Training the Trial Lawyer

Speaking at the dedication of the Stanford Law School in 1950, Mr. Justice Robert Jackson observed that the unsolved problem of legal education is how to equip the law student for work at the bar of the court. . . . He told his audience that the greatest opportunity for improvement in the legal profession, and where it is now most vulnerable on the score of performance, is its work in the trial courtroom. It seems to me, that while the scholarship of the bar has been improving, the art of advocacy has been declining. My report for 1968, as the fledgling dean of the Notre Dame Law School, is distinctly more cheerful; I would say that the observations of Mr. Justice Jackson and others do not presently apply in our law school and from reading approximately 50 law school bulletins in the last few months, I would judge that this is no longer true in the leading law schools of the nation. Naturally, I am not prepared to evaluate what other law schools are doing to train lawyers for the trial bar, but I can outline what we are doing at Notre Dame Law School to do so