Welcome back to Trivia Tuesday, Clear Admit’s weekly peek into a leading law school. Today, we’re taking a look at Northwestern University Law School’s Plan 2008, a multi-year initiative created to alter the legal education provided at Northwestern to better suit the legal profession’s needs.
With data from studies and insights from working groups, Northwestern’s Plan 2008 has been developed to focus on increasing the breadth of legal education to help students gain expertise in a variety of legal topics, as well as adding more – and deeper – opportunities for experiential learning. Northwestern targeted these areas to address new realities that lawyers face throughout their legal careers, such as the fact that most lawyers are likely to have several legal jobs over the course of their career rather than stay at a single law firm long enough to become partner. To prepare law students for this environment, the Plan 2008 studies concluded that law schools need to provide a more well-rounded legal education that emphasizes general legal knowledge and reasoning, requires more robust instruction in legal writing and lawyering skills, and encourages students to develop competency in a variety of areas through participation in clinics and externships prior to graduating.
In the 20 months since Plan 2008 was completed, Northwestern has taken several steps to implement its suggestions in the curriculum. The most drastic development that arose from Plan 2008’s findings has been the creation of the Accelerated JD (AJD) degree program, a two-year degree open to prospective lawyers who have amassed real-world work experience (The Clear Admit Law Blog discussed the AJD in greater detail in June 2009). Another area that has been significantly altered per the suggestions of Plan 2008 is JD Admissions, particularly the admissions process and the criteria used to evaluate applicants. To the admissions process, the school has added an in-person interview for all applicants (strongly recommended, though not required for admission) and Optional Essays that give applicants the opportunity to discuss their interest in Northwestern Law and aspects of their background that could add diversity to the class. The evaluation criteria has been modified to follow a preference for candidates who have had at least one year of full-time work experience, and to place greater emphasis than before on the application essays when making admissions decisions.
With regard to curricular changes, Northwestern has also added or refined a number of programs to help students acquire the legal education prescribed by the Plan 2008. For example, to graduate with the Northwestern JD, students must now complete a professional skills course, as well as fulfill a four-credit hour writing requirement. During the third year of law school, Northwestern students are strongly encouraged to participate in the Bluhm Legal Clinic and Practica, which are externships that give 3Ls substantive experience working in a legal organization and require a commitment of 12 to 15 hours per week. In addition, Northwestern has improved access to courses offered through other schools within Northwestern University – especially the Kellogg School of Business – to help students develop expertise in disciplines that inform the practice of law in areas such as securities or corporate law.
Taken together, these developments are designed to prepare Northwestern graduates to be immediately employable as well as to give them the tools to successfully navigate the legal profession as it changes in the next decades. It is likely that the flexibility afforded by Northwestern’s approach will prove to be successful, as graduates will be able to use their general knowledge of the law and broad exposure to legal practice to change the course of their career as the legal profession continues to change.
