Legal education certainly can improve, but the recommendations of the American Bar Association’s Task Force on the Future of Legal Education are not the way to do it. The task force released its report and recommendations on Jan. 24, and they are a collection of ideas that will do little to make law schools better — and some would make them much worse.
The report does make some useful suggestions. For example, it recommends that law schools do more to provide need-based financial aid to students, observing that in recent years most law schools have shifted to giving financial aid primarily based on merit. Also, the report urges more “competency based” education, including more skills training for law students. Every study of law schools has stressed the need to do more to prepare students for the practice of law.
