The Case Against Tamanaha's Motel 6 Model of Legal Education

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

UCLA Law Review Discourse

Abstract

The radical overhaul of legal education espoused in Professor Brian Tamanaha's new, widely read book, Failing Law Schools, would represent a disastrous step backward in legal education. Tamanaha and his supporters argue that the current crisis in legal education-rampant unemployment among debt-laden law graduates and plummeting law-school applications requires a dramatic reduction in law-school tuition by substituting a yearlong apprenticeship for the final year of law study and replacing tenured, full-time legal scholars in the classroom with low-cost, part-time practitioners at non-elite law schools. this Essay examines Tamanaha's model in light of the pedagogical needs of law students, the interests of the clients of fledgling attorneys, and the role law professors have traditionally played in championing legal reform and the rights of the disenfranchised through enlightened scholarship. Who will replace the law professor-protected by tenure, unbound to clients or special interests, and able to reflect on abuses of power from the Archimedean point of the academy-as the critic of injustice? I contend that Tamanaha's argument for apprenticeships disserves clients and is pedagogically unsound. And that Tamanaha's "differentiated" legal education, with elite, three-year programs training corporate lawyers and less expensive two-year schools for local practitioners, would limit the choices and opportunities of law students from the start.

First Page

50

Last Page

59

Publication Date

2012

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