Teaching Health Law: What We in Law Can Learn from Our Colleagues in Medicine about Teaching Students How to Practice Their Chosen Profession

In this column, Professor Bard draws from her experience of teaching in both United States medical schools and law schools to compare contemporary approaches to medical education with contemporary approaches to legal education. Bard posits that during the last thirty years, the approach to medical education has shifted to provide more practical and skills training, while the approach to legal education has remained more static. Bard conjectures that the fundamental difference between medical education and legal education today is that medical schools teach students to practice medicine while law schools teach students to study law. Because the majority of law students will practice law, not become law professors, Bard argues that the legal profession should follow the medical profession’s lead and focus more on teaching law students to practice law, rather than focusing on teaching them how to study the law. By pointing out the differences between the current approaches to medical and legal education, Bard raises fundamental questions about the proper role of legal education, and questions how legal education can best achieve the goal of preparing law students to join the legal profession.