The Current Crisis in American Legal Education
There has been a good deal of recent commentary about a perceived “crisis” in American legal education. A combination of rising tuition rates for law schools and a decline in the number of entry-level jobs in the legal profession has resulted in reduced numbers of applicants to law schools, and a corresponding reduction in entering law school class sizes. From the perspective of recent history, the “crisis” represents a potentially dramatic change in the stature and prospects of American law schools and the legal profession, which since the Second World War have been regarded as highly desirable educational and professional locations. But from a longer view, the crisis can be seen as yet another episode in the American legal profession’s eventful history.
The prominence gained by the legal profession in the last half of the twentieth century was a function of a set of interlocking relationships among universities, law schools, and state bars. By the 1950s almost all law schools required applicants to have a college degree, all the major law schools were affiliated with universities, and most state bars listed as a prerequisite for admission attendance at a law school that had been accredited by the American Bar Association. Taken together, those requirements ensured that persons aspiring to be lawyers would need to attend colleges or universities and accredited law schools, all of which had admissions requirements. They would also have to pass increasingly rigorous state bar examinations.