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

Law in the Universities: The Historical Context
porary university law school is in many key respects a post-Ormrod
creation. Ormrod established the structure of professional training
and assigned law schools a relatively clear but limited role within
it, but left them with a good deal of space to develop as they saw fit.
(ii) Diversification. It is not surprising, then, that a second post-
Ormrod theme is academic pluralism. This takes three main forms:
variations in the shape and content of undergraduate law degrees;
diversification of intellectual approaches to the study of law; and
extension of law teaching beyond undergraduates. 66
Over time undergraduate degrees in law diversified in respect of
both form and content: today there are full-time single honours
degrees, English and Foreign law degrees, inter-disciplinary or
mixed degrees with a substantial law content. There are part-time
and sandwich courses, as well as a variety of conversion courses
for law graduates. Modularisation may further increase the variety.
In many respects the most interesting developments since
Ormrod have been in the field of ideas. Later we shall see how
different approaches to law challenged the traditional emphasis on
"blackletter" doctrine in both scholarship and education: for
example, at undergraduate level, Kent pioneered a multidisciplinary,
critical approach and for a time experimented with
clinical work; Warwick tried to "broaden the study of law from
within"; Birmingham Polytechnic (now the University of Central
England) went further than anyone in requiring a "clinical" element
in all three years; the School of Oriental and African Studies
managed to design a B.A. in Law which both satisfied professional
exemptions and reflected the title of the institution.
At least until recently, university and, to a lesser extent, polytechnic,
law schools saw themselves as mainly undergraduate institutions
with the LLB as the main, sometimes the only, offering.
Gradually they have diversified their clientele. There has long been
a modest legal contribution to subjects such as business studies,
accountancy and engineering. Traditionally this was referred to by
the derogatory term "service teaching", and the offerings have
often been rather unimaginative. Some other professions still maintain
an outdated picture of law as a knowledge-based subject. That
is changing. Perhaps even more significant is the trend away from
almost exclusive emphasis on undergraduate teaching: since 1971
there has been a considerable expansion of postgraduate legal education
67 ; by 1993, about 20 universities were offering "Legal Practice
courses" that satisfy the Law Society's requirements for the
second, or vocational, stage; individuals and to a lesser extent insti-
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