Are traditional law schools keeping up?

Guest post by alumni Lael Weinberger

The National Law Journal has a report on a recent conference that called for big changes in traditional legal education. The conference was called “Future Ed: New Business Models for U.S. and Global Legal Education,” and was sponsored by the law schools at New York University and Harvard.

According to the article, the conference was a reaction to an important 2007 report from the Carnegie Foundation that warned that traditional law schools were doing a poor job teaching students practical job skills. Many of the participants in the “Future Ed” conference went further, warning that law schools are out of touch with the real world. They don’t teach practical skills as well as they should. They don’t emphasize business considerations (like talking with clients about costs). They are run on a model that is becoming obsolete: students rack up enormous debt on the assumption that they can get high paying jobs at firms, but those jobs are disappearing and the firm structure is changing.

The article quotes one analyst at the conference who said that American law school is “not simply incomplete.” “It's directionally wrong in many respects because it's misaligned with where the world really is. In my opinion, most of the things I see that are problematic in the profession right now are rooted in law schools.”

The report concludes by noting that the conference “included panels on the possible alternatives” to the standard legal education model and “addressed accelerated programs, experiential learning and distance education and lessons learned from other industries.”

“There's a saying in academia that change is good…for others,” one of the conference participants joked. For a long time, most American law schools have resisted change. But with conferences like this, momentum seems to be building for more change in the field.

Hopefully, this means that the larger world of legal education is recognizing what Oak Brook College of Law has known since its founding in 1995. OBCL’s non-traditional program puts an emphasis on practical skills and the curriculum makes it possible to get real-world work experience while in school. In the process, OBCL students also avoid the enormous debt that usually accompanies three years at a traditional law school.