Gasshūkoku ni okeru hōgakkai to hōjitsumukai [The Worlds of Academics and Legal Practice in the United States]

I prepared this paper for a symposium entitled, Academics and Practitioners in Japan and the United States: Can the Two Worlds Ever Meet? When I saw the symposium title, my first reaction was that it might seem strange to ask whether the worlds of academics and legal practice can ever meet in the United States. After all, to a large degree the history of the law school in the United States has been that of an institution dedicated to the training of legal practitioners; the vast majority of US law professors are members of the bar; and many, if not most, US law professors also practice or serve as legal consultants from time to time. In fact, of any nation in the world, in the US legal education probably has the closest connection to the world of practice. Still, in recent years, a number of observers have claimed that in the US, two worlds that used to meet regularly have begun to drift apart, with law schools becoming so academically and theoretically-oriented that they have started to lose touch with and relevance to legal practice