Practice Management

What a cool idea.

D. Benjamin Barros, an professor at Widener Law, on his Property Prof Blog, advanced the proposition of teaching basic doctrinal law courses at the undergraduate level and that law students then be allowed to place out of these courses in law school.

It is law school re-engineering.  It helps those undergraduates that are thinking of a legal career and it does not overly disadvantage those law students who did not think of a legal career until later.

The issue is of course the soaring cost of a legal education, coupled with often required undergraduate degrees which are not preparatory for law school.  Legal education cost a small fortune and takes years to complete.  So, this idea tries to cure part of both problems. 

Admittedly, Dr. Barros was not necessarily bringing this argument up in the context of cutting the current law school timetable, but as a means of softening the expansion to law school to four years as some have suggested.  If there is no expansion of law school to four years, then this could act to help some law students complete their law degrees in two years.

As stated by Barros, "What we teach in law school can be roughly divided into two components:  stuff and skills.  In its current incarnation, legal education is largely focused on teaching stuff ? the basic doctrinal rules, and related policy issues, of various areas of law.  There is a reasonable amount of legal analytic skill that is taught in your typical casebook course, especially in the first year.  But most of what we teach is stuff ? basic knowledge of one sort or another.  Some types of stuff are more complex than others, but most of the basics really aren?t that hard.  I?m pretty confident that undergraduates would be able to handle most of the basics of property law, and of any other legal area ... If students came into graduate-level law school with a decent introduction to the law of property, then we could do so much more with them."

The argument is that the use of placement exams would allow the market to decide how best to promote undergraduate legal education.  These legal subjects could be taught online, for example.  There might be prep courses.  All that would matter would be competency.  Universities could start offering offer law majors.  The advanced placement could make it easier for law students to get a J.D. in two years.