Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Law School Reform

Prof. Douglas A. Berman, Ohio State University, referred to a preliminary plan to delineate suggestions to improve law education, LEARN (Legal Education Analysis & Reform Network).

Here is a list of subjects the responsible insiders did not think about.

1) Every lawyer who has ever expressed himself on this subject, has said, he learned nothing in law school that he could use day 1 of being a lawyer. They have to get the advice of their secretaries on what to do. In all other fields, the grads emerge as just less experienced colleagues, because they have done the real work under supervision, and not as total novices cruising on summer intern experience.

2) The project proposes some audio-visual enhancements. No. Brick and mortar schools are dead down to kindergarten. The building and the mediocre staff is a total waste. The best kindergarten art teacher in the nation will get to teach kindergarten art to all the kindergarten students of the nation. There is not a hint these Deans have any awareness of such. All buildings, all paper, all on site work must be ruthlessly eradicated.

3) The indoctrination into supernatural, unlawful, core doctrines must stop. I do not want to argue this point. I invite the students to apply their personal experience to the following table. See for yourself which column best applies to law school. Contact me if anyone wants further discussion on this point.

http://www.rickross.com/reference/cults_in_our_midst/cults_in_our_midst2.html

4) The education is biased. The textbooks are Mein Kampfs for plaintiffs and for criminals. There is no balance about the severe damage the lawyer does to the nation. The lecturers are extreme left wingers. This bias makes the profession heinous. The law education is basically hate speech, devoid of facts or evidence for its biased teaching.

5) No fundamental questioning of assumptions is permitted, such as the profession is a criminal cult enterprise. One may only criticize the profession along lines that will generate more jobs, for example feminist, homosexual, terrorist, animal rights advocacy. OK, because they promote lawyer rent seeking, however bitter or strident the complaints by crybaby, overly lawyer entitled, parasites. Question the damages done to the country, and one is shunned.

6. Obsoleteness. Nothing from 1250 AD or 1870 AD is acceptable in current practice (except for the opnion of OW Holmes). There would be no lawsuit if any other product or service provider were to use practice from those days. There would be arrest to protect public safety.

7. Lawyers run the government. They are 100% responsible for all social problems, for the economic crisis, and the stagnation of our nation, instead of its pulling ahead by 9% a year. They run the government and very badly. They need to leave the government or get banned from it. If this debate does not happen in law school, where will it happen?

8. Prelaw courses should be required. These include Psychology 101. Punishment is the sole tool of the law. Technical aspects exist. Few judges or lawyers know them. I would start a Psych 101 For Lawyers Course. It would emphasize law relevant psychology other than operant conditioning. It would heavy on perception, psychopathology, cognition, with an emphasis on memory. I would suggest Sociology but the faculties are so biased to the left as to make them more damaging than useful. Another would be the philosophy of science, so that the term, evidence, in law and in science may merge. Consider testing the content of such courses on the LSAT, replacing some of the testing of the least wrong answer about a passage of inscrutable BS.

9. Explicit, Black Boxed Warning about Grads. No graduate of law school is fit to be a judge, a legislator, or to hold any responsible policy position in the executive branch. The Rent Seeking Theory and Cult Indoctrination cause an irremediable conflict of interest. Furthermore, judging is a nearly unrelated profession to lawyering, analogous to engineer and construction worker.

10. Eliminate 3L. Replace it with mandatory rotating internship in a general law firm or government agency. After that, have 3 years of practice in a specialty firm for specialists. These should take a specialty exam at the end of the three years, as a marker of minimal quality for the public.

2 comments:

Throckmorton said...

I agree with your points. When a physician finishes his training, they are ready to practice medicine although often not the practice of medicine. In medicine there are at least four years of medical school followed by an internship at the least and then 2 to seven years of practice under other physicians before one can go out on their own and practice.

Supremacy Claus said...

At least they have seen and done a little medicine for two years. They have talked to real patients. In some location, med students have been the sole provider of care, with a little oversight. But they are basically inexperienced colleagues. They will get good at their specialty, like everyone else, in ten years.

The law student has not spoken to a client, nor even written a brief demand letter in anger. He would need help filling out a small claim to retrieve a rent deposit.

The smallest, and potentially most beneficial change in this list is the addition of pre-law courses. Their content should be tested on the LSAT, as pre-med course content is tested on the MCAT.

My hidden agenda in this item is to try to immunize the pre-law student against the supernatural content to come in law school. The student might then demand that doctrines that will put people to death and transfer $trillions from productive people to less productive people in rent seeking, have a minimum of scientific reliability and validation.