Bottling Experience: How Simulations Can Jump-Start a Legal Career

Lawyers develop and grow through the experiences they gain in practice. That’s why lawyers who have been practicing longer charge a higher hourly rate. More senior lawyers have more experiences to draw when helping clients solve problems. And it’s that experience that junior lawyers wish they could somehow bottle and consume to bypass the uncertainty and doubt that plagues them in their initial years of practice.

But what if we could jump start aspiring lawyers by helping them build a toolbox of experiences to draw on in their early years of practice? That’s where experiential learning comes in.

Learning by Doing

At its simplest, experiential learning is learning by doing. Law schools offered experiential learning through legal clinics since 1970. In clinic, students work with real clients on real problems. They gain experience on file management, client interviewing and court appearances.

Over time law schools have expanded their experiential learning opportunities. These include internships, externships, mooting, pro bono, civil and criminal trial experiences, and courses teaching legal skills such as legal writing and negotiation. But this doesn’t mean that every law student is able to participate in experiential learning. These opportunities often require small class sizes and are more resource-intensive than traditional doctrinal courses.

Simulations: The Underused Power Tool

So how can we expand access to experiential learning and help more students build their toolboxes? One underused experiential learning methods is simulation. Simulations are a great learning method for one big reason: students can make mistakes without real-life consequences. They’re learning in a safe space, not risking harm to an actual client. Student can also provide the opportunity, that real world settings do not, to experience the same scenario again.

Simulation allows students to actively engage in activities that replicate real-world legal scenarios. Through simulations, students can apply their existing legal knowledge, practice essential legal skills, develop professional identify and hone their critical thinking and professional judgment. Simulation also offers an opportunity for students to reflect on and analyze their experience.

Simulation can be incorporated as a standalone activity in a course or form the foundation of an entire course. Well-designed simulations can expose students to the most common practice scenarios. Every experience large or small provides students with additional tool to add to their toolbox. If provided throughout their law school journey, students could accumulate a multitude of experiences they can draw on as they enter practice.

Although good simulations do take time and effort to develop, they are typically less costly than maintaining a legal clinic. As a result, they can be scaled more easily, allowing more students to benefit from experiential learning. With advances in artificial intelligence, there’s also an opportunity to develop innovative and cost-effective simulations to support legal education.

Jump Starting Careers

The power of experiential learning—especially simulations—lies in its ability to bottle legal experience and share it with students. By the time they graduate, law students could leave with a rich toolbox of experiences that would jump start their legal careers and allow them to better manage the uncertainty and doubt of early practice.