AALS Curriculum Committee

I'm currently serving on the Curriculum Committee of the American Association of Law Schools. Under the leadership of Judy Areen and Ed Rubin, we're looking at various ideas for promoting change in legal education. You can read more about what Dean Rubin is doing at Vanderbilt here and here.

My own particular focus is on teaching courses related to transactional lawyering. Broadly speaking, I think we do a great job teaching doctrine and policy, but there's room for improvement in giving law students the full set of tools they will need to succeed in practice. In the transactional context, this translates into designing new ways of teaching the principles of contract design, drafting, and negotiation. This might include a more balanced combination of traditional doctrinal courses, conceptual transaction-oriented classes (like Deals and my new course on Venture Capital & Private Equity) and skills-oriented classes or clinics.

For more information on Deals-related course innovations, see this webpage (a work in progress - comments welcome!). You might also check out my 2002 Essay, Deals: Bringing Corporate Transactions into the Law School Classroom.