A LIVING CASEBOOK · 50 YEARS OF METHOD
John Sonsteng and Damien Riehl, with Abby Breit, Editor
Law school, legal aid, or law firm? Use the practicum on your own cases
The Legal Practicum System is an innovative teaching and learning tool for law students and lawyers. The Practicum System is designed for lawyers at any level.
Try an experiment. Take a risk. Receive immediate feedback. Try again. Any time. No waiting in line. No coffee breaks. 24/7. A classroom of one. It is yours whenever you want.
For more than 50 years, a group of exceptional people — law students, law teachers, lawyers from firms large and small, judges, and non-lawyers — have worked together to develop the Legal Practicum System to assist law students and lawyers to learn, build, enhance, experiment, test ideas, strategy, and techniques, and take risks without fear of negative consequences.
Emerging technologies will help lawyers at all levels provide legal services quickly and at appropriate cost. Justice for all.
The Legal Practicum System is an open resource tool for all lawyers and law students at no cost. It may be edited and used to develop, learn, enhance, and perfect legal practice and legal management skills.
The Legal Practicum System is available to law students and lawyers throughout their careers, at any time, and is adaptable to any jurisdiction.
THE THREE MODULES
The groundwork — how to think, read, and carry yourself as a lawyer before the substance arrives.
Open moduleThe trades of lawyering, learned on real-shaped matters across ten practice areas.
Open moduleThe business of law and the professional judgment that turns a graduate into a practitioner.
Open moduleTHE APPARATUS
A recorded client interview — Devon Halvard, charged with DWI — played back turn by turn, then assessed with feedback. See the consultation room and the debrief in action before you bring your own key. Scripted sample, not a live AI client.
Play the sample26 surveyed lawyering skills — 108 tasks with subtasks, FOLIO mappings, and the matters that exercise each.
Browse skillsTen practice shapes, each in the fictional State of Meridian and again in a real jurisdiction. Full packets, case files, rubrics, and interviews.
Open the libraryEllingboe & Ravndal LLP — the two-lawyer practicum firm. Fees, realization, AR aging, trust accounting, and budget, charted and taught.
Open the ledger PRACTICERecognize practice and revision in a record kept on your device.
View my practice recordCompare time worked with time you could bill, and record your contribution to each deliverable. Records remain in this browser until you export them.
Record weekly hoursThe six recurring course handouts — time sheet, engagement letter, interview plan, settlement plan, portfolio, and reflective report — each presented as a Planning Guide and Checklist with assessment and feedback notes. Print-ready.
Open the templatesMeet the people who run the practicum, shape it around your school, and find free matters and templates to begin.
Every exercise here ships with a machine-readable rubric and a revise-and-repeat loop. Faculty coach students through live work with people. Technology supplies more practice repetitions under faculty supervision. Technology gives the first-pass assessment and feedback, at any hour. The simulated client interviews, rubric feedback, and firm dashboard below support that practice.