I’ve written
before about the debate within the legal community about the "purpose" of law
school. Some argue law school should
essentially be vocational training and should be geared towards teaching
lawyers to succeed in practice. Others
argue that law school should give students a well-rounded education in the
liberal arts mold.
Some schools have moved toward including more
practical training in law school in light of this debate, while others haven’t changed their curriculum
at all. Until now I haven’t seen
anybody propose what probably should have been the most obvious solution: allow law students to choose their own
curriculum.
That is the solution proposed by Dean
Paul Schiff Berman of the Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law in an article from Legal Times. According to Dean Berman, his school is considering “allowing
students to design their own legal education and choose among larger conceptual
‘schools’ or tracks within the College of Law.”
Thus, “while one track might emphasize hands-on legal skills
training, another might combine students and faculty from law and other
disciplines working on specific policy problems.”
I like Dean Berman’s approach, and I think it sounds like an
excellent solution to the conflict over the purpose of law school. However, I think it may overlook one pretty
important obstacle: the bar.
By my estimate about half of the units we take in law school
are from bar classes. So, under Dean
Berman’s approach, about half of the classes a student takes could be
determined by their track. Is this
really enough time to create a coherent theme or concept in a student’s
education? And if it is, does creating
this theme distract from the bar preparation duties of law school that are,
theoretically, law school’s most important function?
I like Dean Berman’s solution, and I agree that giving students a variety of organized choices is an excellent addition to the debate over the role of law schools, but, in my opinion, it might be a little too ambitious.
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