We previously noted here Professor George Kuney’s recent critique of legal education, in which he focused on the need to restructure traditional law firm summer associate programs. But there have been numerous criticisms of legal education in recent years, including the disconnect between the legal academy and profession—i.e., too many law professors are out of touch with the actual practice of law by attorneys and judges.
While there has been legal scholarship touching on this issue (see, e.g., here, here, and here), Chief Justice John Roberts illustrated the point as follows at the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Annual Conference on June 25, 2011—
A video of Chief Justice Roberts’s conversation is available here.
And Justice Antonin Scalia expressed similar sentiments when speaking at the University of New Hampshire School of Law on March 22, 2013. The article is available here. In his keynote address, Justice Scalia noted that “there’s not much more legal scholarship to be done and too many scholars to do it,” criticized scholarship that had “no value to the practitioner, or would-be practitioner,” and warned that “[t]he academic mindset is too far removed from the practice of law.” Why? In part, because too many law professors lack significant practical legal experience.
But we will save that criticism of legal education for another post.