I would like to direct readers to an interesting discussion at Prawfsblawg on the proposal that the ABA mandate 15 credits of experiential learning. I have one thought to add to my comment on John's original post on this topic.
I am dismayed by the growing conventional wisdom that the law school curriculum is partly to blame both for new lawyer unemployment and falling applications to law schools. Prof. Birckhead's post on Prawfsblawg, for example, includes the following:
[G]iven the dramatic drop in law school applications combined with the collapsing job market and escalating student debt, I'm surprised that more law school deans aren't promoting clinical and experiential education, as it may be one of the best strategies for keeping American law schools afloat.
I've blogged previously on the highly unconvincing Illinois report that draws the same alleged connection between practical training and employment so I will not repeat myself here. But note that, if you accept the predicate that more clinical and skills instruction results in better placement results (despite early results to the contrary), then the high cost of legal education might seem like less of an issue. Rather than finding ways to reduce tuition, law schools need to only redistribute existing resources to clinical programs and skill training. They may even wish to increase tuition so that students truly get top-flight practical training and become even more marketable. This will enable graduates to find law jobs, and, once employed, students will be able to pay off their loans (with the aid of income-based repayment in some cases). An added benefit is that these reforms will help to eliminate longstanding inequalities between doctrinal and non-doctrinal faculty.
One can understand why this story might appeal to a wide variety of constituents: Clinicians and skills faculty, administrators who do not wish to battle central universities to cut tuition, some legal employers (who might have to do less training on their own dime), and of course those who have long decried the academy's obsession with 18th Century Bulgarian evidence law.
I have tremendous respect for clinics and experiential programs. My own experience as a student in the Center for Applied Legal Studies was incredibly meaningful and greatly benefited me when I became a corporate litigator. I hope to one day start a clinic at my own institution. But curriculum reform is not a magic bullet to the crisis in legal education and may only give today's law students false hope that their prospects will be superior than those of their immediate predecessors.