Chicago Symposium to Address Effect of Vanishing Trials on Legal Education

185 law school deans are invited, all-expenses paid

Lynne Marek

The National Law Journal

June 10, 2009

For law school deans troubled by the diminishing importance of litigation skills in a U.S. legal world where trials are becoming a rare occurrence, there will be an opportunity next month to commiserate and brainstorm on the topic.

DePaul University College of Law on July 31 is hosting a two-day symposium in Chicago exclusively for law school deans called "Vanishing Act: Legal Education in a World Without Trials." DePaul College of Law Dean Glen Weissenberger has invited 185 of his fellow deans and received financial support to host them, all-expenses-paid, at the five-star Peninsula Hotel thanks to DePaul alumnus and personal injury attorney Robert Clifford, the founder of Chicago's Clifford Law Offices.

"This is an issue of huge concern," said Weissenberger, explaining that he and other deans fear that the decline of trials could eventually make obsolete the case method of instruction taught at law schools across the country. The symposium brochure said federal civil trials dropped to 3,500 in 2006 from about 12,000 in 1984.

Clifford, who declined to specify how much he's contributing to the event, said he's interested in the topic partly because he's a trial lawyer and also because he wanted to support Weissenberger and his alma mater, where he has a daughter studying to become an attorney. It's a conversation that needs to take place because it's not clear how the schools should respond to the changing environment, and it's "startling" that some deans seem to want to increase the focus on business skills, he said.

"There are two phenomena going on right now that are substantially weakening the future existence of the civil justice system," Clifford said. "One is the vanishing trial, and the other is confidentiality."

The rise in alternative dispute resolution and the corresponding increase in confidential settlement agreements is problematic because the lack of transparency will make it difficult for the government and taxpayers to determine how the court system is performing and to what it extent it should be funded, Clifford said.

University of Chicago Law School Professor Craig Futterman, Yale Law School Professor Judith Resnik and Duke Law School Dean David Levi are among the panelists who will speak at the symposium. The keynote speaker for the event will be Kenneth Feinberg, a Washington attorney and law school lecturer who was appointed to oversee the federal government's September 11th Victim Compensation Fund.

The symposium was timed to coincide with the American Bar Association's annual meeting in Chicago running from July 30 to Aug. 4.