When pop culture last took a sustained look at American legal education, audiences didn’t like what they saw. “I train your mind,” Professor Charles Kingsfield (John Houseman) intones in “The Paper Chase.” “You come in here with a skull full of mush, and you leave thinking like a lawyer.” That result — as James Bridges’ 1973 film made all too clear — is far from a good thing.
Certainly, Bridges — and John J. Osborn Jr., whose Harvard Law memoir inspired Bridges’ film — meant us to do something about law schools: to question a socialization process that makes relentless self-interest its predominant value; to critique an educational system that emphasizes rationalization over responsibility; to challenge a legal academy that celebrates its insularity from the world.
