Keynote Speech: Reimagining Law Schools?

• Author: Erwin Chemerinsky
• Position: Dean and Distinguished Professor of Law, University of California-Irvine School of Law
• Pages: 1461-1470

1461

Keynote Speech: Reimagining Law

Schools?

Erwin Chemerinsky

Reconsideration and discussion of legal education is nothing new. It has

occurred at regular intervals for over a century. I became a law professor in

the fall of 1980, and since then there have been countless conferences and

books about how to rethink law schools. In the early 80s, there was the effort

by the critical legal studies movement, casting a new light on legal

education. We have had the MacCrate report, and more recently, the

Carnegie Commission. And yet, despite all of this, law schools remain largely

unchanged.

Legal education today is very similar to that which I received in the mid-

1970s, and I would guess that the legal education that I received in the mid-

1970s is much like those in the mid-1930s. That is not to say there are no

differences. If one would walk into a law school classroom today and

compare it to that of the mid-1970s or mid-1940s, one would be

immediately struck by the tremendous increase in the number of women

students. As recently as 1970, only about five percent of law school graduates

were women. My class of law school was twenty-five percent women. And

now, at my law school, which I think is typical of many across the country, a

majority of the students are women. The story is less successful, but still

notable, with regard to the increase in the number of students of color at

law schools around the country. And there are differences with regard to

curriculum as well. Almost every law school has some form of clinical

education. Every law school has some set of courses with regard to skills

training. But overall, what goes on in law school and law school classrooms

seems so unchanged, despite all the conversations and all the conferences

on legal education.

In spending two days talking about legal education it is worth thinking

about why it is so resistant to change. There is no easy answer to this

question. In part, I think it is that because law schools are generally

successful. Law schools have historically succeeded in preparing students to

be lawyers, to meeting the needs of the bar and society. There is, thus, not a

 Dean and Distinguished Professor of Law, University of California-Irvine School of

Law. The following is a transcript of Dean Chemerinsky’s remarks delivered at the Iowa Law

Review 2011 Symposium, The Future of Legal Education.