The Proposal for a 2 Year Law Degree: Deja Vu All Over Again?

Brian Tamanaha

From Robert Stevens, Law School: Legal Education in America From the 1850s to the 1980s (1983) p. 242:

Demands for some structural change--especially from a handful of reformers in the elite law schools--were, however, a continuing phenomenon of the 1970s. The structural changes being advocated at the end of the 1960s, especially the two-year law school, for a while seemed close to being accepted early in the new decade. The well-funded and visible AALS Curriculum Committee, chaired by Paul Carrington of Michigan, argued, in its 1971 Report, for a basic standard two-year J.D. degree, followed by a series of post J.D. alternatives designed to respond to the different types of legal practice. From a more elitist perspective, Bayless Manning, the dean of Stanford Law School, called for a two-tiered system of legal education, although who belonged to which tier was a matter of doubt. The 1972 Carnegie Commission report suggested the two-year model, again as part of an overall freeing up of the alternative structures of legal education.

In light of this, the [ABA] Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar recommended to the mid-year meeting of the ABA in 1972 that Rule 307 of the law school standards be modified to allow the two-year law school. Many assumed the change would go through. They could not have been more wrong. In his witty article, "The Day the Music Died," Preble Stolz chronicled what actually happened. The deans of the leading law schools extolled the virtues of the three-year law school. Dean Albert Sacks of Harvard, arguing a position redolent of the longest traditions of academic life, suggested that the "time was not yet ripe," since Harvard was apparently about to make a great breakthrough in legal education. Dean Bernard Wolfman of Pennsylvania, reflecting the follow-my-leader view of legal education, opposed the idea because, he argued, if one school went to two years, all schools would follow. Dean Michael Sovern of Columbia rejected the scheme on the ground that it would increase the supply of lawyers at the very moment there was a glut, and at a local level he noted that his students would have to sacrifice $20,000 to stay on for the third year at Columbia. Dean Abraham Goldstein of Yale, emphasizing that lawyers had to be trained as generalists, opposed shortening law school at the very moment that law was becoming more complex and students needed to be trained in history, philosophy, and the social sciences. Only Dean Thomas Ehrlich of Stanford supported the proposals.

The two-year law school may have been dead, but the debate about the lockstep of seven years of higher education continued. Dean Sovern of Columbia proposed the 2-1-1 idea--the three-year law school with a year of practice after the second year--and Columbia had already developed a six-year B.A.-J.D. program with a group of elite colleges. Sniping, however, continued. Justin Stanley, president of the ABA in 1975-76, continued to argue for a two-year law school, and once again the profession's heightened interest in professional competence kept the pressure on. In 1978, Chief Justice Burger called for a two-year conventional law school followed by a year of clinical work. Again the law school establishment was not amused. The two-year law school, which had seemed so vigorous in 1970, seemed virtually dead by 1980.
Posted 2:24 PM by Brian Tamanaha [link]