The Contextual Problem of Law Schools
The Contextual Problem of Law Schools
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法学院的背景问题
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发表时间：
2018
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通讯作者：
Eli Wald
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作者：
Eli Wald
法学院有一个背景问题。他们普遍地教授法律，忽略了上下文。通过在世纪中变化相对较小的传统课程，法学院推进了一种普遍的专业精神和专业身份的方法，使法律学生能够进入一个同质的法律的职业，在这个职业中，律师在类似的实践环境中代表类似的客户执行类似的任务。除了与法律的教育不同，法律实践随着时间的推移变得非常复杂和多样化。法律实践和律师远非普遍，而是具有丰富的背景。背景现在在法律实践中很重要：客户身份，律师身份，任务，主题和地位告知和塑造律师做什么以及他们行使职业判断。因此，法学院无视背景构成了一个重大问题，因为它误导学生，使他们无法为法律实践做好充分准备。
法律实践和法律的教育之间的不匹配需要一种背景方法。本文认为，法学院可以而且应该系统地将背景洞察力引入其课程和文化，包括其专业思想方法和使法律学生融入法律实践，将司法问题作为法律的教育的一个组成部分，使学生接触到无法充分获得法律的服务的复杂问题及其一些可能的解决方案，并提供了丰富的帐户的竞争概念的律师的职业身份和他们的互动与同样丰富的愿景的个人身份。
语境法进行法律的教育既不是梦想，也不是学术抱负。相反，它在法律的教育的过去、现在和未来都有很好的基础。正如文章所示，现实主义者对传统法律的教育的改革包括对情境洞察力的实验。目前，法学院在其主要课程核心之外，在诊所，技能课程，审判宣传课程，模拟，所需的专业发展课程，实习和体验课程中，对背景有着丰富多样的承诺。一个语境的方法要求从这个丰富的边缘学习，并把它的语境洞察到法律的教育的理论和文化的核心。
法学院的背景问题，即法律实践与法律的教育之间日益增长的不匹配，必须得到解决。对法律的教育采取一种有背景的方法是缩小差距的关键，使法学院能够更好地为学生、法律的专业和公众服务，同时也解决了人们谈论得很多的实践准备危机和（被忽视的）对司法和获得法律的服务不够重视的挑战。
Law schools have a contextual problem. They teach law universally, ignoring context. Through a traditional curriculum that has changed relatively little in over a century, law schools advance a universal approach to professionalism and professional identity preparing law students to enter a homogenous legal profession in which lawyers practice law performing similar tasks in similar practice settings representing similar clients. Except that unlike legal education, the practice of law has grown immensely complex and diverse over time. Far from universal, law practice and lawyers have become richly contextual. Context now matters in the practice of law: client identity, lawyer identity, tasks, subject matters and status inform and shape what lawyers do and their exercise of professional judgment. Law schools’ disregard of context thus constitutes a significant problem as it misleads students and fails to adequately prepare them for the practice of law.
The mismatch between law practice and legal education requires a contextual approach. This Article argues that law schools can and should systematically introduce contextual insights into their curriculum and culture, including their approaches to professional ideology and socializing law students into the practice of law, addressing questions of justice as an integral part of legal education, exposing students to the complex problems of insufficient access to legal services and some of their possible solutions, and offering rich accounts of competing conceptions of lawyers’ professional identities and their interaction with equally rich visions of personal identities.
A contextual approach to legal education is neither a dream nor an academic aspiration. Rather, it is well-grounded in the past, present and future of legal education. As the Article shows, Realist reforms to traditional legal education included experimentation with contextual insights. At present, law schools feature a rich and diverse commitment to context outside of their main curricular core, in clinics, skills classes, trial advocacy courses, simulations, required professional development classes, externships and experiential offerings. A contextual approach calls for learning from this rich periphery and bringing its contextual insights into the doctrinal and cultural core of legal education.
Law schools’ contextual problem, the growing mismatch between the practice of law and legal education, must be addressed. A contextual approach to legal education holds the key to closing the gap and allowing law schools to better serve their students, the legal profession and the public while also addressing the much talked about practice ready crisis and the (neglected) challenges of insufficient attention to justice and to access to legal services.