...being an expert lawyer requires learning to interpret legal rules and use them to personal, corporate, and social ends...
Legal education in the United States has usually been experiential. For many years, it was undertaken in law office apprenticeships, the classic format for learning by doing. When legal education moved from law offices to academia, its methods changed. During a brief transitional period, law classes became static as experienced practitioners, working first in meeting halls and then in university classrooms, began reciting the "black letter" law of treatises to assembled novices. This lecture system was bound to change, for lawyering, like most professional activity, requires more than learning a set of fixed rules; being an expert lawyer requires learning to interpret legal rules and use them to personal, corporate, and social ends.