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Although I know this thought will induce a bad reaction in many, I think law school is really pretty good at teaching people how to analyze cases and pick apart legal doctrine.
I know folks will react badly because so many of us who have been through the experience question whether law school does anything well. But once I get past the emotions that still well up when I think about first year (it still has power for me, let alone my dear friend who still recalls getting a spontaneous nosebleed upon being cold called in Contracts Class), it seems to me that Tony Amsterdam, was right when he suggested that in the old days law school taught that one thing, case analysis, over and over again (Prof. Amsterdam's article, Clinical Legal Education -- A 21st Century Perspective," 34 Journal of Legal Education 612 (1984), is always worth rereading if you have not looked in a while).
One of the advances of clinical legal education has been to help broaden the range of analytic modes and skills taught in law school. Even a person of my advanced years, who still reads news in print on paper and occasionally looks up statutes in bound, hardcover volumes, understands that the future of good lawyering is in adding value through teamwork and collaboration.
Here is my colleague, friend and former student, Michael Martin, talking about teaching teamwork and preparing law students for the future - which is quite literally really tomorrow, not ten years out.
--Ian Weinstein
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