While reviewing Walter Olson‘s book Schools For Misrule in the latest National Review, Robert Verbruggen includes the following passage:
Olson does not, unfortunately, say much about what we should do about all this. In the book’s conclusion, his main suggestion is that law schools should refocus themselves on teaching the law rather than changing it. But one idea, suggested by George Leef of the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, would be to eliminate the government mandate that lawyers go to law school. We already have ways of making sure a lawyer is qualified ? the bar exam, coupled with the revocation of law licenses for crimes and malpractice ? and it makes absolutely no difference whether someone acquires his legal knowledge at an accredited law school or from books he ordered on the Internet and studied in his parents’ basement.
If you listened to Carolina Journal Radio over the airwaves last weekend ? or through the Internet this week ? you’ve heard George explain how law school has been oversold. Here’s an excerpt of his discussion with Donna Martinez:
