Towards a Theory of Assimilating Law Students into the Culture of the Legal Profession

The purpose of this article is to propose a unified perspective of teaching legal skills courses and to show how mastery of legal skills progressively educates students from the initial academic experience in legal writing to the threshold of practice in a clinical program. This paper concentrates on skills teaching in legal writing and judicial externship courses. Specifically, this article will: (1) identify the legal skills taught in legal writing and judicial externship courses; (2) discuss different teaching approaches with a focus on the social perspective; and (3) introduce various teaching techniques that are effective methods of acculturating law students into the practice of law.