Legal Education In The United States

Comprehensive history of American legal education. Originally published: Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, [1983]. xvi, 334 pp. Law School: Legal Education in America from the 1850s to the 1980s examines legal education and its impact on the legal profession and the society it serves. This highly lauded work won a Certificate of Merit from the American Bar Association upon its original publication. Stevens' distinguished career in education and law includes his eight years as Master of Pembroke College, Oxford, seventeen-year term as professor of law at Yale University and nine-year term as president of Haverford College. Well-annotated and indexed, with a thorough bibliography. "the most comprehensive treatment of the subject." --LAWRENCE M. FRIEDMAN A History of American Law, Third Edition (2005) 589

Harno, Albert J. Legal Education in the U.S.: A Report Prepared for the Survey of the Legal Profession. San Francisco: Bancroft-Whitney Company, 1953. v, 211 pp. Reprint available August 2004 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. ISBN 1-58477-441-X. Cloth. $70. * This concise yet detailed survey offers an excellent introduction to the history of American legal education from the colonial era to the 1950s. Its evolutionary perspective derives from one telling insight: "A social consciousness of the significance of law to a people is an attribute of a ripening civilization" (18). In succeeding chapters, Harno examines "Our English Heritage," "The Formative Period of American Legal Education," "Early American Law Schools and the Laissez Faire Period," "The Case Method," "Impact of Professional Organizations, Criticisms of Modern Legal Education," and "Legal Education-A Present Appraisement."

A critical history of the Americanization of legal education in fourteen countries The second half of the twentieth century witnessed the export of American power—both hard and soft—throughout the world. What role did US cultural and economic imperialism play in legal education? American Legal Education Abroad offers an unprecedented and surprising picture of the history of legal education in fourteen countries beyond the United States. Each study in this book represents a critical history of the Americanization of legal education, reexamining prevailing narratives of exportation, transplantation, and imperialism. Collectively, these studies challenge the conventional wisdom that American ideas and practices have dominated globally. Editors Susan Bartie and David Sandomierski and their contributors suggest that to understand legal education and to respond thoughtfully to the mounting present-day challenges, it is essential to look beyond a particular region and consider not only the ideas behind legal education but also the broader historical, political, and cultural factors that have shaped them. American Legal Education Abroad begins with an important foundational history by leading Harvard Law School historian Bruce Kimball, who explains the factors that created a transportable American legal model, and the book concludes with reflections from two prominent American law professors, Susan Carle and Bob Gordon, whose observations on recent disruptions within US law schools suggest that their influence within the global order of legal education may soon fall into further decline. This book should be considered an invaluable resource for anyone in the field of law.

The 19th century saw dramatic changes in the legal education system in the United States. Before the Civil War, lawyers learned their trade primarily through apprenticeship and self-directed study. By the end of the 19th century, the modern legal education system which was developed primarily by Dean Christopher Langdell at Harvard was in place: a bachelor's degree was required for admission to the new model law school, and a law degree was promoted as the best preparation for admission to the bar. William P. LaPiana provides an in-depth study of the intellectual history of the transformation of American legal education during this period. In the process, he offers a revisionist portrait of Langdell, the Dean of Harvard Law School from 1870 to 1900, and the earliest proponent for the modern method of legal education, as well as portraying for the first time the opposition to the changes at Harvard.

Softbound - New, softbound print book.

This book makes the case for a more legally literate society and then addresses why and how a law school might contribute to achieving that. Moreover examining what public legal education (PLE) is and the forms it can take, the book looks specifically at the ways in which a law school can get involved, including whether that is as part of an academic, credit-bearing, course or as extra-curricular activity. Divided into five main chapters, the book first examines the nature of PLE and why its provision is so central to the functioning of modern society. Models of PLE are then set out ranging from face-to-face tuition to the use of hard-copy material, including the growing importance of e-based technology. One model of PLE that has proven to be very attractive to law schools – Street Law – is described and analysed in detail. The book then turns to look at the considerations for a law school wishing to incorporate PLE into its offerings be that as part of the formal curriculum or not. The subject of evaluation is then raised – how might we find out if what we do by way of PLE is effective and how it might be improved upon? The final chapter reaches conclusions, some penned by the book’s author and others drawn from key figures in the PLE movement. This book provides a thorough examination of PLE in a law school context and contains a set of templates that can be implemented and/or adapted for use as the situation and jurisdiction dictate. An accessible and compelling read, this book will be of interest to law students, legal academics, practising lawyers, community activists and all those interested in PLE.

List of publications of the foundation dealing with legal education and cognate matters is included in each issue.

Clinical legal education has revolutionized legal education, from its deepest origins in the nineteenth century to its now-global reach.

This book discusses the opportunities and challenges facing legal education in the era of globalization. It identifies the knowledge and skills that law students will require in order to prepare for the practice of tomorrow, and explores pedagogical shifts legal education needs to make inside and outside of the classroom. With contributions from leading experts on legal education from various jurisdictions across the globe, the work combines theoretical depth with practical insights. Seeking to understand the changing landscape of legal education in the era of globalization, the contributions find that law schools can, and must, adopt educational strategies that at least present students with different understandings of what studying and practicing law is meant to be about. They find that law schools need to offer their students choices, a vision of practice that is not driven entirely by the demands of the marketplace or the needs of major international law firms. Bridging the gap between theory and practice, this book makes a significant contribution to the impact of globalization on legal education, and how students and law schools need to adapt for the future. It will be of great interest to academics and students of comparative legal studies and legal education, as well as policy-makers and practitioners.

From Barack Obama (Harvard and Chicago) to Bill and Hillary Clinton (Yale), many of our current national leaders emerged from the rarefied air of the nation's top law schools. The ideas taught there in one generation often shape national policy in the next. The trouble is, Walter Olson reveals in Schools for Misrule, our elite law schools keep churning out ideas that are catastrophically bad for America. From class action lawsuits that promote the right to sue anyone over anything, to court orders mandating the mass release of prison inmates; from the movement for slavery reparations, to court takeovers of school funding—all of these appalling ideas were hatched in legal academia. And the worst is yet to come. A fast-rising movement in law schools demands that sovereignty over U.S. legal disputes be handed over to international law and transnational courts. It is not by coincidence, Olson argues, that these bad ideas all tend to confer more power on the law schools' own graduates. In the overlawyered society that results, they are the ones who become the real rulers.