The Responsive Law School
US law schools today are subjected to a lot of criticism, much of it deserved. One big chunk that is not always deserved is this: Law schools aren’t sufficiently in tune with the needs of the market. That’s the topic of this post and others to come: What, when, how, and why should law schools care about the market?
For the moment, I set aside other common critiques of legal education, many of which are deserved. That it’s too expensive. That it crushes the souls of aspiring lawyers. That it produces too many lawyers, or too few. That law schools are staffed by underqualified teachers and undertrained scholars. That law schools are staffed by undercompensated adjunct faculty and overqualified PhDs. That some schools focus too much on theory and not enough on the necessaries of practice, while others focus too much on bar exam-readiness and not enough on law on the ground.
I want to focus instead on the problem of what law graduates today are trained to handle and what they’re not trained to handle. I’ll use that beginning to edge into discussion about the future of higher education generally. Narrow start, big finish.
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