Clinic in an Era of “Crisis” for Legal Education

1. Clinic in an Era of “Crisis” for Legal Education Lawrence Donnelly Lecturer & Director of Clinical Legal Education School of Law National University of Ireland, Galway larry.donnelly@nuigalway.ie International Journal of Clinical Legal Education Annual Conference Olomouc, Czech Republic – July 2014

2. The “Crisis” in a (probably over dramatic) Nutshell • “Legal education is a broken, failed, even corrupt enterprise. It exalts and enriches law professors at the expense of lawyers, the legal profession, and most of all the students whose tuition dollars finance the entire scheme.” • James Chen, Dean of the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law

3. The Emerging Media Consensus • Forbes: “Why Attending Law School is the Worst Career Decision You’ll Ever Make” • New York Times: “Legal Education Reform” • The Economist: “Reforming America’s Legal Education: The Two-Year Itch” • Boston Globe: “Waning Ranks at Law Schools”

4. Failing Law Schools • Professor Brian Tamanaha of Washington University School of Law; a highly regarded scholar • a seminal work that cannot readily be dismissed • has, to a large extent, dominated discourse in the American legal academy since its publication in 2012 • an interesting (familiar?) anecdote

5. Four Parts • Temptations of Self-Regulation: ABA capitulation; is 3 years necessary?; academic vs. vocational • About Law Professors: teaching loads down, salaries up; performance?; what is the appropriate role of scholarship? • US News Ranking Effect: law schools “gaming the system” or outright lying? • Broken Economic Model: ever-rising tuitions and value for money

6. Failing Law Schools on Clinic • Tamanaha is broadly supportive of clinic as a component of legal education, but. . . • CLEA comes in for criticism: 1) it wrongly intimates that law schools produce incompetent lawyers; 2) clinicians fundamentally want the same protections as their “academic professor” colleagues • also, clinical programme costs(!) and clinical scholarship(?)

7. (Ir)relevance for Clinic in Europe Part 1: What “Crisis”? • money, money, money! • undergraduate discipline in Europe • diversity of career paths for graduates • “Rolls Royce” vs. doing more with less – differing models of clinic • multi-lingual, well travelled European law graduates

8. (Ir)relevance for Clinic in Europe Part 2: Different/Similar Challenges • money, money, money! • changes to university structures, loss of law school autonomy, demands on academics’ time: whither clinic? • the daunting task of innovating on a continual basis and the dangers of standing still • a very different type of student: the “millennials” • the globalised, changing nature of law practice • the current paucity of opportunities and an uncertain future for traditional legal careers

9. Final Thoughts on European Clinical Legal Education in 2014 • clear points of transatlantic convergence and divergence in legal education generally and in clinic specifically • What should we as clinicians be about – without borders? • the pursuit of “disorienting moments” for our students and ourselves • “confronting ‘disorienting moments’ that do not conform to the student’s pre-existing understanding of life experience, how the world operates and how people behave.”

10. Bibliography • Emily Benfer and Colleen Shanahan, “Educating the Invincibles: Strategies for Teaching the Millennial Generation in Law School” 20 Clinical Law Review 1 (2013). • Frank Bloch (Ed), The Global Clinical Movement: Educating Lawyers for Social Justice (Oxford University Press 2010). • Lawrence Donnelly, “Developing Irish Clinical Legal Education” in (Thomas Mohr and Jennifer Schweppe Eds) Thirty Years of Irish Legal Scholarship 359 (Round Hall 2011). • Lawrence Donnelly, “Clinical Legal Education in Ireland: Some Transatlantic Musings” 4 Phoenix Law Review 7 (2010). • Fran Quigley, “Seizing the Disorienting Moment: Adult Learning Theory and the Teaching of Social Justice in Law School Clinics” 2 Clinical Law Review 37 (1995). • Brian Tamanaha, Failing Law Schools (University of Chicago Press 2012). • Richard Wilson, “Training for Justice: The Global Reach of Clinical Legal Education” 22 Penn. State International Law Review 421 (2004).