We've had several posts about the way that New York's judiciary is asserting regulatory authority over legal education -- in ways that affect every law school that wishes its students to be eligible for taking the NY bar. Steve Gillers posted in January, we followed up in May, and in October I asked, "Can New York Regulate the Elite Law Schools?"
Dan Filler has discussed the issue at The Faculty Lounge. Now, Filler (at Leiter) and Matt Bodie (at Prawfsblawg) continue this important discussion.
I have long worried that legal education was not nimble enough to respond to the current market conditions, but it appears that if the largest states have the nerve to step in and condition bar eligibility on educational reform, they can change things quickly. Because nearly 1/4th of all lawyers work in those states, almost every law school needs to enable its students to sit for one or both of those bars.
California is looking at adding requirements for practical skills training. (A recent report at the CA project is here.) NY has added pro bono and PR course requirements. (Filler's recent post has a good list of the imporant NY requirements.) I imagine that law school deans will oppose this development and it's not clear to me who will prevail. But this development could be a way to help schools do what they need to do.
I haven't read all the links but how does a more "practical" education create jobs? Won't we just have more "practical" unemployed lawyers?
Posted by: mt45 | December 07, 2012 at 06:31 PM
mt45, the idea behind the California project is that law students with more marketable skills that clients will pay for can translate into law firm jobs and solo practices. if even the more marketable grads can't find jobs then we'll have to keep shrinking law school enrollment (as has already begun).
Posted by: John Steele | December 07, 2012 at 06:50 PM