Last week, I was busy and so I tried to follow the discussion; in fact, I had a few discussions in “real space” with colleagues about some of the posts. But I did not post anything; so here goes, a little late.
It’s been a fantastic discussion on a wide array of […]

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The Madisionian Mobblog comes to a partial end today. The blog will now return to a mix of pieces on law, technology, and society. Nonetheless, there may be additonal posts on the topic so stay tuned for those.
In addition, I want to take a moment and thank all involved with this event. I had a […]

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In reading the posts in this mobblog one thing comes through: right now many factors push on law and legal education. One could say the game is over. One could say stay the course. One could say radical change is required. Whether such positions are accurate or apply to all depends on the facts. Nonetheless, […]

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Perhaps appropriately on the last day of this fascinating stream of mobbloging, I thought I would try and offer a partial defense of the-way-things-are-right now on the law review front:

Don’t romanticize the alternative: When one begins to publish in the peer-reviewed world, the whole romantic notion of blind review becomes somewhat tainted — in all […]

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The conversation here at Madisonian about law schools and “what kind of institution” they should be has been fascinating.  I regret coming in so late. 
I have probably spent more time thinking about what kind of institution my law school — Notre Dame Law School, a Catholic law school — should be than about what kind […]

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Today is the last day of Madisonian’s full-time attention to the future of legal education, and Jim Chen has energized the mobblog with a sweeping, challenging post about focus.  Again, I want to broaden and narrow the conversation, all at once.
No Tags

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With apologies to Larry Lessig, whose classic law review article title I am snagging and translating quite faithlessly, and with kudos to Al Brophy, who has stated the financial realities as bluntly as anyone in this mobblog has.
What kind of institution do we want our law schools to be? Legal educators should strive to […]

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Several posts have grappled with the basic structure of law schools. Al evokes the idea of a mini-university. Nancy has offered that a required pre-law curriculum would improve law schools as students would have better interdisciplinary training and better writing skills. Mike has asked “Why not offer undergraduate and graduate legal education programs in […]

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The prompt for this mobblog is “What kind of institution do we want a law school to be?,” and most of the posts have focused on content and method — what and how do law schools teach, what and how do law faculties study, how many law schools do we need, and where?
Dan Filler’s post […]

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Ok. So Michael’s gone to the heart of this business: what’s going to happen with the legal profession and how will that affect law schools? (I was going to write how will law schools respond, but I think that implies more agency on our part than we’ll have. The profession is going […]

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The idea of what is the social vision of law schools has permeated many of the posts here. These views remind me of a class I took in high school called Individual Humanities. We read The Odyssey, Oedipus Rex, Hamlet, St. Joan, Don Juan, Faust, Don Quixote, Man and Superman, and Huckleberry Finn. We also […]

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I’m not endorsing this post from a theory-loving prof outside of law schools, but I think it provides some good warnings about exactly how far we want to go in standardizing educational experiences:
These days, one of the more frustrating and tedious aspects of working in an institutional setting such as a secondary school, a […]

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An insightful (and concerned) colleague of mine has noted the paucity of female participants in this mobblog - and for her it reflects, more generally, the ways in which women’s voices are underrepresented in the law school community.  So let me throw up a surely controversial idea for discussion.  Is there a place for a single sex, […]

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Now that both Mike and I have broached the possibility that economic change could radically affect the demand for attorneys in the future, let me say a little about the relationship between the law school and the market.
Optimistically, we might praise “market discipline” for law schools. Law firms want to reduce clients’ expenses; governments […]

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Consider the existing law school as an institution, or as kind of community, and as faculty we are touched with the warm fuzzies.  I share many of those fuzzy thoughts, but my contrarian streak will out.  Law professors cannot construct or reconstruct legal education without accounting for its place in law and justice generally.  Do […]

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There are many jaw-dropping statistics about globalization, but this estimate by a renowned economist may be the most worrisome for U.S. attorneys:
Practically all kinds of employment that do not require physical presence can now be offshored. According to Alan Blinder, this amounts to 22–29 percent of all US jobs. [C]ontinued retraining and improvements […]

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Thanks to Deven all of us are thinking this week about an issue that we should indeed always be reflecting upon: realities and ideals of law schools. A law school is a multitude of things and has different meanings and consequences for different people. Law schools are workplaces, learning centers, research institutes, communities, and sometimes […]

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I’m excited to join everyone in this intriguing conversation about law schools.  Thanks to Deven, Mike, and all the other participants.  As a member of the inaugural faculty of a new law school, I often have the joy - and headache - of contemplating the question of what Drexel Law ought to be.  I think […]

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I believe law schools have many noble missions, including the education and preparation of students as future legal professionals, contributing to the marketplace of ideas and the evolution of law and policy through scholarship and other forms of intellectual endeavor, serving the public through pro bono activity, public service, and civic engagement, and contributing to […]

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Thanks for the invitation and the opportunity to muse about the future of law schools.  I am currently on our dean search committee, so I’ve been in a lot of conversations lately about delivering quality legal education.  Reading these posts, I’m also uncomfortable with the idea that all law schools should aspire to the same […]

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