Legal Education

I

Introduction

Legal Education, branch of education devoted to preparing individuals for the practice of law and for other law-related careers. In the United States, legal education is carried out by approximately 200 law schools around the country. Most law schools are units of public or private colleges and universities. A small number of law schools, however, are independent. In most states, completion of law school is required before an individual may take a bar examination, and one must pass the bar exam to become a lawyer. In a few states, an individual may serve an apprenticeship in a law office for several years as an alternative to law school.

Law schools in the United States are usually accredited by the American Bar Association (ABA). The ABA determines whether a new law school has skilled teachers, an adequate library, and sufficient resources to conduct a successful program of legal education. After the ABA grants a law school accreditation, it visits the school once every seven years to ensure that the school still meets the required standards. Graduates of ABA-approved schools may take the bar examination in any of the 50 states. Because each state has different laws, each one tests different material and has different requirements for passage of its exam. Graduates of law schools not accredited by the ABA are usually limited to taking the bar examination only in the state where the school is located.

II

Admissions and Enrollment

Most U.S. law schools require applicants to have a bachelor’s degree as a condition for admission. In addition, almost all require applicants to take the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT). There is no required pre-law course of study. While many pre-law students major in political science or economics during their undergraduate college years, others study such subjects as philosophy, math, engineering, or business.

Admission to most law schools is competitive. The most selective schools offer fewer than one out of four applicants a place in the entering class. Typically, a committee of faculty members and administrators makes the admissions decision by reviewing the file of each applicant. In making its decision, the admissions committee considers such factors as the grades earned by the applicant in college, the reputation of that college, the applicant’s score on the LSAT, letters of recommendation, and essays or personal statements by the applicant. Very few law schools interview candidates for admission.

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There are approximately 120,000 law students enrolled in the United States and about 40,000 graduate each year. The number of applications nationwide rose steadily during the 1980s and early 1990s, but began to decline in the mid-1990s. Despite fluctuation in the number of applicants, there are still fewer available places in law schools than there are people interested in attending law school. Tuition costs for legal education are substantial, especially at law schools affiliated with private universities. Many such schools charge more than $20,000 per year, not including books, housing, or food costs. Law school tuition rates usually rise at or slightly ahead of the general rate of inflation.

III

Instruction and Degrees

Law school requires three years of full-time study. Some schools offer part-time programs that hold classes in the evening. Part-time programs require four years of study. Almost all schools require the same basic courses during the first year of the program. These include contracts, criminal law, property, civil procedure (the study of the rules controlling the conduct of lawsuits in court), constitutional law, and torts (the study of law governing personal injury). After the first year, students are free to choose from many courses concerning specific areas of the law. Among the many elective courses offered by most law schools are corporate law, criminal procedure, international law, family law (the law of divorce and child custody), copyright law, evidence, and legal history. Along with classroom work, most law schools offer clinical programs that permit students to represent individuals with relatively simple legal problems, under the supervision of a faculty member. Unlike most colleges, law schools do not require students to select a major field of study. Some students informally choose to specialize in a particular branch of the law, but most take a very general program of studies.

The materials for most law school courses consist of a collection of court decisions, known as opinions, in texts called casebooks. Law school classes are usually conducted using a technique known as the Socratic method, named after the teaching strategies used by the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates. Instead of lecturing about the material, the teacher will usually call on one or more students and ask them questions about the cases assigned for study. Because the classes are often large and the questions often difficult, some law students find the Socratic method unpleasant. Others feel the method is useful because it forces students to think quickly about difficult problems just as a lawyer must do when working on a real case.

The basic law degree at American law schools is the doctor of jurisprudence (J.D.). The J.D. degree permits an individual to take the bar examination, which is, in turn, a prerequisite for receiving a license to practice law. After completing a J.D. degree, students may return to law school for one additional year to earn a master of law, or LL.M. degree. Many lawyers from other nations come to the United States to study law for one year to earn the LL.M. degree. Some schools offer a highly specialized degree known as the doctor of juridical science (S.J.D).

IV

History in the United States

Before the American Revolution (1775-1783), the American colonies had no law schools. Lawyers studied for their profession by serving as an apprentice to an older, more established lawyer. The first law professor in the United States was George Wythe, who was appointed to teach law at College of William and Mary in 1779. The first school that devoted its entire educational program to the study of law was the Litchfield Law School in Litchfield, Connecticut, founded in 1784. The Litchfield Law School operated until 1833. Several major universities, such as Harvard, Yale, and the University of Virginia, established law schools in the early 19th century. By the time of the American Civil War (1861-1865), there were approximately 20 law schools in the United States. At this time law was taught through formal lectures. For their texts, students read the works of great legal authors, such as British jurists Sir Edward Coke and Sir William Blackstone.

In the late 19th century Christopher Columbus Langdell, the dean of the Harvard Law School, introduced a new method of study known as the case method. Langdell felt students could learn more about the law by studying actual court opinions than by reading legal texts. By the early 20th century virtually every American law school had adopted Langdell’s method. In the 1960s most schools began to introduce some form of clinical education to supplement the classroom study of cases. Other schools began to award academic credit for outside work with law firms or government agencies. Although these programs were controversial when first introduced, they are now fundamental parts of legal education.

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