The NYU School of Law announced a revamping of its curriculum for third-year law students earlier last week.
The law school’s dean, Richard Revesz, said the new curriculum aims to accommodate the changing practice of law, which resulted from globalization, technological advancements and the recent economic crisis.
The initiatives include study abroad options in Buenos Aires, Paris and Shanghai during students’ final semester of school, which are expected to start in spring 2014. Come fall 2013, third-year students will also be given the option to spend a semester in Washington, D.C.
These will prepare students for global legal practice, Revesz said.
The law school has also developed a program called Pathways, which will direct one of eight focused areas of study: law and business, global legal practice, litigation and dispute
resolution, tax, intellectual property, criminal practice, government lawyering and academic careers. The school will also be implementing a number of newly created programs that are aimed at increasing students’ business and financial literacy and training in leadership skills.
The changes come from recommendations made by a strategy committee that was formed in May 2011 to explore how changes in the legal field affect the Law School.
“The steps we are announcing … assure that the education we offer is keeping pace with those changes,” Revesz said in a press release.
Third-year NYU law student Judd Lindenfeld questions the extent to which these initiatives will affect NYU students because these paths of study will be optional. But he said he also sees universal benefits.
“NYU is a pretty important player in the law school world, and in the law school world, change is hard to come by. These places are pretty conservative,” Lindenfeld said. “So if a place like NYU is ready to institute changes, maybe it gives a meaningful green light for other law schools to do the same.”
But NYU Law is not the first school to receive complaints about the curriculum and change. Former dean of Stanford Law School Larry Kramer said Stanford began to modify its program in 2005.
“We started by conceptualizing the three years [of law school] differently,” Kramer said. “[Traditional law classes] are now mixed over the second and third year with other kinds of courses designed to add other kinds of essential skills. These include sophisticated problem solving, working in teams, applying analytic skills in practical settings and more.”
A version of this article appeared in the Wednesday, Oct. 24 print edition. Hannah Stern is a contributing writer. Email her at [email protected].
