The Path of Law School Development

Legal education is taking on new meaning. Law schools areentering upon a new development. The classical American lawschool, represented by three or four well known schools after whichall the better schools are patterned, has clung rather tenaciously to atwin-function program of training technically fit young lawyers andpromoting scholarly legal research. That it has succeeded in bothundertakings is attested sufficiently by the present leadership at thebar and by the fact that the law books which have commanded thegreatest respect and influenced the development of the law most profoundly,with rare exceptions, have been the products of lawteachers. Nor will either of these functions receive less emphasisin any revised program of legal education. Rather, will they be tremendouslyaccentuated. The bar is insistently calling for a bettertrained graduate. Whatever the cost, it wants a man who has thecapacity to turn out work from the moment he steps into the office.Moreover, the general standard of living demands that a young manbe able to earn a decent income from the moment he enters the practice.The five year starvation period of grace has been cut down toa few months at the most. The profession is even demanding thatthe school take over that most difficult of teaching tasks, the instructionof the young lawyer in both the theory and -routine of procedure.The office is no longer willing to overlook the initiate\u27s lackof precision in this particular nor to afford the instruction itselfwithout grumbling. The school has so improved its product fromtime to time that it has no alternative other than continue to offer a better and better graduate