Educational Games for Law Students

This is from the Teaching Manual which accompanied the Lexis Nexis Evidence Challenge Game which was published in January of 2014. The bar for the delivery of legal education has been raised by environmental factors external to the legal academy and the legal academy must respond. As Washington and Lee Associate Dean and Professor Benjamin Spencer stated in his 2012 law review article: “law school, as it exists today, is an artifact of its past, with a structure and tradition that is rooted in history more so than being founded on rational design.” This does not mean that our current methods should be abandoned. Professor Spencer goes on to state that we should use new methods to “[supplement] traditional law school education rather than supplant it.” As legal education responds to those demands, one path opening up to pedagogical change comes through the avenue of serious games. Students need systems that can help them achieve their full potential. Well done serious games have the power to accomplish that and more.