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
[email protected]
International Journal of Clinical Legal Education Annual Conference
Olomouc, Czech Republic – July 2014
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
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”
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
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
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(?)
(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
(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
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.”
Bibliography
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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).