Publication Date

Summer 2024

Document Type

Article

Abstract

In any conversation about integrating opportunities for professional identity formation into the curriculum, particularly when suggesting that these opportunities be integrated into required doctrinal courses, one will hear an objection that there is no room for these learning activities. Many doctrinal teachers worry that incorporating professional identity formation opportunities or focus into classes would require sacrificing the critical time, doctrinal content, and analytical skills that are the “signature pedagogy” of law schools. Lawyering skills faculty, already managing a broad, feedback-intensive range of learning objectives, may object that their courses are the last place one can find room for one more goal. This article explores this phenomenon as “the curse of coverage”: an implicit pressure created by ever-growing bodies of law and by the concern that bar exam outcomes and in practice will depend on the faculty’s ability to “cover” a broad range of legal doctrines and analytical skills.

The article first explores the assumptions and motivations driving coverage as a primary goal of law school classes. It next identifies two fallacies underlying these perspectives: questioning the assumption that breadth of coverage is critical to learning and that the classroom is the primary location in which learning takes place. Finally, the article provides reassurance that core learning goals need not be sacrificed in order to marry professional identity formation with knowledge and skill development. Simple adjustments to our classes can provide powerful opportunities to reframe rather than abandon our questions, supplement rather than supplant our materials, and guide rather than avoid personal reflection on learning and formation.

Publication Title

University of St. Thomas Law Review

Volume

20

Issue

3

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