Does the legal profession face an apocalypse, or is this all the same old problem? Many have expressed this opinion since 2008, citing as evidence that big law firms are making drastic cuts, law schools are facing declining enrollment, and state bar associations are making their exams harder to pass.
Not so! According to Russell Pearce, in an essay he's published showing the five areas of crisis, and how it's actually history repeating itself.
Read the full article here:
Nothing New Under the Sun
From the abstract:
Drawing
upon Julius Henry Cohen’s classic 1916 work, 'The Law: Business or
Profession?', this Essay explains that the challenges facing the legal
profession today are not new and that in current debates lawyers,
judges, and law professors too often rely on inaccurate assumptions
regarding the history of the legal profession. In particular, this
Essay identifies five crises facing the legal profession today that
parallel challenges at the turn of the Twentieth Century: (1)
determining whether law is a business or a profession; (2) debating
whether lawyers have responsibility for civic and business leadership;
(3) considering whether lawyers should have control of the market for
legal services; (4) promoting reform of legal education; and (5)
managing increased diversity. The Essay argues that placing these
crises in historical context reveals that the legal profession’s
responses to these dilemmas have varied over time, suggests that today’s
status quo is neither traditional nor inevitable, and seeks to create
space for rethinking assumptions that underpin our current debates.
