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Full-Text Articles in Legal Profession
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 …
Aba Accreditation Of Law Schools: An Antitrust Analysis, Andy Portinga
Aba Accreditation Of Law Schools: An Antitrust Analysis, Andy Portinga
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
The accreditation activities of the American Bar Association are under attack. From within legal academia, professors and deans complain that the ABA accreditation process is overly formalistic and intrusive. In addition, the Massachusetts School of Law has sued the ABA, alleging that the ABA's accreditation standards violate the Sherman Act. From outside legal academia, the Department of Justice has investigated the ABA's accreditation activities and initiated an antitrust suit against the ABA. The Department of Justice and the ABA immediately settled this suit, and, as a result of this settlement, the ABA has agreed not to enforce certain standards and …
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.
Clinical Legal Education: Is Taking Rites Seriously A Fantasy, Folly, Or Failure?, Steven D. Pepe
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 …
The Nobel Prize For Law, Alfred F. Conard
The Nobel Prize For Law, Alfred F. Conard
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
There is no Nobel prize for law. This lack is not in itself a cause for concern, since the discipline of law is replete with its own rewards. But some cause for concern inheres in the implication that law provides very few examples of the kinds of contributions to humanity that merit Nobel prizes.
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 …
The Law School's Role In Post-J.D. Specialty Education, Guy O. Kornblum
The Law School's Role In Post-J.D. Specialty Education, Guy O. Kornblum
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
As members of a profession which is largely self-policing, attorneys must find ways to protect the public by identifying the areas of practice that require special expertise and by ensuring that those who hold themselves out as specialists possess the necessary expertise. Simply because one claims a specialty or even practices a specialty does not mean that he has the requisite competence to practice in the field. Because one is presently competent in a specialty does not mean that he will continue to practice and maintain his competence and keep abreast of new techniques and developments. Certainly the profession should …