Against Practice
Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law.By William M. Sullivan, Anne Colby, Judith Welsh Wegner, Lloyd Bond & Lee S. Shulman. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2007. Pp. x, 225. $40.
Legal education is against practice. More than a half century after Jerome Frank’s call for a clinical-lawyer school, and nearly two decades after the MacCrate Commission’s plea for professional development, many American law schools continue to privilege theory over practice in teaching, scholarship, and institutional mission. In teaching, law schools elevate for- mal knowledge and case-dialogue pedagogy over practical judgment and policy analysis. In scholarship, law schools favor doctrinal synthesis and critique over field-based research on “law in action.” And in mission, law schools promote a self-regarding vision of lawyer-guild professionalism, role differentiation, and dyadic adversarial conflict over civic professionalism, role integration, and community-based social justice.