Deep Learning that Lasts: Transforming Law School Learning with Some Help from Science

Abstract

What happens to law student learning after a course ends? This question has become increasingly important in an era of challenging bar passage rates and demanding law practice. While traditional legal education usually focuses on substantive law coverage and pedagogies of the professor, support for emphasizing learning that lasts has emerged in unexpected places, including the American Bar Association (A.B.A.) and learning science. The new A.B.A. assessment standards requiring learning outcomes, formative assessment and meaningful feedback align with learning science, which offers law students better strategies for advancing durable encoding, storage and retrieval of knowledge. Of equal importance for law teachers, creating a narrative of deeper student learning that lasts can be achieved without transforming the professor’s pedagogy or substantive coverage.