Blackstone's Tower: The English Law School - College of Social ...

Law School Culture: A Visit to Rutland
part of the humanities and as a good, perhaps necessary, foundation
for professional formation. 42 However, it is a lack of consensus
on the part of the faculty about objectives, priorities and methods
in the LLB that gives so much power to student culture, while leaving
so little space for individual student choice.
EVENTS
One way of evoking a culture is through fiction. We have noted
already that law schools are almost invisible in English campus
novels. But if one were to shift the scene from a department of
English or Sociology to an English law school, the possibilities
would not be very different: Jim Dixon's public lecture in Lucky
Jim 43 ; a British Council tour or a spoof on post modernism in the
mode of Malcolm Bradbury 44 ; an academic conference, an
exchange with an American institution or with "a real world", as
evoked by David Lodge, 45 micro-politics along the lines of The
Masters 46 or The Abbess of Crewe, 47 sexual romps in a Tom Sharpe
polytechnic 48 —all of these could be accommodated in a law
school without too many adjustments. There is no reason that I can
tell why murder, love or intrigue is less likely in a law school than
an English Department. Even some of the types satirised in The
History Man, which helped to bring sociology into disrepute, had
legal counterparts in the late 1960s and early seventies. 49 One
could not compete with the wealth of literary allusions in the works
of Malcolm Bradbury or J. I. M. Stewart or Amanda Cross, but law
could probably produce some functional substitutes. American law
school novels emphasise the Socratic case class, the hard work and
stress for the students and the intensely competitive atmosphere.
But these are features that to some extent differentiate American
from English law schools; that is a matter of degree, however, and
in England they suggest fewer fictional possibilities, at least on
campus.
So what, if anything, might this change of setting have to offer?
There is potential in a moot, or a visit to a court or prison that goes
wrong; law centres and clinics provide a promising point of contact
with live clients and real problems, even though regrettably few
law students actually participate in them. Besides the traditional
moot, the increasing use of simulations in teaching basic professional
skills such as interviewing, negotiation, and first instance
advocacy has dramatic possibilities, but these take place mainly at
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