Emergence of Forensic Psychology as a Recognized Subfield 399social, cognitive, and abnormal psychology), as well as an un-
derstanding of important ethical and professional issues. The
second area wasknowledge of research design and statistics.
Third wasbasic legal knowledge,the ability to “think like a
lawyer,” learning the basic tools of law and the core substance
of the law itself. The fourth area was labeledsubstantive legal
psychology,which involves an understanding of how social-
scientific evidence is used in law. The final area, called
scholarship and training,included the experience of conduct-
ing original dissertation research. The conference participants
also noted that it would be especially helpful if additional
opportunities were provided for students to obtain appropriate
real-life experience in legislative, administrative, and judicial
settings. It has been asserted that the competent psycholegal
scholar must be “trilingual,” familiar with scientific psychol-
ogy, the law, and the psychology-law interface. This would
seem to be a most challenging training situation (e.g.,
see Bersoff, Goodman-Delahunty, Grisso, Hans, Roesch, &
Poythress, 1997).
Training
The 1970s and 1980s saw a proliferation of psychology and
law training programs. The prototype was developed at the
University of Nebraska by Bruce Sales in 1974, offering joint
PhD and JD degrees in a blended graduate program involving
the university’s psychology department and law school. Sev-
eral other joint-degree programs followed, but even greater
was the increase in clinical graduate programs that allowed
students to specialize in forensic psychology either formally
or informally. By 1980, about one-third of the clinical
psychology graduate programs in the United States in-
cluded courses in psychology and law or forensic psychology
in their curricula (Grisso, Sales, & Bayless, 1982). Shortly
thereafter, postdoctoral programs in psycholegal studies as
well as forensic clinical psychology began to evolve.
Currently a number of doctoral programs offer training in
“forensic psychology,” “psychology and law,” or “social sci-
ence and law.” The latter two concentrations, which Brigham
(1999) suggested could be called “legal psychology,” may be
located within social psychology programs, stand alone as an
area in psychology, or serve as a specialty within a general
psychology and law track. In contrast, graduate training
labeled as “forensic” typically is located within a clinical
psychology program. A survey of graduate student members
of the American Psychology-Law Society in the late 1990s
found that almost half (48%) of those who replied were in
clinical programs, while 18% were in social psychology pro-
grams, 10% were in joint degree programs, and 8% were in
applied graduate programs (Baldwin & Watts, 1996).
The way that forensic psychology is conceptualized will
have a strong impact on the way graduate training programs
are set up (e.g., see Bersoff et al., 1997; Ogloff, Tomkins, &
Bersoff, 1996: Roesch, Grisso, & Poythress, 1986). As the
twenty-first century began, there were at least five joint JD/PhD
programs at universities in the United States. But while joint
degree programs may represent the most direct route to achiev-
ing integration of psychology of law (Tomkins & Ogloff,
1990), such programs require from students massive amounts
of time, effort, and tuition costs (to two schools within the uni-
versity). Psycholegal scholars continue to debate whether it is
necessary to achieve terminal degrees in both psychology and
in law in order to be a competent psycholegal scholar, or
whether this represents an instance of overkill. Another issue
involves whether there are sufficient numbers of well-trained
scholars to staff joint-degree programs or general psychology-
law programs. Although such broad-based training seems to
presuppose the presence of several faculty members with var-
ied knowledge, it has been pointed out that it is a “cold fact that
most departments have only one, if any, faculty member inter-
ested in social science applications to law” (Bersoff et al.,
1997, p. 1304). Nevertheless, as has been stated elsewhere
(Brigham, 1999), there is a growing need for well-trained
psycholegal scholars to conduct policy development work, to
train law-enforcement personnel, lawyers, and judges, to
work on legislative committee staffs, and, as we discuss
below, to work in various phases of the legal process (e.g.,
jury selection, expert testimony, trial consultation, dispute
resolution).
As noted above, most training programs that call them-
selves “forensic psychology” are housed in clinical psychol-
ogy graduate programs. Presumably, these programs are
oriented toward applying the scientist-practitioner model to
psycholegal issues. A survey by a working group from the
Villanova Conference found that slightly over half of clinical
internship programs offered major forensic rotations, mostly
inpatient experiences with adult criminal forensic popula-
tions. Turning to the postdoctoral level, the working group
was able to identify only about a dozen postdoctoral forensic
training programs. They noted, though, that these programs
should be oriented toward producing the future leaders in
(clinical) forensic psychology (Bersoff et al., 1997).
Elsewhere, Brigham (1999) argued that it appears neces-
sary to maintain two, or perhaps three, categories to describe
psychologists involved in legal matters. A typology suggested
by Heilbrun (in Brigham, 1999) includes three basic areas:
clinical forensic psychology, experimental (researchers who
consult with attorneys and/or give expert testimony in their
research specialty), and legal psychologists (those with train-
ing in law and social science who work on broad psycholegal