clickers can be used in the law classroom. (Has anybody read my book over there yet?) But at least they have announced a study of the subject - here is a quote on this from the document: "LEARN intends to study how this technology can or cannot be effectively used in various law school settings. The results of this study will be disseminated widely and would be expected to have significant impact on whether law schools and instructors adopt these devices, and if so, how they will utilize them."
What I find encouraging about this last bit - even if it seems a bit uninformed about the broad and effective uses of clickers in the classroom (and much other technology) - is that finally, there seem to be folks making the connection between reform in legal education and the intelligent use of educational technology. While it remains to be seen what this group can do, I think its formation and this announcement are an excellent development. Here is an encouraging quote from the conclusion of their document: "The stars have aligned now to create a prime moment of opportunity for reflective, thoughtful, meaningful and lasting change. But we need to seize the moment."
