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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Crisis In Legal Education: Dabbling In Disaster Planning, Kyle P. Mcentee, Patrick J. Lynch, Derek M. Tokaz
The Crisis In Legal Education: Dabbling In Disaster Planning, Kyle P. Mcentee, Patrick J. Lynch, Derek M. Tokaz
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
The legal education crisis has already struck for many recent law school graduates, signaling potential disaster for law schools already struggling with their own economic challenges. Law schools have high fixed costs caused by competition between schools, the unchecked expansion of federal loan programs, a widely exploited information asymmetry about graduate employment outcomes, and a lack of financial discipline masquerading as innovation. As a result, tuition is up, jobs are down, and skepticism of the value of a J.D. has never been higher. If these trends do not reverse course, droves of students will continue to graduate with debt that …
The Crisis Of The American Law School, Paul Campos
The Crisis Of The American Law School, Paul Campos
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
The economist Herbert Stein once remarked that if something cannot go on forever, it will stop. Over the past four decades, the cost of legal education in America has seemed to belie this aphorism: it has gone up relentlessly. Private law school tuition increased by a factor of four in real, inflation-adjusted terms between 1971 and 2011, while resident tuition at public law schools has nearly quadrupled in real terms over just the past two decades. Meanwhile, for more than thirty years, the percentage of the American economy devoted to legal services has been shrinking. In 1978 the legal sector …
Eyes To The Future, Yet Remembering The Past: Reconciling Tradition With The Future Of Legal Education, Amy M. Colton
Eyes To The Future, Yet Remembering The Past: Reconciling Tradition With The Future Of Legal Education, Amy M. Colton
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This Note explores the relationship between legal education and the legal profession, and what can be done to stop the two institutions from drifting farther and farther apart. Part I examines the history of the American law school, focusing on how the schools came into existence and what goals they intended to serve. Part II questions whether these goals have been reached, and dissects the present-day law school curriculum in search of both its triumphs and its failures. A necessary part of this curriculum analysis includes examining the evolution of the profession into a creature of both law and business, …
Deconstructing Los Angeles Or A Secret Fax From Magritte Regarding Postliterate Legal Reasoning: A Critique Of Legal Education, C. Garrison Lepow
Deconstructing Los Angeles Or A Secret Fax From Magritte Regarding Postliterate Legal Reasoning: A Critique Of Legal Education, C. Garrison Lepow
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This Article asks readers to imagine the shapes and colors of legal issues; it examines how people communicate and develop ideas through moving, metamorphosing images, especially computer graphics, and why methodology affects the eventual product of thought. Like dance, legal issues are described better through action than through words. Therefore, this Article challenges the principles of verbal reasoning upon which our legal system is based.
Fairness In Teaching Advocacy, Charles W. Joiner
Fairness In Teaching Advocacy, Charles W. Joiner
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
The questions I address are these: Is fairness related to advocacy? Is fairness a concept that law teachers should address in their teaching, in particular in courses involving advocacy? By "courses involving advocacy" I mean courses that teach both law and practice techniques involving the direct protection of the rights of clients, particularly in the courts-for example, civil and criminal procedure and evidence.
Is Thinking Like A Lawyer Enough?, Sallyanne Payton
Is Thinking Like A Lawyer Enough?, Sallyanne Payton
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Every year that I attend meetings of the Law School's Committee of Visitors I ask members of the committee how the school might improve the training that we give to our graduates. Every year until this one the lawyers who have responded to this question have given a standard answer: the young lawyers are smart, they say, smarter in many respects than their seniors, but they don't know how to write well. This response usually leads to a discussion of the proper place of skills training in the law school curriculum; lawyers and professors engage in a little jousting over …
Lawyers And Professionalism: A Further Psychiatric Perspective On Legal Education, Andrew S. Watson
Lawyers And Professionalism: A Further Psychiatric Perspective On Legal Education, Andrew S. Watson
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
In recent years, clinical teaching methods have played an increasingly significant role in the education of this nation's lawyers. With the consequential accumulation of data pertaining to various institutional experiences, it is now worthwhile to explore, from a clinician's perspective, some of the psychodynamics of this educational process as it appears to affect a student's future professional behavior. In addition to such an examination, this article will delineate methods for dealing with the stresses of a lawyer's professional life, suggesting ways in which the attorney may satisfy his goals as well as those of his client. It is hoped that …