ANALYSIS: Bloomberg Law’s Top Law School Innovators for 2023–24

Law schools that are leading the way in teaching students critical lawyering skills are being honored today as part of Bloomberg Law’s 2023–24 Law School Innovation Program.

Now in its second year, the Law School Innovation Program was created to identify and acknowledge law schools that are pioneering educational innovations. Last year, the program featured many types of innovations that advanced a new approach to student instruction, including leveraging legal technology and experiential learning.

This year’s program took a slightly different approach. The call for submissions asked specifically for innovations aimed at teaching students lawyering skills that are often overlooked in traditional legal education. We’re excited to announce this year’s 12 finalists for the program.

Practical Skills Gap

Law school faculty and supervising attorneys recognize that there’s a gap between the skills that law students have upon graduation as new hires and the skills that they need most as practicing attorneys, according to Bloomberg Law’s most recent Law School Preparedness Survey.

Although the American Bar Association has issued minimum mandates for skills-based courses, most law schools don’t go beyond this minimum and continue to focus on doctrinal teachings. Recognizing this disconnect, the NextGen Bar Exam, which will be administered for the first time in 2026, will test students both on doctrinal knowledge and on what it terms “foundational skills” in order to assess their readiness to practice.

Inspired by the NextGen Bar Exam and the fact that this academic year’s 1L class will be the first to take this skills-based exam, we wanted to see what schools were doing to address the skills gap and to better prepare students for practice.

Bloomberg Law asked law schools to share examples of innovations that go beyond the ABA mandates and teach one or more of the following foundational skills:

• investigation and evaluation;
• client counseling and advising;
• negotiation and dispute resolution;
• client relationship and management;
• issue spotting and analysis;
• legal research; and
• legal writing.

Evaluation Process

Dozens of schools from all over the country sent submissions detailing programs that bridge this skills gap. These programs take many forms, from clinics and other experiential programs to changes to required coursework.

Submissions were evaluated according to a uniform rubric by a team of industry experts, including practicing attorneys, legal technology and legal operations professionals, in-house counsel, recent law school graduates, and Bloomberg Law experts.

Applications were evaluated based on (1) their degree of novelty, uniqueness, and innovative approach and (2) their impact on students and the legal industry. These top programs each have one of four defining qualities:

• Include a change to either required coursework or an approach to teaching that amounted to Changing Pedagogy;
• Look to other industries, or Beyond the Law, for new ways to approach teaching the law;
• Create Immersive Experiences for students to apply their legal knowledge; or
• Assist in Career Pathing—helping students understand what a particular legal career path entails.

2023–24 Law School Innovation Program Finalists

Our top-scoring applications from this year included 12 innovations from the following schools:

• Skills Academies Program, Brigham Young University Law School
• Legal Innovation Through Design Thinking, Harvard Law School            
• AI and Legal Reasoning, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and McCormick School of Engineering
• The Accelerator to Practice Program, Suffolk University Law School
• Lawyers for America, University of California College of the Law, San Francisco           
• Law In Practice, University of Minnesota Law School
• Daniel Webster Scholar Program, University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law
• Digital Initiative, University of Oklahoma College of Law
• Experiential Advocacy Practicum, University of San Diego School of Law
• Advanced Legal Research and Legal Technology Experiential Coursework and Certifications, University of Wisconsin Law School
• Teaching Legal Research Through Community Outreach, Western New England University School of Law
• Legal Writing, Leadership, Advocacy, and Professionalism, Case Western Reserve University School of Law 

Over the next couple of weeks, we will highlight the finalists and note those schools that received an honorable mention for their high-scoring innovations in each of the four categories listed above. Look for the next piece in the series on Jan. 26, when Bloomberg Law Legal Analyst Stephanie Pacheco will examine “Changing Pedagogy.”

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