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

Epilogue
isticated body of scholarship. There is an admirable tradition in
law schools, much influenced by America, of taking education
seriously.
However, our law schools are some way from realising their
potential. It is not necessary for my argument to speculate how far
English undergraduate degrees in law do provide a good general
education for those who take them. My impression is that the practice
is uneven, ranging from the excellent to the inadequate. The
cardinal sin of making an interesting subject boring is not
unknown. The overloading of the undergraduate curriculum; the
preference of some law firms for non-law graduates; the ambivalence
of many academic lawyers about their roles and objectives
are all matters of concern.
If law schools are to flourish they need to move in the direction
of the ILC model. The case for embracing this model can be
restated as follows:
It is in the social interest that our law schools should be involved
in the systematic advancement and dissemination of knowledge
about all aspects of law from a variety of perspectives and that they
should be quite large and diverse rather than contracting into a
small elite that focuses mainly on the upper reaches of the legal
system.
It is in the interests of law schools, law students and law teachers
that they should broaden their range. Undergraduate options are
increasingly being squeezed and vast tracts of law are conspicuously
under-researched. Students have diverse needs and interests
and should have the opportunity to choose from a reasonably
broad menu of subjects, perspectives and methods. Academic lawyers
need varied outlets in order to flourish.
It may be less easy to persuade the legal profession that law
schools should diversify in this way, because this could be interpreted
as law schools distancing themselves from the profession
and weakening its influence. But the ILC multi-functional model is
as much in the interests of the profession as of anyone.
At the lowest level it will relieve the so-called problem of "oversupply"
of law graduates: if the profession really helped to promulgate
the idea that a law degree is and should be genuinely liberal
and academic in the best sense, this would maintain a broad pool
of talent from which to select, take pressure off undergraduates to
make premature career choices, and it would help to reduce the
expectation that a law degree is an automatic passport to practice.
In respect of undergraduate degrees, if only a third to a half of law
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