The doctrine-skills divide : legal education's self-inflicted wound

Calls to reform legal education argue for increasing skills courses and for adding skills components to existing doctrinal courses. Doctrinal teachers naturally resist. The argument asks them to give up curricular space and syllabus time in order to advance the teaching goals of someone else's course. But what if doctrinal and skills courses are not naturally occurring categories at all, but rather subjective groupings of our own creation? What if skills teaching is actually an inherent part of deep doctrinal learning? This book dismantles the theoretical legitimacy of the doctrine-skills divide, identifies its unnecessary negative entailments, and suggests better alternatives.

Today's doctrine-skills divide -- Getting real about categories -- Legal theory : realism and the nature of what we teach -- Theories of meaning : realism and rhetoric -- Theories of learning -- Category errors in legal scholarship -- The divide's disturbing entailments -- Educational entailments : learning theory & formative assessment -- Rhetoric's critique -- Gendering entailments -- Crossing the great scholarship divide -- The road that brought us here -- Choosing a better future in the classroom -- Rethinking the curriculum -- A journey across the divide.