Legal Commentary

Do We Need to Change Legal Education?

By Orin Kerr

Paul Horwitz summarizes some recent proposals for changing legal education. Like Paul, I?m not convinced changes are needed. 

As I see it, the basic structure of legal education in the United States works quite well. Every student gets the basic tools of legal reasoning and the common law building block courses in the first year. After that first year, students mostly can specialize however they want. Most law schools offer a dizzying array of electives for 2Ls and 3Ls that offer a wide range of approaches. Students can focus on clinical courses and trial practice classes if they want to get ready for practice. They can take traditional doctrine courses to learn particular areas of law. And they can take course in theory, legal history, and jurisprudence if they want a more theoretical perspective. Plus they can mix and match among these options ? which most students do ? if they want to try a bit of everything. It?s pretty much a choose-your-own-adventure approach beyond the basic tools of the first year. 

I think that works pretty well on the whole. The students are buying a product, in a sense, and after they take the building-block courses of their first year they get to choose what product they?re buying. As long as students have a sense of their own needs and career aspirations ? and in my experience, usually they do ? I don?t see why we shouldn?t leave the choice about what kind of education they get to them.

Full post as published by The Volokh Conspiracy on August 31, 2010 (boomark / email).