In this NRO article David Frum, a Harvard Law School graduate, discusses two recent plagiarism cases there which have embarrassed the (very liberal) perpetrators.
In the course of his discussion, Frum wonders about the benefit of “prestige” law schools, but I don’t think he carries that line of thinking far enough. Law schools do not prepare people to be lawyers. You would be just as foolish to hire a new graduate of Harvard or any other law school to, say, defend you against an IRS tax prosecution as you would be to hire a new graduate of an engineering program to build a bridge. People learn virtually everything they need to know about lawyering, engineering, or any other occupation, on the job. All that law school and similar “professional” training programs do is to help the existing professionals identify which kids they want to bring in.
A century ago, most lawyers did not go to law school, but rather joined up with firms as apprentices, just as Clarence Darrow did. My conclusion is that formal education programs are certainly not the only and probably not the best way for people to learn what they need to know in order to do some job well. Alas, we’re caught in a credential spiral where it’s becoming obligatory to go through some type of formal education in order to get the piece of paper you need to get into the real training.
