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3L Curriculum Featured in National Journal

The National Law Journal leads its story about legal education reform with the Washington and Lee School of Law’s new third-year curriculum. Here’s a link to the story titled “Reality’s Knocking.” Among the other schools that were cited for new law curricula are UCLA, Indiana University, Duke, and the University of California at Irvine. But W&L’s program is called the boldest initiative of all by legal scholars. At least two pieces of data show the curriculum’s immediate impact: applications for admission for this fall were up by 33 percent over a year ago while the national average showed a 6.5 percent increase in applications, and a strong majority of entering law students, when asked whether or not the new curriculum was a factor in their decision to attend W&L, indicated that it had been. Said School of Law Dean Rodney Smolla in the National Law Journal article: “I suspect that a lot of students found this program particularly attractive when they saw the job climate right now.” If you haven’t already examined the new program, take a look at the special Web site that the law school has created.