Are Law Schools Passing the Bar?

  • When: November 16, 2012, 8:15 am - 4:30 pm
  • Where: William F. Starr Hall - William R. Davis Courtroom and Reading Room

Sponsored by the Connecticut Law Review

As Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story said, [a law student must] “at the very outset of his career, acquire a just conception of the dignity and importance of his vocation. Let him not debase it by a low and narrow estimate of its requisites or its duties. Let him consider it, not as a mere means of subsistence, an affair of petty traffic and barter, a little round of manoeuvres and contrivances to arrest some runaway contract, to disinter some buried relic of title, or to let loose some imprisoned wrong from the vengeance of the law...The profession has far higher aims and nobler purposes.”

In the 183 years since Justice Joseph Story gave this discourse at Harvard Law School, the role of lawyers in American society and their job market have changed dramatically. Have law schools evolved to fit the needs of the legal job market, and are our schools sufficiently preparing our students for their future careers? Should law schools reorganize their structures and curricula to better ensure the employability of their students? 

Participants will address how to effectively prepare law students for the current job market, the constraints of the law school framework, and the future of American legal education.

8:15 am  Breakfast and Meet-and-Greet with the Speakers
9:00 am Opening Remarks
9:15 am Panel 1: Delivering Competent Lawyers to Meet the Demands of Today's Legal Market
 
  • Chester Paul Beach, Jr., Associate General Counsel, United Technologies Corporation
  • Ann Marie B. Cavazos, Director of Clinical Program and Associate Professor of Law, Florida A&M University, College of Law
  • Jeffrey Lipshaw, Associate Professor of Law, Suffolk University Law School
  • Judith Welch Wegner, Burton Craige Professor of Law,University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law
10:45 am Break
11:00 am Panel 2: Rethinking the "Model" Law School - Disdain and Solutions for the Current Framework
 
  • Darren Bush, Associate Professor of Law, University of Houston Law Center
  • Jon M. Garon, Director of Law and Informatics Institute, and Professor of Law, Northern Kentucky University Chase College of Law
  • Nancy B. Rapoport, Interim Dean and Gordon Silver Professor of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, William S. Boyd School of Law
  • David N. Yellen, Dean and Professor of Law, Loyola University Chicago School of Law 
12:30 pm Luncheon and Keynote Address
  William D. Henderson, Indiana University, Bloomington, Maurer School of Law
   
1:30 pm Break
1:45 pm  Panel 3: Innovation in Legal Education - What Should the Future of Legal Education Look Like?
 
  • David H. Blankfein-Tabachnick, Penn State Law
  • George A. Critchlow, Associate Professor, Clinical Law Programs, Gonzaga University School of Law
  • Renee Newman Knake, Associate Professor of Law, Co-Founder and Co-Director of ReInvent Law; Co-Founder and Co-Director of 21st Century Law Practice Summer Program in London; Co-Director of the Kelley Institute of Ethics and the Legal Profession, Michigan State University College of Law

Registration and refreshments are FREE to those who RSVP. (11/15/12, 9:00 am - the RSVP for this event is now closed)
General questions should be directed to Kaelah Smith or Sara Ray, symposium co-chairs..
If you require reasonable accommodations for a disability, please contact Jane Thierfeld Brown at (860) 570-5132 at least two weeks in advance.

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