Humanizing Legal Education

The initiative to Humanize legal education is an effort by legal educators to maximize the well being and career satisfaction of legal professionals. There is growing concern that lawyer and law student dissatisfaction, depression, excessive work habits, substance abuse and eroding professionalism may begin in law school. Humanization of legal education studies draw a corollary between the impact of law school and the effect it may have on the attitudes, values, health and well being of law students.

Further, researchers are relating that impact to problems experienced by lawyers in the profession. The movement to humanize legal education is backed by scholarship, web-based discussion, empirical research and conferences. Innovative teaching methods are in development to minimize these risks.

Recent empirical research has linked the development of lawyer distress, to the extent it develops in law school, to a shift in one’s values.