Crossing Boundaries: Legal Education and the Challenge of the New Public Interest Law

Abstract

The article discusses contemporary legal practice and how new understandings of how the law can emerge from empirical information about current approaches to legal issues. It presents the argument that a new public interest law is emerging to deal with current legal problems in a contemporary context. The new public interest law requires a rethinking of the relationship between public interest goals and mainstream practice. Legal education is an integral part of constructing legal practices, and is now confronted with the challenge of changing is pedagogy to reflect the new practice of law. The article describes how a new framework is emerging, and how some law schools are beginning to revise their curriculum to reflect this new framework. It closes with a discussion of the barriers to embed these innovative projects more generally in law schools.