Yesterday, the Pope Center released a new paper on legal education in North Carolina. Authors Andrew Morriss and William Henderson advocate a liberalization of the legal-services market, including legal education. North Carolina, like most states, insists that only graduates of American Bar Association-accredited law schools can take the bar exam, but Morriss and Henderson see no justification for that restriction.

At the luncheon for the presentation by Morriss and Henderson, I was sitting next to former Duke Law School Dean Paul Carrington, who said that decades ago he had been part of a Ford Foundation study group that had advocated reducing law school from three years to two. (I think that you could have a useful law school program that lasted just one year, but if students want to stick around longer, fine.) Why didn’t that suggestion go anywhere? Carrington explained that since medical school takes four years, the big shots in the legal profession felt that it would lower the prestige of the legal profession to go to only two years of study.

Well, there’s a really good reason to use up a lot of a student’s time and money.