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The Path of Law School Development
Green, Leon
Green, Leon
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Abstract
Legal education is taking on new meaning. Law schools are entering upon a new development. The classical American law school, represented by three or four well known schools after which all the better schools are patterned, has clung rather tenaciously to a twin-function program of training technically fit young lawyers and promoting scholarly legal research. That it has succeeded in both undertakings is attested sufficiently by the present leadership at the bar and by the fact that the law books which have commanded the greatest respect and influenced the development of the law most profoundly, with rare exceptions, have been the products of law teachers. Nor will either of these functions receive less emphasis in any revised program of legal education. Rather, will they be tremendously accentuated. The bar is insistently calling for a better trained graduate. Whatever the cost, it wants a man who has the capacity to turn out work from the moment he steps into the office. Moreover, the general standard of living demands that a young man be able to earn a decent income from the moment he enters the practice. The five year starvation period of grace has been cut down to a few months at the most. The profession is even demanding that the school take over that most difficult of teaching tasks, the instruction of the young lawyer in both the theory and -routine of procedure. The office is no longer willing to overlook the initiate's lack of precision in this particular nor to afford the instruction itself without grumbling. The school has so improved its product from time to time that it has no alternative other than continue to offer a better and better graduate.