Law Commons^™

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

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 …

Gatekeepers Of The Profession: An Empirical Profile Of The Nation's Law Professors, Robert J. Borthwich, Jordan Schau

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Part I of this Note surveys the existing body of literature on legal education, with a particular emphasis on previous empirical studies concerning law professors. Part II focuses on the increasing number of women in the teaching profession. Part III looks at the nonteaching experience of law teachers, including judicial clerkships, private practice, government experience, and public interest experience. Finally, Part IV examines the influence of "elite schools" in law school hiring and tenure decisions.

Sex-Bias Topics In The Criminal Law Course: A Survey Of Criminal Law Professors, Nancy S. Erickson, Mary Ann Lamanna

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article addresses the empirical question of whether law school curricula have advanced to the stage of integrating materials on gender-related topics into core courses, thus exposing students to gender-related topics in the law and presenting a perspective shaped by women's as well as men's experiences. We examine one of the central courses of the law school curriculum: criminal law. Although some of the attention directed to sex discrimination in law has focused on specific areas of criminal law such as rape and spouse abuse, a more systematic scrutiny of the substantive rules of criminal law and the ways in …

Preface, Journal Of Law Reform

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This collection of essays is offered not as a .finished product but as part of an on-going discussion among faculty, between faculty and students, and between Michigan faculty and others concerned with legal education. It is our hope that this collection will convey to students that faculty members take seriously their responsibility to provide a comprehensive, quality legal education, to individual faculty members that other faculty are thinking about similar issues, and to faculty at other schools that several ideas about legal education are being explored by Michigan faculty members.

Why I Teach Water Law, Joseph L. Sax

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

I began my first law school job in 1962 and water law is the only subject I have taught every year since then. Though I am enthusiastic about all the courses I teach, I confess that water law remains my favorite. I have often asked myself why, because few subjects are considered more peripheral to the central mission of the law schools. In the East and Midwest the course is rarely taught, and in the West-where it has long been a staple- it is pretty much treated as a "nuts-and-bolts" offering for students who will practice in appropriation doctrine states. …

Why Would Law Students Benefit From Studying Economics?, Michelle J. White

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Why would law students benefit from studying economics? Three reasons come to mind. First, knowing some economics should enable students to understand more fully the issues encountered in a variety of areas of the law. Second, in a variety of areas of the law, economic analysis constitutes a central component of the legal arguments made in prosecuting and defending the case. Third, many law students will become involved in policy-making, whether because they end up working in the executive branch of government or because they become legislators, lobbyists, or legislative staff.

In the following sections, I treat each of the …

Doctrine In A Vacuum: Reflections On What A Law School Ought (And Ought Not) To Be, James Boyd White

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Although this paper will reach a wider audience, in it I mean mainly to address the students and faculty of the University of Michigan Law School. It is meant to be part of a conversation in which members of this community talk to each other about the life they share.

I have written elsewhere about the expectations-the fears and hopes-that one can appropriately bring to law school. In this paper I speak to those who are immersed in ·the process of legal education, on one side of the podium or the other, and wish to say something of what I …

The Law School Of The University Of Michigan: 1859-1984: An Intellectual History, Elizabeth Gaspar Brown

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The intellectual history of the University of Michigan Law School is recorded in the titles of contributions to legal literature published from its organization in October 1859 to the present. These writings demonstrate a continued commitment to legal scholarship and illustrate both the changing patterns in the subjects chosen for research and writing, and the methods utilized for treatment of the subjects.

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

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 …