Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T04:29:35.907Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Future and Legal Education: Are Law Schools Failing and, If So, How?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Abstract

In Failing Law Schools (2010), Brian Tamanaha recommends that law schools respond to the current economic crisis in the legal profession by reducing support for faculty research and developing two‐year degree programs. But these ideas respond only to a short‐term problem that will probably be solved by the closure of marginal institutions. The real challenge lies in the powerful long‐term trends that animate social change, particularly the shift to a knowledge‐based economy and the demand for social justice through expanded public services. These trends demand that law schools transform their educational programs to reflect the regulatory, transactional, and interdisciplinary nature of modern legal practice.

Type
Review Essay
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References

Altman, Nancy 2005. The Battle for Social Security: From FDR's Vision to Bush's Gamble. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley.Google Scholar
American Bar Association. 2012–2013. Standards and Rules of Procedure for Approval of Law Schools. http://apps.americanbar.org/abastore/index.cfm?section=main&fm=Product.AddToCart&pid=529008412ED (accessed May 11, 2012).Google Scholar
American Bar Association, Commission on Loan Repayment and Forgiveness. 2003. Lifting the Burden: Law School Debt as a Barrier to Public Service. Chicago, IL: American Bar Association. http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/migrated/legalservices/downloads/lrap/lrapfinalreport.authcheckdam.pdf (accessed May 16, 2013).Google Scholar
American Bar Association, Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar. 2013. Approved Law Schools by Year. http://www.americanbar.org/groups/legal_education/resources/aba_approved_law_schools/by_year_approved.html (accessed May 11, 2012).Google Scholar
Balderston, Frederick E. 1995. Managing Today's University: Strategies for Viability, Change, and Excellence. San Francisco, CA: Jossey‐Bass.Google Scholar
Blinder, Alan S. 2013. After the Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, the Response, and the Work Ahead. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Bok, Derek 2003. Universities in the Marketplace: The Commercialization of Higher Education. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Braun, Denny. 1997. The Rich Get Richer: The Rise of Income Inequality in the U.S. and the World. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.Google Scholar
Bright, Stephen B. 1997. Neither Equal nor Just: The Rationing and Denial of Legal Services to the Poor When Life and Liberty are at Stake. Annual Survey of American Law 1997:783836.Google Scholar
Campos, Paul. 2012. Don't Go to Law School (Unless): A Law Professor's Inside Guide to Maximizing Opportunity and Minimizing Risk. Independently published.Google Scholar
Castells, Manuel. 1996. The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, vol. 1: The Rise of the Network Society. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Cesca, Bob. 2009. Keep Your Goddamn Government Hands Off My Medicare! Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob‐cesca/get‐your‐goddamn‐governme_b_252326.html (accessed May 11, 2013).Google Scholar
Chase, William. 1982. The American Law School and the Rise of Administrative Government. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Coase, R. H. 1960. The Problem of Social Cost. Journal of Law and Economics 3:144.Google Scholar
Davis, Peggy Cooper, and Steinglass, Elizabeth Ehrenfest 1997. A Dialogue About Socratic Teaching, N.Y.U. Review of Law & Social Change 23:249280.Google Scholar
Dewey, John 1938. Experience and Education. New York: Touchstone.Google Scholar
Drexler, K. Eric. 2013. Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization. New York: Public Affairs.Google Scholar
Engel, Jonathan. 2006. Poor People's Medicine: Medicaid and American Charity Since 1965. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Foster, John Bellamy, and Magdoff, Fred 2009. The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences. New York: Monthly Review Press.Google Scholar
Galanter, Marc, and Henderson, William D. 2008. The Elastic Tournament: A Second Transformation of the Big Law Firm. Stanford Law Review 60:18671929.Google Scholar
Galanter, Marc, and Palay, Thomas 1994. Tournament of Lawyers: The Transformation of the Big Law Firm. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Gallagher, Jeanette McCarthy, and Reid, D. Kim 2002. The Learning Theory of Piaget and Inhelder. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole.Google Scholar
Georgetown Law Center for the Study of the Legal Profession. 2013. Report on the State of the Legal Market. New York: Thompson‐Reuters.Google Scholar
Gorton, Gary 2010. Slapped by the Invisible Hand: The Panic of 2007. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gorton, Gary 2012. Misunderstanding Financial Crises: Why We Don't See Them Coming. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen. 1987. The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 2: Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason. Trans. Thomas McCarthy. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Harper, Steven J. 2013. The Lawyer Bubble: A Profession in Crisis. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Heidegger, Martin 1962. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Heinz, John P., Sandefur, Rebecca L., and O. Laumann, Edward 2005. Urban Lawyers: The New Social Structure of the Bar. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Henderson, William D. 2011. Three Generations of U.S. Lawyers: Generalists, Specialists and Project Managers, Maryland Law Review 70:373389.Google Scholar
Henderson, William D. 2013. A Blueprint for Change. Pepperdine Law Review 40:461507.Google Scholar
Husserl, Edmund. 1970. The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Trans. David Carr. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Internet Legal Research Group. 2013. Law School Ranking by Tuition. http://www.ilrg.com/rankings/law/tuition.php/4/desc/Tuition08 (accessed April 3, 2014).Google Scholar
Kirp, David. 2003. Shakespeare, Einstein, and the Bottom Line: The Marketing of Higher Education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Kissam, Philip. 1999. Lurching Toward the Millennium: The Law School, the Research University, and the Professional Reforms of Legal Education, Ohio State Law Journal 60:19652016.Google Scholar
Kitch, Edmund W., ed. 1969. Clinical Education and the Law School of the Future. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
LaPiana, William P. 1994. Logic and Experience: The Origin of Modern Legal Education. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Leuchtenburg, William. 1962. Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal 1932–1940. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
MacEwen, Bruce. 2013. Growth Is Dead: Now What?: Law Firms on the Brink. New York: Adam Smith.Google Scholar
Marmor, Theodore. 2000. The Politics of Medicare, 2nd ed. New York: A. de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Marsh, Peter. 2012. The New Industrial Revolution: Consumers, Globalization and the End of Mass Production. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
McGill, Christa. 2006. Educational Debt and Law Student Failure to Enter Public Service Careers: Bringing Empirical Data to Bear. Law & Social Inquiry 31:677708.Google Scholar
Mertz, Elizabeth. 2007. The Language of Law School: Learning to “Think Like a Lawyer.” New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mooney, Carol Garhart. 2000. Theories of Childhood: An Introduction to Dewey, Montessori, Erikson, Piaget & Vygotsky. St. Paul, MN: Readleaf Press.Google Scholar
Moran, Rachel. 2006. Of Rankings and Regulation: Are the U.S. News & World Report Rankings Really a Subversive Force in Legal Education? Indiana Law Journal 81:383399.Google Scholar
National Institute of Standards and Technology. 2013. NIST Unveils Net‐Zero Energy Residential Test Facility to Improve Testing of Energy‐Efficient Technologies. http://www.nist.gov/el/nzertf (Accessed April 3, 2014).Google Scholar
Oberlander, Jonathan. 2003. The Political Life of Medicare. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Page, Clarence. 2009 “Keep Government Out of My Medicare?” Not Easy. Chicago Tribune, August 9.Google Scholar
Polanyi, Michael. 1962. Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post‐Critical Philosophy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Putnam, Hilary. 1981. Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Reich, Charles. 1964. The New Property. Yale Law Journal 73:733787.Google Scholar
Reich, Charles. 1965. Individual Rights and Social Welfare: The Emerging Legal Issues. Yale Law Journal 74:12451257.Google Scholar
Rifkin, Jeremy. 2011. The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy and the World. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Roth, Alvin E. 2003. The Origins, History and Design of the Resident Match. JAMA 289:909912.Google Scholar
Rothstein, William G. 1987. American Medical Schools and the Practice of Medicine: A History. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rubin, Edward. 2007. What's Wrong with Langdell's Method, and What to Do About It. Vanderbilt Law Review 60:609665.Google Scholar
Rubin, Edward. 2008. Should Law Schools Support Faculty Research? Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues 17:139170.Google Scholar
Rubin, Edward. 2012. The Affordable Care Act, the Constitutional Meaning of Statutes, and the Emerging Doctrine of Positive Constitutional Rights. William and Mary Law Review 53:16391715.Google Scholar
Rubin, Edward. 2013. The Illusion of Property as a Right and Its Reality as an Imperfect Alternative. Wisconsin Law Review 2013:573606.Google Scholar
Schrag, Philip G. 2007 Federal Loan Repayment Assistance for Public Interest Lawyers and Other Employees of Governments and Nonprofit Organizations. Hofstra Law Review 36:2762.Google Scholar
Schrag, Philip, and Meltsner, Michael 1998. Reflections on Clinical Legal Education. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press.Google Scholar
Schweber, Howard. 1999. The “Science” of Legal Science: The Model of the Natural Sciences in Nineteenth Century American Legal Education. Law and History Review 17:421466.Google Scholar
Segal, David. 2011a. For Law Schools, a Price to Play the A.B.A.'s Way. New York Times, December 17. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/18/business/for‐law‐schools‐a‐price‐to‐play‐the‐abas‐way.html (accessed February 4, 2012).Google Scholar
Segal, David. 2011b. Law School Economics: Ka‐Ching! New York Times, July 16. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/business/law‐school‐economics‐job‐market‐weakens‐tuition‐rises.html?_r=0 (accessed February 4, 2012).Google Scholar
Segal, David. 2011c. Law Students Lose the Grant Game as Schools Win. New York Times, April 30. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/business/law‐school‐grants.html (accessed February 4, 2012).Google Scholar
Segal, David. 2011d. What They Don't Teach in Law School: Lawyering. New York Times, November 19. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/business/after‐law‐school‐associates‐learn‐to‐be‐lawyers.html (accessed February 4, 2012).Google Scholar
Sullivan, William M., Colby, Ann, Welch, Judith Wegner, and Bond, Lloyd 2007. Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law (the Carnegie Report). San Francisco, CA: Jossey‐Bass.Google Scholar
Super, David A. 2004. Offering an Invisible Hand: The Rise of Personal Choice Model for Rationing Public Benefits, Yale Law Journal 113:813893.Google Scholar
Susskind, Richard. 1998. The Future of Law: Facing the Challenges of Information Technology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Susskind, Richard. 2010. The End of Lawyers: Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Susskind, Richard. 2013. Tomorrow's Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tamanaha, Brian Z. 2012. Failing Law Schools. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Trotter, Michael H. 1997. Profit and the Practice of Law: What's Happened to the Legal Profession. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.Google Scholar
Trotter, Michael H. 2012. Declining Prospects: How Extraordinary Competition and Compensation Are Changing America's Major Law Firms. Independently published.Google Scholar
Vandenbergh, Michael P. 2004. From Smokestack to SUV: The Individual as a Regulated Entity in the New Era of Environmental Law. Vanderbilt Law Review 57:515628.Google Scholar
Vandenbergh, Michael P., and Steinemann, Anne C. 2007. The Carbon Neutral Individual. N.Y.U. Law Review 82:16731745.Google Scholar
Vernon, David H. 1989. Education Debt Burden: Law School Assistance Programs—A Review of Existing Programs and a Proposed New Approach. Journal of Legal Education 39:743771.Google Scholar
Walen, Edward. 1991. Responsibility Center Budgeting: An Approach to Decentralized Management for Institutions of Higher Learning. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 2002. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Trans. Stephen Kalberg. Los Angeles, CA: Roxbury.Google Scholar
Wentz, Dennis K., and Ford, Charles V. 1984. A Brief History of the Internship. JAMA 252:33903394.Google Scholar
White, Lucie. 1997. Subordination, Rhetorical Survival Skills and Sunday Shoes: Notes on the Hearing of Mrs. G. Buffalo Law Review 38:158.Google Scholar
Wolff, Edward. 1994. Top Heavy: A Study of the Increasing Inequality of Wealth in America. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.Google Scholar

Cases Cited

Barsky v. Board of Regents, 347 U.S. 442 (1954).Google Scholar
Fleming v. Nestor, 363 U.S. 603 (1960).Google Scholar
Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963).Google Scholar
Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254 (1970).Google Scholar
NFIB v. Sebelius, 567 U.S. ___ (2012).Google Scholar

Statutes Cited

Social Security Amendments of 1965, Pub. L. 108–173, 117 Stat. 2066 (1965), codified at 18 U.S.C. §§ 1801–1899.Google Scholar
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, Pub. L. 111–148, 124 Stat. 119, (2010), codified in scattered sections of 42 U.S.C.Google Scholar