LEARNING BY DOING THE REAL THING: Wisconsin's Legal Assistance to Institutionalized Persons Program

The American law school, throughout its existence, has been an instrument of mass production. Today, and from the beginning, the bulk of formal legal education has been passively acquired in large classes, with only limited opportunities to learn by doing, and few chances for extended one-on-one discussions between student and professor. To be sure, some opportunities for individualized involvement in the learning process have been available, but they have been generally limited in kind and often open to only a small fraction of all law students. The Socratic method, for example, was intended to make legal education something more than a spectator sport. Participation on law review afforded a chance for individual and intensive efforts to define and seek answers to particular legal problems. Other individualized efforts included moot court participation, serving as a research assistant for a faculty member, or part-time employment with a practicing attorney. Historical as well as practical reasons probably account for the fact that mass production remains the dominant characteristic of legal education: Legal training first entered college at an undergraduate level, where mass production was the order of the day. In practical terms, mass production of lawyers is much less expensive than any of the individualized alternatives. And, besides, the best of the mass-produced graduates are so very good that it is not easy to argue that the system does any lasting harm to those who survive it. In the past two decades, however, there has been a sharp increase on the kinds and opportunities for learning by doing and the Wisconsin law student of 1984 has choices on this front that were simply not to be had a generation earlier. Two quite different approaches to learning by doing at the Wisconsin Law School are illustrated by the pair of articles which follow. The first of these approaches involves learning by doing the real thing: As many as 75 law students annually participate in providing legal services to inmates of Wisconsin correctional and mental institutions by participation in the Legal Assistance to Institutionalized Persons Program (more commonly referred to as LAIP). The second and quite different approach involves learning by doing a simulation of the real thing, as described in a speech by Professor Stuart Gullickson from which excerpts are reproduced in the last of the two articles. Prof. Frank Remington: Mainspring of the Legal Assistance to Institutionalized Persons Program (LAIP) which enables 75 law students annually to learn by providing services to inmates of Wisconsin's institutions.