Legal Commentary

From 2007 to 2009, I taught Legal Research and Writing at UC Berkeley.  Unlike some of its peer schools, Boalt doesn't use Fellows to teach LRW.  Instead, it has a group of full-time, permanent lecturers, often with substantial practice backgrounds.  (I ended up with a kind of unofficial Fellowship, since I got the job only a few years out of law school and eventually went on the tenure-track market.  But that's not the norm).  

My time at Boalt reinforced what I'd felt about LRW as a beginning lawyer and as a law clerk: if you want to litigate, LRW is the class.  (It also reinforced what I'd suspected as a law student: that LRW teachers deserve huge raises).  And it made me curious about the virtues and drawbacks of the Fellowship model.  Of course, I can see how it'd appeal to schools (which effectively freeze salaries with the perpetual turnover) and to Fellows (who take a big professional step forward).  But I'm a little skeptical that it works as well for students.  For one, practical experience is the coin of the realm for skills-based classes, and Fellowship hiring is largely based on other criteria.  Moreover, I can't imagine that the same incentives exist to hone the class and have it evolve when it's taught by a revolving group of Fellows.         

What do others think?