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

What are Law Schools for?
and prestige. The most ambitious version of this is set out in a
report by the International Legal Center (I.L.C.) on Legal Education
in a Changing World, which states:
"Law schools, perceived as multipurpose centers, can develop human
resources and idealism needed to strengthen legal systems; they can
develop research and intellectual direction; they can address problems
in fields ranging from land reform to criminal justice; they can foster the
development of indigenous languages as vehicles for the administration
of law; they can assist institutions involved in training paraprofessionals;
they can help to provide materials and encouragement for civic education
about law in schools and more intelligent treatment of law in the
media; they can organize, or help organize, advanced specialized legal
education for professionals who must acquire particular kinds of skills
and expertise." 20
This vision of law schools as multi-purpose centres of learning
might be grandly labelled the law school as the legal system's, as
opposed to the legal profession's, House of Intellect. I shall refer
to this as the I.L.C. model. It overlaps with the professional model
in that it includes practical training and other services to the legal
profession as part of its remit. But it differs in three key respects:
it is independent of the legal profession, it has a much wider clientele
and its mission is more in tune with the academic ethic. As
with the medical school model, I know of few law schools that
have committed themselves wholeheartedly to so ambitious a mission,
with the possible exception of the National Law School of
India University in Bangalore. 21 As law schools in this country
diversify their services and their clientele they have the opportunity
to move in this direction, without necessarily seeking, at least individually,
to take on such a wide variety of tasks.
A second version of the academic model is the Law Faculty as
a full part of the university pursuing original research and offering
a general education in law at undergraduate level and a range of
postgraduate courses, including research training, advanced academic
studies, multi-disciplinary work and some kinds of specialist
education and training. This has been the aspiration of most Continental
European Law Faculties, with many variations in time and
place.
A third variant is the law school which is essentially an undergraduate
teaching institution. This may or may not have a commitment
to research and, typically, it sees other teaching activities as
secondary or even, as still often happens in our tradition, as "out-
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