事实调查——被法学教育遗忘的领域

法学教育在培养法学院学生作为律师所需的技巧———如调查事实、整合所发现的事实及构思有说服力的事实理论的技巧———方面的成效不尽如人意的情况可谓司空见惯。笔者身为法学院的一名诊所教师,将在本文中对作为一种重要律师职业技巧的事实调查的价值进行探讨,并介绍可用来获取与当事人之处境有关的信息的两种方法———常规调查和非常规调查。

It is no great surprise that legal education did not do a very good job of providing law students with the skills that they would need as lawyers, for example, the skills for fact-finding, organizing the facts discovered, and designing persuasive factual theories. In this article, the author, as a clinician in law school, discusses the values of fact-finding as an important lawyering skill, and introduces two methods for obtaining information related to a client's circumstances-informal discovery and formal discovery.