The Growing Disjunction between Legal Education and the Legal Profession

In the last analysis, the law is what the lawyers are. And the law and the lawyers are what the law schools make them. Felix Frankfurter' For some time now, I have been deeply concerned about the growing disjunction between legal education and the legal profession. I fear that our law schools and law firms are moving in opposite directions. The schools should be training ethical practitioners and producing scholarship that judges, legislators, and practitioners can use. The firms should be ensuring that associates and partners practice law in an ethical manner. But many law schools especially the so-called "elite" ones have abandoned their proper place, by emphasizing abstract theory at the expense of practical scholarship and pedagogy. Many law firms have also abandoned their place, by pursuing profit above all else. While the schools are moving toward pure theory, the firms are moving toward pure commerce, and the middle ground ethical practice has been deserted by both. This disjunction calls into question our status as an honorable profession.2 Over the past two decades, law and economics, law and literature, law and sociology, and various other "law and" movements have come to the fore in legal education. We also have seen a growth in critical