This new substack has as its purpose collecting and disseminating cool thinking and concrete ideas about how to improve legal education. We begin with two seemingly contradictory claims: First, American legal education is on the whole a remarkable development, truly the envy of the world. In so many ways, the progress of legal education across the world has been a story of various emulations of the American model — adapted, to be sure, for local circumstances. A century’s worth of efforts by what are now more than 200 law schools (nearly all accredited by the American Bar Ass’n) has created a system that educates many thousands of college graduates (an increasing number of whom have work experience on top of their undergraduate degrees) and sends them into the legal profession ably trained and acculturated in profound ways in our legal system and the rule of law. Second, the structure of American legal education is broken in many ways. It is expensive and unwieldy; it is unsuccessful in many ways that could be and ought to be fixed. We can and should mend it, not end it, and the mending requires careful attention to what is broken and what it will take to fix it.
Legal Education Revolutionaries
Legal Education Revolutionaries
Legal Education Revolutionaries
This new substack has as its purpose collecting and disseminating cool thinking and concrete ideas about how to improve legal education. We begin with two seemingly contradictory claims: First, American legal education is on the whole a remarkable development, truly the envy of the world. In so many ways, the progress of legal education across the world has been a story of various emulations of the American model — adapted, to be sure, for local circumstances. A century’s worth of efforts by what are now more than 200 law schools (nearly all accredited by the American Bar Ass’n) has created a system that educates many thousands of college graduates (an increasing number of whom have work experience on top of their undergraduate degrees) and sends them into the legal profession ably trained and acculturated in profound ways in our legal system and the rule of law. Second, the structure of American legal education is broken in many ways. It is expensive and unwieldy; it is unsuccessful in many ways that could be and ought to be fixed. We can and should mend it, not end it, and the mending requires careful attention to what is broken and what it will take to fix it.