Emotional intelligence and legal education

The traditional knowledge-based law school curriculum is slowly giving way to one that increasingly exposes students to various lawyering skills. None theless, legal educators are generally averse-or at best ill equipped-to su pport that training with the empathic and psychological skills good lawyeri ng demands. The author discusses how emotional intelligence is essential to good lawyering and argues that it can and should be cultivated in law scho ol. The article draws upon three examples of popular culture to explore bot h the absence and possibilities of interpersonal intelligence in the practi ce of law. The author also describes her own law school's current project o f re-imagining legal education and explains how the development of emotiona l skills might be incorporated into that vision.