The Future of Legal Education Reform
28 Pages Posted: 14 May 2013
Date Written: March 29, 2013
Abstract
The history of the legal profession’s self-regulation during self-identified crisis times (such as the present) is not a happy one. The profession has resisted change. When it has instituted change, such change has been directed not at the existing members of the profession, but at new entrants. Mostly, the change that has come has been forced by the influence of society, culture, economics, and globalization — not by the profession itself. These change agents include Watergate, communist infiltration, the arrival of waves of immigrants, the litigation explosion, the civility crisis, and the current economic crisis that blends with dramatic changes in technology, communications, and globalization. In every instance the profession has held fast to its history and its ways long after those ways have become anachronistic. The profession seems to repeat the same question in response to every crisis: How can we stay even more the same than we already are? Legal education has fared little better in this mode.
Keywords: legal education reform
JEL Classification: K10, K40
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation