My goal in this essay is to offer a “self-help” remedy for faculty members and administrators interested in responding to the Carnegie Report’s call for greater emphasis on experiential education, but uninterested in waiting for the committee deliberations, reports, faculty votes, and tough resource trade-offs that lie ahead. We drag our heels at our own perils, and to the serious disadvantage of our current students. What follows is a description of nine changes that individual faculty members and deans can make now to improve the professional education of law students. While each initiative when viewed in isolation may seem modest, collectively they could have a huge impact on our programs.

Many states follow the Model Penal Code approach and recognize the renunciation defense, without defining its precise contours or limits. Other states are still struggling with the issue, and have yet to accept or reject the renunciation doctrine. After surveying state and federal law across the United States, the authors unpack proposed policy arguments for and against the renunciation defense. The authors conclude that none of the pragmatic justifications advanced by the ALI in support of the doctrine survive close scrutiny. Moreover, renunciation is theoretically inconsistent with the social harm caused by an actor’s participation in a conspiracy, in contrast to the absence of harm present with other inchoate offenses such as incomplete attempts. In the authors’ view, renunciation is best understood historically as a special form of legislative grace designed to counteract some of the harsher aspects of conspiracy law. The authors argue that states grappling with this issue should decline to recognize a renunciation defense, and instead focus their attention on eliminating some of the more notable inequities of conspiracy liability.

The author addresses the controversial subject of impeachment disclosures from both an institutional and a substantive perspective. A great deal of legal scholarship aims directly at the content of proposed law reform without considering the threshold and pivotal question of what institution is best situated to administer those duties imposed. The author argues that as a matter of institutional competence and legitimacy, the courts are far better equipped to enforce criminal discovery obligations through rules of procedure than bar disciplinary authorities are capable of doing through attorney conduct rules. With regard to the substantive issue - that is, how much impeachment evidence should be turned over by a prosecutor before a guilty plea - the author proposes a categorical approach to impeachment disclosures that will mediate the tension between the defendant’s interest in accurately assessing the strength and weaknesses of the government’s case, and the state’s interest in protecting the privacy and security of potential witnesses.