‘Best Practices’: What's the Point?

Abstract:     
In a separate article - Best Practices on “Best Practices”: Legal Education and Beyond - Professor Robbins formulated a paradigm for “best practices” and applied it to the book, Best Practices for Legal Education. Professor Robbins concluded that the book did not meet any of the criteria necessary to constitute best practices and, further, that using the concept of best practices when thinking and writing about legal education is misleading and inappropriate. The primary author of the book, Roy Stuckey, responded, claiming that “best” can mean something other than best, that the difference really doesn’t matter, and that the debate over the proper use of best practices in legal education is a distraction. This is Professor Robbins’ reply.

Keywords: best practices, benchmarking, minimum standards, baselines, legal education, legal education reform, industry, competitive advantage, administrative regulation, corporate governance, Carnegie Report, MacCrate Report, goals of legal education, case method, clinical legal education, law reform

JEL Classifications: D23, D24, D60, D61, D81, E00, H00, I20, I21, K00, K10, K20, K23, K29, L11, L15, L80, M11, O20, O21,

Accepted Paper Series