Inclusive Socratic Teaching

For more than fifty years, scholars have documented and critiqued the marginalising effects of the Socratic teaching techniques that dominate law school classrooms. In spite of this, law school budgets, staffing models, and course requirements still centre Socratic classrooms as the curricular core of legal education.

In this clear-eyed book, law professor Jamie R. Abrams catalogues both the harms of the Socratic method and the deteriorating well-being of modern law students and lawyers, concluding that there is nothing to lose and so much to gain by reimagining Socratic teaching.

Recognising that these traditional classrooms are still necessary sites to fortify and catalyse other innovations and values in legal education, Inclusive Socratic Teaching provides concrete tips and strategies to dismantle the autocratic power and inequality that so often characterise these classrooms.

A galvanising call to action, this hands-on guide equips educators and administrators with an inclusive teaching model that reframes the Socratic classroom around teaching techniques that are student centred, skills centred, client centred, and community centred.