Talk:Law school in the United States

message: There has apparently been an organized effort to vandalize this wikipedia page executed by members of the anti-law school blog Law School Transparency and the blogger Paul Campos.  
Per Wikipedia policy, blogs by LST, Mr. Campos and Mr. Tamanaha are not reliable sources of information. 
In addition, many of the claims asserted in recent wikipedia edits are factually inaccurate and constitute [attacks], also in violation of wikipedia policy.
If this vandalism continues after this warning, this will be escalated.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 150.108.60.10 (talk) 00:13, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Wow, someone at Fordham University believes that authors of peer-reviewed publications on the subject of post-graduate employment prospect of law students are not reliable sources. I wonder who that might be FOARP (talk) 15:20, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Postgraduate employment

message: I have moved this article and started legal education (which requires a vast amount of improvement). Trying to cover a global topic in an article which is mainly about the U.S leads to things being pulled in two directions, and unsurprisingly the balance was poor. CalJW 11:57, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: U.S. centrism

message: Somebody please tell me why does Law School direct to Law School in United States! I believe this redirection takes the cake!
Priyatu 11:11, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Law schools (especially the concept of stand-alone independent law schools) are primarily an American institution.  Everywhere else, lawyers are trained in law faculties, which are university departments.  --Coolcaesar 18:40, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Not necessarily so. There are several "Law Schools" in Canada, India, and Australia. Though the "law school" concept may have originated from the US but it has been widely adopted in many parts of the world. --PullUpYourSocks 22:48, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

text: RickReinckens 03:09, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that a disambiguation is needed.  However, "law schools" outside the US are hardly the same thing, it's like comparing a BA program in business with an MBA program.  Bobak 16:52, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I concur.  --Coolcaesar 01:34, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Hardly the same thing? In what way? You are aware that US is not the only country that requires an undergraduate degree to enter law school?--PullUpYourSocks 13:23, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: But nearly all American law school programs require full-time study (and the few that don't are unaccredited).  In my research for the rewrite of the Lawyer article, I've noticed that many Latin American "law schools" are actually part-time programs.  Also, law schools are used as the basis in Latin American countries for a huge range of careers (direct out of law school), while the vast majority of American lawyers actually do practice law for several years before looking at the possibility of taking their career in non-law directions.  --Coolcaesar 05:19, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Granted I can't speak for Latin American Law Schools but I can assure you that there are other countries with law schools that are as formal as the US.  For example, law schools in Canada are almost identical to the US ones and have been around over a hundred years.  Also, I don't see why "law school" cannot be defined by (say) its Latin America meaning along with the american meaning. Just because it is a less formal institution doesn't mean it's not worthy of defintion. --PullUpYourSocks 14:24, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  So, are there no law schools outside US? 

message: I made the change in reference to American law schools.  In the US, the law degree is considered a "professional degree" along with the MD, MBA, MFA, DVM, DDS, etc.  The defining line is that these students don't tend to go on to be academicians.  The other, more snarky way of putting it is "Professional degrees are glorified vocational institutes" --which as a proud American law school graduate I smile and concur.  --  Bobak 19:21, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I concur.  :-) The only point to having law schools affiliated with general research universities is the prestige and access to the resources of the larger institution.  --Coolcaesar 20:43, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Professional Degree vs. Graduate Degree 

message: This article claims that most courses in first year law school courses span a year. It certainly doesn't at my school, and my understanding was that year long courses are on their way out or a thing of the past.  The line in question is:
"In the First Year, most courses span a year."
Also, I find the text about the Socratic method going out of fashion to be fairly weak and possibly biased, since many people are critical of the Socratic method itself, and pleased that it is going out of fashion.  The article doesn't seem to present this side of the issue.
:Have to agree with the above. There were no year-long courses in my law school either (unless you count the three semester legal skills program). However, the Socratic method was used quite extensively. bd2412 T 03:19, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: My school had a yearlong Lawyering Skills course where a grade was given only at the end of the year.  However, all six other courses were one semester in length.  Isn't that the typical arrangement?  --Coolcaesar 16:07, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, I had a program similar to Bjsiders.-Lciaccio (talk) 04:24, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is this even true anymore? 

message: Someone's rant is in the section on criticisms. It should be NPOV'd.
:The section in question has a bunch of Couric citations, they need to be expanded to quotable/sourcable individuals.  I also question that assertion near the end, that the evaluation method doesn't match the practice.  Do employers care about your learning arc if you can't perform under pressure in ambiguous situations?  More importantly, do the people you represent care about your topical strengths and weaknesses if you can't win a case?  Do you get allowances for being sick at the trial?  Does the judge grant you special exceptions to procedure and rules of evidence if your cat died last night?  It seems to me that taking an exam in which the scoring is subject to the whims and interpretations of a professor who you've had all semester to study and get to know (and, most likely, whose past exams are available for analysis) is pretty similar to the one shot opportunity you get to convince the judge or jury.  The whole thing smells like original research, and all the Couric sources suggest to me that the author is simply stating his or her opinion by proxy through nameless "critics."  If we can find some reputable sources that echo these points, let's source this section.  If not ... I'm having trouble with keeping it in.  There's some good points in there but they can be pulled out and merged with existing material in the Criticism section. Bjsiders 19:08, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  (Moved comment by anonymous poster) 

message: The material on federal, state, and Supreme Court clerkships should be moved out of this article and into the Law clerk article. Any objections? bd2412 T 22:41, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clerkship material should be moved out 

message: Some bitter female law student has inserted a rant, and while ideas from that rant may be worthwhile, it is a rant and is inappropriate for this meduim. I suggest it be changed to better reflect wikipedia's ethos.
:See my comment above.  The rant smells like original research disguised with Couric cites.  I'll rewrite it this afternoon. Bjsiders 13:41, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I concur with all the above, especially with Bjsiders's last three paragraphs.  It was only when I was preparing for the bar exam that I truly began to understand why the law school exam process and the bar exam are so harsh (in California no one gets extra time on the bar exam for power outages, computer crashes, flooding, earthquakes, fires, heart attacks, and so on).  The reason for making the prelude (and first few years) of a lawyer's career depend on a relatively small number of huge exams is that (for litigators) the rest of their career will depend upon the outcome of a relatively small number of hearings, trials, and appeals — although most of their time will be spent in preparation for those things.  But the client never cares about how much time went into your elaborate appellate brief or closing argument. All they care about is winning. --Coolcaesar 20:38, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

text: "In real practice you have some time to do extensive research and tackle a complex legal question, pore over past decisions, etc." Ha ha ha ha ha ... wait till you get into practice, juggling six or seven cases with negotiations, depositions, etc... when an actual legal question comes up, you'll be lucky if you have as much time to address as you get on a law school exam - oh how I miss the peace and quiet of the exam room, where I could ponder just a few questions for hours, without constant interruption! BD2412T 14:51, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  criticisms section 

message: Someone has suggested merging this article with Legal education in the United States.
*Strongly Disagree: while this is not as strong a reason as why we shouldn't merge in Admission to the bar in the United States, I still feel that "law school" is to focused on the actual school.  Examples of Legal Education in the US that do not involve Law School:
:#Court clerkships
:#Legal internships at private law schools (also called "summer associates" or "law clerks")
:#Mandated Continuing Legal Education for all practicing lawyers
:#I know for a fact that California still permits students to "apprentice" their way into taking the CalBar (very few try, and very few pass, but it's still allowed).
:For these reasons I cannot agree to merging these articles because they are significantly different topics to lawyers and those interested in legal education. --Bobak 21:40, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed merger: this article with Legal Ed in the US 

message: I've arbitrarily left only the 10 oldest schools on the list, the rest are here. Really, do we need a crufty list that, when I trimmed it, was up to 67 schools??? If anybody cares about founding dates, the List of law schools in the United States article now has them. Wl219 10:20, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: The rest of the list

message: I propose merging the subsection on "legal journals" into "law review," as the law review WP article discusses both. Also, the "prestige" of law review vs. "legal journals" is better explained in the law review article, I think. Wl219 07:25, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Law review/legal journals

message: This is the second place this disagreement has occurred, please see article on Stanford Law School. User 69.215.136.98 believes that GPA curves for law schools are relevant to include on wikipedia. Though I personally disagree, I see no real problem with this. However, this appears to be a strangely singular attack on Stanford Law School. 69.215.136.98 claims Stanford has the highest mean in the country, but I have not seen this cited anywhere and is contrary to what I've heard individually. The wording reverted here is especially obvious in indicating his believe that Stanford grade inflates, but for some reason he is not listing any other schools as engaging in the practice. With a blip here or there, it is my understanding that as a school's ranking or general quality goes up, so does its mean GPA. I think it's unfair to single out Stanford for this practice. Please, thoughts? I'm hoping I'm not being overly defensive but I really think it has to be more thorough than this. As is I think it's a thinly-veiled attack at Stanford for what is far from unique behavior. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.44.212.48 (talk • contribs)  on 28 December 2006.
* See new article List of law school GPA curves addressing discussion of singling out by being inclusive. --lquilter 18:10, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Information about GPA curves 

message: This article badly needs a lot of historical background!  For instance, the way that law was taught prior to the creation of separate professional "law schools" ... --lquilter 18:05, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, I've added some history. Cheers! bd2412 T 08:51, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  historically inadequate 

message: I removed a section about Illinois schools being included in state accredited law schools. Every law school in Illinois, as far as I know, is fully ABA accredited. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.194.130.70 (talk) 04:12, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  State Law School Accreditation 

message: Which undergrad degrees are typically held by students entering law school? Is there a statistic? Are there special undergrad degrees that specifically prepare for law school? Please add this information. -- 212.63.43.180 (talk) 16:11, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: They'll take any undergraduate degree although the most common ones are political science, philosophy, English, and history, if I recall correctly.  Some universities offer an undergraduate Legal Studies degree like UC Berkeley but those degrees are very controversial and most law schools frown upon them. There is a widespread consensus in the U.S. that studying the common law, especially American law, requires a level of cognitive and emotional maturity (that is, the maturity of most college-educated Americans around ages 22-26) which most undergraduates simply don't have (when they enter college between ages 17-19).  --Coolcaesar (talk) 15:05, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

text: Actually, there has been a mighty debate among legal educators (spanning over a hundred years now) about whether law schools should follow the example of medical schools and some other graduate programs and require potential law students to take specific undergraduate courses in areas such as philosophy, government, and the humanities. I'll see if I can find citations to these discussions. bd2412 T 08:24, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Which undergrad degrees are typically held? 

message: I think it's a stretch to call William and Mary the oldest based on the lone undergraduate law professor that they had from 1779 on. Not sure when the real program got established, but that is not a conventional "law school" by any standard. bd2412 T 08:58, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Oldest law schools 

message: I have removed the Charleston Law School from the list of oldest active law schools, as it clearly does not belong there. Its public relations materials state: "The Charleston School of Law is rooted in tradition. In fact, its origins predate the formation of the oldest law school in the country."  However, this is not a statement that the schools itself predates anything at all. Hawaii's origins predate the American Revolution, but that doesn't make it the oldest state. bd2412 T 05:40, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: There are some vandals who keep attacking the Charleston School of Law's article.  No one actually claims that it is the oldest school in the country, but the vandals insist on inserting that claim just so that they can turn right around and attack it.  The poster of this comment is one of them.--ProfReader (talk) 11:10, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the notice. Cheers! bd2412 T 01:32, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Charleston Law School 

message: There are several reasons noted for why top law schools decline to teach doctrine as extensively as other law schools and instead focus on theory and analysis. The list is highly incomplete. All of the reasons focus on the academically-oriented nature of top schools, but that is one small part of the story.
Other reasons should be added because it is an important distinction between law schools and a big reason why higher ranked law schools are higher ranked.
Some to get started: top law schools don’t teach doctrine as much because they perhaps have less faith in doctrine as being useful. Being able to do the analysis is far more useful to legal professionals. The law changes all the time and being able to adapt to those changes and understand them is much more important than knowing what the law is at any given time. Moreover, even the clearest doctrine is a tenuous concept, so understanding how to do the analysis is useful for attacking a doctrine that on its face seems against you.
There are more reasons out there too; I just thought the section was misleading because of how limited it was.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.247.205.107 (talk) 20:35, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Curriculum 

message: It's cited for five propositions but appears nowhere in the references.  Great.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.253.90.111 (talk) 04:06, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is the Anderson source 

message: The section on criticism of law schools violates several Wikipedia policies, including: (1) Information must be verifiable -Many of the cites are to blogs and other unreliable sources. Much of the objective information (i.e., numbers, percentages) is inaccurate. (2) No disproportionate criticism -The criticism of law schools is longer than the description of law schools. (3) No original research Again, lots of stringing material together here. (4) Information must be noteworthy Off the cuff remarks and this one guy I knows blog or horror story are not noteworthy. Peer reviewed Empirical research in noteworthy.
I've tried to fix some of these problems, but it's a mess. Wikipedia is not supposed to be a blog.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 100.2.189.16 (talk) 13:36, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticism 

message: It seems to me that section 7 on post-law school employment and section 10.1 on employment statistics and salary information should probably be consolidated as they sufficiently overlap in subject matter (including many citations to the same sources).  I propose consolidating both under the latter heading because, as the citations in the article already show pretty well, and has been noted elsewhere, the subject is a matter still under debate in the legal community.Sneekypat (talk) 20:51, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I would split those out into a separate article on Post-law school employment in the United States, since employment after finishing law school is only tertiary to what an encyclopedia article on law school should primarily be about, which is the history, development, operation, curriculum, and function of law schools. Also, the information currently in the article on this topic is narrowly focused on a specific, recent period, and is not reflective of the historic course of post-law school employment. A more complete historical record could better be developed in a separate article. bd2412 T 23:21, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'm totally fine with that.  I agree that legal employment is a peripheral subject that is big enough to merit its own article, especially when you include the history.  In point of fact, my main reason for wanting to consolidate the two sections is that the legal employment topic seems to be playing an outsized role in the current article and, given the contentiousness of the ongoing debate, potentially hindering the main article's credibility/impartiality.  Sneekypat (talk) 12:38, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sections 7 (post-law school employment) and 10.1 (employment statistics and salary information) Consolidation 

message: There seems to be some dispute as to how the finding of the Economic Value of a Law Degree source, and it's derivative sources (i.e., articles discussing it and relying on it) should be described.  I changed the sentence "More recent press coverage by some higher education reporters has noted that peer reviewed studies and comprehensive data suggests that law graduates are still typically better off financially than they would be had they not attended law school, notwithstanding challenges facing recent graduates." to read "More recent press coverage by some higher education reporters has noted that peer reviewed studies and comprehensive data suggests that law graduates are still typically better off financially than they would be had they not attended a post-college graduate program, notwithstanding challenges facing recent graduates." (Emphasis mine).  I did so because the study compared lifetime earnings of JD holders to lifetime earnings of those who obtained only a college degree and calculated a premium for the JD holders over the college degree holders.  The study explicitly did not compare the lifetime earnings of JD holders to holders of all other degrees, such as medical degrees, doctoral degrees, or masters degrees. See 43 J. of Leg. Studies at 256 ("Below we report both OLS and quantile regression coefficients. To estimate the law degree earnings premium, we compare law degree holders to bachelor’s degree holders who are similar to law degree holders on many observable dimensions that predict earnings. We defer to later research the differences in earnings associated with law degrees compared with alternate graduate degrees." (emphasis mine)).  
Another editor has reverted the change (in addition to moving a section currently under discussion for a different move on a different section of this talk page).  I believe that the original language is potentially confusing as to the study's finding and seek consensus on how the description should be phrased. Sneekypat (talk) 12:18, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reverted Edit Regarding "Economic Value of a Law Degree" 

message: Am I the only one who thinks that the "oldest active law schools" section doesn't belong here? It's totally unsourced (as it would pretty much have to be), and it doesn't really serve a purpose in the article. I think we should delete it. agtx 22:22, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Oldest active law schools" section 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified