The Future of Legal Education

When you get right down to it, there really hasn't been a radical change in the conventional law school curriculum since ... well, I don't know, but it's been a long time. Most of the major changes of the past 30 years (the rise in clinical education, the general trend toward more skills-based courses, etc.) -- while undeniably important -- represent an attempt to integrate skills training within the traditional law school curriculum rather than an outright rejection of the traditional model. The first-year curriculum at Law School X is still probably pretty close to what it is at Law School Y, and the upper-level offerings at both institutions are likely to be pretty similar as well. To date, no one has tossed the old mousetrap aside and tried to build a new one. Maybe that's because the old mousetrap works pretty well. Maybe there are other reasons. (Any takers on that one?)

That's what makes all of the focus on the recent changes to the curricula at Harvard and Stanford interesting. Between the two, Harvard's changes to the first-year curriculum are the more modest. Stanford's new "3D" plan is a bit bolder. Stanford's focus is on the second and third years of law school. According to the press release, Stanford's program "combines the study of other disciplines with team-oriented, problem-solving techniques and expanded clinical training that enables students to represent clients and litigate cases -- before they graduate."  The Wall Street Journal used the word "revolution" in reference to the 3D program, and the approach certainly represents more than mere tinkering. But if you like your revolutions a bit more revolutionary, you might check out "Educating Lawyers for the Future of the Legal Profession," a forthcoming article by Professor Thomas D. Morgan of George Washington. If you'd all love to see the plan, here's the SSRN link. According to the abstract:

Tomorrow's lawyers are likely to have to be more specialized than their predecessors, and many will deliver services that are less personal, more commodity-like, and less financially rewarding. Legal education, in turn, faces challenges producing lawyers capable of functioning in that world. Future lawyers will have to be simultaneously more specialized and more capable of responding to change than were earlier generations. To meet these needs, entering students should be introduced to fundamental issues that cut across all fields, including more public law and international material than most students now encounter. Upperclass students should be given opportunities to specialize and study more non-legal subjects that will make them better able to understand clients' needs.

All of which sounds fairly mainstream. It's when you start looking at the details of Morgan's imagined future that things get really interesting. To provide a couple of examples, Morgan suggests that the fourth year of undergraduate study become the first year of law school. After that, a student would take three years of law school with the third year consisting of non-law courses. And what would students take in that first year of law school, you ask? Well, forget Contracts. Think Enforcement of Agreements. Bye bye Civ Pro and Property. Hello Sources of Legal Rights and Redress of Wrongs. It's all good as long as I can still teach Torts.