...The Lawyering Method identifies the component parts of each lawyering task, engages students in the collaborative performance of that task, then takes student performances as texts for structured, collaborative reflection and critique...
In the 1970s, New York University’s increasingly prestigious law school began to develop a new model of legal education. In doing so, it embraced and expanded the Langdellian principle of experiential learning but rejected Langdell’s negative judgment about practice. Under the leadership of Anthony Amsterdam, a practitioner and scholar of Olympian quality, it made what have come to be known as Lawyering or simulation courses a fundamental part of every student’s legal education.
Amsterdam and his colleagues realized that contextualizing and expanding on the doctrinal analysis that was practiced in Langdellian classes required dissecting and rehearsing all of lawyering with sophistication comparable to that which had been brought to doctrinal analysis by Langdell and his followers. Law needed vocabularies for understanding legal process and systems for developing the skills of establishing goals, interpreting facts and rules, and moving strategically through professional interactions.
Over time, the Lawyering program developed a theoretical framework and exercise sequence for a) building experiential and collaborative learning into every phase and every specialty of legal education and b) developing career-long habits of structured critique and self improvement. The Lawyering Method, refined over more than thirty years, identifies the component parts of each lawyering task, engages students in the collaborative performance of that task, then takes student performances as texts for structured, collaborative reflection and critique. In each learning sequence, students are challenged, and then carefully mentored as they work collectively to identify the complex demands of legal practice, cultivate the intellectual flexibility required to meet each demand, perform in role as professionals, and then engage in supervised, qualitative critique of their experiences. With each exercise, new factors and uncertainties help students build on the active, text-based legal reasoning of the Langdellian classroom to develop a broad understanding of law-in-use and a system for life-long self-critique and professional growth.