There is an interesting post today on Law School Cafe talking about the relatively poor performance of Washington and Lee graduates in the job market subsequent to their introduction of their (highly touted) experiential learning third year (here). The post discusses some of the possible reasons for it. The post touches on this, but I also want to note one of the challenges that arises when you reduce the signifying function of law school evaluation - i.e., that law school grades (and admission to high ranked schools) aren't important because of what they say about what you learned, but because of what they say about your underlying capacities (both intellectual and work effort). Experiential learning tends to be associated with group work and to be less associated with the traditional grading scale. That takes away a useful market signal for those hiring law school grads to rely on. I.e., you give them relatively generic piece of information about graduates from the school (these graduates have skills training) rather than a specific piece of information about a particular graduate (this graduate was able to outperform her peers).
Whatever the reason, this post certainly sounds a cautionary note to law schools considering experiential innovation (as my own is).
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