So argues Lawrence Velvel, the dean of Massachusetts School of Law in this essay posted on Minding the Campus.
Legal education has been badly warped by what economists call rent-seeking — that is, the way special-interest groups (in this case, the organized bar and the legal-education establishment) have been able to increase their monetary intake by manipulating the political process. For the better part of a century, the ABA has worked to control access into the legal profession by regulating legal education. If we could have avoided that, law school would today look a lot different than it does.