David Segal's critiques of legal education and the academy's reaction
David Segal of the New York Times has spent the better part of 2011 skewering American legal education. Academic reaction, though never favorable, reached a nadir when Segal assailed legal scholarship and the process for hiring law professors. This post is intended primarily as a way of documenting the Segal critique and some (though by no means all) of the academy's reaction to it.
Segal's articles:
- The economic irrationality of the decision to attend law school
- Allegedly deceptive practices in the awarding of law school scholarships
- The economics of law school admissions
- How the curricular priorities and hiring practices of law schools depart from legal employers' expectations
- A Times "Room for Debate" forum, The Case Against Law School
- A Times staff editorial, undoubtedly inspired by Segal's series, urging reform of legal education
- Paul Caron's compilation of academic responses to David Segal
- Paul Caron, Are Law Review Articles Worth $575 Million ($4,000 Per Student) Per Year?
- Sarah Krakoff, David Segal's Paper Chase and Some Musings on Legal Education
- Dan Farber, The Unexamined Life of the American Law School
- Bill Henderson, The Hard Business Problems Facing U.S. Law Faculty
- Michael Froomkin, Links to Postings on l'Affaire Segal
- Daniel Martin Katz, Thoughts on the State of American Legal Education — The New York Times Editorial Edition
- John Steele, 1.5 Cheers for Segal's Article
- Matt Bodie, A Recipe for Trashing Legal Scholarship
- Orin Kerr, What the NYT Article on Law Schools Gets Right
- Frank Pasquale, New York Times Financial Advice: Be an Unpaid Intern Through Your 20s (Then Work till You’re 100)
- Brian Leiter, Another Hatchet Job on Law Schools
- Scott Greenfield, Those Who Can't, Teach Law
- Peter Tillers, Sequelae to Law School and Law Practice, and A Bit of Progress Immersed in Murk
- Bruce Ackerman, The Law School Experience (letter to the editor of the New York Times
- Stanley Fish, Teaching Law
6 Comments:
Jim, thanks for that round-up. As I've been tracking the responses, they seem to fall into two camps: (1) profs who react very negatively and don't concede the basic problems that law schools are facing, and (2) profs who see the flaws in the Segal articles but also acknowledge and try to grapple with the problems. Fwiw, and I apologize for touting my own post, here are my thoughts on it:
http://www.legalethicsforum.com/blog/2011/11/15-cheers-for-segals-article.html
I can't help but wonder, are there any practicing lawyers who have anything to say about all this? You remember practicing lawyers, the folks who hire, mentor or work with n00bs straight out of law school.
Probably not, since they're so busy making money hand over fist that they have no time to think, no less write, about such provincial matters.
Thanks, John. Thanks, Scott. I've added your posts on the subject to the list.
Thank you, Jim.
For some scattered comments see http://tillerstillers.blogspot.com/2011/11/sequelae-to-law-school-law-practice.html
AND
http://tillerstillers.blogspot.com/2011/11/new-york-times-editorial-on-legal.html
Thanks, Peter. I've linked both of your pieces, too.
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