We recognize the importance for legal professionals of practical skills and experiential learning and appreciate the difficulty of addressing these needs within the law school curriculum. But we assert that the law school owes a duty to provide for the best interests of the students whenever it makes a decision about the required curriculum. These interests go beyond the classroom experience, and they can be served indirectly if curriculum changes benefit the law school itself. But regardless of how a curriculum change is intended to benefit students, its value must be measured against its opportunity-cost -- the value of other alternative possible curricula or course requirements not implemented as a result.

Current problems with the course, identified by some or all of the undersigned, include: a lack of continuity between sections of the class; a lack of coherence between materials within sections; poor organization of course materials; poor choices of assigned reading material; poor presentation of reading material; ineffective use of recorded materials; low-utility classroom exercises; poor implementation of classroom simulations; inconsistent acknowledgement of non-realistic elements of simulation scenarios; cursory coverage of relevant substantive law; poor communication of expectations and evaluation criteria; written assignments founded on faulty premises; etc. The undersigned are divided as to the feasibility of addressing these problems.