Editing Juris Doctor (section)

====Revolutionary approach: scientific study of law====
[[File:Joseph Story.jpg|thumb|[[Joseph Story]], United States Supreme Court Justice, lecturer of law at Harvard and proponent of the "scientific study of law"]]
In part to compete with the small professional law schools, there began a great change in United States university legal education. For a short time beginning in 1826 Yale began to offer a complete "practitioners' course" which lasted two years and included practical courses, such as pleading drafting.<ref name="Moline-2003" />{{rp|page=798}} United States Supreme Court justice [[Joseph Story]] started the spirit of change in legal education at Harvard, when he advocated a more "scientific study" of the law in the 19th century.<ref name="Moline-2003" />{{rp|page=800}} At the time he was a lecturer at Harvard. Therefore, at Harvard the education was much of a trade school type of approach to legal education, contrary to the more liberal arts education advocated by Blackstone at Oxford and Jefferson at William and Mary.<ref name="Moline-2003" />{{rp|page=801}} Nonetheless, there continued to be debate among educators over whether legal education should be more vocational, as at the private law schools, or through a rigorous scientific method, such as that developed by Story and [[Christopher Columbus Langdell|Langdell]].<ref name="Stein-1981">{{cite journal
 |first=Ralph Michael
 |last=Stein
 |year=1981
 |url=http://digitalcommons.pace.edu/lawfaculty/228/
 |title=The Path of Legal Education from Edward to Langdell: A History of Insular Reaction
 |journal=Chicago-Kent Law Review
 |volume=57
 |issue=2
 |pages=429–450
 |access-date=25 May 2008
 |archive-date=3 March 2021
 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210303194828/https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/lawfaculty/228/
 |url-status=live
 }}{{rp|page=445}}</ref>{{efn|For detailed discussions of the development of [[Christopher Columbus Langdell|C.C. Langdell's]] method, see la&nbsp;Piana (1994)<ref name=la-Piana-1994>
{{cite book
 |first=William P. |last=la&nbsp;Piana
 |year=1994
 |title=Logic and Experience: The origin of modern American legal education
 |place=New York & Oxford
 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]
 |url=https://www.questia.com/read/90428553?title=Logic%20and%20Experience%3a%20The%20Origin%20of%20Modern%20American%20Legal%20Education
 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090506183208/http://www.questia.com/read/90428553?title=Logic%20and%20Experience%3A%20The%20Origin%20of%20Modern%20American%20Legal%20Education
 |url-status=dead
 |archive-date=6 May 2009
 |via=
}}
</ref> and Stein (1981)<ref name=Stein-1981/>{{rp|pages=449–450}}
}} In the words of Dorsey Ellis, "[[Christopher Columbus Langdell|Langdell]] viewed law as a science and the law library as the laboratory, with the cases providing the basis for learning those 'principles or doctrines' of which law, considered as a science, consists.{{' "}}<ref>
{{cite journal
 |last=Ellis |first=D.
 |year=2001
 |title=Legal education: A perspective on the last 130&nbsp;years of American legal training
 |journal=Washington University Journal of Law & Policy
 |volume=6 |page=166
}}
</ref> Nonetheless, into the year 1900, most states did not require a university education (although an apprenticeship was often required) and most practitioners had not attended any law school or college.<ref name="Moline-2003" />{{rp|page=801}}

Therefore, the modern legal education system in the United States is a combination of teaching law as a science and a practical skill,<ref name="Moline-2003" />{{rp|page=802}} implementing elements such as clinical training, which has become an essential part of legal education in the United States and in the JD program of study.<ref name="Sonsteng-2007" />{{rp|page=19}}