that don’t improve your educational experience — then ask whether the risks of deliberately and strategically withdrawing from (not losing) accreditation outweigh the benefits. The ABA has been talking about switching to output measures in accreditation for years now, and we shouldn’t expect any progress for more years to come. You might not want to wait that long.
These are five places where a law school can begin the process of exploiting its own vulnerabilities and reinventing its own model. Whether and to what extent these are practical for any given law school will depend on its specific circumstances. I can only say this: the traditional law school model simply doesn’t serve the legal market anymore. Whether it’s new entrants or familiar incumbents, someone is going to replace it with something better — and soon.
Jordan Furlong delivers dynamic and thought-provoking presentations to law firms and legal organizations throughout North America on how to survive and profit from the extraordinary changes underway in the legal services marketplace. He is a partner with Edge International and a senior consultant with Stem Legal Web Enterprises.
6 Responses to “How to kill (or save) a law school”
Adam ZieglerDecember 6, 2012Insightful post, as always. One other possible
suggestion worth considering: law schools can do more to help match their students and underemployed grads (our excess supply of legal talent) to the underserved client populations in their communities (our unmet demand for legal services). Transform the lose-lose proposition that Dean Wu (UC Hastings Law School) discussed in his recent letter to the ABA Task Force on Legal Education, into a win-win solution, in which students get better practical experience and skills training and clients get help they
otherwise would have to forego. Law schools are perfectly positioned to help make that happen.
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Susan GainenDecember 7, 2012Insightful. Thought-provoking. If law school
can be re-imagined and renovated, there may be no better time than right now to begin.
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M.December 7, 2012Brilliant, innovative, and thought-provoking post. Hopefully,
someone out there is listening.
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Old Fashioned Law ProfDecember 10, 2012Let me get this straight. We best
serve our students by dropping our ABA accreditation which is required to take the bar examination in almost every state (and particularly in the one in which my law school is situated and all the surrounding states)? Somehow I think not. Until you convince all the state and federal folks that ABA accreditation is not necessary that part of your post is a bit misleading. You simply cannot gain employment as an attorney in the legal field (or create your own position) without a license, and most every state requires graduation from an ABA accredited law school to sit for their bar examination.
I would also say that the theoretical and analytical grounding I received in law school prepared me very well for my 18 years of practice in one of the most intricate fields of law prior to returning to law school to teach. I would hate for the next generation to loose the abilities instilled by our classic legal education model which made American lawyers so respected the world over in favor of a trade school approach to legal education. In short, we don’t need to train students to fill in the blanks on a pleading form or land sale contract, but should strive to give our students the tools necessary to analyze and resolve the complex, difficult, and unanticipated problems of our time.
I do, however, agree that the USNWR “ratings” are counterproductive and would love to be able to ignore them — but tell the recruiters, the bar, the alumni, the donors, and, yes, the students and applicants that and see if they belive you. A distressing number of recuiters will only recruit at a 1st or 2nd tier school (top 100). And yes, I teach at one of them. I hate having to deal with those “rankings” and they disserve many worthy applicants who deserve a chance to succeed in law school, tie our hands in other ways,
and disserve the legal community in too many ways to count. Focus your ire on that, and I’m with you all the way.
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Practical PrawfDecember 12, 2012Putting the “Computational Legal Studies”
BLOG [a BLOG operated by a Michigan State Law Assistant Prof (in his 2d year of teaching and who practiced law NOT A DAY in his life) and 2 non-lawyers and which is NOT a program of Mich State Law or an anything close] in the same category as W&L’s Third Year Program [a major curricular shift by a major law school embraced by its entire faculty and dozens of alums, prominent judges, practitioners, etc.] is exceedingly inappropriate. Arguably, things like Computational Legal Studies (trying to glean meaning from the frequency of word usage in the US Code or in Supreme Court opinions and the like) are exactly what is WRONG with legal education, not a model for how to reform it. The W&L program on the other hand (or NE’s coop program or a few others) that focus on teaching students not only theory and doctrine but HOW to ACTUALLY BE LAWYERS, are on the right track.
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William HendersonDecember 13, 2012Until the requirement of ABA
accreditation is broken in each state, no competition can take place. The goal of a law graduate is to pass the bar exam and be admitted. If a few states begin to allow persons to take the bar exam without graduation from an ABA accredited school, and thereby gain the license to practice, then competition will begin to force the law schools to consider change. ABA accreditation creates monopoly power in the hands of the law schools to prevent any competition.
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