Ten Ways to Enliven Legal Education

Abstract

Lord Denning's judgements have an enduring vivacity. An aliveness that textbook authors almost never emulate even when writing about the same legal issues. This article is a search for how that aliveness can be replicated in the teaching of law, an investigation of how to make legal education a more enlivening experience for both teacher and student. This paper is in three parts. Part I considers eight specific achievable ways to enliven the teaching of law. Part II considers incentives for excellence in teaching. If management want certain conduct from employees or government from citizens, each consider increasing incentives for that conduct and there will be meaningful change in legal education when law schools follow suit. Finally, for initiatives to flourish the institutional framework must be supportive, and so Part III looks at law schools as institutions and their role in the 1990s.