Legal education. Most teaching courses include overviews of the application of certain aspects of the law in practice. These ideas come from sources of knowledge about law in action: practice, research and theory. One could say that today`s teaching courses are hybrids of law in force and law in action, examinations of legal content, interspersed with insights into the practical implications. Realistically trained law graduates should be more sensitive to the realities of practice and be aware of the multiple forces that influence legal decisions and adjustments and adjustments that benefit clients. For example, new lawyers facing Macaulay`s work should be better prepared to deal with their clients` responses to breaches and other contractual disputes, and be more willing to review existing contracts in a way that reflects the reality of business practices. Students trained in law and economics were exposed to the economic incentives underlying transactions and institutions (e.g. how best to structure effective venture capital deals). Clinical and simulation courses, which have grown significantly since law school, draw on or integrate legal practice and are popular with students who want to understand how legal theory knowledge is applied in real-world situations. Clinical education has another appeal, as it often involves public interest law and introduces students to the pro bono side of the profession. The partial overlaps and tensions between existing law, as taught and studied in law schools, law in action, as practiced in practice, and law in action, as studied in empirical research, have existed since the beginnings of formal legal education.
Like Yin and Yang, Law in Action and Law in the Books are defined by each other and coexist in creative tension. The website explains that solving a client`s problem “often requires looking beyond the rules and examining the overall relationships surrounding the dispute,” adding that Law-in-Action “also studies with professors whose own work explores the role of law in the world, the School of Law and Society Research.” This explanation seems largely consistent with clinical training, but it is more complex when it comes to postulating a distinction (and unresolved tension) between legal rules and the practice of law, and introducing a role for legal research into society. “As the foregoing demonstrates, today`s faculty member must be willing to conduct research and service in any area of law. Moreover, the most effective way to pursue these activities is through research guided by the concept of law in action. The distance between policy research and legal practice. Empirical and theoretical policy research is valuable to law professors as it provides sophisticated tools for teaching and policy analysis in its areas of expertise. Some law professors have dual degrees because of the value of interdisciplinary training to complement teaching, analyze public policy, and participate in legal reform efforts. But empirical research on policy and legal reform is of limited interest to law students and practicing lawyers who are more concerned with the details of legal practice. Lawyers are interested in when reforms emerge from the legislative process and come into force (unless they are involved in the reform process). Nor does legal practice involve empirical research using social science methods. Efforts to train law students in empirical research date back to the days of the legal realism movement, but have never gained much traction due to the lack of relevance to legal practice. [Note 4] Academic research that is more useful to practitioners seems both feasible and untapped and should be of interest to law students.
Legal doctrine as taught at the Faculty of Law. Law textbooks are literally law “books.” Most law courses are collections of cases, laws and regulations organized by substantive legal field or subject: tort, property, criminal law, civil procedure, taxes, companies, professional liability, etc. Each area is organized according to legal content or doctrines. Legal doctrine is relevant, but often far removed from applicable law. Law in action rarely unfolds as an ordered sequence of legal content in certain areas of law, rather the opposite, a messy sample of facets of different areas of law combined with a variety of other factors in certain contexts. Although the influence of the law is vague in various contexts, it is somewhat predictable. Models of legal influence, compliance and non-compliance exist in all areas of practice and social life. The most important sources of knowledge on contextualized legal influence are legal practice, empirical research, and social science theory.