Comments on: What Kind of Institution Do We Want a Law School To Be?

By: Student

Student — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 01:58:45 +0000

Why can’t law schools mirror medical schools? Why can’t there be an intensive first-year of learning law at a theoretical level together with intensive evaluation of writing. PhDs in History, Philosophy, Economics and Political Science alone are more than able to teach 1L classes. Then the next two years can be involved in clinical rotations. Law schools, especially the elite ones, can start developing area-of-law tailored clinics and begin to recruit lawyers from the outside into the legal academy as clinical professors (as opposed to the PhDs and straight-research JDs who are research professors). This way the University can generate income by having their clinical professors engage in billing schemes and these profits can be used to expand research faculty. Clinics would serve to house both research professors and clinical professors and serve as a nexus between research and practice. Students would be heavily involved in the work of these clinics and, based on their performance in these clinics, they can be well-evaluated for further pursuits e.g. clerkships and/or private practice. Moreover this University model of legal practice would change the notion of the firm by reconstituting the legal elite into university professionals where the law clinic, like the University hospital, is seen as a place of public service even when lawyers and doctors might be paid well. Indeed if Skadden Arps makes over $1 billion in annual profits, surely the University could be an ideal place to channel those profits, which can be further invested and distributed to faculty on the basis of research and clients.

The level of education today is one where professors devise 3-hour exams to ensure that their burden of improving student writing and thinking is kept to a minimum and that their time for being left alone to do pithy research is maximized.

I have had a number of professors use Examples and Explanations as the basis for their exam questions. But they get away with this because they have tenure. This isn’t education, it’s privileging mediocrity and hurting students. The system of exam-evaluations privileges such professional negligence.

Students should be writing and engaging in advocacy from the start.

By: Nancy Rapoport

Nancy Rapoport — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 17:14:38 +0000

I enjoyed all of these comments, and they’re adding to my understanding about some massive disconnects in law schools between what law professors like to do and what law students may want or need us to do. More on that in a moment.

By: Stephen M (Ethesis)

Stephen M (Ethesis) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 11:38:59 +0000

I think one of the problems with making changes in law schools is that there are two ways the changes can go:

1. Towards metrics that will improve a school in the ratings and that just happen to be things that most law professors know how to do and like to do

2. Towards things that students and lawyers often suggest but that are things many law professors are not comfortable with and have little experience in.

That hit me when the assistant dean where I went to law school remarked one day that they needed a class or two oriented towards small firm practice — something that none of the professors had any experience in but that was where the vast majority of law students ended up.

The no. 2 type classes also tend to take a lot more time from those teaching them.

I took a criminal trial practice class. There were only fifteen students and it took two professors and three T.A.s working at it pretty hard. We did either video or writing assignments twice a week, and got feedback individually and as a group, as well as classes, instruction and context. That meant about fifteen or twenty video sessions and about fifteen graded written assignments.

On the one hand, Orange County reserved one of its three clerk positions for someone who took the class. On the other hand, it was a lot of work to teach and most professors would not have the actual background to teach it well.

The same is true of paraclinical classes vs. clinics.

E.g. http://adrr.com/law0/rf6/family.htm

You make a great case for context — which is exactly what the old pre-law programs were intended to provide. I’m all for additional applied tools as well — if they are presented in ways that actual lawyers in normal practice would apply them.

By: JR

JR — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 10:01:34 +0000

I got steered over here from Volokh as well. As someone starting as a 1L in the fall, I’ve been accepted and offered a scholarship to Washington & Lee, and accepted to GW and Georgetown. I received a letter just yesterday describing the proposed change to the 3L curriculum at W&L and, you’re right, I did appreciate the choice it offered.

…which is why I plan to pass on W&L and attend Georgetown instead. I’m well aware of the adage that the study of law bears little resemblance to the practice of law, but I really do view the next three years as a chance to develop my thought processes more than a vocational education. I’m sure other students will take the opposite view, but I really don’t want to learn the rote mechanics in place of the underlying philosophy. (Admittedly, I’m probably selling W&L’s 3L experience short and underestimating their 1L and 2L programs, but the impression they’ve left me with is certainly more vocational than cerebral regarding the 3L curriculum.)

Ah, the bold pronouncements and cocky, semi-coherent ramblings of a pre-1L…I hope you enjoyed.

By: Volokhreader

Volokhreader — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 23:02:11 +0000

You guys just got some very positive coverage over at The Volokh Conspiracy. Keep up the good work!