Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law Professor and Vice Chancellor for Graduate Education at Chapman University Richard Redding’s article “The Counterintuitive Costs and Benefits of Clinical Legal Education” was recently published by the Wisconsin Law Review.

From the abstract:

Professor Jason Yackee’s recent study, Does Experiential Learning Improve JD Employment Outcomes?, finding no relationship between a schools’ clinical offerings and student employment outcomes was greeted with skepticism by the clinical legal education (hereinafter “CLE”) community. If we may tentatively conclude from the study that clinical courses fail to give students any significant leg-up in the job market, then perhaps CLE entails some counterintuitive pedagogical costs and benefits that we ought to consider. Could it come at the expense of what is nowadays often touted as being precisely its goal, which is to equip students with practice-ready skills? Contrary to what they promise to students and employers, clinics provide a relatively poor platform for students to learn and master legal skills. Instead, the often unrealized potential of clinics is that they can foster in students a better understanding and appreciation of the legal theory and analysis that is the mainstay of their doctrinal counterpart. The most meaningful, lasting, and transferable lawyering skill is knowing how to interpret, manipulate, employ, and reform legal (and relevant interdisciplinary and extralegal) theory, doctrines, and practices when applying them to solve real-world client problems. Clinical education is most effective when it actively engages students to grapple with the applications and limitations of legal theory and doctrine and the ways in which to interrogate and innovate existing law and practices. Thus, CLE can be immensely valuable, but not for the reasons typically advertised.

Read the full article.

Dr. Richard Redding currently serves as the Vice Chancellor for Graduate Education at Chapman University, where he is the current holder of the Wang-Fradkin Chair, the highest honor Chapman can bestow on a faculty member for exceptional merit in scholarly or creative activity.  Previously, he served as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Associate Dean for Administration, at the Fowler School of Law. Dr. Redding specializes in forensic issues in criminal law; juvenile justice; the use of social science research in law and public policy; the role of sociopolitical attitudes in diversity, and interpersonal and professional functioning; and the ways in which social and political attitudes influence how science is used in policy making. His work in these areas is both theoretical (or policy-oriented) and empirical. Dr. Redding has published over 75 articles and book chapters in leading legal and peer-reviewed scientific journals, including Law and Human Behavior, Behavioral Sciences & the Law, University of Chicago Roundtable, Utah Law Review, American University Law Review, Virginia Journal of Social Policy and the Law, Washington & Lee Law Review, Washington University Journal of Law & Policy, American Psychologist, Psychological Science, Psychological Inquiry, Journal of Social Issues, and the Duke Journal of Gender Law and Policy, as well as publications of the American Bar Association, the MacArthur Foundation, the University of Chicago Press, Oxford University Press, and the U.S. Justice Department. He also has co-authored or co-edited four books.