The Problem with Law School
The Narrowing of Legal Education in the Age of Specialization
This article considers the growing disconnect between what is taught in law schools and the actual practice of law.
Lawyers used to become lawyers by working with lawyers. They would apprentice in much the same way that trades people currently learn their skills. At some point they would reach at point of confidence in their capabilities that they would seek to be formally recognized by their local Bar (no pun intended). They would be required to prove their worthiness through references, interviews, and exams.
Over time the focus on the examination requirement became paramount and prospective lawyers would spend weeks, months and eventually years in preparation for these Bar Exams. Inevitably legal curriculums and law schools emerged to train the skills necessary to become a lawyer and pass the Bar Exams. However, once the exams became the focus the first level of disconnect was achieved between what lawyers were required to learn and the work that they would actually do in their professional lives.
This disconnect was not so great at a time when both the number of lawyers and the amount of jurisprudence was relatively small. However as the legal profession expanded, choices had to be made by the educators in terms of what should be included in a legal education. The mundane but critical skills required of a lawyer in a day to day practice were sacrificed to include the finer points of arcane corners of the law rarely called upon in the average practice. The logic behind this transition was that these were the questions that would need to be dealt with by students on their Bar Exams and therefore the law schools needed to make a parallel move in this direction. But the logic was self enforcing. As time went by the exams became more academic as the students became more entrenched in academia. Law as a profession became what you did after law school.
In the recent history of law schools a second level of disconnect has been introduced. Law schools are now moving away from teaching students with an eye to the Bar Exams towards teaching the students the law as an ends in itself. Law schools increasingly rely on their local law societies and bar associations to provide students coming out of law school with the skills that they will need to pass the Bar Exams and actually function as professional lawyers. Furthermore, law schools have tended offer full tenured positions to those legal academics that have a very specialized knowledge in a very narrow area of the law. As a counter-balance practicing lawyers deemed adjunct professors and typically paid honorariums are brought in from the legal community to teach the ‘black letter’ courses for which the academics have no experience and no interest.
The system works fine enough except for those students that were hoping that they would learn the skills necessary to be a lawyer in law school. It is now generally accepted that you will learn those skills on the job as a summer student, articling student, or first year associate which brings the whole matter full circle except for the three years and mountain of debt that has been incurred in the process.
To that end, law schools have essentially become a screening device for an overpopulated profession. It would make more sense to have two streams to a legal education. One stream would include those more academically inclined and would follow the same track currently followed by all law students. A second stream would return to the apprenticing/articling tradition whereby a law student could work at a firm for three or four years, taking ten weeks out every year for intense schooling. The student would take the same Bar Exams but would have been able to earn income rather than incur debt over that time. This stream would lower the pressure on law schools and actually teach the legal skills necessary to practice as a lawyer. Both streams could be screened initially by undergraduate grades and LSAT scores as is the current practice in most North American law schools.
