An Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Some Curriculum Innovations in Law Schools

Abstract

This article reports the results of an evaluation of the effectiveness of curriculum innovations on third-year law students in four law schools over a three-year period. Each "program" school was matched to a nonprogram school. Students' attitudes in "program" and "control" schools were compared along such dimensions as legal ethics, professional activities, relations with clients, and more general personality measures, before and after exposure to a clinical program. Each program lasted the academic year. A standard questionnaire was administered to students in the program and control schools. The major goal of the clinical programs was to enhance the students' sense of professional responsibility so that when they entered legal practice their behavior would be more in keeping with the standards of their profession. The results of the evaluation were disappointing. The responses of the students exposed to the clinical programs did not show any significant shift in a more professionally responsible direction. Like the control students, the attitudes of the program students changed hardly at all between the first and second surveys. Exposure to clinical programs did not significantly alter students' attitudes toward professional ethics or professional behavior.