Educating Lawyers Now and Then: Two Carnegie Critiques of the Common Law and the Case Method

Abstract:     
The 2007 Carnegie Foundation report on legal education, Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law, is eerily reminiscent of the Foundation's 1914 Report, The Common Law and the Case Method in American University Law School. This article compares the two reports. It commends the 1914 report for its broad comparative civil/common law perspective that is unsurpassed to this day. It shows how the two reports view the case method similarly, but with significantly different emphases. The 2007 report counts the case method as academic, while the 1914 report sees it as practical. It shows how the two reports, while having similar diagnoses of the ills of legal education, prescribe different cures. The 2007 report calls on legal educators to increase clinical education; the 1914 report urges them to rationalize the legal system in order "to invigorate the principle of social and economic justice in the life of the American people." The article questions the comparability of medical and legal professional education. The article is available in book form together with a reprint of the 1914 report.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 46

Keywords: legal education, legal scholarship, legal training, medical education, comparative legal education, legal methods

Accepted Paper Series