Touro Law Center Featured in The Chronicle of Higher Education

Touro Law Center is featured in a great article in The Chronicle of Higher Education on how law schools are changing their curricula to better focus on practical lawyering skills. The article features the first-year Court Observation Program and our own Professor Lynne Kramer.

The article reads, in part:

"Touro's program represents part of a broader soul-searching at law schools, which have been accused of being stuck in a model that is more than a century old. For years practicing lawyers and judges have complained that law-school graduates lack the skills they need to adequately represent clients.

In 1992 the American Bar Association issued a report that urged law schools to identify skills, values, and ethics lawyers should possess and adapt their curricula accordingly.

Since then, many law schools have offered more externships and mock courtroom exercises to give students more hands-on practice.

. . .

As the Touro program shows, sometimes little things make a difference. Ms. Kramer, who spent 25 years as a divorce and family lawyer, can be irreverent with her students but is unfailingly polite with the court employees, including the officers who, as they escort students to the courtrooms, offer running commentaries about what they're about to see."