The Serpent Strikes: Simulation In a Large First-Year Course

Simulation in legal education has come of age. Once confined to moot court exercises and trial practice offerings, simulation is now accepted, in principle, as a legitimate method of instruction in many types of courses. Every recent volume of the Journal of Legal Education has included at least one article on simulation, and in the past few years published works have offered the community of law teachers advice on using simulation to teach administrative law, contracts, constitutional law, bankruptcy, civil procedure, pretrial litigation, legislation, the lawyering process, and, of course, negotiation. These writings have helped to make simulation an accessible alternative to a steady diet of Langdell\u27s case method. Other, more theoretical publications have explored the pedagogical advantages of including a substantial simulation component in a student\u27s legal education. Nevertheless, simulation remains at the fringes of legal education. Only one school, the experimental City University of New York Law School at Queens College, makes simulation throughout the curriculum a centerpiece of its educational philosophy. For most students at most law schools, simulations comprise just a small component of a small number of courses