| This study examines the relationship between selected educational experiences at Harvard Law School and students' perceptions of the acquisition of selected analytic and critical skills. The primary questions this study addresses are: (1) What analytic and critical skills do students perceive they acquire through their legal education? (2) What law school experiences are most closely associated with the perceived acquisition of analytic and critical skills?;This study draws from two sources of data, a self-report instrument and a written test. The self-report instrument, which was administered to the entire third year class, measured students' perceptions of acquisition of selected reasoning skills and students' ratings of the effectiveness of selected educational experiences. The written test was administered to randomly chosen samples of first and third year students, and required them to analyze a problem presented in a case study.;The findings were, predictably, small, but some of the more noteworthy are: (1) There is a disparity between the learning experiences which students most value and those which are most closely associated with perceived acquisition of analytic and critical skills. (2) The experiences which students rate most highly tend to be those which get them involved in practical, hands-on work, while those which correlated most highly with the perceived acquisition of analytic and critical skills are more traditional classroom experiences. (3) The classroom experiences which are most closely associated with the perceived acquisition of analytic and critical skills those which engage students in class participation and use a well defined fact set, and those in which the professor controls the material to be covered. (4) The ratings students give to the learning that occurred in the second year are more closely related to the perceived acquisition of analytic and critical skills than ratings given to the first or third years. |
