This past August, Liberty University School of Law received accreditation. What makes Liberty University unique among law schools is its uniquely conservative Christian perspective on the legal system. According to its own website, they: "believe that truth is knowable, see law as a creation of God designed to protect life over death, liberty over tyranny, and bring order out of chaos. Founded in and originating from God, law is infused with transcendent principles that surpass time, geography, and politics. Positive law must be in consistent with natural and revealed law."
Despite the fact that my perspective on the law is drastically different than that of those promulgating this institution, I am very pleased by this development. In many ways, as I shall explain, I hope this is the sign of things to come.
There are approximately 200 law schools in the United States. Most of them claim no ideology other than "success." Thus, although there are indeed differences in offerings among the various law schools, there is also a certain uniformity that makes legal education in one institution fairly interchangeable from another.
From what I can tell, most law schools compete with themselves for the students with the best match of high college grades, LSAT scores, and most likely to obtain financial success in the marketplace. Although different schools have different matricies when comparing applicants, for the most part, they are all looking for the same ideal, the "A" student with perfect test scores who is likely to secure a lucrative job and contribute lots of money to the institution. This effectively means that the student's motivation to attend law school is not necessarily a contributing factor to their acceptance or rejection. I remember one law school dean explaining to me, when I was exploring law school, that"no amount of work experience and commitment to the social good can outweigh the combination of good grades and a good LSAT because all we care about is bringing in students who can succeed in our program."
These rankings are also crucial for student job prospects. Thus, there is a great incentive on the part of the management of each law school to fit to compete in the arenas that draw attention by US News and World Report. This can have the side effect of making law schools as uniform as possible.
This uniformity has some favorable effects, such as lawyers having a common set of academic material with which they are all familiar. From the job prospect side, it also means that an employer can trust that a graduate of any law school has a certain knowledge and experience. The downside, however, is that the legal community runs the risk of a paucity of diverse ideological perspectives on the law. This is especially true when law school focus their attention on employability and marketability, rather than directing students to think about how they can contribute to the development of the law or society.
My law school for instance, has a noble history of providing legal education to working class night students, many of whom work during the day and many of whom did not go to fancy colleges. Many of these students have family obligations, and thus do not have the luxury of making law school a full time endeavor. These night students bring an experience to the legal community that is not available to law school students without serious work experience. However, because of the uniformity above discussed, traditional students who come from right from undergrad with stellar grades and test scores are sometimes more attractive students to schools than those with diverse experiences on their record. The cumulative effect of this is that law schools compete for the same students, train students in very similar ways, and encourage them to compete for the same big law firm jobs.
Thus, I see good news in the establishment of Liberty University Law School. In it, I see a possibility of various law schools providing more diversity in the legal profession. For instance, just as Liberty University provides a conservative Christian approach, another school could provide an approach that is uniquely leftist, or another which is more academic oriented.
An example of what I have in mind is in recent history, namely Antioch School of Law, which is the predecessor to the law school of the University of the District of Columbia. Antioch was unique because its singular focus was to train lawyers dedicated to public interest and low income advocacy and representation. According to its description on one website, it "pioneered a comprehensive clinic education model." That this is not currently being offered to potential lawyers is a real shame, as there is a very lack of law schools in this country that make concerted efforts to train their students to represent the disadvantaged, and those who cannot afford expensive counsel. Although most law schools profess a commitment to encouraging public interest work to some extent, there is no other school uniquely committed to such an endeavor. In most schools, in fact, the presumption that one is driven to the law for financial gain is so strong, that schools publicly push their students to do a certain amount of pro bono work--because obviously they wouldn't consider more reasonable hourly rates or other creative mechanisms to make their business affordable. Antioch took the radical approach of having their students reside temporarily in low income neighborhoods in order to appreciate the challenges they were being asked to address. As the goal was to encourage service to communities otherwise without legal services, it is quite easy to admire the extent to which Antioch went to advance its agenda.
I don't mean to suggest that Antioch and Liberty are sole members of a family of law schools with their own approaches. Certainly Northeastern University deserves lots of credit for its cooperative legal education program. At Northeastern, students are required to intern during the course of their educational career, thus making their experience in the workplace an essential part of their education. Also, all students spend a certain amount of time doing public interest work. The school is very selective. For the class of 2011, there were over 3 thousand applicants competing for the 200 available spots.
I envision a world in which there can be more diversity in legal education. In all frankness, I envision a world in which legal education was far less expensive, and perhaps easier to come by. For instance, I went to a college called St. John's College where we read and discussed the great books of Western civilization. We were graded on our engagement with the philosophers, not purely our memorization of theorems. Why not a law school that is drive to engage the philosophers and questioners of law, rather than merely the comprehension of the prevailing method for addressing known legal problems?
In the course of this analysis, one must ask whether my suggestion might also lead to the inadvertent specialization of law schools. Perhaps one law school would direct their students to become experts at law for the medical profession and others would direct their students to become experts at law relating to malpractice or auto injury. On one hand, it seems reasonable that a profession might desire newly minted lawyers with specialization in their field. On the other hand, a nation of specialists would be a serious problem. Thus, although it seems reasonable that professions have a right to train a cadre of lawyers to focus on their needs, the fact that lawyers generally have the ability to be generalists and to go from one field to another is a wonderful trait that we must guard against losing. Thus, in applying the ideas in this essay, their must be balance.
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