The Future of Legal Education: Three Visions and a Prediction

Abstract

I’m going to present three quite different views of what law schools ought to be and ought to do. The first holds that their primary, if not their sole, function should be to produce "practice-ready lawyers" for today’s profession. The second is that they should produce "tomorrow’s lawyers", lawyers with the capacity to adapt to the rapidly and radically changing circumstances of legal practice. And the third is that law schools should play a leading role in the creation and transformation of legal knowledge, legal practice, and the legal system — a role that requires them to provide their students with a large and liberal understanding of law that will prepare them for a variety of legal and non-legal careers. I’ll end by making a prediction about which model represents the future of law school. Or perhaps you’ve guessed already.

Keywords: future, legal, education, law, school