David Mainiero**, a Harvard Law School student, offers his thoughts on the crisis in American legal education and the growing gap between study and practice. In considering various cost-saving maneuvers that could help decrease the cost of law school, and thus the debt-load that JD students would be incurring, he explores the importance of moot court:
American legal education is at a crossroads. The current state of legal education has been described as “broken,” “dysfunctional,” “failed,” “corrupt,” and almost any other imaginable synonym over the course of the past decade. Law schools and the legal profession as a whole must come together to effectively overcome these challenges. They are certainly not insurmountable. Nonetheless, the onus is on law schools, as institutions of higher education, to spearhead the efforts to reform an unsustainable system that is producing thousands of graduates who carry an average of $100,000 in debt after paying more than $200,000 for their law degrees in a legal market marred by a paucity of jobs and jobs that offer starting salaries far below what would be required to responsibly shoulder such a debt load.
In this climate, moot court is too often the “poor cousin of law school—an activity with which no one wishes to dispense, but with which most faculty members would rather not be bothered.” This attitude of neglect toward moot court is undeserved. Legal educators should take steps to elevate moot court activities to their historical prominence. Because of the very strong status quo bias in law schools, schools need to act now in order to capitalize upon a climate of impending reforms in legal education and the legal profession and mobilize the institutional support necessary to channel that enthusiasm into improving moot court competition. Very few deny the value of moot court in law school curriculums. Instead, critics decry how much “ a lot can be done with just a little effort and without much extra cost or time commitment.” By adopting some common reform proposals involving moot court, law schools can further to bridge the gap between legal education and legal practice in a cost-effective fashion by restoring the historically prominent institution of moot court its former glory.
**David Mainiero is an admissions counselor at inGenius Prep -- an admissions counseling company that advises college students applying to various professional school programs and high school students applying to college. If anyone is interested in the sources and research that helped inform the abstract/conclusion above, please e-mail David at [email protected].
American legal education is at a crossroads. The current state of legal education has been described as “broken,” “dysfunctional,” “failed,” “corrupt,” and almost any other imaginable synonym over the course of the past decade. Law schools and the legal profession as a whole must come together to effectively overcome these challenges. They are certainly not insurmountable. Nonetheless, the onus is on law schools, as institutions of higher education, to spearhead the efforts to reform an unsustainable system that is producing thousands of graduates who carry an average of $100,000 in debt after paying more than $200,000 for their law degrees in a legal market marred by a paucity of jobs and jobs that offer starting salaries far below what would be required to responsibly shoulder such a debt load.
In this climate, moot court is too often the “poor cousin of law school—an activity with which no one wishes to dispense, but with which most faculty members would rather not be bothered.” This attitude of neglect toward moot court is undeserved. Legal educators should take steps to elevate moot court activities to their historical prominence. Because of the very strong status quo bias in law schools, schools need to act now in order to capitalize upon a climate of impending reforms in legal education and the legal profession and mobilize the institutional support necessary to channel that enthusiasm into improving moot court competition. Very few deny the value of moot court in law school curriculums. Instead, critics decry how much “ a lot can be done with just a little effort and without much extra cost or time commitment.” By adopting some common reform proposals involving moot court, law schools can further to bridge the gap between legal education and legal practice in a cost-effective fashion by restoring the historically prominent institution of moot court its former glory.
**David Mainiero is an admissions counselor at inGenius Prep -- an admissions counseling company that advises college students applying to various professional school programs and high school students applying to college. If anyone is interested in the sources and research that helped inform the abstract/conclusion above, please e-mail David at [email protected].