Addresses the important need for new lawyer preparedness.
Wolters Kluwer Law & Business’s Legal Education group today announced the launch of PracticeTrack, the first online training solution intended exclusively to help law students develop real-world lawyering skills in order to improve their employability. “As a result of ongoing evolution in the legal marketplace, when evaluating job candidates law firms are now placing an increasing premium on first-day readiness in key job requirements,” said Vikram Savkar, Vice President & General Manager of Legal Education group. “Traditional law school classes often are designed to produce academic, rather than practice-oriented, outcomes. Wolters Kluwer’s PracticeTrack gives law schools an effective bridge to prepare students to meet employers’ expectations, allowing participating schools and their graduates to better differentiate themselves in a competitive legal market.”
PracticeTrack currently contains courses in business and financial skills, created by Prof. Robert Rhee of the University of Florida Levin College of Law, and legal writing and research, created by Prof. Deborah Bouchoux of Georgetown University. Both courses are based on the new associate training that Profs Bouchoux and Rhee have provided for leading law firms for a combined forty years. The courses cover a broad range of topics including memo and brief writing, legal citation, financial statements, and business strategy. Each course contains between 10 and 15 modules, each combining video lectures, presentations, thorough textual reviews, and automatically graded assessments. Forthcoming courses will cover contract drafting and intellectual property.
Instructors of practical lawyering courses may assign PracticeTrack materials as part of their curriculum, or students may utilize them on a self-guided self-paced basis during their preparation for summer internships and job searching. Michael Gregory, Director of New Markets for Wolters Kluwer’s Legal Education group, said “PracticeTrack has been designed in response to extensive market research with law schools and law students. As a customizable digital environment, PracticeTrack can support the broad set of approaches that law schools are seeking to take for practical training, including formal courses, clinics, externships, and simulations.”
Prof. Bouchoux adds “Practice Track equips students with the critical skills they will need to succeed from their first day on the job after law school. As a result, law firms will save time and expense that are currently required to train new associates.”
PracticeTrack is available for purchase on a subscription basis by law schools on behalf of their students. For more information about PracticeTrack, visit [http://www.wkpracticetrack.com]
For more information about Wolters Kluwer’s Legal Education group, visit www.wklegaledu.com
