What is going to happen to legal education? That subject comes up rather often on PBC.

My friend Andy Morriss, dean of the law school at Texas A&M, is optimistic that law schools will weather the current rough seas and explains his reasons in this Library of Law and Liberty piece. But Washington University law professor Brian Tamanaha responded a few days later with his reasons for pessimism.

Of course, legal education will remain in some form because there will always be some demand for knowledge about our laws and procedures. How and where that information is transferred to those who desire it is the question. My hunch is that if we break out into wide open competition in higher education generally (as Kevin Carey forecasts in The End of College — see my review here), law schools, despite all the defenses the ABA will probably put up, will also be radically transformed. A century ago, relatively few lawyers ever set foot in a law school and I think we will move back in that direction.