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History is Past Politics: A Critique of the Legal Skills Movement in England and Wales
Author(s) -
Boon Andrew
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
journal of law and society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.263
H-Index - 48
eISSN - 1467-6478
pISSN - 0263-323X
DOI - 10.1111/1467-6478.00085
Subject(s) - curriculum , legal education , vocational education , competence (human resources) , politics , political science , law , legal profession , legal practice , sociology , pedagogy , engineering ethics , psychology , engineering , social psychology
In the past thirty years legal practice changed so significantly that afundamental response was demanded of legal education. Making legalskills a compulsory component in the vocational stage was an incompleteresponse. It addressed the technical competence of lawyers but leftsignificant gaps in professional preparation in terms of content andmethodology. By focusing on the educational and pedagogic implicationsof the skills curriculum the clinical movement contributed to these gaps.The Lord Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Legal Education andConduct has facilitated the consideration of a curriculum organizedaround a more imaginative integration of legal skills in order to beginto tackle these failings and prepare lawyers for the new economic andsocial challenges facing them. Solutions, however, must permeate everystage of legal education, requiring unprecedented levels of co‐operationand interaction between the profession and the academy.