A BETTER BEGINNING: FAMILY LAW IN THE FIRST YEAR OF LAW SCHOOL

The American Bar Association's Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar's Standards Review Committee has focused law schools' efforts to modify their curriculum with an appeal to focus on outcomes and assessments. A cornerstone of the outcomes and assessments discussion is skills training. The committee's call for more skills training has prompted family law faculty to consider innovative methods to bring that training into substantive courses or to bring the substantive curriculum into a skills course. This essay discusses how law faculty are incorporating family law doctrines into first‐year legal research and writing courses.