The Law Firm Disrupted: A Kirkland & Ellis Law School? Crystal Ball Gazing on the Future of Legal Ed — from by Roy Strom
What blue-sky thinking about the future of legal education might tell us about the relationship between Big Law and legal institutions of higher learning.
Excerpt:
The speech, which is worth watching here at the 4 hour and 41 minute mark, was a clear-eyed look at both the current state and the future possibilities of “innovation” in the legal education market. Rodriguez comes to the conclusion that law schools that have focused on tech training or other skills aimed at changing legal services delivery have yet to “move the needle” on demand for their students, rankings for their own schools or their own economic predicament.
That is in large part due to at least 10 “conditions” that currently exist and are limiting legal education innovation. I won’t list them all here, but they include the formal structure of offering only JD and LLM degrees; a university schedule that was created more than 100 years ago; and, of course, accreditation and credentialing requirements.
One solution offered by Rodriguez: “Blue-sky thinking.”