Symposium introduction: Humanism goes to law school.

Source: (2012) Touro Law Review. 28: 1141-1188.

For some, introducing humanism into the curriculum meant focusing on developing interpersonal skills;6 for others, like the authors of Becoming a Lawyer, it was a call for a more values-focused legal education. This focus on values however, was coupled with renewed attention to the human element in the law: the humanbeingness
of teachers, students and, most importantly, clients. The book was an outgrowth of a federally-funded project based at Columbia
Law School, the Project for the Study and Application of
Humanistic Education in Law. The Project’s mission was to address
the perception that in the process of training law students to become
lawyers, for the most part legal educators at best ignored and at worst
dismissed attention to the core values that attracted many students to
the study of law. These values included the desire to “help people,”
to “make a difference,” to seek justice, to have a positive impact on
the world. The intellectual indoctrination of law students distanced
many from the ideals that provided a meaning for the work they
wished to do,o thus threatening to separate lawyers from their own
moral core. (excerpt)