Are you old enough to remember when the only way you could send a letter or a package to someone in another city was through the Post Office? Do you remember what it was like to deal with the employees and policies of a company that had a complete monopoly on a vital service? Remember… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Law School
How to kill (or save) a law school
Back in August 2010, I wrote a post called “How to kill a law firm” that continues to receive a steady stream of traffic and responses. Recently, John P. Mayer on Twitter suggested it was time for a law school version of that article. I agree. My interest in applying a legal education focus to this topic… Read more »
Walking away from a losing game
And suddenly, everyone’s talking about Procurement. Not that long ago, warning lawyers about the rise of the corporate purchasing function was a little like a medieval parent telling their children about the goblin who lived under the floorboards: you’d better behave, or he’ll come and eat you up. Now the goblin is loose: Procurement’s importance… Read more »
Law school revolution
One of my favourite bumper stickers, back when such things were popular, read as follows: “Where are we going? And what’s with this handbasket?” If you’re involved in any aspect of legal education these days, or if you have even a passing interest in how law schools are doing their job, you might feel that… Read more »
Learning to run
There’s an old expression among professional sports coaches: “You can’t teach speed.” It’s usually meant to indicate that there are things you can train athletes to do well (skills) and things that are simply God-given (raw talent), and it encourages the traditional view that talent is more valuable. I’ve come to believe differently. In most… Read more »
The decline and fall of law school
As every frustrated customer knows, there comes a time when you stop trying to negotiate with a stubborn supplier and start looking for alternatives. I think that time is just about here for the legal profession in its relationship with law schools. If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, you probably already know that… Read more »
Law schools and the law of supply and demand
If law schools were publicly traded companies and you held some in your portfolio, I would be strongly advising you to sell. Fast. Here’s a quick review of some recent news concerning the US legal education industry and the legal profession it is purportedly preparing its graduates to enter. As reported by the Wall Street… Read more »
Law as an undergraduate degree
The start of the school year is upon us. You can tell from the firestorm of written commentary in the legal press and blawgosphere about the function, fitness and future of legal education. Fanning the flames hardest is Brent Evan Newton, an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, who has written an article… Read more »
Resolving the legal education disconnect
In conversation last week with a law school professor, the subject of law firms’ tunnel vision when recruiting law graduates came up. Firms focus relentlessly on the students with the highest grades, the professor lamented, even though these students can be one-dimensional performers with an affinity for the academic environment and no competing pressures outside… Read more »
The apprenticeship marketplace
Critical mass, like the famous definition of obscenity, is one of those things you can’t necessarily define but that you know when you see. We’re approaching a critical mass of discourse on the necessity of change within the American law school system, and when we reach that point, the focus will switch overnight from necessity… Read more »