Legal History Commons^™

The Futures Of Law, Lawyers, And Law Schools: A Dialogue, Sameer M. Ashar, Benjamin H. Barton, Michael J. Madison, Rachel F. Moran

Articles

On April 19 and 20, 2023, Professors Bernard Hibbitts and Richard Weisberg convened a conference at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law titled “Disarmed, Distracted, Disconnected, and Distressed: Modern Legal Education and the Unmaking of American Lawyers.” Four speakers concluded the event with a spirited conversation about themes expressed during the proceedings. Distilling a lively two days, they asked: what are the most critical challenges now facing US legal education and, by extension, lawyers and the communities they serve? Their agreements and disagreements were striking, so much so that Professors Hibbitts and Weisberg invited those four to extend their …

50 Years Of Excellence: A History Of The St. Mary's Law Journal, Barbara Hanson Nellermoe

St. Mary's Law Journal

Founded in 1969, the St. Mary’s Law Journal has climbed the road to excellence. Originally built on the foundation of being a “practitioner’s journal,” the St. Mary’s Law Journal continues to produce quality scholarship that is nationally recognized and frequently used by members of the bench and bar. From its grassroots origins to the world-class law review it is today, the St. Mary’s Law Journal continues to maintain its prestigious position in the realm of law reviews by ranking in the top five percent most-cited law reviews in federal and state courts nationwide.

In celebration of the St. Mary’s Law …

An Invitation Regarding Law And Legal Education, And Imagining The Future, Michael J. Madison

Articles

This Essay consists of an invitation to participate in conversations about the future of legal education in ways that integrate rather than distinguish several threads of concern and revision that have emerged over the last decade. Conversations about the future of legal education necessarily include conversations about the future of law practice, legal services, and law itself. Some of those start with the somewhat stale questions: What are US law professors doing, what should they be doing, and why? Those questions are still relevant and important, but they are no longer the only relevant questions, and they are not the …

The End Of Law Schools, Ray Worthy Campbell

Ray W Campbell

Law schools as we know them are doomed. They continue to offer an educational model originally designed to prepare lawyers to practice in common law courts of a bygone era. That model fails to prepare lawyers for today’s highly specialized practices, and it fails to provide targeted training for the emerging legal services fields other than traditional lawyering.

This article proposes a new ideology of legal education to meet the needs of modern society. Unlike other reform proposals, it looks not to tweaking the training of traditional lawyers, but to rethinking legal education in light of a changing legal services …

Preparing For Service: A Template For 21st Century Legal Education, Michael J. Madison

Articles

Legal educators today grapple with the changing dynamics of legal employment markets; the evolution of technologies and business models driving changes to the legal profession; and the economics of operating – and attending – a law school. Accrediting organizations and practitioners pressure law schools to prepare new lawyers both to be ready to practice and to be ready for an ever-fluid career path. From the standpoint of law schools in general and any one law school in particular, constraints and limitations surround us. Adaptation through innovation is the order of the day.

How, when, and in what direction should innovation …

Fighting For The City In Context: William Nelson And The Legal History Of New York, William P. Lapiana

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Continuing Classroom Conversation Beyond The Four Whys, Jeffrey W. Stempel, Bailey Kuklin

Scholarly Works

LAW school classes regularly prove Santayana's aphorism. Although nearly every law teacher desires to keep discussion focused and forward-moving, there are more than a few moments of thundering silence experienced in the classroom. Most of us adjust to this inevitability by positing some pedagogical virtue to still air and contenting ourselves with the knowledge that conversation-stopping “whys?” are usually delivered by us as teachers rather than the students. Perhaps we are underappreciative of the value discomfitting silence has, but we generally prefer that the conversation continue, that we miss the opportunity to feel simultaneously smug and uncomfortable, and that students …