With all the recent discussions about the need to re-think legal education and the value proposition facing law students deciding about attending law school, I started wondering - and I'd really like to know this - how universities in the U.S. ended up teaching law to begin with. It's not really an academic discipline in the same way as many other things taught at universities, although I know the U.K. has a long historical tradition of offering studies in law.
The reason I ask is that I have vague memories of my 1L "history of the legal profession" class back in Australia many years ago and I know we learned about how and when Australian universities started teaching law. Initially it was taught by trade schools and practitioners. Even now, in Australia, one can't practice law without undertaking either a year of professional training school after university or a year as an articled clerk to a law firm partner who then certifies the completion of the practical legal training.
Who is really doing the practical legal training in the U.S.? Here, it's just university degree + bar exam. And neither of these avenues seems to give students exactly the kinds of skills they need - at a reasonable cost - to do what they need to be able to do as a baby lawyer.
As a side note, there was a brief time (and I believe that time has passed now) in Australia when some universities tried to compete with the practical legal training schools for offering the post-law-school pratical training. My understanding was that these experiments didn't work very well and that practical training was found not to be best provided at a reasonable cost by universities. This was after my time so I'm going on hearsay, and I'd be happy to be corrected by anyone with better knowledge of those experiments.
But if anyone knows how and why the legal training system was set up in the U.S. in the way it was, I'd be very interested to learn about it.
Law was one of the traditional subjects taught in medieval universities (along w/ "arts" (liberal arts), medicine, and theology), starting at least in the 11th century in Spain, France, England and Italy, so it's a pretty long tradition. Obviously, law (like medicine) has been taught in other settings, too, but it has been in universities since their earliest days, it seems.
Posted by: Matt | November 30, 2012 at 01:43 PM
That's true, Matt, but it was traditionally always an academic discipline at universities that was augmented by years of practical legal training before one could hang out a shingle. That's still the case in England and Australia. Why is it different here?
Posted by: Jacqueline Lipton | November 30, 2012 at 01:45 PM
We require a bachelor's degree in order to make it harder to enter the profession. The BA, in other words, is a restrictive device to keep out immigrants.
Posted by: Bill Reynolds | November 30, 2012 at 05:03 PM
Traditionally law was learned as an apprentice. Then, the ABA got involved. Wikipedia has a broad account. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_school_in_the_United_States
Posted by: Pam | November 30, 2012 at 05:45 PM
Matt - it's true that "law" has been taught at universities for centuries, but that was Roman law, as a part of a classical education. The common law in a university setting is of relatively recent origin. Sir William Blackstone occupied the very first common law professorship (at Oxford) in the latter decades of the eighteenth century. Jacquie is right - we're Johnnies come lately in this game.
Posted by: Ian Holloway | November 30, 2012 at 06:09 PM
There are a number of good books on this: Stevens, Law School is the standard. The immediate prelude to the current scene is well described by William LaPiana. I have a collection on it, The History of Legal Education in the United States: Commentary and Primary Materials. There are excellent histories of given schools, such as Laura Kalman's of Yale.
Despite the argument that law school is a tool of monopoly, the primary reason for it, and for requiring it, is to ensure a baseline of education in general, legal knowledge, analytic skill, and professional engagement before taking an exam on the minimal rules of the law.
Posted by: Steve Sheppard | December 02, 2012 at 03:14 PM
Not to toot my own horn, Jacqui, but many moons ago I wrote an article addressing this exact question:
"THE RISE OF THE MODERN AMERICAN LAW SCHOOL: HOW PROFESSIONALIZATION, GERMAN SCHOLARSHIP, AND LEGAL REFORM SHAPED OUR SYSTEM OF LEGAL EDUCATION," 39 New Eng. L. Rev. 251 (2005).
It explains how we got to the modern American law school in much more detail than you could possibly ever need!
Posted by: Laura | December 03, 2012 at 01:24 PM
Thanks Laura and Steve. I will look into your work with interest.
Re Steve's baseline level of education point, I agree with the importance of a baseline level of education for lawyers but wonder if academic institutions are the best places to go for it. Between U.S. law schools and the bar exam, no one is really giving a solid baseline level of education in practical skills, unlike the situation in countries where professional training school (or articled clerkships) are the norm instead of a bar exam.
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