Instrumentalism?

This is a curious editorial for several reasons, one of which is the last few lines, where an opinion is offered about the nature of law.  The jurisprudential choices on offer seem to be: (1) Langdellian legal science; or (2) law as "a means, rather than an end, a tool for solving problems."  I'm not a philosopher of law, but I am having trouble with these options as conceptions of law.  I also don't understand their relationship to the call for "legal education reform." 

First, one does not need to believe in the legal science model (of Langdell or Savigny et al.) to think that the case method of legal education is still viable.  In many respects (not as many as in the time of Langdell, to be sure), ours is still a common law system, and one can be a legal realist, a crit, a law-and-economics maven, etc., and believe in the importance of studying cases as a means to understanding what law is all about.  So the options cannot be "study cases" or "use the law as a means to an end": these possibilities are not in the same conceptual category.

Second, what can it mean to say that law is "a means rather than an end, a tool for solving problems"?   

At one level, no one -- and certainly very few law professors that I know -- would disagree with the statement.  Langdellians (raise your hands and be counted!) would agree with it.  Natural lawyers would agree with it.  Legal positivists would agree with it.  Of course law is in some measure an instrument to accomplish certain social ends. 

But there seems to be something more in the Times's account of law, something along the lines of: 'there's nothing more to law than the mechanical application of skills to achieve a client's desired outcome, and law ought to be taught that way.'  If that is more the meaning of the statement, I'm afraid I don't agree.  There is more to law than mechanically applying rules to serve a client's wishes.  There is more to learn about law than the acquisition of skills to reach some predetermined end.  Indeed, it is exactly because law is in part an instrument to achieve social ends that it is about much more than the mechanical application of skills.  Speaking in part as a professional responsibility teacher, stripping away that quality of law is more than just a mistake; it's a dangerous way to conceive the profession of law.  And it has an, at best, uncertain and an, at worst, directly harmful effect on some of the other reforms that the editorial thinks would be worthwhile improvements, such as an increase in the representation of low-paying clients.

No one doubts or denies that the law may be used to achieve particular outcomes.  But many people doubt or deny that conceiving of the law in exclusively these terms is either sound in itself or useful as a way to reform legal education.