Law School Innovation

Practitioner sabbaticals

This week, one of my colleagues began a six-month sabbatical to work as an Assistant District Attorney.  He’s an outstanding teacher and very popular with students, recently received tenure, and did not need this experience to improve his standing at the school.  Rather, the point seems to be simply to become an even better classroom professor.  

He teaches advocacy, and his reason for taking such a sabbatical is to deepen his understanding of what happens in the “real world” he talks about in class.  He was hired shortly after law school and a clerkship, so he did not previously have a chance to get this kind of experience.

Nonetheless, this kind of sabbatical seems very rare relative to sabbaticals for scholarship.  Perhaps, at least at those schools which focus on practitioner training, more of a balance would be a good thing. 

-- Mark Osler

New Kindle Being Unveiled Today

Scott Kirsner, Boston Globe, How Amazon's Kindle reader might be improved; LA Times, Amazon's new Kindle 2, please read me a story

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