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University of Michigan Law School

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University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

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The Crisis In Legal Education: Dabbling In Disaster Planning, Kyle P. Mcentee, Patrick J. Lynch, Derek M. Tokaz Sep 2012

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 Sep 2012

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 …


Clinical Legal Education: Is Taking Rites Seriously A Fantasy, Folly, Or Failure?, Steven D. Pepe Jan 1985

Clinical Legal Education: Is Taking Rites Seriously A Fantasy, Folly, Or Failure?, Steven D. Pepe

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This article assesses the primary product of law schools-the practicing lawyer-and reviews the criticisms of the adequacy of the initial training for attorneys that law schools provide. After a brief. review of goals of legal education and goals of clinical teaching methods, the article argues that properly structured clinical programs are not based on flawed premises and that the nation's law schools, particularly the leading schools, should not abandon their clinical experiments without further efforts to help clinical legal education achieve its unfulfilled promises. The premises and assertions of this article are not new. Indeed, they are reiterations of a …


Lawyers And Professionalism: A Further Psychiatric Perspective On Legal Education, Andrew S. Watson Jan 1975

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 …