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- Title
Creating opportunities to "prepare, perform, and reflect" in a doctrinal family law course.
- Abstract
This article details "why" and "how to" use in‐depth lawyering simulations in a doctrinal Family Law course. Students are placed in‐role as lawyers engaged in a specific lawyering task: negotiating a divorce settlement on behalf of a client, representing a client in a child custody mediation, and interviewing and counseling a client to revise a draft premarital agreement. Incorporating these intensive lawyering simulations into a doctrinal course advances numerous pedagogical and curricular goals. The article explains the instructional design for each simulation, from assignments and assessment to legal doctrine, specific lawyering skills introduced, and structured reflection and debrief. Key points: The goal of legal educators should be to help law students become good lawyers.Family Law is a course ideally taught and learned experientially by using an integrated approach to the three apprenticeships of professional education: studying doctrine, developing skills, and forming professional identity.Integrating experiential pedagogy—the opportunity to prepare, perform, and reflect—into the doctrinal classroom by using in‐depth simulations advances the goals of a professional education.Simulated lawyering tasks push students to higher levels of learning because students must synthesize and manipulate doctrinal knowledge in the context of a specific legal practice situation.When reflection is built‐in as an intentional component of simulated lawyering exercises, students can practice skills and habits that are essential for high performing professionals.Simulations can function as formative assessments and foster collaboration and teamwork.
- Subjects
DISPUTE resolution; CUSTODY of children; DIVORCE mediation; LEGAL education; LAW schools; LAW students; LAW teachers
- Publication
Family Court Review, 2022, Vol 60, Issue 4, p777
- ISSN
1531-2445
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/fcre.12675