Do Law Schools Really Exist? A recent protest at Carolina Law raises questions about the purpose of legal training.

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | July 31, 2023 | Matthew G. Andersson

[karpov]

Law schools began as trade schools, training future lawyers to sell legal services as licensed providers. Modern law schools, however, have increasingly adopted the routines of political institutions. Even at more practical regional schools, the effect can be insidious, as faculty bring with them a progressive bias from their extensive academic exposure. Sometimes, this ideological emphasis is subtle and difficult to detect, because it can be integrated into the basic framework of how law is taught. At other times, the effect of ideological preoccupation in the legal academy is observable in how law students behave.

Recent dramatic disruptions in such “elite” law schools as Berkeley, Stanford, Chicago, Yale, and UNC-Chapel Hill may say a lot about those institutions, but it says more about the state of mind that has permeated general law-school culture. These incidents represent a deviancy from the law industry’s professional standards and arguably from those of the legal academy’s own advisory body, the American Association of Law Schools.

The UNC example is especially interesting, because, unlike Yale Law students protesting a Supreme Court nominee or UChicago’s J.D. candidates heckling a conservative alumnus, Carolina Law students were advocating for the re-admittance to campus of an accused domestic terrorist with a long arrest record. Having been barred from in-person classes upon his March arrest at an anti-police riot in Atlanta, Carolina Law student James Marsicano became a cause célèbre among his classmates. On April 13, dozens of Carolina Law students walked out of class in protest of his suspension. What might once have been an act of academic misconduct subject to discipline was instead greeted meekly by law-school administrators and teachers, who appear to have done nothing to punish the disruptive protesters.

[Bubba_Leroy]

Medical schools are even worse.

[PUGACHEV]

The law school I attended almost fifty years ago was an interesting experience. It did teach quite a bit of practical knowledge and certain counter-intuitive concepts the law is built upon, but the most important effect it produced was none of that. “This education will change the way you think” I was told on my first day. I did not believe it until my second year, when it suddenly occurred to me that I was looking at things differently than before. The change was subtitle but real.

[Salman]

The entire education system from top to bottom has been destroyed.

There is organizational continuity of institutions, but in effect they are wearing the corpse of an education system as a costume.

[Fester Chugabrew]

There is no mechanism whereby the common citizen can hold legal and medical practitioners/standards to account. This invites massive overreach and abuse, which we are experiencing more and more.

[jimfree]

My law school was definitely one of the honest ones. The nature of the part-time student market served would not tolerate a political echo chamber.

[joma89]

Democrat lawfare schools exist.