SYMPOSIUM: THE FUTURE OF LEGAL EDUCATION: Practicing Theory: Legal Education for the Twenty-First Century

Larry E. Ribstein*

 
Many of us write scholarly articles unconcerned that practicing lawyers never read them but in hopes that other professors will... . To call us residents of an ivory tower may be giving us more credit than we deserve. Residents of ivory towers sometimes climb the parapet and get a glimpse of the outside world. ¹
 

 
Is it not plain that ... our law schools should once more bring themselves into close contact with what clients need and what courts and lawyers actually do? ²
 
* * * As these quotes indicate, judges and lawyers have long complained about the disconnection between the real or practical world of law practice and the unreal or theoretical world of law teaching. However, it is important to put these complaints into perspective by noting two important points. First, despite lawyers' and judges' grumbling about the divide between them and law professors, the two groups historically have coexisted in comfortable symbiosis. Licensing laws and accreditation standards give law schools a constant supply of customers who can find decent employment on graduation. Law professors are free to teach what they want, and licensed lawyers are protected from competing with unlicensed practitioners.

A second important perspective point is that the future world of practice for which today's law graduates are being prepared is no longer clear. Large law firms, previously the standard business model of the legal profession, have lost much of their power to generate profits at the firm level and ...