The Brief:

CHRISTOPHER LANGDELL IS DEAD!!

For those of you who have the fortune of never having gone to law school, Christopher Langdell was the dean at Harvard Law School during the late 19^th/early 20^th century who along with many of the “progressive” reformers of the times changed how Harvard taught law to its students, and hence how law schools across the country provided legal instruction.   Any first year law student is owned by Langdell; who overhauled the curriculum to its doctrinaire standard; civil procedure, contracts, criminal law, property, torts. 

I don’t take issue with the program which is the same whether you go to Harvard, Stanford, UCLA or Concorde law school, and everything in between.  It’s his trademark case study style “Socratic” method of learning that I, and many others, take issue with.

Case in point; my contracts professor.  He’s a good man and a fine lawyer, civil and criminal by practice but just is not very adept and experienced at teaching.  And like (just about) every other law professor he defaults to going through our massive case book (one of the worst I’ve come across, but that’s a separate issue) practically one case at a time, picking on random students (usually not me) to engage in a “Socratic” discussion about the finer points written by an appellate judge, most of us have never heard of before.  For this we all owe Langdell a debt of gratitude; wink, wink.    

Now, I have no problem with in-class discussions as opposed to monotone lecture, but each of these cases is an edited version of the actual case itself that the author of our book felt free to cut and paste away.  I’ve read whole opinions and edited ones, and even though the entire thing is anywhere from 5-15 pages (Supreme Court cases are usually longer) you comprehend it better.  Why on earth professors, and book editors think that cramming 8 cases on a particular topic covering 30 pages is better than say 2 or 3 complete cases is beyond me.  By the fifth or sixth one, I’m already thumbing forward at what’s next or diving into my Gilbert Law Summaries to comprehend in outline format, plain-old-English exactly what I just read.  And then our professors, almost one-by-one have the nerve to tell all their students not to rely on out-of-class supplements that cost a fraction of the price and are way more instructive. 

No wonder traditional, daytime-fulltime law schools, particularly the local and regional ones that don’t have the brand name and pedigree of a Harvard of Yale are feeling the pinch of competition from upstarts like Concord and Abraham Lincoln, who provide web instruction and distance learning programs for the non-traditional student, the night student, the part-time student.  The ABA might not like it, Harvard and the Ivies might not like it, but the day of the Langdell model is coming to an end.  Already Concord law school turns out more graduates in one year than Harvard, and given its affordability and flexibility, that trend will only continue. 

Like most of what is already happening in high-tech and the business world the next great innovation in legal education, indeed in higher education, will not come from the Harvards and the Yales of the world, the incumbents who loathe that their monopoly is coming undone, but from the Concords and the ALU’s and the University of Phoenix and schools yet to be heard of.  And hear them you will. 

And Christopher Langdell is rolling over in his grave.  Rebels, Mavericks, Innovators and Associates.  Here they come.