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52 J. Legal Educ. 473 (2002)
Out-of-the-Box Dialogs - Foreword

handle is hein.journals/jled52 and id is 481 raw text is: Out-of-the-Box Dialogs Foreword John B. Attanasio The Langdellian Paradigm Legal education and the law are both by nature self-critical processes. After all, from the time students first attend law school, the legal academy trains them to criticize appellate court decisions which represent the analysis of judges exponentially more experienced in the law than a budding first-year student. This critical perspective is drilled into each of us from the first days of law school. Certainly this critical attitude extends to legal education itself. From the time they enter law school, lawyers are exposed to a variety of literature that criticizes the processes of legal education. That literature is far more extensive today than it was twenty-five years ago when I began law school. Yet, ironically, American legal education has not changed very much from its Langdellian model. What goes on in most law school classrooms would be immediately recognizable to Dean Christopher Langdell of Harvard Law School, just as it is to any judge, practicing lawyer, or even businessperson with a law degree who visits a law school-virtually any law school-even for the first time many years after graduation. This sort of Rip Van Winkle effect is an interesting phenomenon. Obviously legal education has changed substantially since the time of Langdell. After all, since that time the central Langdellian idea that law is somehow a self-contained science has been hotly disputed, and at least sub- stantially displaced. We have witnessed the legal realism movement, the vari- ous law and movements, and the critical legal studies movement, among many others. These developments have deeply influenced not only legal scholarship, but also what goes on in law classrooms. For example, law and John B. Attanasio <OutofBox@mail.smu.edu>, cochair, Out-of-the-Box Committee, ABA Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, is dean and William Hawley Atwell professor of constitutional law, Dedman School of Law, Southern Methodist University. I would like to thank Kathleen Spartana, Heather Stobaugh, and Tina Brosseau for their able assistance with this essay. The essay is intended only to provide some background about the work of the Out-of-the-Box Committee. While committee members were given the opportunity to comment on this Foreword, the remarks herein were not vetted at committee meetings and do not represent the committee's views. The four papers that follow this one were each extensively discussed at meetings of the committee and at least represent provocations which we hope to discuss with the broader academic and professional legal communities. Journal of Legal Education, Volume 52, Number 4 (December 2002)