MY COLLEAGUE PENNY JO WHITE on skills education at the University of Tennessee College of Law:

I had received a message from a judge asking me to take a look at a book he had written, which he described as “premised upon the fact that law school teaches nothing about how to try a case.”

“Being as how I direct the oldest continually existing legal clinic in the world, where 85 percent of our students represent clients and go to court before they graduate,” I wrote in my reply, “and direct the Center for Advocacy and Dispute Resolution, which employs more than thirty lawyers and judges who teach our students every conceivable lawyering skill from interviewing and counseling, to voir dire, to closing argument; and teach Evidence, Trial Practice, Pretrial Litigation, and Negotiation, all in a concrete, applied format—ouch! Judge, I doubt I’d be a very objective reader of the book you describe.”

The judge’s premise continued to bother me. I did read some of his book—and I’ll likely read the rest, but one statement in the early paragraphs stuck: “The law student is taught in those three years what the rules are, not how to use them.”

Not so, judge. Maybe in your day and my day, but not anymore. Maybe at your law school, but not at ours.

Yeah, if you want to learn how to try a case, we’ve got that covered.