Larry Ribstein has posted a provocative new paper Practicing Theory: Legal Education for the Twenty-First Century:
Law practice and legal education are facing fundamental changes. Many assume that these changes will force law schools to give up on theory and focus more on training students for the practice of law. However, this essay shows that the future may be more uncertain and complex. The only thing that is certain is that law schools may face, for the first time, the need to provide the type of education the market demands rather than serving lawyers' and law professors’ preferences. Legal educators must respond to these demands by serving not just the existing U.S. market for legal services but also a global market for legal information. This may call for training in some, but not all, of the theories and disciplines that have been developing in law schools.
What strikes me most forcefully is Larry's observations with respect to the dying system in which law school graduates got most of their practical training in a de facto apprenticeship at the first legal job:
Big Law’s decline threatens the significant training opportunity provided by senior partner mentoring. Law partners who have to spend more time tending to their books of business have less time for building the firm’s value through activities like training younger lawyers. Also, increased competition reduces firms’ freedom to bill training time to clients. Law schools no longer can pretend their best graduates will get the training they need on the job.
To be sure, Big Law jobs are only one segment of the general law-job market. However, it is the segment that previously offered law graduates the highest pay and the best opportunity for on-the-job training. Small firms and government employers have even less budget cushion for training. The death of Big Law therefore increases law schools’ overall training burden. Law schools now must train their students for the full range of the potential employment market.
In order to be competitive, the law school of the future can no longer aspire to being a graduate school of law in which J.D./Ph.D.s teach courses like Law and [fill in the blank] or Critical Perspectives on [ditto]. We are going to have to be professional schools training professionals.
This is going to require us to rethink two areas in which change can be the most difficult: hiring and curriculum. It likely also will force us to be far more paternalistic. Young people tend to make serious errors when it comes to temporal discounting, e.g., selecting easy courses instead of courses that will build key skills. We may have to be more directive in requiring courses that will give students job-relevant skills.
