Higher Education Under Pressure: What Will the Future Hold?

In the absence of a dramatic shift in their approach to legal education, law schools are approaching the last days of Rome, a time when decline cannot be reversed and only the precise date of the final fall is to be determined. The role of marauding Germanic tribes will be played by new legal education competition whose emergence is enabled by recent technological developments. The new competition will be highly flexible, unencumbered by expensive legacy costs and, because it will reside mainly online, so scalable that no traditional, place-based law school will be immune from its impact. There will be much to lament should history take this course. When Rome fell, Europe became worse in many ways; similarly, in some ways the quality of legal education is likely to become worse, too, should new competitors emerge triumphant. For persons who wish to save the place-based law school, it is tempting – but a great mistake – to deploy this likelihood as a talisman that might, if wielded with enough vigor, by itself preserve the status quo. To the contrary, in fact, salvation lies not in asserting the superiority of the status quo, but in recognizing its weaknesses – and then fixing them. With a striking uniformity, generations of well-considered reports have agreed that those shortcomings may be summarized as a failure to teach the majority of the skills needed to succeed as a practicing attorney. For traditional law schools, the solution to the challenge of the internet age is, first, to migrate online whatever content can effectively be delivered there; second, to make extensive use of the physical building to deliver a premium educational experience that online providers cannot copy, one which emphasizes the practical skills that have for so long been ignored; and, third, to establish the premium experience as the new and regulated norm. Adherents of the status quo will object that it will be too difficult to follow this path. The objection presupposes that there is an easier route to survival. There is not. The management of the bookseller Borders determined that building an online presence was too difficult, and focused instead on the traditional methods of selling books. Borders now exists no more. Unlike Borders, traditional law schools still have the option – if only for a short period of time – to accept the challenges of the age. If the option is declined, the law schools‘ attachment to the comfortable ways of the past will similarly doom them.

This is a paper written in response to Professor Brian Tamanaha’s Failing Law Schools. Much of the book is laudable for highlighting the serious structural, policy, and moral issues confronting legal education today. However, I disagree with several of Professor Tamanaha’s ideas for reforming our system. In this paper, I write from the perspective of a tenured legal writing professor teaching at a for-profit fourth tier school, in fact, one of the schools that Professor Tamanaha repeatedly implies are the problem and not the solution for the legal education crisis. Part One addresses the idea, which dates back to 1921, that students at lower-tiered schools should be able to receive a different education (impliedly lower quality) than those students matriculating at higher ranked schools. Part Two counters Professor Tamanaha’s dichotomous view of legal scholarship and teaching, arguing that scholarship and legal theory carry a unique practical value for students, particularly in the context of a non-elite legal education. Part Three considers Professor Tamanaha’s puzzling claim that clinical faculty and legal writing faculty must accept less job security and unequal pay in order to help save legal education. Part Four of this paper presents an alternative explanation as to why students might choose to attend law school, even with the deep economic hardships involved. In terms of the continuing value of the J.D. degree, both Professor Tamanaha’s narrow economic analysis and the predominant counterarguments (e.g., you can do anything with a law degree!) miss the point that, for many, a law degree carries cultural value that operates apart (but sometimes in tandem) with economic capital. The idea that we should impose restraints on the ability of students to obtain a law degree, if they so choose, is somewhat paternalistic and at odds with the free market aspects of his analysis. The paper concludes by briefly developing social policy arguments that explain why we must work on reducing the institutionalized elitism that afflicts the legal profession and its educational system. Legal education must be reformed. But my suggestion is that we look for ways to make it better—less elitist and less hierarchical—as well as cheaper.

Washington University Journal of Law Policy, 2014

insights about lawyering competencies and experiential legal education; the shifting nature of legal practice in the United States; a decrease in law jobs; changes in the economics of the legal profession that challenge the current cost of legal education; a dramatic drop in law school applications and admittees; increased competition for students among law schools; increased market demand for-practice-ready‖ law graduates; and increased numbers of law grads going into solo and small firm practice. 3 Current concerns about legal education echo long-standing criticism of the upper-level curriculum, particularly the third year of law school, when, as the saying goes, law schools-bore you to death.‖ 4 As long ago as 1883, Harvard Law Dean Ephraim Gurney lamented in a letter to Harvard President Charles Elliot, one of the inventors of the modern Langdellian law school:-If you[r] LLB at the end of his three years did not feel as helpless on entering an office on the practical side as he is admirably trained on the theoretical, I think he would begrudge his third year less.‖ 5 Economic, social, and political conditions make it impossible to ignore the clamor for reform. Today's climate invites a deeper examination of law school curricula and pedagogy, with a focus on the-sequencing of doctrine, skills and values across the curriculum designed to prepare students for practice. .. .‖ 6 Legal education is at 3.

Yale Review of Law and Social Action, 1971

2010

Thank you for the opportunity to return to Rutgers to participate in this symposium on legal education. This building is a wonderful facility; it is a real jewel in the Rutgers crown. Many other members of the Rutgers educational community come to the Rutgers-Newark Law School and immediately become infected with atrium envy. But what goes on here is much more significant than the law school's physical beauty. Your law school is noted for its commitment to excellence in scholarly research. Rutgers-Newark is also recognized for its innovative teaching, particularly its very early commitment to clinical teaching.1 But most significantly, all of us in legal education recognize that Rutgers-Newark Law has, for many generations, an extraordinary and sustained commitment to social justice.2 All of this makes Rutgers-Newark Law a very special place indeed. This is a striking moment for the legal profession and for legal education. The state of the economy has placed incredible stress on all components of the legal profession. That stress must be felt by law schools. Continuing a long-term trend, our colleagues in the practicing bar will ask us to bear more of the effort of training our graduates to be more fully-formed practitioners from the moment they graduate. The profession's desire to shift costs coincides with calls within the academy for fundamental change in the goals and modes of instruction in legal education.3 The Carnegie Report is only

Yale Rev. L. & Soc. Action, 1970

2012

Akron law review

Publicity about law schools for the past several years has been consistently bad. The underlying problem with legal education is the mismatch between what legal employers, law students, and clients need from law schools and what too many legal educators want to give. This essay explores this phenomenon, and how law schools need to prepare students better for the practice of law today and in the future, and engage with the legal profession to meet society's legal needs.

Alberta Law Review, 2014

One law professor takes a stab at imagining an ideal law school of the future and describing how to get there. The Essay spells out a specific possible vision, taking into account changes to the demand for legal services and changes to the economics and composition of the legal profession. That thought experiment leads to a series of observations about values and vision in legal education in general and about what it might take to move any vision forward.

The recent energy for reforming legal education focuses on curricular changes that expand students' understanding of what law is, move beyond adjudication and the courtroom, introduce broader forms of knowledge, and develop a wider range of skills. These well-intentioned and carefully analyzed programmatic initiatives may nevertheless founder because of the cultural mismatch between these proposals and the institutions they seek to change. In this essay we argue that successful reform requires taking account of the culture of competition and conformity that permeates law schools. By culture we mean the incentive structures and peer pressure, dominant rituals and unspoken habits of thought that map the physical and psychic terrain for a majority of both students and faculty. That cultural mix exerts a constant pressure to make comparisons along a uniform axis. As a result, the requirement to conform will often trump the invitation to explore. We identify the features of conflict,...

2006

American legal education produces tens of thousands 1 of well-trained attorneys who provide competent legal service to the public. Despite our success, the system of legal education is on a path to ruin because of the confluence of American Bar Association (ABA) accreditation, U.S. News and World Report (U.S. News) influence, and Association of American Law Schools (AALS) hegemony. The system of legal education is fundamentally broken not because of the legal education produced, but because of the social and economic cost to the students and the public. The students have too few price choices and far too much debt while the public has legal services that are too expensive to provide meaningful representation for a significant portion of the population. Moreover, as preferred pedagogical and institutional choices have evolved into baseline accreditation requirements, the ability to reach a broadly diverse group of law students has been stymied. The public is being priced out of legal services, 2 and the racial disparities threaten the credibility and stability of our legal system. 3

2019